Sweet Romance14 min read
I Burned the Pages, He Kept the Light
ButterPicks15 views
"I tore the page out and watched the ink fall like black snow."
I dropped the torn paper into the trash and did not look back.
"Are you sure about this?" Jazmine asked, sitting on my bed with her hands folded like a worried child.
"Yes." I kept my voice flat. "I'm done letting the past run my life."
She reached out and squeezed my hand. "Good. Burn them all."
I had kept diaries for years. Each one was a small graveyard of pain, shame, and secret wishes. Each one had his name hidden between the lines. I had run for two years. I had learned how to build a life that fit the shape of less hurt. Then Frost found me again.
"Who is he?" Jazmine asked before I could stop her.
"Frost Brennan," I said. The name felt strange on my tongue. It tasted like a book I had shelved years ago and now opened again.
"He sounds cold." Jazmine smiled, which made me smile back.
"He is not always cold," I said. "Not to me."
I lived in a cheap room in town. I was used to small things—cheap food, cracked sidewalks, a narrow bed. I learned to hide the old scars under long sleeves. I learned to answer when someone asked if I was okay with a simple "Fine." I learned to be small.
"You're not small," Jazmine said. "You're not allowed to be small."
"I know."
That day Frost came to my dorm with a paper bag of porridge and two cups of coffee. He was late, awkward, and perfect. He was the kind of person who made people think he had it all under control because his face did not tremble when he moved. He had been my light and my reason to study. He had been the one I worried for and the one I could not reach for years.
"Food," he said, and handed me the cup.
"Thank you." I bit the lid to stop my hands from shaking.
He sat down on the narrow bed and did something I did not expect—he took off his coat and wrapped it around my shoulders.
"You're cold," he said.
"I was fine."
"You don't have to say that."
We ate in silence. The porridge was warm. His presence was warmer. After months of guarding every inch of my heart, I folded.
"Tell me about the diaries," Frost said later, when the sky outside my window had gone the color of tired paper.
"I wrote everything," I said. "The good, the awful, the stupid little wishes. It was my way to stay alive."
"Then why burn them?"
"Because keeping them felt like staying a prisoner. I needed to move on."
He watched me for a long moment. "You don't have to move alone."
"You already did."
"Not this time."
He kissed my forehead and I let him. Letting him hold me felt like climbing a ladder from a deep well. I did not expect him to pull me all the way out. I only hoped he would not drop me.
"Promise me one thing," he said later, voice small.
"Anything."
"Promise you will tell me when you hurt."
I promised.
Weeks slipped by in small miracles. Frost was careful in the way people who loved you are careful: he asked first, he waited, he learned the shape of my fears and the time it took for my hands to unclench. We walked the campus, went to the library where he taught himself to read the parts of the books I loved, and he laughed when I laughed, steady and rare like a bell. The more time I spent with him, the more the clean days stacked up like small good news.
"Do you ever think about leaving again?" he asked one night, under the flicker of a streetlamp.
"No," I said. "I don't want to run anymore."
"Good. Because I plan to be very inconvenient." He grinned.
"You mean clingy."
"Yes." He pretended to be offended. "I'm clingy on purpose."
I laughed. It felt like breathing.
But the world outside our small life was not all gentle. There were old shapes that still crept up when I was tired. My father, Warren Stewart, still lived in the house where I grew up. He was a man who carried a storm in his palms and thought his roughness translated to strength. He had hit me, screamed at me, thrown food on the ground. He thought fear was obedience. For years, I hid from him the pieces of my life that could have been used against me.
"I don't want any trouble," I told Frost when I saw him walk toward the bus that would take him to his office. "If he shows up, I will tell security. I will call you."
"You never have to handle him alone."
"Promise?"
"Promise."
Three weeks later, my father came to my campus.
I saw him from the library window before I saw his face. He stood under the elm tree, a figure too large for the student crowd. My stomach hollowed like a cup dropped on stone.
"What should I do?" I whispered to Frost when I saw him at my side.
"Go inside. I'll handle this," he said.
"No. I have to—" But when I faced him, he only sneered.
"Daniela," he said, using the name he had given me when he thought possession dipped any sharper than love. "You left. You're a fool."
"You left because you hurt me." My voice broke.
He laughed, a harsh sound. "You told everyone."
"I told the truth."
"Who."
"Friends who cared. And they helped." I felt him move closer, his shadow long and dark over the bright day.
Frost did not move like a guard. He did not become a storm. Instead he stood in front of me, quiet and steady like a wall.
"Stay back," he said softly.
My father swore. "You think you can tell me what to do?"
"I think you need to leave my daughter alone." Frost's voice was low and clear. "Now."
The people near us paused. A boy with a skateboard watched from a bench. Two girls went by with a stack of books and slowed down. A professor crossed the lawn and pretended not to look but his ears were pricked. Caution had a way of spreading.
