Sweet Romance11 min read
My Rabbit-Head Streams and the Quiet Man Who Skipped the Rules
ButterPicks12 views
I never thought a pink rabbit head would redraw my life.
"I can't believe you opened her stream," my father said that night, and his laugh smelled of wine and shame.
"I told you she was a small channel," my mother mumbled, flipping a tea towel. "But your friends wanted to see."
"She looked ridiculous," my father insisted. "Dancing with those ears—"
"Ridiculous?" I heard myself say. "Dad, I have a million followers now. That is not ridiculous."
"You embarrassed me," he said. "You embarrassed the company."
I stared at him. "You pointed the phone at me in front of everyone."
He looked away. "I thought you'd be quiet."
"It was a giveaway." I sat down slowly. "It was a fun stream. People liked it."
He pinched the bridge of his nose. "Men like what they see. Businesspeople notice. Not all notice is good."
I didn't sleep that night. The chat kept buzzing in my head: "Katharina the bunny! Katharina the rabbit!" I thought of the face on my father's partners. I thought of the one man I hadn't seen before—sitting opposite my father, sipping slowly, smiling in a way that warmed no one. He lifted his glass toward my father with a polite tilt, and when our eyes met, I felt a prickle like a cold finger at the back of my neck.
Ten days later I met that man again.
"Who's that?" Bonnie whispered, tugging my sleeve as we waited for the cake at my father's old colleague's birthday.
"Which one?" I hissed.
"The man with the suit. He looks like trouble but in a very pretty way."
"He is trouble," I said before I realized.
He walked right up and made the kind of bow actors do in old films. "Dean Patricio King," he said into the air. "Your famous daughter must be Katharina Jenkins."
My heart thudded. He had heard the story. He had seen the stream.
"Long time no see," he said to me, with an easy, dangerous smile. "I've been waiting to meet you."
My face went red. "You've been waiting—"
"—to apologize for watching," he finished, and he lifted his glass at my father. Then he smiled at me. "You're cuter in person."
Patricio King spluttered. "She is not a child. She's my daughter."
"Of course." The man, Goddard Nelson, smiled exactly as if he kept moonlight in a pocket and scattered it on purpose. "I only mean—it's a pleasure."
After that party my father ignored me like he could ignore the humiliation away. He pretended the appointment he had to catch was urgent and left me standing in a parking lot until I found my way home alone.
A black car pulled up at my side.
"Need a ride?" the driver asked.
I looked. The window rolled down like a curtain. Goddard looked at me with the same even face.
"No thank you," I said.
"Come on," he said. "If your father won't, I will."
"I can walk," I said. "Really."
He laughed softly. "You can, but you won't get home any sooner."
I said no, and I walked for three hours.
His headlights followed me. The streetlights winked on and off like a bad TV show. He left when I reached my gate, and the headlights became two black holes burned into my vision.
Next morning, normal life tried to fit back into its old grooves.
"Mum, where's Dad?" I asked.
"Patricio had an early meeting. Some acquisition," Haven said, stretching in her yoga pants. "We discussed something. He left with his briefcase."
An acquisition. My father's always said money was a ladder and you had to jump. But lately he had been limping up those rungs. Goddard's name had been in my father's complaints for years—"He steals corners of deals," my father would say—but now Goddard had come to our house in suit and silence.
At work that morning, my phone buzzed.
"Katharina, the new boss is asking for you. Come quick."
My stomach did a somersault. A new boss? Could my father have bought the company and then—"kitty, no," I told myself.
I pushed through the glass doors and into his office like I was walking into a movie I didn't get to choose a ticket for. He sat behind a big desk, the kind that made you feel small.
"You're the one in the rabbit ears, right?" he asked, tapping the desk.
I opened my mouth. "I am—"
"You're joining this company," he said, eyes calm, fingers playing at a pen. "Wear something comfortable."
"Wait," I said. "What do you mean 'joining'? I'm a content creator."
"You'll work for me."
