Sweet Romance11 min read
You Aren't My Whole World (But You Were My Warmest Lie)
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June. The city boiled. Cicadas made a constant thin drum in the heat.
I had not seen Fielding Zaytsev for half a month. We were on a cold war because I had said three words that detonated between us: "Let's get married."
"Marriage" was his landmine. He could play with me, he could own my nights, but he couldn't be asked to own my mornings.
I stood at the entrance of Night Drift and felt the lights strike at my skin. The club was rich in gold and velvet and the kind of luxury that smelled like other men's money.
"Well, well, look who it is—Fielding's plaything," a girl hissed.
"Plaything?" another scoffed. "She's old news."
Hands found my waist before I could pull away. Their perfume and lipstick smeared my sleeve.
"Get off me," I said, because I did not like human hands on my body.
"You calling who a dog?" one girl snapped, indecent hands still lingering.
"Hey!" a manager barked. "Room 702, now. Move."
They spat and left me with that sticky shame.
I smoothed the hem of my white dress and walked toward a private suite to fix my hair. The mirror showed a face people said was unblemished by the world. Pale skin, moon-curve eyes, soft mouth. They said I looked like someone famous—someone named for all the wrong reasons.
When I walked into the club lounge, everyone froze.
"Fielding," I said. My voice was smaller than I meant.
He sat like a statue in black, one leg over the other, a cigarette held between fingers like a possession. He was pretty in a way that made me small—sharp cheekbones, a wind-cut jaw, cold eyes edged up the way a hawk's do.
"Who told you to wear white?" he asked without moving the paper-thin line of his mouth.
White was, apparently, not allowed when you resembled someone he could never accept. He hated when I wore things his other love had favored.
"Take it off," he said.
I blinked. "What?"
"Take it off," he repeated, voice flat and dangerous.
I could hear it like a rope tightening. My hands found the zipper at my back.
Someone's hand stopped me. A different man—lighter clothes, arrogant kindness in his smile—stood behind me. Glenn Karlsson.
"Don't be ridiculous," Glenn said, different tone, warm and theatrical. "We're friends here."
He knew me from university. His presence made the room tilt in a different direction. He laughed, easy and loud, and the pack of rich children cheered because an actor had spoken.
"Let's play a game," someone suggested. "Truth or dare."
"Of course dare," Glenn said. He drew a card.
"French kiss for one minute with anyone present," it read.
The lounge went wild.
"Pick me!" "Pick me!" They made a mess of themselves.
Glenn looked at me with a crooked, almost guilty smile. I felt him reach for my wrist.
"I don't feel well," I said urgently. "I should go."
Glenn's fingers tightened. "One minute," he murmured. "Just one. Come on, help me out."
He moved. He flopped me on the couch like a lobster out of water. The lounge cameras blinked toward us. Phones came out. The hint of his lips met mine at the corner in a staged tilt that looked like a kiss for a crowd and not for a person.
They recorded. They cheered.
Then Fielding walked back inside.
He saw the frame he did not want in his eyes: me and Glenn, a blurred kiss in public. His face closed like a trap.
"Get her out," he said, and two words later I was dragged, not gently, out of the room.
We were in the hall before I could say anything. He snarled, and I felt his hand press into my jaw. "Who were you trying to catch, Cora Vega? Him? Or the next man?"
"It was a staged kiss!" I tried. "It was for the game."
"Enough," he said. "You're mine. Don't forget."
He pushed me against the marble wall. Someone in the corner watched and did nothing. I felt his mouth at my throat, his hands shoving, and shame was an animal running in the wrong direction.
"Fielding, stop," I said. He shoved me. "I'm not—"
"Don't pretend," he hissed. "You came here to play. You always come here to be seen."
I crawled away when he finally left. I almost wanted to die where I stood.
A girl stood at the far end of the hall. She had a look that belonged to Fielding's absent Muse, someone the city called a "white moonlight." Her eyes were complex when they looked at us—more curious than jealous.