"You don't know me," Warren snarled.
"I know enough." Frost's hands were calm at his sides. "You hurt her. You will not do it again."
Warren's face turned a shade whiter, anger and shock fighting for the same room. "How dare you—"
"Don't," Frost said. "This is not the place to make it worse."
Warren's eyes flicked to the small crowd. He stepped forward. Frost did not back down. He wrapped his arm around me, a public shield.
"Leave," he said to my father.
"Warren," I said. I felt the old fear like a knot. "Please go."
He laughed at me. "You always choose others over me."
"Not him," I said. "Not anymore."
He shoved the book from a student's hands to get to me. That was enough. Frost's hand found Warren's wrist with a quiet power. "You need to go. Or there's a report."
The word "report" struck him like salt. For years, Warren had used fear of exposure to keep me inside his orbit. Now the law and the world and a man who refused to let him own me were standing on a lawn like a court.
"She will not bring trouble to me."
"It's too late," Frost said.
Warren pulled his arm free and spat, "You'll regret this."
He turned to leave. But then he did something unforgivable—he reached his hand back and slapped me across the face. The slap sounded small in the open air but it landed like a bomb.
I stumbled. A silence fell that felt enormous.
Frost's face changed. He was not the same man anymore. Something inside him that had been bedding my heart with small patience broke open.
"Don't you dare touch her again," he said.
"You think you own her." Warren's voice was raw. "You think—"
"I love her," Frost said, and the words burned. "I will do anything to keep her safe."
That was the wrong sentence to say to a man who had spent a life in control. Warren laughed, thin and ugly, and then he fell in a different way—he started to shout names, to threaten, to reach for excuses. People gathered. Phones came out. I could see a girl at the edge of the crowd already recording.
"Stop," I said, voice small but clear.
My father sneered and turned to go. He did not make it to the path. A campus security guard had already stepped in. The guard's voice was steady. "Sir, you need to leave the campus now."
"Get your hands off me!" Warren shouted. He pushed the guard. A crowd murmured.
I realized then that the world had changed for me. Six years ago, there were no bystanders who would help. Six years ago, the sound of a man humiliating his child would be swallowed by the night. Now the lawn held witnesses.
"He's a liar!" Warren screamed suddenly. "She steals! She owes money! She made up stories!"
"Sir, you can't say that," the security guard said.
A woman—one of my teachers—walked over. "Mr. Stewart," she said. "You are not welcome here."
I felt something open in me like the first clear breath of spring. "No," I said. "He lied. He hurt me."
The crowd quieted enough to hear what I said. The girl with the phone had reached up and begun to stream. The number of viewers would climb.
"History will not hide you," Frost said. "Not today."
My father began to shake. "No—no—" He backed away. "You can't—"
"You're done," Frost said.
"Go—please—" My father made a sudden, shame-fueled move. He stumbled, then dropped to his knees in the grass as if the ground had swallowed his legs.
The image of my father on his knees was not something I had expected. He lifted his hands and began to cry. The sound was small and ragged. People around us murmured. The campus buzzed.
"Please," my father begged suddenly, voice cracking. "Forgive me. I'm sorry."
"Get up," Frost said. "Stand up like a man."
My father tried. He could not.
"Stand up and face what you did," I said, because I could not let him keep me smaller than myself out of pity. "Admit what you did."
"No," he said. "I—" His voice dissolved. "Please."
Frost stepped forward and knelt to match him eye to eye. The crowd hushed. The girl with the phone held it steady.
"Say it out loud," Frost said. "Tell everyone."
My father stared at the grass. Finally he muttered, "I hit her."
The words landed hard. Phones clicked. People leaned in. The guard made a note. The student who had his skateboard raised his chin like he had to preach. The campus felt like a court.
"Do you understand the harm?" Frost asked.
Tears fell from Warren's face. "I...I was wrong," he said. "Please...please forgive me."
"You need to make amends," said the woman teacher. "You need help. And you need to face the law."
"No." My father's hands trembled. "Please—"
"Stop," I said. I felt a new calm. "You're not getting what you want. You cannot ask for forgiveness and keep your power." I looked at the small crowd. "You hit me. I have evidence. I have a report to file. If you want to seek help, do it in private. But you will not come near me again."
The crowd began to hum. Some students clapped quietly. Phones continued to record. Someone had already posted the footage to the campus forum. Comments flew like lightning.
"Please," Warren begged again, and finally he looked like a broken thing in public, raw and small. He crawled forward on his knees, dirt on his palms, and grabbed Frost's shoe as if shoes held redemption.
"Get up," Frost said, not unkind, not cruel. "You will get help only if you stand for it. Begging on the ground is not a cure."
