Sweet Romance13 min read
Return, Rescue, Reckoning
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I wake up with my heart tattooed by a nightmare.
"I saw him again," I whisper to the dark, and the room answers with the patter of rain against the window. The old locust tree outside our villa stands like a silent witness. My palms go slick. I splash cold water on my face until the world glitches back into shape.
"Everlee," a voice outside says. It's Dustin Deng, my doctor and my constant shadow. He always knocks, never barges in. His footsteps are careful like he fears breaking me.
"What if he needs me?" I ask, almost to myself.
"You've been asking that for five years," Dustin says. "You should sleep."
"I can't sleep if he is out there," I say. "If my home city is drowning and he—"
"Dust and boats, Everlee," he says softly. "I'll get your ticket."
"I want to go now," I say. "Pack my bag."
Dustin looks at me like he is seeing my resolve harden into something sharp. He reaches for his cigarette then remembers it is forbidden around me. He tucks his hands into his pockets instead. "Okay," he says. "I'll come with you."
A helicopter thumps down on the lawn hours later. "Ready?" Dustin asks, looping his arm through mine.
"Always," I lie. I refuse to tell him that my chest feels like a fist.
We land in A City to a sky the color of old bruises. The river has eaten half the streets. Volunteers move like islands of warmth. I follow, relief boxes in hand, and feel for the first time in years that my feet are doing something that matters.
"Your donations are like rain," Carlos Garcia, the local team leader, says, voice thick. "You don't know how much this helps."
"Tell me where he is," I whisper. "Matthew Zhang. Where's Matthew?"
Carlos looks at Dustin. "He left this morning with the boat teams."
We reach the shelter and everything sharpens. There, among tired faces and the sour smell of damp clothes, I see him. Matthew Zhang—like the memory I carried in my ribs. He moves quietly, hands steady as he hands out rations. Even masked, he is unmistakable: long limbs, the kind of face that gets framed in magazines.
"Hello," he says to Dustin with that cool politeness he's famous for.
"My name is Everlee," I say, and my voice stumbles. I will not tell him my surname. Five years ago I had reasons to hide it.
Matthew turns to me with those quiet, sharp eyes. "Your name?"
"Everlee," I repeat.
"Nice to meet you, Everlee," he says. "Thanks for the food."
I hand him a box of canned rice. "You eat," I say. "Please."
He nods. "You too."
Dustin squeezes my hand under the table. "Are you okay?" he murmurs.
"I'm fine," I lie again. I am not fine. I am stitched together from the memory of a boy who had begged for help and the girl who once flung herself forward to shield him. I have been waiting to be close to him since then.
Nights are cold at the shelter. Volunteers sleep in shift lines, boots by the door, the electric lights humming like insects. I cough through the night and decide to visit a pharmacy before dawn. An old doctor runs the counter. He offers me antibiotics, then halts.
"You should take potion-based medicine," he says. "Your stomach is fragile."
I ask for the traditional prescriptions. He looks at me like I am a stray animal. "You need warmth, patient. But if you want, I can sell you something stronger."
A hand comes down on the pill sheet. Matthew stands beside me in the narrow pharmacy, and he is too close. The air pulls tight.
"These are from the shelter," he says. "Take these. Trust me. You'll feel better."
"You're an angel," I blurt.
He smiles, something wry and small playing at the corner of his mouth. "Don't be ridiculous. I'm just another volunteer."
We walk back together. The city is a tangle of water and mud. A mangy dog barrels out of a side alley and snarls.
"Don't move!" Matthew says, and for a moment the confident volunteer flickers. He freezes like a rabbit.
"Run with me," I tell him. "On three."
"One—"
"Two—"
"Three!" I shove him. The dog lunges. I grab a paving brick and fling it. It hits the dog's head with a dull thud. It yelps and runs. I turn to Matthew, heart pumping.
"You okay?" I ask.
He bends and laughs—sharp, surprised. "You hit it."
"That dog wanted your leg," I say.
"You're braver than you look," he says. "Stay safe."
At night, he dreams. I hear the way his breath changes in the dark. Once, as I help bandage his scraped knuckles, he says, quiet as a prayer, "He screamed, Everlee. He screamed and I couldn't—"
"You're here," I say simply. "You made it. That's what matters."
Days pass in work and small, bright intersections. Matthew and I don't talk beyond necessary things, but the world begins to compress into the space we share—the shelter, the boat trips, the makeshift dorm. Dustin hovers like a worried moth. He stitches and fusses and says things like "Don't lift that" and hands me hot water bottles when my cough flares.