That night, Fielding took me to the suite on the rooftop. The moon fell through the glass and turned the room cold.
"Don't wear white again," he said as if he hadn't been the one to pull me to him.
He stripped the dress off me and shoved my face under the faucet like I had been dirt.
"Clean those lips," he ordered. He scrubbed my mouth until it shone raw.
I choked. "You're disgusting."
He didn't answer. He forced me into the bed and said, "We're not done."
I tried to keep my breathing even. I thought of the girl who used to mean everything to him, and I thought of how the world around me had learned to call me a replacement. That memory kept me small and quiet.
In the morning, he told me to take the morning-after pill he'd left beside the ashtray.
"Do it," Fielding said like it was a favor.
I swallowed it in front of him because I had no courage to refuse. I pressed my hand to my stomach and wondered what would have happened if a small pulse of life were inside me—would it look like his eyes or like someone I loved in secret?
He told me later, with a sneer, that I should stay away from the club. "Don't seduce his friends, Cora," he said. "You aren't for people who matter."
I believed him. The next week, I went to work on a different life: a film set.
I got a call from Clive Espinoza, my old photography mentor.
"Cora," he said softly on the phone. "We start shooting next month. I want you as my assistant."
He'd pushed for me to get a spot on a new S-plus drama, Longing of Days. "It's a small but important role," Clive said. "You learn. People will see you."
I said yes.
The set was coastal and quiet. I thought I might breathe. Then the world proved a taut thing again.
I met Aiden Lindgren when we literally rescued a white cat. He had the air of someone who belonged in old books—gentle, pale blue eyes, long hair, always with a hint of a smile. He called himself "Aiden" and joked like friends.
"You saved my cat," he said softly. "Thank you."
"It followed us," I said, embarrassed but relieved.
Aiden's hands were big, calm. He laughed like a low bell.
"May I be honest?" he asked later, when we stood in the hotel corridor. "You are nothing like the gossip. You seem tired, but brave."
"You always talk like a poem," I teased.
He did not laugh. "I like poems."
The opening banquet was a golden mess of cameras. People with big faces and small voices moved like chess pieces.
Amelie Palmer came out in a white gown and put her arm in Fielding's. The cameras ate her up. Fielding smiled at her the way rich men smile at a rare thing, like a successful bet.
"She’s new to our company," someone whispered. "A Fielding special, for sure."
I stood in the corner with my camera. Francesca Bell, bubbly and loud, bounced with her phone.
"She looks like a born star," Francesca breathed.
I watched Fielding with Amelie and felt something in me fold.
Then the set grew dangerous.
A man—Lawson Foley, a deputy director I had not wanted to meet—brought champagne. He smiled with a beard that represented favors. "Drink," he said. "A toast to new faces."
Clive watched me twirl the glass and did not stop me when he left. I drank from the glass and felt the world spin.
"Go away," I told myself. I stumbled to find the bathroom.
On the stairway a hand came that was unwelcome. "Pretty," Lawson said. "Be useful."
I fought. I said, "Get off me." Men who have power think their hands are ownership. He had the sort of confidence that comes when you believe your title makes you entitled.
Then Aiden came.
"Are you all right?" he murmured.
Lawson blustered and stepped back. Aiden did not move to take her into a room. He called him out in a way that made others listen.
"I am not your entertainment," Aiden said. "Leave her alone."
The man backed away because Aiden had a quiet that is sometimes louder than noise. He left in a storm.
I wanted to cry and blamed myself. I called Clive and he sounded like a man who would break into pieces for me.
"You should rest," Clive said. "You don't owe anyone anything."
A day later, with my throat still raw, I found Fielding standing in my doorway.
"Don't lie to me," he said with a knife-edge smile. "You have friends now? A poet and an author? Cute."
"Please, Fielding," I whispered. "I need space."
He laughed, like a cat swatting at a moth. "You think it's that simple? You're mine."
He shoved me into a corner and held me there with two words: "Watch."
