Sweet Romance16 min read
My Monster, My Lighthouse
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I slammed the script down so hard the pages rattled across my dressing table.
"What a terrible script! Who wrote this trash? The heroine is supposed to beg for forgiveness? Gross." I hissed, my fingers still trembling.
"Annika, calm down. Don’t wrinkle your pretty face—wrinkles don’t suit you," Dennis said as he bent to pick the scattered pages up.
"Do you seriously expect me to play that Li Yi character? She cheats, she ruins things, then she gets forgiven? No way." I crossed my arms and sat back, feeling every ounce of hot rage and theatrical disgust bubble up.
"Sweetheart, breathe. Look at the later scenes—she gets a second chance, she changes, and they end up blissful. It's a redemption arc." Dennis tried to reason with me.
"I don’t care about redemption arcs," I said flatly. "If he suffers for years waiting for her, she should be punished, not rewarded."
"Oh come on," Dennis sighed. "You always take things so personally. You know this role could show your range."
"Range? I get to play someone ungrateful? Someone who destroys a man’s life? No." I tossed the script back. "Not me. I won’t."
I lay in bed that night with my face mask on and my phone buzzing. A voice I knew like home spoke on the line.
"Annika, are you still asleep?" Baylor asked.
"I’m awake," I mumbled.
"You coming back tomorrow? Your brother’s wedding is in two days, I booked your ticket."
"New York to the capital? Wait—" I blinked, then remembered the last few hours: a party, drinks, falling asleep on my sofa. I was in a hotel room. Panic rose. "Who put me in a hotel?"
"You partied, then your friends took care of you," Baylor said warmly. "Pack light. See you tomorrow." He hung up.
I sat up and stared at the ceiling. I had been reading a script all evening, railing against the heroine listed on the pages: a meek, wronged, then repentant Li Yi. I had never been the kind to accept a weak-willed woman as heroine. I loved strong leads, people who made decisions.
Then the thought hit me—hard and electric. "What if I’m inside the script?" I whispered to my reflection in the bathroom mirror. The mirror showed me: tousled curls, high cheekbones, full lips—my face. My hands trembled with a different kind of excitement. "Alright," I told myself. "If I’m here, I’m not just going to play the heroine. I’ll rewrite her."
I spent the next morning luxuriating in a too-long shower, skipping makeup on purpose. I liked my bare face. At the airport, I slipped into the VIP lounge and froze when I saw him across the room.
He was everything the memories promised: tall, severe, impeccably dressed. Nathan looked older than when I’d once seen him as a child—sharp jaw, dark brows like in my old script images. My heart did that ridiculous flutter and my cheeks warmed. I could not help myself.
"Is that you, Nathan?" I said before I could stop myself, the familiarity slipping out like a secret.
He glanced up and scanned my face quickly. "Annika?" he asked, stunned.
"Yes—Annika Beasley. Baylor’s little sister." I could feel him relax and a small smile touch his mouth, though he immediately looked away.
"Sit," he said awkwardly. "You grew up."
"I grew up," I agreed, hair bouncing when I turned. "You changed, too. You’re even more... severe."
He said nothing and only bowed his head slightly. Then, as if to soothe some private worry, he handed me a small gift he had been carrying. "For you. For your birthday. From ten years ago."
I opened it: a pink crystal hair pin that had long been treasured. Warmth filled me. "You kept it," I breathed.
"You were always good at taking care of things," he said, and for a second his eyes were soft. I let my head fall against his side in a gesture that was both childlike and deliberate.
On the plane, a blond pilot named Jaxon marshaled flowers and tried to be charming. He leaned close and offered me a single rose with a showy bow.
"Annika," he said, bright as camera flash. "For my New York princess."
"Thanks," I said, placing it on my lap. "You’re…very kind, Jaxon."
Nathan's jaw tightened a fraction. "Annika, don’t let strangers gift you flowers like that."
"Your protector again," Jaxon said with a half-smile and took his leave, eyes narrowed in petty defeat.
Baylor’s wedding drew everyone home to the family estate, where I presented myself like a living jewel. People whispered, cameras eyed me, and although my role on a script was to be ordinary, I decided I would not be.
"Annika," Baylor teased when he arrived with his new wife, Frost. "You travel like a royal."
"I will accept that title," I answered, cheeky and bright. "Your wedding is beautiful. You look happy."
"Because I am," Baylor said and hugged me. He had always been my anchor, and tonight he seemed to glow with contentment.
