Sweet Romance13 min read
I Won an Award, Lost a Night, Married a Firefighter — Then Exposed the Monsters
ButterPicks10 views
"I got the invitation," June said, "the production sent it ten minutes ago. Eight o'clock at the River Pavilion. It's the wrap party for Favor."
"Okay." I watched the cushion of my compact puff rise and fall and said nothing more.
"Arabella, you really have to go," Veronika added, voice brisk. "As the female lead, you must be there."
"I know," I said. I put the puff down and let my face go cool and blank again. The mirror gave me the same answer every night: a face people paid to look at and to buy things for. A face that was mine and not mine at all.
June pushed a plate of cake toward me. "Do you want anything? You need—"
"No." I smiled small and civil. "Thanks."
"You're not going to wear red again, are you?" Veronika held up the garnet dress like a verdict.
"Red suits me." I eased into mock innocence. "Burning and bold sounds like my mood tonight."
"Then wear it," Veronika said, satisfied. "And don't be late."
"You two," June complained, "if I were a man, I'd be drooling right now."
"Don't say that about our boss." I laughed. "Go fetch a brush, June."
The dress hugged me like a secret. The lights in the River Pavilion snapped to attention when I walked in.
"Arabella, come—come meet Producer Mason." Andreas whispered.
"I thought we were just congratulating the cast," I said and gave Mason Schreiber my measured smile. He took my hand and squeezed, kept it there too long, and smiled like a man with the right to own someone's skin.
"Arabella," Mason purred, "you were extraordinary."
I pulled back. "Thank you. I'm glad Favor did well."
"Of course." He patted my hand. "Keep up the good work."
I almost excused myself. All I wanted was to breathe. I went to the ladies' room instead.
"You look terrible," June said, later, when Veronika had already vanished into someone else's orbit. "Like you want to die."
"I don't look like I want to die." I tried to laugh and mostly failed. "I just want to… not be touched by rotten hands."
"You're being melodramatic." June fussed.
"Maybe," I admitted. "Maybe I'm hungry."
"Eat cake then. Don't get drunk."
But five minutes later, someone at the table slid me a glass. "For the star," a voice said, breath warm with liquor and smiles.
"Thanks," I said and drank, because the night felt soft and because I'm not a child and because a sip could not change the map of my life.
"Watch your dress," Beatrice said with a thin smile. She was close enough to be breath and not a friend.
"Beatrice," I returned the word like a greeting card. "Glad you could come."
"Of course." She clicked her wine glass, eyes sharp. "Small world, huh? Lucky breaks for lucky people."
"Don't be bitter," I said and put the cup down.
At the bar, the cameras blinked and one of the photographers—Sebastien Zeng—squinted at me from the second floor.
"Who's he?" I whispered to Andreas.
"Andreas looked up. "A guest."
"A guest," I echoed.
A tall man stood on the balcony then, silent, smoking. He looked like someone who kept things sharp inside him. He watched everything: the lights, the crowd, me. Something unclenched in my chest when his gaze landed. Not safety. An odd recognition, like a line skipped in a record you loved.
"Arabella, come toast me," Andreas said, suddenly. I went through the motions. People smiled. Cameras flashed. I felt the cold ink of the world press in.
Later, when the noise thinned, I slipped back to the car. Sebastien lingered near the hedge. Two paparazzi murmured and stayed when I passed.
"She went that way," one hissed.
I moved faster.
My room key read 412. I swore at elevators and at the playful way my heart kept skipping. I jerked the door open.
Someone was already there.
He was a silhouette at the window. He turned and the room filled with him. I had the stupid, ridiculous thought: my heart was an animal that recognized its shelter.
"Who are you?" I asked.
"You sure this is 412?" he asked and held my key between thumb and forefinger like a verdict.
My throat tightened. "Yes."
He glanced at the key. "It says 214."
"I must be drunk," I told him. The word came out thin.
"I am Alaric," he said. "But why worry about room numbers when some nights come to us anyway?"
His voice was low, even, and it steadied me. He looked nothing like the men who smile too much in interviews. He looked like somebody who kept a rope for emergencies.
"There's paparazzi outside," I whispered. "They'll get pictures."
"Don't make noise," Alaric said. He stepped close and his scent was green and smoky. "Be quiet."
He wrapped his hand over my mouth. My breath fluttered. He steadied me rather than caged me. I pushed his hand away and the room stilled between us like a held breath.
"Don't shout. They'll take it."
"Do you live here?" I asked dumbly.
"No," he said, steady.
"Then—"
"Stay here," he said. "At least until it's safe."
I could have left. I did not.
I made myself small and tried to be sensible. Then the world turned.
Later, or much later, memories were shards.
A glass that tasted of cheap sugar and hate.
Hands that were not mine on a body I thought belonged to me.
A dim room, a kiss that wasn't consent but a command.
When I woke up, Alaric was watching me with worry.
"You should have gone home," he said. "You shouldn't have drunk that."
"I don't remember—" My voice broke.
"You were drugged," he said simply. "They slick words like honey into a glass."
"Who?"
"Someone from the party. Someone who thought of you as an inconvenience."
"Alaric—I'm—" The heat in my cheeks belied my shame.
"You're safe now," he said, unyielding as steel. "I'm a firefighter. I can help more than most."