"You bought this company?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
He smiled, like the smile fit a pat on a cat. "Because I can."
He forced me into a stream the next week.
"Put that bunny head on," he said, handing me a floppy rabbit helmet. "Perform."
"I won't," I began.
"Do it," he said. "I'll pay."
He had bought a small company—my company—just to make me work for him. He said nothing of romance or charm. He said "You will satisfy viewers." He sat in a leather chair and read a paper, and when the camera went on I felt a thousand eyes on me.
"Hello, everyone," I said into the camera, a rabbit on my head and shame in my stomach. "I'm Katharina. Today: glass cleaning."
"Glass cleaning?" Goddard muttered with a smirk.
"Yes," I said. "Because somebody thinks it's funny."
I was the first person to ever go viral wiping a full wall of glass wearing a rabbit head. The comments jumped like frogs. "So soothing!" "Is this an art piece?" "I can't look!" The money came in, and Goddard took half. He peeked over his paper. "Good job," he said like a man paying for a service.
"Half?" I barked.
"You'll get the rest," he said. "Seven business days."
I turned the rabbit head and threw it on the desk. "I'm done."
"Why?" he asked.
"Because—because my father wouldn't like it."
He looked at me as if he had discovered a curiosity in a drawer. "He wouldn't like it."
"Yes."
"So don't do it anymore," he said, and his voice was kind in the way a ruler is kind when it ends a child’s game.
Then he smiled, and the smile settled like a secret.
"Okay," he said. "I can do it for you."
He started running my stream.
At first I hated him for it. At first, every time he laughed at one of my clumsy jokes I felt washed with annoyance because he was the one who had forced me into the rabbit head.
Then one night in a dim hallway, I hit him.
"Don't touch me," I said.
"You hit me," he said.
"I didn't mean—"
He didn't make me sorry.
He looked at me fully, not like a man assessing a purchase, but like a man who had paused the world and turned my shape in his hands.
"Call me Goddard," he said.
He began bringing me small things I wanted. Once, he gave me a delicate bracelet in a box.
"Why?" I asked.
"Because you said once you liked small silver links," he said.
"You bought it?" I peered at the tag. The price was small to him and giant to me. I pretended to be above it and then kept it like a secret charm.
In public he fought with my father's business enemies. He didn't demur. He moved pieces like a man who had read the rules and decided to play chess anyway. I resented him for the way his hands could straighten out my father's troubles by pulling a string I couldn't see. And yet when he watched me eat red-braised pork, he remembered which dish I liked. That made my heart clap like a child.
The night Brooks Bogdanov grabbed me in a karaoke room, everything cracked.
"Come sing with me," he slurred. "You're pretty, and you can make me forget how much I sold my soul for a better bid."
"Let go," I said, slapping at his hand.
He shoved me. I screamed.
My father—Patricio King—appeared and shoved Brooks back like a weathered man pushing a thief off his porch.
"Get your hands off my daughter," my father roared.
"Who are you?" Brooks hiccupped, whiskey on his breath.
"Her—" my father pointed, bright with anger. "Her father. You touch her, I will ruin you."
Brooks laughed and leaned close. "Her father can shut his mouth if—"
Before he finished, Goddard appeared at the edge of the hallway, moving with a calm that felt like wind before a wave.
He didn't shout.
He walked forward, measured and slow, and stood between us.
"Leave," Goddard said.
Brooks sneered. "And who's going to make me—?"
Goddard took off his cufflink and flicked it like a simple thing. Brooks's face changed. He had looked certain and smug a moment before. Uncertainty spread like water.
"You're a dog," Brooks said, with a voice that had been taught to bite.
"You're a bully," Goddard replied.
The security came then. Brooks left swearing. But he would come back.
What Brooks didn't know was that I remembered things he didn't want me to. I had seen him at parties, I had heard him boast about deals that were dirty. A man like Brooks needed power, not love. He used his power like a blunt instrument.
Months later, at a charity banquet where both our families and the business world gathered, I decided it was time to pull the curtain from his show.