Nathan’s presence at the wedding was a surprise in its own right. He always held himself at a distance, as if shielding himself from ordinary warmth. But when the bouquet throw came, fate— or the clumsy event planner—arranged for Nathan and me both to be in the line of fire.
"Catch it," the host shouted. The bouquet sailed toward me, and Nathan reached instinctively. We both caught it, palm to palm.
"Are you two a couple?" the emcee teased into the microphone.
"No," I stammered, hiding behind the bouquet.
Nathan folded his mouth into a line that made him look colder and more severe than anything he wore. Baylor shot us each a look like "No nonsense," and the room dissolved into laughter.
Later, in the garden under pale lanterns, Nathan surprised me by asking me to dance. It was as if no one else existed. We moved slowly, his hand steady at my waist, an energy between us like the pull of tide. Camera flashes from gossip reporters caught the moment, and soon the internet would spin a story about how he had a "mysterious new companion." I danced and sang a little melody I had been carrying in my chest, letting the garden dark be the stage.
"You should not go viral for private moments," Nathan murmured after our small show. "People will parse everything."
"I wasn’t trying to be private," I said. "I just wanted something simple."
He looked strangely vulnerable for a beat. "Then keep my moment simple; keep it yours."
His hand wrapped my fingers and I felt a tether—comforting, binding. It was dangerous and delicious.
The next morning, the world exploded. A few bad-faith paparazzi had posted our garden dance. Social media whipped itself into a whirl. The headlines called me "Nathan’s stunning companion" and assumed a dozen things about our relationship. Invitations arrived from an industry that suddenly saw me as "bankable." Calder Mortensen, a powerful man who ran a top entertainment house, called and said he wanted to meet.
"You did well at the premiere," the man said when I met him. "We can make you a star."
"Calder, I don’t want a safe path," I said plainly. "I want to build my own way."
He laughed softly. "You’re bold. Have you thought about starting your own studio?"
"Yes," I admitted. "But I’m young."
"Then let us help," he said. "Partner now; learn from us." He proposed a deal that sounded like support with strings attached.
That day, I signed with Calder’s people, but only so long as I had clear terms. I had a voice, and I refused to be another person’s prop. Ignacio Davenport, the award-winning actor the world loved, took me under his wing. He asked an honest question that made my mouth dry.
"Annika, if Li Yi comes to you asking for the chance to be forgiven—what would you tell her?"
"I’d tell her this: actions have consequences. You can be forgiven, but you must first accept responsibility," I answered without hesitation. "And you need to be better than before."
As the days spun out, the story around Nathan and me settled into a comfortable myth: he was the severe benefactor, and I was his luminous counterpart. Calder pushed opportunities, Ignacio gave me an acting team, and Dennis fussed over every logistical detail.
Meanwhile, there were people who resented the attention. A young actress, Li Yi—humble, pale—kept appearing in the margins. Nathan had once helped her mother when she collapsed; he had given money, contacts, and kindness. She had taken his help and, in time, made choices he disliked. When she confronted him, she asked to return the money and sever ties.
"This was my fault," she told him one evening, hands trembling as she passed a worn bank card across a table. "I want you to forget me."
"I respected you," Nathan said flatly. "So pay it back. Then we’ll be done."
She left meekly, pride fraying with every step.
That scene made me nervous. The script I had slipped into showed Li Yi making a terrible mistake, and then—worse—getting a second chance she did not deserve. I wanted to keep her alive and well if possible; I hated the notion of anyone dying because of a misstep. But in the book’s original arc, her fate was tragic. My head spun with possibilities. I refused to accept that the author’s cruel design was unchangeable.
"Maybe she can learn," I thought aloud one night, voice hoarse from a long day. "Maybe she can mend. Maybe she won’t die because she confessed."
Ignacio looked at me thoughtfully. "You want to change the plot?" he asked.
"I want to give someone a chance to be better, on her merits," I said. "But if she hurts people, I will make sure consequences follow."
As days became weeks, my world narrowed into a patterned life of rehearsals, meetings, and midnight messages from Baylor buzzing with wedding plans. Nathan and I grew closer in small increments. He showed me how to pronounce an old song with proper phrasing; I pressed a soft foam earplug into his palm when he forgot one night in the hotel. He found reasons to check in on me. He smiled more. And when he laughed, the severe edges of him softened as if sunshine rubbed against ice.
Then the chaos came.
