Sweet Romance11 min read
You, My Little Present
ButterPicks10 views
I found him by accident on a short-video livestream, and then he became my small, careful reality.
"I can't believe he's real," I typed into the live comments, and then, before I could stop myself, I wrote the thing everyone writes when their heart goes silly: "husband!"
The man in uniform smiled at the camera like he meant only the lesson. He was Cade Delgado — tall, clean-cut, the kind of face that looks firm and kind at the same time. He was teaching people how to avoid scams.
"Please, everyone, pay attention to the numbers," he said. "Never transfer money to strangers."
"Also," I kept typing, "smile for your husband!"
A million comments rolled by. I thought none of it mattered. I thought I was anonymous. I thought maybe he would never know.
Then my brother called me into the hall and I opened the door and nearly ran into him.
He looked better in person. The uniform fit, the voice was deeper. "Hi," he said, and the whole bright livestream face was in the doorway of our small house.
"Landon," I said. "This is... Cade Delgado."
"Nice to meet you." Cade smiled and the smile made my heart misstep.
"Stay safe, little sister," Landon said, throwing an arm around my shoulder like I was still small. "These are my friends."
"This way, sit," one of them, Egon Fischer, said. Bruno Mason said hello. The room filled with friendly male energy. I forced myself to say, "Hi," and I even managed to be loud: "Brother, hello!"
Cade's eyes found mine. He cocked a small, teasing smile. "Why didn't anyone call me 'husband' in person?" he asked.
My face went hot. "You—" I nearly told him the truth. I nearly said I'd been spamming his livestream.
But I didn't. I only managed a high, brave: "Brother, hello!"
He laughed softly. "You okay? Did I scare you?"
"No," I lied. "No, I'm fine."
After he helped us cut the watermelon, I sat in a little space on the couch hoping he would sit next to me. Landon, of course, did not move. I watched Cade lift a slice and hand it to me.
"Here," he said. "Eat."
"Thank you," I said. My chest hummed.
"Do you watch short videos a lot?" Bruno asked.
"Sometimes," I said.
"You watched my friend Cade's livestream last night?" Egon teased.
I fumbled. "Not really. Maybe I missed most of it."
Egon hooted. "This whole room lit up with comments. 'Husband' everywhere."
Cade pushed Egon playfully, like he was used to the chaos. "Don't be rude to my live audience."
A tiny thrill went through me when he nodded once at the idea that I might watch. "Can I watch your livestream?" I asked.
"If you want to learn," he said, light as a feather. "We talk about scams. Mostly we want people to stay safe."
"Of course," I said. "I will."
That night I sent my friend Landry a picture and lots of emojis. She was furious and happy for me at the same time. "You met him?" she wrote. "Take a photo!"
"I am not taking a photo," I sent back. "He is in my brother's living room. I am not brave."
"Live dangerously," Landry replied.
The next days were a slow parade of small, perfect moments. Cade called himself "Gift" on WeChat and left a message the night he got me home: "Sleep early. Don't delete the anti-scam app." His voice note made me hold my pillow like a secret. I answered late: "Okay. Good night, brother." I added a silly rabbit sticker. He answered: "Night."
He began to reply more often, sometimes with long voice messages about police life, campaign reminders, short jokes. He always signed off like someone with a private, careful warmth: "Gift."
"You're acting weird," Landon said one evening. "You've been smiling at your phone like it owes you money."
"It's nothing." I hid the phone under my thigh. "Just a friend."
"Which friend?" Landon leaned in.
"Just a friend," I repeated. "A police friend."
He rolled his eyes, but he stopped teasing.
We met in the street when the rain was hard and the drains clogged and a woman fell on a slick curb. I ran to help. An elderly neighbor had nearly been scammed into sending money. I convinced her to go to the station to check. Cade appeared like he'd been planned by fate.
"Anna," he said. "Did you bring her?"
"It was nothing," I said, but he walked me to the station. He asked me to have lunch with him at the station canteen. We sat opposite each other and a coworker joked about me being his girlfriend.
"She's Landon's sister," Cade said, and his tone was flat enough that the joke died. But his eyes had looked at me in a way that made my mouth soft.
There was a moment that I will remember like a light switch. I dropped something in a store and when I bent to pick it up, my hand brushed a box that had the worst possible name printed on it. I turned beet red. Cade's fingers closed the distance and removed the box for me, then sat quietly.
"Don't buy that," he said, and then he smiled. "Buy gum."
We added each other on WeChat after he rescued me from embarrassment over the condom box. He sent me a voice: "I can watch your movements. If anything happens, tell me." I felt safe. I felt very young and a little drunk on attention.
He called me "little friend" in a joking way. I called him "brother" back because I was shy and it felt easier to have that wall. He kept chipping at it with small, considerate acts: sharing his umbrella; reminding me to charge my phone; offering his seat on the bus.
"You're really careful," he said once, holding my hands while he cleaned a cut on his thumb after a rain job.
"It was small," he said. "Don't worry."
"You could show me your WeChat moments sometime," I murmured.