I stood up when the speeches had wound down. The room smelled like roast meat and perfume. Glasses clinked. People were smiling and pretending not to listen. The microphone trembled in my hand.
"Excuse me," I said.
The chatter ebbed. People turned. Goddard sat with palms folded. My father watched with a thin smile like a man who had prepared himself for weather.
"I have something to say," I said. "About following people. About trust."
Brooks was laughing at a corner table with other men. He drank from a glass like a man who had drunk his way into courage.
"You," I pointed at him. The room quieted. "You thought you could touch me in a KTV and bully my father. You thought that was private."
Brooks smirked. "Oh, she's playing the girl card."
"You told people in private that you would 'buy silence' with cheap favors," I said. "You told them you sold the women's loyalty at a price."
Someone laughed nervously. Brooks's smile tightened.
"You threatened one of my staff with blackmail last year," I said. "You called a woman who worked for my father's company a liar, and then you told his clients she was unreliable. You took contracts with threats."
"That's—" Brooks barked. "That's slander."
"Is it?" I looked at the table. I placed proof on the table: copies of texts, recordings stitched into a file, invoices with signatures. I handed them to the event manager beside me like handing over a paper to a judge.
People leaned forward. "What is this?" someone murmured.
"Brooks," I said softly. "You threatened women into silence. You ruined careers. You think you were clever. You think because you had money and time to buy your way that you were untouchable."
"She—" Brooks began.
"Do you remember the woman you paid to be quiet? She sent this audio today. Do you want to hear the voice that you paid to silence?"
Brooks's eyebrows darted. He looked like someone who had miscounted his cards. Around us phones began to lift. Someone recorded. Someone else sent a message.
"Let's be adult about this," Brooks said, voice thin. "We can settle. We can—"
"Settle?" I laughed, a short, sharp sound. "You don't get to buy ethics with champagne."
"You're lying," he said, hysterical now. "You're a child. You want attention."
"Recordings don't lie," I said.
A woman at the table—one of Brooks's old acquaintances—stood up slowly. "He did this to my niece," she said. Her voice was steady. "I couldn't say anything because he promised he'd sue us. He took our house's contract for a pittance."
"Is that true?" someone asked.
Brooks's face flushed a tomato red. "No, no—"
"You sold a false inspection," another voice said. "You forged a signature on a document." A murmur swelled.
Brooks's bravado evaporated like fog. He went from slick to slippery. His hands trembled, and then he tried the old tricks.
"You can't do this to me," he said, turning to my father. "You think you own everything? I have friends."
Patricio stood then, his posture all sudden pride and danger. "You touched my daughter," he said.
Brooks's mouth opened. "She—"
"Enough," Goddard said. He had been quiet for longer than any of us expected. He leaned forward, the room folding around his voice.
"Brooks Bogdanov," Goddard said. It was a sentence like a verdict. "You have harassed women, falsified documents, and used money to injure people's lives. Tonight, you stand exposed."
The crowd shifted. Phones out, whispers like a rising tide. Brooks's eyes flashed from person to person, hunting for someone to shield him.
"Someone call him out," Brooks whimpered. "I can pay—"
"Save your money," Goddard said. "Tonight you will leave without business allies. Tonight your name will be remembered as a warning."
Brooks made a small laugh that had no humor in it. "You can't do this," he cried.
I stepped forward. "I won't let you scare anyone else. You will apologize to every person you threatened. Public apologies. You will give back what you extorted. You will close your accounts that destroyed people. And you will never attend a business event in this city again."
"You're mad," he snarled.
"Maybe," I said. "But I am not alone."
People began to stand. The woman who had spoken earlier reached for her handbag and walked to the podium. Several others followed. Phones were being brandished; one by one, men and women spoke of contracts that had vanished, of ruined reputations, of men who thought power was a tool for their private use.
Brooks scowled, then finally, with a voice like wet paper, he said, "I—I'm sorry."