Back home, my father Carter Hart welcomes me with the well-practiced warmth of a man who has kept his hands clean. My stepmother Eileen Renard is everything that public smiles can be: jewelry like moons on her fingers, perfume like a practiced poem.
"You're back!" she cries, and her arms are open in a way that is designed to be photographed.
"You've been wonderful," Carter says, and his hand presses my shoulder. "We're glad to have you home."
I hate the way both of them say "we" like an ownership.
At dinner, Eileen touches my arm. "You must be tired, dear. Rest. You look so pale."
"Mom," I say, and the word slides out before I can stop it. Her smile flickers. She has been my stepmother since my father married her when I was very small, and I learned early to call her mother if I wanted dinner on time.
"I can't stop thinking about Matthew," I confess, quietly. "He was hurt. He nearly—"
Dustin clears his throat. "Everlee, you should rest."
"He was a boy," I say. "He begged for help. And then—" I remember the smell of that night, the terror. "And then I couldn't stop thinking about him at all."
Carter's face shadows. "Going back might not be wise."
"You're afraid I'll find out about the old days?" I say.
Silence like a held breath. Then Dustin's hand closes mine. "I'll go with you if you insist," he says.
"I insist," I tell him. "I go."
A car keys in my pocket that was taken from home—my father's flashy muscle car. We drive toward the small studio where Matthew is about to start filming a variety show. Dustin drives. I rehearse being small and useful. I will be his assistant. I will watch him. I will protect him with whatever pieces of me are left.
The next day I stand in a small waiting room and hand over my résumé. A woman with a clipboard looks at my handwriting and smiles.
"Did you study abroad?" she asks.
"Hell yes," I say. It comes out like a challenge. I do not tell her that I once scrubbed the floor of a training center at three in the morning because the teacher told me to. I do not tell her about hiding my name.
"Why do you want to be his assistant?" she asks.
"I want to be near him," I say.
She blinks. "Honesty! We like that here."
So begins my official job. Matthew is exacting and blunt and sometimes like a winter dawn—beautiful and sharp and able to take your breath away. He teases me and drives me a little mad, but he also notices the cuts on my knuckles. Once, standing in his dressing room, he says, "You look tired."
"I am," I say. "Too much work."
"Then sleep," he says. "You look fragile like glass."
And there it is—the way he says "fragile" like it might shatter. My throat tightens.
At the studio, things are noisy. Cameras move like beetles. Producers shout. A woman named Angela Rocha tries to flirt and fails the way a practiced flirt does: thinly, purposely. Angela leans into Matthew and laughs too loud. He acts polite, then slaps her hand away when she tries to edge into his space on purpose.
"Don't touch me," he says, and the slap is not violent but cold as a blade.
"He's so rude!" Angela exclaims to a camera that isn't on. "He pushed me!"
"No," Matthew says flatly, "I removed you."
I taste anger like iron. "You're going to make a fool of yourself," I tell Angela later. "Stop clinging like a vine."
"Who are you to tell me—?" she starts.
"Who am I?" I say. "I am the one who will not let you embarrass yourself in front of the cameras."
She laughs like a dog with a bone. "You? A lowly assistant? You think you can stop me?"
I don't answer. I move like a shadow. The cameras love the drama. The internet eats it. Fans declare a "lock" of Matthew's life with the other actress. I breathe in and out and do my job; I make tea; I carry his bag; I learn the way he drinks coffee: one small sip, always from the right side of the cup.
There are small moments that prick like splinters. Once, in a lighting rehearsal, my hand brushes his and he pins my wrist gently with his fingers.
"Don't dawdle," he says, as if that explains everything, but his voice softens like rain.
"Okay," I breathe, and my pulse is loud in my throat.
The politics of fame circle like sharks. Then, a thread in the dark unravels everything. An anonymous tip leaks a dossier to every news outlet about Gerardo Semyonov—Eileen Renard's brother—implicating him in violent crimes and in the trafficking of minors, with proof of his connection to Angela Rocha’s patronage and to an old attack on Matthew five years prior. The images are ugly. The videos are worse.
My hands move by their own criminal impulse. I send a set of documents to reporters. I do not wait. I press send. It's a single button that clenches the world.
"Why?" Dustin asks when he sees me.
"He hurt him," I say. "He helped cover it up. He was part of it. He thinks he can buy silence."
Within hours, the news explodes. Gerardo's name blares on screens. The agency that represents him falls silent. His hotels lock their doors.
Then the big night comes: a charity gala at the hotel's grand ballroom. The city pours in. I walk in like an accused woman, my cheekbones hollow from sleepless nights, my hair done by an exhausted stylist. Dustin stands at my side, steady.