He smiled. "I already follow you," he said quietly, and then his mouth curved like he'd shared a private joke.
It turned out he did follow me. I had been shouting in his livestream and he had known. He told me, later, "The account that called me 'husband' was more interesting than most." He laughed. "One day I thought I should know who this 'super lover of chicken wings' is."
When he said "I already follow you," my stomach did something I cannot name. He had been there in the small corners of my life, reading the things I thought were private. He had already built a quiet map of me.
I started spending more time with him. The office invited us to be part of a public anti-scam event. I went to watch him live. I filmed him and posted the clip: "Came to see my husband live." He winked at me in the footage and my cheeks hurt for three hours.
Then the moment that tried my heart came like winter.
I saw him on the street with another woman.
She was tall, tidy cuffed hair, fashionable, comfortable as if the world had been made for her. She leaned on Cade like she had a right. They laughed. Someone took a picture. I watched them from across the road. My stomach gave a lurch like an elevator.
I could have crossed the street. I could have run and clung to him. Instead I went away. I sat on cold steps and drank water, thinking of a million reasons to be brave and none that I used.
Two men in a reckless mood found me on the steps. One wore bright hair, the other had his shirt slung over his shoulder like bad confidence. They offered me an easy laugh, a drink. Their words were crude. I tried to stand and walk away, but they closed in like a tide.
"Leave her alone," a voice said. It was deep and clean and carried the weight of training.
Cade was there two steps behind, like he'd been watching me the whole time. He took in the scene and his face changed.
One of them reached forward and grabbed my arm. The other took a cheap step toward me.
Cade stepped closer. "Back off," he said.
"Or what?" the taller man sneered.
Cade's voice went colder. "Or I'll make sure you remember this night. Publicly."
His hand caught the taller man's wrist with a grip that didn't hurt but flattened the man like a quiet order. The other fellow laughed and tried bravado. Cade turned his head and called out, "Hey, there's a patrol car five minutes away. Do you want them to find you here? Do you want us to file a complaint?"
They tried to laugh, but his tone didn't invite jokes.
"Don't touch her," Cade said. "You don't know what you're doing. Leave."
The bright-haired guy decided to push hard. He shoved me. I stumbled. He thought he was big.
Cade moved like water and air and force. He pinned the bright-haired man to the ground with a technique I can only describe the way a trained person does a task: efficient, final. He held him down. The other man tried to pull his friend up.
"Now," Cade said, "you are going to see exactly what people do when they cross a line. You are going to learn it in front of others."
He stood the tall man up and led us toward the small plaza with its traffic and store windows. People looked. Cade's voice changed into something I had never heard from him—firm command and slow, measured instruction.
"Do you know what harassment is?" he asked the men, loud enough that heads turned. "You touched someone without consent. That's harassment."
The bright-haired man tried to smirk. "It was nothing."
A few people stopped and watched. Phones came out. A crowd formed as if curiosity were a magnet.
Cade pointed at the first man. "Take off your jacket," he said.
The man blinked. "What?"
"Take it off," Cade repeated. "And apologize. And say out loud: 'I apologize to her and I understand I crossed the line.'"
The man hesitated. A woman nearby took a step forward. "Say it now," she said.
He looked at other faces. There were at least twenty people around, some with shopping bags, some taking pictures. This was how he would be seen, now: publicly corrected.
He ripped his jacket off like a petulant bark and spat out an apology. "I'm sorry," he said, but it sounded thin.
Cade didn't stop. "Louder," he said. "Look at her. Say it to her, not to the air."
The man stammered, then forced the words toward me. The crowd murmured. Some clapped. Someone recorded.
"Because," Cade said softly but with a gravity that made the man swallow, "you might think it's a joke. But it's not. You hurt someone. You made them afraid. Do you understand what fear you put into that girl's eyes?"
The man blinked. "Yes."
Cade continued, turning the lesson into something the whole plaza could hear. "You will tell your friends you were wrong. You will stay away from places where you could hurt someone. You will think before you act. You will learn that 'no' means 'no.'"
He didn't shout. He didn't need to shout. He named the harm. He asked for accountability in front of other people. The taller man tried to deflect, tried to bluster. Each deflection Cade met with a fact: "You reached out. You grabbed. That is assault. People make choices. You chose badly."
A circle had formed. A few people took pictures; several women nodded. "Good," one woman said. "Teach them a lesson."
The bright-haired man broke. His face went raw. He tried to claim it was just a prank. He tried to joke. He tried to deny.
Cade stepped closer. "Look at me," he said.
The man's bravado fell. He looked small. "Please… don't call the police," he said. "I'll apologize."
"Apologize now," Cade said. "And promise to never do it again."
He apologized, but not sincerely. The crowd hissed. A few voices spoke up in support of the apology and in criticism at the weak tone. Cade asked them to remain civil. He wanted this to be correction, not a spectacle.
"Go home," Cade said finally. "Think about what you've done. If we see you here again, things will happen differently."