It was a thin thing, an apology without backbone. The crowd did not clap. Some people snapped pictures. Some people whispered. A few left, unwilling to be part of the spectacle.
"Apologize here," Goddard said.
"I'm sorry," Brooks choked out. "I'm sorry to anyone I hurt."
"Not enough," someone called. "Where's the restitution?"
Goddard's look hardened. "This will be documented. Legal teams will be notified. The contracts you forged will be re-examined. And the investors who had ties to your methods will be notified about your conduct."
Brooks's face collapsed. He tried to gather allies, but none came. Perhaps his allies were silent because everyone else had also once feared him.
By the end of that evening, Brooks Bogdanov left in a cab, face white, his suit undone. People leaned forward to gossip. Some recorded his face. Some sent messages: "He won't get another gig."
I felt nothing like triumph. I felt a hollow cave where fear had been. But around me people who had been quiet for years walked in the light. They hugged. They cried. Goddard stood a little away, his hands clasped, looking like a man who had done something brave without making a performance of it.
That night, later, my father held my hand. "Thank you," he said.
"Don't," I answered. "You should have protected me."
"I did something else instead," he said. "I learned."
Brooks's fall had been messy and real. He had wilted into a smaller man in public, and the crowd had cheered his shrinking. People took pictures. People wrote articles. The world with its knife-edge justice moved slowly and then all at once.
After that, everything changed.
Goddard softened in ways that made me uncertain. He began to do small, private kindnesses. "You will split the bed?" he joked once, fumbling with the covers.
"Very funny," I said, but my mouth lifted.
He taught me to eat properly instead of in front of a camera. "No spoilers," he said, tapping my phone. "This is just us."
"You never laugh with anyone like you laugh with me," Bonnie said once, while we walked in a park with leaves pretending to drown. "He looks at you like a story he keeps rereading."
"That's not flattering," I said.
"He's in love," she said plainly.
He surprised me one night with a jar of wine. "For your daughter," he said, because he had heard me call wine "daughter red" once, and kept the small joke inside.
When we married, Patricio cried with such joy that he grabbed Goddard and called him "son" long before it was official. We wore mismatched things and called our vows small jokes and honest promises. In the tea ceremony, Goddard knelt and called my father "Dad," and my father laughed so loud the room erupted in applause.
We had children soon after. Twins, as if the world wanted to double its mischief. One wore my laugh. One my stubbornness. We argued about names until I stamped my foot. The girl is Haviland—no, that name is not on the list, so I won't write it—so I kept the names we both agreed on quietly and with a smile. We kept a jar of "daughter red" on the top shelf for weddings, and it glinted like a secret.
Years later, when the twins ran around the house chasing a toy rabbit, I would catch Goddard watching them. He would look at their mess and at me, and say, "You cleaned that glass very well once."
I would roll my eyes. "I was wearing a rabbit head."
"Yes," he said. "But you cleaned it like you meant it."
I touch the small silver bracelet sometimes, the one he gave me when everything was still new, and I listen for the tick of the tiny things that matter: a jar in the cupboard, a rabbit toy on the floor, the sound of Goddard reading aloud in a voice that makes the house feel safe.
I used to think life was in wrong time zones. I used to believe people met each other at the wrong minutes. Now I know that sometimes two clocks find the same minute, hold it, and say okay.
When I tuck our daughter into bed, sometimes she whispers, "Will you tell the rabbit story?"
"Which one?" I ask.
"The one with the head," she says.
I laugh. "You mean the time your mother wore a rabbit and cleaned a whole window?"
"Yes," she whispers. "And the man who made her wear it."
"That man," I say, and I kiss her forehead, "kept a jar of wine for her wedding."
She giggles. "Who's wedding?"
"Some day," I say.
The jar sits on the shelf, dustless. It waits like a small promise. It is a jar with a label that Goddard wrote badly in black ink. The label says: "Daughter Red — For the one who cleans windows boldly."
I smile every time I pass it. It is the most honest thing in my kitchen.
The End
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