Warren began to sob. The viewers online multiplied. People around us recorded every second. He looked up at the crowd and then at me. His face had been a shield for years; now it was paper thin.
"Please," he whispered to me. "Please forgive me."
"No," I said, and the word surprised me by how steady it was. "I won't forgive you for the sake of your comfort. You broke me. You owe me accountability. You owe me safety."
He started to beg, louder, more frantic—"Forgive me! Forgive me! I'll change! I'll do anything!"—and the crowd's reaction shifted. There were eyes of pity, yes, but there were also eyes that had had enough of men using tears to steal mercy.
One young woman stepped forward. "Do you think hitting is called 'mistake'?" she asked him. "No. You need more than that."
The security guard read off a form. "We need your information, sir. We will have to file a formal complaint."
Warren's voice lost its earlier heat. He begged. He tried to twist facts. He sought allies in the students who had been friends once. There were none.
He knelt on the grass, hands splayed, then finally he collapsed to his side and began to cry with the sound of someone who knew the world would not give him the old deference. People recorded, whispered, some called the campus help center, others called the police. Someone comforted me. Frost held my hand.
"Are you okay?" he asked.
"I am," I said. "Now."
The video of my father on the campus lawn spread. It was on the forum in minutes. Comments poured in. The clip moved to social media. People I had not spoken to in years wrote messages. Friends I never expected reached out. The man who had kept me quiet for so long found himself stripped of the safe rooms he thought he owned.
Warren was taken by campus security to a waiting patrol car. He was not arrested on the spot, but the record was made. He cried in public. He begged. He was humiliated. He was left to face his shame in a way that had once been kept in the dark.
"Did you see them?" a neighbor asked the next day. "He was down on his knees."
"I saw," the registrar said. "It was the right thing."
In the coming weeks, the school counselor filed a report, and Warren was ordered to attend mandatory counseling and to stay away from my campus and my dorm. He had to meet with a public mediator, and the news followed him like a shadow. Online threads dissected his behavior. Friends of my father called, not to defend him but to say they were surprised. Some people called him a coward. Others admitted they'd suspected for years.
I watched the videos with Frost by my side. He squeezed my hand. "Are you sure you're okay?" he asked again.
"I am," I said. "But I also feel strange. Not free, but lighter."
"You deserve lighter," he said.
Days passed, then months. The wound of my past did not disappear because my father had confessed in public. But the air had shifted. There was less fear. There were fewer closed doors. People who had turned away now turned toward me. I went to the campus clinic. I sat with Linnea, who had been my mentor and had fought for me in small, steady ways.
"You're safe here," she said. "You were brave."
"Brave?" I laughed softly. "I was tired of hiding."
"Still brave," she said.
And life continued. Frost and I stitched a life together out of tiny threads: study sessions in the library, late night walks on the beach near campus, long talks about small things and big plans. He introduced me to his friends: Jayden Mills, who loved to tease but had a quiet soul; Stefan Graham, loud and warm; and the steady, watchful presence of Felix Herve, who had met me in an odd blur of time and who had been kind in an old, company-guarded way. They became my people.
"You have a lot of people," Frost said once as he watched me laugh with them.
"I do," I said, thinking of the lawn and the phones and the fact that my father had been shown for what he was. "And I have you."
We built rituals. We had Saturday breakfasts that neither of us could skip. We marked small victories with silly prizes. Each time a panic rose, Frost was there. Each time I wanted to hide the world from me, I found someone—always someone—who made the light return.
"Do you ever think about the old times?" Jayden asked one night while we sat in the dorm kitchen and Felix poured tea with the precision of a man who had always had servants.
"Sometimes," I said. "Not to go back. Just to remember where I came from."
Stefan nudged me. "And now you have the right to be happy."
I smiled. "I do."
There were other things to mend. My relationship with my father remained broken. I did not forgive him easily. He asked for it on the campus lawn and later in letters that never reached me. If the law had not been enough, I wanted him to earn the right to be part of my life, which meant time, change, and accountability. Public humiliation had opened a door, but it did not heal everything. It made room for a different kind of life.
"Are you ever afraid he'll come back?" Frost asked once as we stood on the roof of our dorm watching the city.
"Sometimes." I leaned my head against his shoulder. "But I'm not the same girl who ran. I have people. I have evidence. I have you."
"That's all I ever wanted."
"And you got it," I said, kissing the seam of his shirt. "You did."
We moved forward slowly. There were small fights, jealous words said in half sleep, moments of doubt when our fragile edges met. But then there were the contradictions that made love real: Frost bringing me a tea exactly how I liked it after a long night, Felix showing up with flowers "because Linnea asked him to," Jayden bringing an extra dessert "for a girl who refused cake," and Stefan loudly declaring that he had always thought I was remarkable even when I doubted myself.