"You're sure about this?" Dustin asks. "You won't change your mind?"
"I will not," I say.
The gala is lit like a star fall, chandeliers trembling. Gerardo struts in surrounded by a pack of smiling men whose faces are descriptions of greed. Eileen—my stepmother—moves like the queen she has trained herself to be: flawless, prepared, cruel in the way that polished diamonds can cut.
A projector screen dims the room. I feel the chill of all those eyes. The MC introduces a speech—then the lights flicker and the feed switches.
A video plays.
"Look," I say. I rise. I push forward in the aisle. My voice is thin, but it carries. "This is about justice."
A hush clamps down. Journalists click record. Smartphones lift like a forest of hungry birds.
The video shows a shabby room, low light. A teenage boy is held down. The sound is low, muffled. A man's voice boasts. The footage is ugly and honest. The name of Gerardo is on the tape—his laugh. People gasp.
Gerardo's smug smile snaps off like glass.
"What is this?" he says, but his voice trembles.
"This," I say, and I hold my phone up, the video playing on my screen for everyone close. "—is what you did. This is what you paid men for. These are crimes."
People start murmuring. "No," a woman near me says. "This can't be—"
Gerardo goes white. For the first time, his face is not staged for cameras. He looks like a fish in a bowl.
"This is a lie," he snaps. "This is fabricated!"
"Is it fabricated, Gerardo?" I ask. The room draws a breath as if waiting for a verdict. I swipe to another file. A ledger, names and payments, anonymous accounts traced to him. "You wired money here. You were present. You were proud."
He laughs, a sound like breaking ice. "You have no proof."
"Do you want to deny your texts?" I ask.
A man's phone records chime. A friend in the crowd holds up a battered phone and plays three voice messages—Gerardo's voice, obscene and exact. The room goes very, very still. Someone screams. The cameras tilt in.
Gerardo's countenance collapses from entitlement to panic.
"This is libel!" he cries. "You will pay for this—"
"It is true," Eileen breathes, but it's not the denial I expect. Her hands curl as if to hide something. "I—" She looks at Gerardo. "You thought we could control this. You thought family would protect you."
He points at her then. "You put her up to this. You are ruining me."
Eileen's mouth opens and closes. "No," she says. "I didn't—"
"Shut up!" someone yells in the crowd. Photographers lean in. Phones flash. The room smells of perfume and fear.
The moment explodes. Reporters press forward. "Gerardo, are you guilty?" "Ms. Renard, did you know?" "Mr. Hart, your family name—"
Gerardo steps away from me but he is unsteady. He looks like a man whose scaffolding has been pulled away. "This is slander," he cries. "It's not true."
"Stop," Eileen says, suddenly sharper than the chandelier light. She turns to him with a look that is not mercy but calculation. "Admit it. Admit it publicly. Name them. Name the men. Name the places."
"You're mad," he says.
"Admit it," she says again, and this is where the room shifts: it's no longer just the press; it's broken families and exasperated lawyers and the police at the edges.
Cameras roll when the police step in. Officers in crisp blue appear behind me like inevitability. Someone murmurs that an arrest warrant is being prepared. The murmurs swell and become a roar.
Gerardo's face contorts. For a terrifying moment he is the last person in the world who can choose to deny everything and hold his head high; instead, he slumps.
"Please," he says suddenly. "You have to believe me. It's a setup."
"Why would anyone set you up?" the MC asks.
He looks like he is aging by the second. The crowd leans forward. Phones record everything. He grabs at a microphone like a lifeline.
"Listen to me," he pleads, voice high and dangerous. "I—I'm sorry. I'm sorry." He repeats it like a broken record. "I didn't mean—"
Someone in the crowd starts to boo. A half-dozen voices take it up. "Shame! Shame!" The phrase slices through the clinking of glasses.
Gerardo staggers, grabs at a table, knocks a glass to the floor. It shatters. Camped cameras catch every second.
He sinks to his knees on the polished marble and begins to beg—loud, humiliating, raw. "Please," he says. "Please, I didn't—please don't—"
"I told you," I say in a voice I hardly recognize, "there is a price for what you've done. Not just justice, but shame."
Around us, phones flash. Some people cry. Some snarl. Someone records his kneeling and uploads, immediate and viral.
A woman in the back claps. "Finally," she says. "Finally."
Another voice: "He should die in jail."
Gerardo's expression slides from defiance to disbelief to pleading to fury to collapse. He wraps his hands around his knees like a child. "It's not true," he says again. "It was a mistake. I was with people. I didn't mean for—"
A man nearby takes a slow step forward. "You told them to do it," he says.