A rumor began: someone suggested on a blog that Nathan had secretly been the sort of man who treated women like conveniences. It was cruel and false. Calder frowned. Ignacio was quiet. Dennis huffed with indignation. I felt a bubble of rage, protective and fierce. Nathan handled it the way he handled everything—coolly, decisively. He put out a short statement to his fans and left it with a photograph of us making ridiculous faces in a photo booth: "Annika is my sister."
People roasted it in applause and delight, because who didn’t like finding a star could be playful? The rumor stuttered and then fell away.
"Why did you post that?" I asked him later when the office was quiet.
"Because laughter diffuses cruelty," he said. "Because if they see me as a guardian, they won’t think to attack you."
"You weren’t protecting me," I said, heart thudding. "You were protecting an idea of me. You put me under a label."
"Because labels keep people from tearing you down," he said. "Sometimes it's the only armor available."
His voice was low and steady. I realized he knew how to defend things. Nathan was not showy; he worked in the margins to build barriers around the people he cared for.
I moved into a smaller house near the company all my own: remote in location but close enough that walking to Nathan’s building took minutes. Baylor set the style and painted walls a soft, confident blue. I called it my practice in independence. Calder introduced me to producers and connected me to Ismael Costa, a singer-producer with a wild mane of hair and a fierce mind. Ismael and I wrote a duet: his music smelled like midnight coffee; my lyrics felt like lace.
"Annika, sing this next line with more light," Ismael coached. "Less stage, more sun."
"Like this?" I asked, turning a line over my tongue.
"Exactly," he said, smiling. "Open, honest."
We worked late, and the song grew into a tender kind of magnetism called "My Girl." It was meant to be a romantic encounter of someone older and wiser seeing someone pure and bright and being overwhelmed. People loved the idea of such gentle contrasts.
Nathan watched from the doorway during one recoding. He said nothing, but later, in private, he said: "You sing like the part of you that never feared being noticed."
"I like being noticed for the right reasons," I said. "Not because I fell into some manufactured scandal."
He nodded. "Then we’ll keep your reasons clean."
I smiled because his fierce protectiveness felt like a lighthouse—and though he claimed otherwise, I guessed his feelings went deeper than guardian.
Li Yi, meanwhile, had been trying to live a quieter life. But grief and shame gnawed at her. She told me once, voice small and raw, "I can never repay what you didn't ask of me." I wanted to tell her the truth: the money and the kindness had been given without ledger. But she refused to accept gifts without returning them. It was her way of finding dignity.
A week later she crossed a street without looking and was hit by a car in a terrible accident. I learned about it from a reporter who called, voice thin with urgency. Baylor squeezed my wrist and said, "We did our best." I flew to the hospital like a storm.
At her bedside, the room smelled like antiseptic and sunlight. Her eyes fluttered. I wanted to speak and say everything that would keep her living. I sang a small song, words soft and bathed in hope. "Live," I told her. "Please live."
She lived. But she was changed—more fragile, more honest. She looked at Nathan with a new clarity. "I didn’t see what you did," she whispered one day, tears like rain. "I thought I had to pay with myself. I was wrong. Forgive me."
Nathan stood by her bed, face unreadable. The original script would have made him simply forgive her and take her back with open arms; I couldn't accept that without a reckoning.
"Actions have weight," I heard myself say into the hush. "You hurt people. You owe them—not just money, but truth."
Her face crumpled. "I know," she mouthed. "What do I do?"
Nathan looked down and then lifted his head. "Before any forgiveness, you must face what you did," he said. "You must tell everyone the truth you hid. Only then can you begin to repair."
She bowed her head and agreed. I arranged for a public statement—a press conference where Li Yi would speak and Nathan would be present. The room would be full of reporters and cameras, the whole town a living, watchful beast.
On the day of the confrontation, we filled a rented hall. Five hundred people squeezed into the seats and more crowded outside, phones up. The lights were bright, and the silence heavy. Li Yi walked to the podium, hands trembling.
"I am Li Yi," she said. "I am here to tell the truth about myself." Her voice shook, but she kept going. She confessed—to taking gifts and not owning up, to using favors for selfish gains, to pretending to be damaged when she had the power to be straight. Each sentence peeled at her like a flayed coat.
"I took Nathan’s kindness and I... I tried to sell myself as a victim. I am ashamed. I tried to repay him with myself. I was wrong." Tears tracked down her cheeks. Cameras clicked like a thousand teeth.