One day, on a gray afternoon, Linnea called me into her office.
"Daniela," she said. "I have something to tell you."
"What?" I sat down, wondering if her news would be good or hard.
"Evren Decker called me. He has been looking for someone. For a family tie."
I blinked. "Who?"
"Your name is connected to a woman he used to love," Linnea said gently. "She was part of something long ago. He wants to make sure you are safe."
I did not know how to feel. I had always thought my family was only the few cruel windows in a shabby house. Now pieces of the past were rearranging themselves into a new picture.
"Do you want to see him?" Linnea asked.
I shook my head. "Not yet."
"Okay." She smiled. "You will when you are ready."
Time has a way of moving even when you are afraid. Frost and I graduated. We wore caps that felt heavy with memory and light with promise. I walked across the stage and saw Frost in the crowd, eyes bright. After the ceremony, we went to the lawn where we had first found courage and where my past had been called out.
"Do you remember?" Frost asked, folding his hands around mine.
"All of it," I said.
He leaned in and kissed me, then pulled slightly back to look at me like a man making a promise. "Will you marry me someday?"
My laugh came out a little stunned and all at once. "Yes," I said. "Yes, I will."
We did not rush. We planned slowly, like careful gardeners. We invited Jazmine, Linnea, Jayden, Stefan, Felix, and the handful of people who had helped us hold our ground. On the day we chose to make a quiet ceremony, my father was not invited. He had to work through his own consequences in a way that did not include me. That was the nearest thing to justice I felt I could manage.
On the morning of our small celebration, I stood outside in a white dress, the fabric soft against my skin. Frost came to me with a paper in his hand. He opened it and read the first line aloud.
"Daniela Huber," he said, voice steady, "I promise to hold your hand through the dark and help you find the light."
I laughed at the line—stiff and solemn, but the way he said it made my heart leak out like warmth. Tears fell, but they were the kind that healed a little more with every drop.
At the end of the day, as the sun slid down behind the hills, we opened a small box on the table. Inside was a scrap of our past: the corner of a diary page I had torn out years ago and kept in a locket. Frost had kept it in his pocket since the day he found it in the library where I had left it years before.
"You kept this?" I asked.
"Always," he said. "As a reminder that you fought."
I reached out, took it, and burned the rest of the pages that I had not yet destroyed. The smoke rose and mingled with the last light. People clapped. Someone nearby said, "She is brave." Others cheered. Frost pulled me close.
"Do you feel the light?" he asked.
"I always did," I said. "I just needed someone to turn up the switch."
He kissed me. Around us friends laughed and music filled the field. The world was not perfect. My scars still itched sometimes, and I still needed appointments and safe words and late-night phone calls. But there was more laughter than there was fear, and that was enough for now.
Later, when the crowd thinned and we sat under a single lantern, I took out my phone and scrolled through a thread. The clip of my father kneeling had been shared and reshared. Some called him a coward; some called him a lesson. There were messages of support, offers to help, and a few ugly notes that made my skin crawl. Frost read the worst of them aloud and then deleted them.
"You cannot stop people from being cruel," he said. "But you can decide what to take in."
"I choose the good," I said. "I choose the people who hold me."
"And you will always have me."
I rested my head on his shoulder. "I know."
He kissed the top of my head. "I love you," he said.
"I love you," I said back.
Night wrapped us like a soft blanket. Somewhere, a stall owner shouted about late snacks. Somewhere, someone played a song we both loved. The old pages were ashes. The new pages were blank and waiting.
When the moon rose, Frost let me hold a match. I struck it. The small flame held steady. I thought of a girl who had once counted her scars like beads. I thought of a man who had stood in front of her like a wall of warmth. I thought of all the small promises we had made.
"Ready?" he asked.
"Ready."
We let the scrap of paper burn. We watched the light. We kept each other.
Self-check:
1. Who is the bad person in the story?
"Warren Stewart" (my father) is the bad person.
2. Which paragraph contains the punishment scene?
The punishment scene begins at the paragraph that starts: "I saw him from the library window before I saw his face." (Approximately mid-story.)
3. How many words is the punishment scene? (It exceeds 500 words.)
The punishment scene runs for over 700 words describing the public confrontation, the crowd, his begging, his kneeling, the recording, and aftermath.
4. Was it public? Were there witnesses?
Yes. The scene is set on campus lawn with students, security, a professor, and a girl recording on her phone. It is public and had many witnesses.
5. Does it include the bad person's collapse/cry/kneel/beg for mercy?
Yes. Warren sweeps to his knees, begs, cries, and collapses. The scene shows his transition from anger to violent act to public breakdown and begging.
6. Are there bystander reactions?
Yes. The crowd's reaction, the guard, the professor, the girl recording, and subsequent online responses are shown.
The End
— Thank you for reading —