Amelie was at his side. He dragged her into the bedroom and invited me to stay, to watch them at work. He threatened to release footage—from one of those nights I had been drugged when he had a camera in his hand. He said he would ruin me.
I could not fight him then. There was a way he kept proof of my compliance and he used it like a leash.
"Don't pretend you have self-respect," he said. "You love being looked at. You come back to me."
I left him that night. I left the club. I told myself leaving was part of surviving.
Weeks passed and I threw myself into work. Aiden would bring me orange slices and say, "Eat. You're burning candles at both ends." Glenn came sometimes to set and joked like the sun.
On the last week of filming, everything changed.
Fielding had become a public figure in our city. He was polished, praised, married inside a marble hall to the other woman. Bright cameras, white flowers, vows. It was a spectacle he wanted. He wanted to be admired.
He did not expect me.
I sat in the back row under the pretense of being some crew member. I watched him stand with a ring on his finger and smile like he was absolved.
At the moment the pastor finished—when congratulations and the flash of cameras would begin—Aiden walked to the stage.
"Stop the ceremony," he said.
"Excuse me?" Fielding snapped. "Who are you?"
"He's the man everybody thinks no one listens to," Aiden said, voice quiet before a storm. He opened a small case and pulled out a flash drive.
"What nonsense—"
"It's not nonsense," Aiden replied. "I have footage. I have the videos. I have messages. I have people who will testify. I thought you'd like your reputation. I thought you'd like your winners."
He pressed play on the banquet screen.
The room saw Fielding—Fielding's hands—forceful, vindictive, cruel. Videos of him ordering me to clean my mouth. Videos of him pushing me into rooms and recording me asleep. The footage was clinical, ugly, undeniable.
"You're lying!" Fielding shouted. He tried to wrestle the laptop away.
"No," Aiden said, mild. "You're the one who lied to everyone you bought. You thought everyone owes you love like payment."
Guests gasped. Cameras caught the change. Some whispered. Others stood. The bride's eyes widened; the bouquet trembled in her hands.
"We know," someone said from the crowd. "We saw the nights you thought were private."
I watched Fielding shrink under the weight of his own image on the screen. He had spent his life pretending to be a noble villain, but here he was—caught.
He tried to salvage it with threats. He tried to pretend the footage was staged. He called for silence. He begged.
"Let me explain," he said, voice breaking for the first time.
"Explain," the bride said slowly. Her voice had the coolness of a thing that realizes a rose is made from paper.
"You used me," someone else called out.
"Shame," murmured another.
Phones raised. The video spread like a stain. People who had once courted him now turned away. His sponsors looked confused. The hostess who had patted him on the back walked off. The socialites—those who had once tried to touch his sleeve—lost their smiles.
I walked forward.
"Fielding," I said, and no actor or camera could make my voice tremble. "Do you remember the night at Night Drift?"
He could not meet my eyes.
"You filmed me," I said. "You told me you were making sure I was safe. You were filming my fear. You made a weapon out of my body."
He finally looked at me. "You were always mine," he said, small.
"You used me to own people," I answered. "You mistook ownership for love. You mistook fear for devotion."
People around us had stopped pretending. Journalists whispered. The bride had her face wet. Amelie, who had once smiled with such good future-hope, slid away from his side like a shadow left too long in the sun.
"Release any fund he controls," someone shouted. "He can't get away with this."
A middle-aged woman—someone who had been there the night he'd commanded me to be silent—stepped forward with a folder of texts. A man who had been his driver produced a thumb drive of other recordings.
"I was told to look the other way," the driver said. "I won't anymore."
It took only minutes. What I'd feared for months happened all at once: Fielding's supporters peeled off like leaves; a single flame burned the papers of his image—one by one, his illusions came apart under public scrutiny.
He fell from polite corners into the open, raw loneliness of someone without a crowd.
"You're lying! They are lying!" Fielding screamed. He staggered like a man who had misread his own reflection.
"You're the liar," An editor of a major magazine said, voice blunt. "You used people."