At first, the crowd murmured. Some people looked incredulous. Others shifted, whispering. Then a ripple of shock rolled through the audience. A few attendees raised their phones and recorded. A woman gasped audibly; "I can’t believe it," she said. Someone else whispered, "She used him," full of venom.
Nathan watched without expression, hands clasped. I stood beside Li Yi like a shield and a witness. Her confession was not complete yet, because the worst part was arranged to come next: reading private messages that showed the manipulation, the promises, the bargaining. They played on a big screen—a cold theater where the truth laid itself open.
"This is when reading raw truth makes people roar," Li Yi said softly before the messages played. "This is what I never wanted to watch everyone see." She put the printed messages on the podium for the record. The first message was a chilling line from her to an unnamed lover: "I’ll be useful until I’m not." Someone in the crowd hissed.
At that moment, the man who had once advised her—an agent who favored opportunistic deals—stood up and tried to interrupt. "This is over the line," he shouted, trying to spin the story to protect the money he’d made. People turned to him in disgust. A dozen voices rose in rebuke.
"Sit down," I said aloud, my voice steady and clear. "This is the truth she offered. It’s not your moment to interrupt."
He sputtered and blustered, but the cameras were already running. The recording captured his panic. People took out their phones and streamed the scene live. A group near the back started murmuring, then applauding Li Yi’s honesty. Some people cheered. A few recorded for the sake of scandal.
The man’s face shifted—first anger, then disbelief. He pointed at James, the agent, "You— You had no right—" He backed toward the door, looking smaller and smaller under the lens. Sweat gleamed on his forehead.
"How dare you," someone yelled from the seats. "You used her for cash!"
"Shut up!" he snapped, voice high. He looked around as realization mounted. He had been the manipulator, and now a thousand eyes were looking at him.
He tried to block the exit, but the door was already crowded. Someone held a recording phone up and the red light blinked. He fell through stages: smugness to shock, then to disbelief. He tried to deny the messages—"These are fake!"—as people began whispering, then murmuring, and then chanting, "Tell the truth!" He started to plead, "It’s not like that! Stop! Stop!" until his voice broke into begging, and his suit collar became crumpled.
"Please," he whimpered. "I didn’t—" He fell to his knees, his knees making creases in the thick carpet. The cameras kept rolling. Reporters shouted questions. Someone slapped the office phone from the table; it smashed.
He begged on his knees, voice smaller and frantic. "Please! I’ll pay! I’ll apologize! Don’t ruin me!" A woman in the audience laughed then clapped slowly, not kindly, her phone held high. Others murmured regrettably. A dozen hands reached to record his humiliation.
No one moved to help him. The room had shifted from curiosity to judgment. People took his phone; others took his name tags. He became a spectacle, stripped of spin. The man tried to plea with the crowd, grasping at the hem of public mercy, but they were not inclined to give it. A camera zoomed in on his face, showing every angle of collapse.
Li Yi stood up, voice shaking. "I accept what I did," she said. "But he—" She pointed at the agent. "—must answer for what he did to me and to others." She named him in a calm voice. Someone in the crowd applauded. Others started to film more intensely. This was not a closure in one breath—it was a long, scorching accountability. It was messy, public, and humiliating for the agent. He had turned paltry deals into power. Now that power slid off like a broken coat.
When the crying and the shouting died down, Li Yi stepped back. The room still hummed. People whispered, some with pity and some with vindication. Nathan put a steady hand on my shoulder. "This is done," he said simply.
"No," I said. "It’s only the beginning. Truth moves slowly, but it moves."
That public scene lasted long enough to be a headline for days. It was a punishment that unfolded as the rule required: the perpetrator went through indignity in public, from smugness to collapse, and everyone around him witnessed his fall. People recorded, argued, and then the footage spread. He tried to deny, then to plead, then to bargain, and finally to be exposed. The crowd was a living jury.
After that, things in my life slowed into truer shapes. My company, launched with Calder and Ignacio as initial backers, became my fledgling kingdom. We chose projects with care. Ignacio taught me the discipline of acting: how to listen, how to hold silence as if it was a full line. Ismael and I released "My Girl," and the song strummed like a lighthouse for people who wanted to believe in gentle devotion.
Nathan sometimes came to the studio, sometimes to the theater when I performed. He watched everything with an intensity that felt like quiet worship. We joked around on set—him, the stoic man who could not be ruffled, and me, the woman who wanted everything to be honest and loud. There were small conversations, messy and true.