The men slunk away, shrinking into the night. The woman with a stroller clapped softly. A teenager filmed the whole scene and uploaded it to his story. By morning, the clip would be everywhere in our small town.
It was a punishment of exposure and accountability. The bright-eyed cruelty that made them think harassment was acceptable was stripped from them in the open, replaced by something else: shame that was public, and the knowledge that their behavior had a witness, a recorder, a conscience.
I was still trembling when I realized my hands were in Cade's. He had wrapped me in a light, guarding hold as if to say the whole world could try anything and he'd stand between me and it.
"Are you okay?" he asked.
"I am now," I said, and the truth felt heavy and honest.
After that night, everything shifted. People in the neighborhood nodded when they saw me with Cade. A neighbor stopped us once and said, "Good man, that," clapping his shoulder with casual approval.
"I didn't have to do anything," Cade told me later when we were alone. He was calm and a little rueful. "But someone had to show them the line."
"You were terrifying," I said, giving him a half smile. "In a good way."
He looked at me like I was the only person in the room. "I'm supposed to be a public servant," he said. "Serving you is part of that."
The following days were full of small certainties. He came to my house and fixed things I didn't know were broken. He called me when I was late. He watched my short videos and made small jokes in the comments: "Don't call me husband behind my back." He brought me two bouquets on a small, late spring evening: one red, one pink.
"I bought two," he said. "I was bad at picking. I wanted to try both."
It was May twentieth. The city was full of couples. I felt like a secret that grew too big to hold. He stood beside my car with his keys and smiled. "Ride with me?" he asked.
We drove slowly. We held hands two whole times, softly and briefly.
At the curb, he turned to me. "Anna," he said. "I like you. A lot."
My mouth made a small sound like a match struck. "I like you," I said. "So much."
He looked at me without blinking. "Will you be my little friend? My... something?"
I wanted to say "wife" in the ridiculous way I had shouted in his livestream. Instead I leaned up and left a kiss on the dimple at his cheek. "Yes," I said.
He kissed me properly then. It was the kind of kiss that felt like an answer to a question I had not known I asked. It was careful and urgent, like a rescue.
We were young. We were clumsy. We were careful. He told me later that he had watched my account for a long time before he knew I existed in the living, breathing world. He had seen my silly videos. He had noticed how I called him names and jested. That knowledge made him brave enough to step closer.
"Why me?" I asked one night when we sat near the window and the city hummed.
"Because you were always honest," he said. "You said things you felt. You weren't afraid to be ridiculous. And you were, somehow, present."
"That's my brother's fault," I said. "Landon put me in the path of a hero."
"He didn't put you anywhere," Cade corrected. "You were already moving."
We learned each other's small rituals. He had a habit of patting the small of my back when we walked. He would place his hand lightly on my head when I tilted it aside. He would send voice notes about apps and safety and then finish them with something personal: "Sleep well, little friend."
I called him "brother" less and "Cade" more. I sometimes reverted and he would tease me, but he would always answer with gentle correction: "Call me Cade when no one else is listening."
One night when Landon sat at the kitchen table and looked thoroughly flummoxed, I told him, "Cade is my boyfriend."
He laughed out loud, then he lowered his voice and said, "You two are a pair. Just keep him around if he keeps sending flowers."
"He's not perfect," I said.
"No," Landon agreed. "He is very good."
There were no grand battles, no long revenge arcs, no melodramatic fallouts. There were public lessons for small men who would prey and private promises for a girl who called her crush "husband" in a livestream. Cade taught me to be safer online. I taught him how to laugh at the small absurdities of my life.
On our first real anniversary of being together, he made me dinner. He called me "my present" and gave me a small, simple gift: a clean, practical watch. "To keep time with you," he said.
We sat together on the couch. He took my hand, looked at me and whispered, "You shouted my name in that chaotic room first. You made a fool of yourself for me."
"I was never ashamed," I answered. "I was proud. I just didn't expect you to notice."
"You were loud enough to be noticed by a man who does this for a living," he joked.
I leaned against him. We talked about scams and safety and small imperfections and the neighbor’s dog and the time Landon tried to make pancakes and set off the smoke alarm. We talked until our voices grew soft and then quiet.
Outside, the city breathed. People walked by with umbrellas and grocery bags. Summers would come and go. Small dramas would flare and fade. But I knew one thing that felt steady: the man who taught a crowd about money and scams and held me in the dark had also placed a hand over my heart and learned how to keep it.
"Will you stay?" I asked him once, immature and earnest.
He smiled and kissed the tip of my nose. "Always where you need me," he said. "But not always where you want to find me first."
I laughed. "That's fair."
The end of the day felt like the end of a page. I had shouted "husband" to a screen and the screen had become a person who learned my account name and my silly jokes. He had followed me from the online world into my small kitchen, into my brother's living room, into the hard bright spots of the city, and finally into my life.
When I closed my eyes at night, I could still hear his voice notes telling me to download the app. They were small, practical, and oddly tender. I kept them all.
"Good night, Gift," I texted him once, and he sent back, "Good night, my present."
That was the name I liked best.
The End
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