Around us, the crowd's reaction changed like seasons.
Shock. Then anger.
Phones recorded. People filmed. Camera flashes tried to make angels out of consequences.
"Do you want forgiveness or revenge?" a reporter asked.
"I want it known," I said. "I want everyone who thought he was beautiful to see him as he is."
An older woman from the bridesmaids' group moved to my side. She placed her hand on my shoulder. "You are stronger than you look," she told me.
Fielding's eyes moved like a trapped beast, darting for an exit.
"Please," he begged. He fell to his knees in front of the crowd, the kind of humiliation no money had bought him before.
The bride's friends hissed. Someone spat. The photographer clicked.
"Don't you dare," Fielding said finally, voice thin with terror. "Please! I can explain—"
"Explain what?" a voice from the crowd asked. "That you preferred to collect people like souvenirs? That your affection came with a price?"
There was no sympathy left. The spectators had seen their fairy tale of him die. He had no script to hide behind now.
Fielding's defense dissolved into pleas and attempts at bargaining. Friends who had once laughed with him now shook their heads at the man who had thought himself invincible.
He beat his chest like a child and then, finally, curled in on himself.
Around him, cameras and phones recorded everything. The footage that would run the next morning's news was already being framed.
Some people in the crowd applauded. Some hissed. Some cried.
In the end it was not I who humiliated him with a savage heart. It was the world he had used. He stood humiliated, small, a man exposed.
Later, the magazine headlines read the truth. His sponsors pulled their money. The wedding was postponed. Fielding lost more than the ring he had used to buy attention.
I walked away from the scene with Aiden at my side. He took my hand like someone who had rescued a light.
"Are you all right?" he asked, gentleness wrapped around each word.
"No," I said simply. "But I will be."
People asked the hard things. Lawyers came and went. I took statements. The studio I worked for released a statement supporting me; journalists wrote pieces that finally called his actions by name.
The public punishment, brutal and open, lasted the rest of the week in headlines, on feeds, in conversations where people used his fall to warn others. He begged, he raged, he tried to buy silence. None of it worked the way money had once worked for him. Those who had loved him publicly found their own distances.
A time later, Aiden brought me to a quiet café where he had saved a corner for us. He had a white cat in his satchel. He smiled like the sun after a long rain.
"You deserve to live like you are not a piece on someone's board," he said.
I smiled and told him about red bean cakes and lemon ice—little things that had been important to me.
We grew closer in small rooms where the moonlight came in soft. The years that followed were not sudden romances. They were patient things built from good mornings and grocery lists and television shows watched on slow nights. Aiden knew how I liked my coffee, what sentence made me laugh, what song I hummed when I thought no one listened. He listened to the small things until the small things were the whole of me.
I learned slowly that love does not need to wound to be remembered. Aiden's hands never hurt me. When he proposed, it was in a quiet kitchen where lemon and sugar dusted the counters.
"Will you marry me?" he asked, open and soft.
"Yes," I said, because I was finally ready.
We left the city some years later. Aiden published essays and I went to photography shows. The press sometimes asked about Fielding's punishment. He had been fined, dismissed by his positions, watched under a microscope. He had to explain himself many times in rooms where people pointed and recorded. That public fall haunted him more than any phrase I might write. He had thought himself untouchable; he learned the cost of cruelty when the crowd turned.
Our life was quiet and good. A white cat slept on the windowsill. We married in the same kitchen where he'd proposed. The bell in the hallway was never silent; friends came and stayed. My photographs hung on walls where the sunlight touched them like a blessing.
On our last anniversary in that city, Aiden squeezed my hand and said, "Sorry I'm late."
"You came at the right time," I replied.
"Will you stay?" he asked.
"Always." My voice was steady and true.
I had battled to be seen and to be chosen. In the end, I found someone who chose me every day without demanding evidence, without filming my pain. I had been small and scared and used, but I had been more than he could take. I was alive. I was loved.
And the man who had once made me a weapon was left in the open, with nothing left but his own reflection.
The End
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