"Do you love her?" a friend asked me once, pointing to Nathan on the phone screen.
"Who?" I asked, throat thick.
"Him," they said. "Do you love Nathan?"
"I love what he lets me be," I said slowly. "He lets me sing, and mess up, and then tries to fix things. That’s...important."
They smiled. "So do you want more?"
"I want what grows honest," I answered. "I want honesty, effort, and someone who stands in the rain with me, if need be."
The world we made together revealed small, beautiful things: the pink hairpin Nathan once kept; the song I wrote at midnight; the garden where we had danced and where the paparazzi had stolen our small moment and given us a rumor that became our launch. Each was a landmark, a proof that life could be tender and loud and brave at the same time.
One night, standing with Nathan under the same garden lamps where the first dance had been, I picked up his hand. "If something ever hurts you," I said, eyes bright. "Tell me. I will not let you carry it alone."
He looked at me like someone who had been taught sternly but not tenderly enough. He smiled, just a little. "I see your monsters," he said suddenly. "And I think—if I let you, you'll chase them away."
"I will be your lighthouse," I answered. "I’ll stand there. I’ll do what I can."
He nodded, like a man making a small promise to himself. "Then we’ll be fine," he breathed.
People still whispered. They assigned us roles—sister, guardian, lover—based on the half-truths they had. But in the private places, we wrote our own story. I wrote a company that protected artists rather than exploiting them. I wrote a duet that let people feel both warmth and longing.
At a late-night rehearsal, Ignacio pulled me aside. "You changed more than a script," he said. "You changed a life."
"I only did what I could," I replied. "I was tired of watching people get punished only for mistakes without chance to heal. But I was also tired of seeing those who used kindness with bad intent get away. So I gave people both accountability and a path forward."
He smiled. "That's the difference between acting and living," he said. "You made the story human."
On another evening, Baylor, Frost, Nathan and I sat on the terrace and watched the moon. It hung like a silver coin over the house. "You’ve done well," Baylor said. He had that old brotherly pride, more solid than any award. "You were fierce."
"Maybe fierce is the right word," I said, fingers laced with mine and Nathan's, who had come and sat down without fuss. He touched the hairpin in my curls, the one from years ago, now a relic and a talisman. "Maybe fierce is how you keep what you love safe."
As for Li Yi, she took the long, quieter road. She rebuilt her life with small tasks and steady work, and sometimes she appeared at events, softer and more careful. She did not rebound into stardom overnight; she worked, learned, and apologized to many people. The fall of those who had used her and others left a trail of consequences—but also, eventually, restoration.
"Do you regret anything?" I asked Nathan late one night, when the city felt like a cradle.
He looked at me. "I regret anything that I let fester because I was too proud to speak," he answered. "But I don’t regret being careful with people. I only regret not being braver sooner."
"Then be brave now," I said. "Stay. Speak. Let me in."
He did.
At the end of one year, when the first song had climbed charts and my company had signed a handful of artists, I stood in a quiet room and wound an old silver watch that had belonged to my grandmother. "Tick," I said to myself, then looked out the window at the garden where we had danced. Nathan was there, adjusting a lantern's light. I could see him as if he were a lighthouse himself—constant, small-beacon steady in a world that was constantly pulling.
"Do you remember that song we danced to?" I asked.
He came closer and nodded. "I do."
"I keep its words in my head," I confessed. "It says 'I’ll be your lighthouse.' So if anything comes—"
He inhaled and met my eyes. "I will be your harbor," he said. "You be my lighthouse."
We laughed softly. It was an odd bargain: a man who had once been stoic and a woman who had once vowed to rewrite a script. Together, we had found an honest story.
When someone asks me now, after everything: "What changed the script?" I tell them. "A girl who refused to accept that anyone’s life had to be a cruel sentence in a book. She decided to write mercy where it was due, and consequence where it was owed. She sang, she sued for the truth when needed, and she let people rebuild."
The hairpin still sits in my drawer—pink crystal catching afternoon light. Sometimes I lift it and remember the hotel room, the plane, the garden, the public confessions and the lonely late-night recordings. I wind the watch and listen for the small "tick." It reminds me that time keeps moving and we keep choosing.
And when the city grows loud and the rumors swell, I walk to our garden and hum the old chorus. "I’ll be your lighthouse," I tell the night. Nathan leans on the lantern and smiles like a man who, finally, found the map he never knew he was missing.
The End
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