"Please," Gerardo says. "Please."
"No one moves," the police say. "We have orders."
The crowd begins to chant, at first soft, then louder: "Shame! Shame! Shame!"
And then, as if in a release, people begin to cry. Cameras pan across faces—neighbors, victims, city officials. Some people clap. Others simply stand, stunned. A woman pulls out a small recorder and says, "This will be evidence."
Gerardo cowers. He tries to stand, but an officer guides him gently down again. "We will take you in," the officer says quietly. "You'll have your day in court."
"Make him pay," Eileen says. Her voice has no warmth, and neither does her face. She speaks like a judge handing down sentence.
"Get back!" Carter Hart roars. He steps forward and stares at Eileen with a look that says he is not her pawn. "You will not use my family name to cover your hands."
Eileen's hand trembles. "I did what I had to," she says. "I've thought about this for years." She speaks like a woman who has stacked her cards and lost.
The cameras roll. The videos circulate. Gerardo is led away with his head bowed under the flood of flashing lights and the hunger of an entire audience watching his fall.
He goes from arrogance to begging to denial to collapse. The crowd records it, laughs at it, cries at it, and then posts it. The clip racks up millions of views in hours.
"You wanted them to remember you," I say to myself, looking at my hands. "Now everyone remembers."
The aftershock is a cascade. Angela Rocha releases a statement. Eileen is called before an ethics board. The company where Gerardo kept his accounts freezes assets. Gerardo is arraigned. Papers file like birds.
"Why did you do this?" Dustin asks me later in a car, his voice a small sound. "Why did you push it to be public? We could have—"
"I couldn't trust a system that would let him slip away," I say. "I wanted it public enough that people couldn't look away. Punishment in private is a rumor. Punishment in public is memory. He needed to be remembered for what he is."
"Did you think about Eileen?" Dustin asks.
"She'll get what she made," I say. "She thought wealth and smile could erase blood."
"You were brave."
"No," I say. "I was furious." My voice softens. "And scared."
The months that follow are messy. Gerardo is charged. Eileen resigns from public life and faces endless hearings. My father looks at me like grief and pride have braided. Dustin returns to his careful ministrations, quieter but present. Matthew and I live in a small orbit of lunches and recorded interviews. We fight. We make peace. We learn what luminous things are left in a world that once felt all darkness.
"Why did you hide your name?" Matthew asks one evening as we finish a quiet dinner.
"I was protecting something," I say. "I thought hiding would save everyone. It didn't."
"Would you do it again?" he asks softly.
"I think so," I say. "Some things need to be exposed."
"Good," he says. "Because I like the Everlee I see. Brave and messy."
We laugh. His hand finds mine, and for once I do not flinch.
The scandal recedes in the way storms do: water pulls back and leaves mud. People replant lives. Gerardo has his day in court. He is convicted. The sentence is enough to keep him behind stone walls for a long time. At his sentencing, the courtroom overflows.
"You're a coward," a victim says into a microphone. "You thought money would give you immunity. It did not."
Gerardo pleads and denies and then pleads again. He kneels by a witness stand and asks for mercy. Journalists stand in a river, crowding for each step, recording each contortion of his face. He begs, stammers, and then collapses into a sound that is not a sentence but the end of an argument. Cameras flash. Phones are out. People film him as he crumbles.
"Please," he whispers. "Please."
"No," the room replies as one. "No more."
He is led away.
At night, I sit under the locust tree back at the villa. Rain has washed a clean line through the leaves. I hold an old brass key in my palm—the one I once used as a talisman—and think of all the things that were broken and all that we put back together. Matthew's voice comes behind me like a tide.
"Everlee?"
"Yes."
"Will you stay?"
I look at him, at the moon catching on his cheekbones, at the echo of all we have survived.
"I already am," I say.
He takes my hand. We stand, together, with the locust tree keeping watch. The past hums like a wound that has scabbed, the city beyond the river is waking up. I fold the brass key into my pocket and tuck it near the roots of the locust tree as if to tell the world a secret: that some things are buried so they can grow new.
"I will keep the watch," I tell Matthew.
"And I'll keep the music," he says.
We walk back toward the lights—the cameras, the interviews, the small tender days stretching in front of us. I have learned that justice sometimes needs a public voice, that shame can unmask monsters, and that the kind of bravery that changes things looks a lot like never giving up on someone who once begged you to save him.
Later, I will sign documents, give interviews, smile through questions that touch old wounds, hold Matthew's hand through his nightmares. But tonight, under the locust tree, with rain in the slow exhale of the night, we only listen to the small sound of our breathing and the promise of something that might be called peace.
The End
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