"A firefighter?" I echoed, the world wobbling.
He smiled like a man surprised to be known. "Yes. I'm a firefighter. Alaric Wells." He said the name like a promise. Then his phone buzzed with work and the rest of the night blurred into the kind of awkward tenderness that happens when two strangers have been through something raw.
"I will be responsible," he said at the end, stubborn and calm. "We will go to the registry."
"We will what?" I coughed.
"Get married," he said like it was the only salvageable thing left. "Tomorrow. Two people made a mess of this night. Let me make an honest man of it."
I thought about shouting. I thought about calling everyone who would drag his name through mud. I thought about contracts and cameras and a life where my choices were never entirely my own.
"Yes," I heard myself say. "Okay."
The marriage was small and quiet. The clerk blinked. "Just the two of you?"
"Yes," Alaric said, and the world narrowed to the square of red paper that felt like a seed.
"Congratulations, Mrs. Wells," someone said, and June cried and Veronika cried less but her smile was steady.
At home, Alaric turned our tiny apartment into my dream in a week.
"Look," he said, pointing at my old posts, at my wish lists, at little things I had once typed beneath a midnight photograph. "I remember. I put sunflowers on the balcony."
"You read my old posts?" I asked, stunned.
"I read everything," he said, proud and sheepish at once. "I built us a house from what you liked."
He filled the shelves gently, placed a cow-patterned cushion on the rocking chair I'd once imagined. He put in a little pink pair of bunny slippers, actually wearing them and calling himself my 'husband' while I laughed until my ribs ached.
Life did not stop being complicated. I still had interviews. I still answered to companies. But at night, the house smelled of dinner and his keys jangled against the door like a lullaby.
Then, people started to notice my award and my marriage. Colton Andrews came to me.
"Arabella," he said, leaning such that his hands drummed the mahogany table. "We want you at Orange Light."
"An offer," Veronika said later, proud.
"An offer," Colton repeated, "and a team. We will build you."
"I don't—" I started.
"Colton," Alaric said, like a warning in a soft voice.
"It's not because of your marriage," Colton said, smooth. "It's because we see a future. Because you're special."
And so we signed. The deal came with an agency and resources and a promise of things I had only half-dreamed.
But shadows lingered. Beatrice's eyes burned at every event. At photo calls, she edged close and spoke poisonous words under bright lights.
"She slept with Mason," she said once. "Mason gives parts to girls who like him."
"You think that matters?" I asked.
"It does for people like me," she said. "You don't know what you're stepping into."
I wished I had kicked her then. I didn't.
Months later, a storm broke. The industry is a small, connected web. Secrets snagged like moths.
June came back from lunch white-faced.
"Mason Schreiber," she said. "We're live at noon at the Sun Hall. Colton's having a panel—and Mason's on stage."
"What about Mason?" I asked.
"They're going to present an honorary award," she said. "No. Arabella—"
"Come with me," Alaric said. "I'll be there."
The Sun Hall swallowed us. Hundreds of people filled chairs like a sea. Lights hovered like hungry moths. Cameras blinked. We sat in the third row.
Mason strutted onstage, shining with a grin that did not reach his eyes. He had paraded his power for years. He liked to think no one could undo him.
I stood when they invited the presenter.
"People of the industry," the host said, "we have a special moment—"
A screen blinked behind Mason. It showed messages.
"What's that?" I whispered.
The messages were simple at first: Mason, in one voice, talking about "favors" and "payments," his smirks preserved for posterity. Then came a video. The screen looped what looked like him in a hotel hallway with Beatrice, whispered words, a hand sliding up a skirt. The room hummed with the noise of realization.
Mason laughed. "Is this some kind of joke?"
"It isn't a joke," a voice called from the stage. I hadn't planned to stand. But I did.
"Wait," I said into the microphone they'd given for the award. "There are more."
"Arabella?" Colton's jaw tightened. "What—"
"This man has used his position to take from young women," I said, and the room calibrated, like a compass finding north. "He has claimed careers. He has claimed bodies. I have evidence. And he is not the only one who thought they could be monsters and never be noticed."
The next video was longer and stranger. It was an old voice recording, a plea. It was a child voice talking about a night of smoke and a locked loft. It was a confession in a soft voice—my voice—that had been found among old family documents and a hurried, guilty whisper: "I set the fire."
I remember the hall in the way rooms look in slow motion. Mason's grin froze, his skin went from champagne to ash.
The footage and messages had come from a leak and from months of quiet investigation by people tired of being hurt. Colton played the files on a loop. The cameras rotated like vultures.
Mason's face changed before our eyes. He went from amusement to confusion, confusion to anger, anger to denial, denial to panic.
"This is a smear," Mason barked. "This is illegal—"
"Isn't it?" I said. "We all have a choice to act."
He stepped down from the stage, swagger gone. "You can't do this!" he shouted. "You can't—"
"Watch," I said. I pushed the next video. It was a grainy clip of a young girl—Lousie—laughing at a locked attic. There was a match on the floor. There was a little hand. There was a quiet ache that made my ribs hurt.
Louise Horn walked in then, pale as a sheet, the same face I had been gifted with through blood and theft. Her hand went to her mouth.
"No," she said. "No, I didn't—"
"You set the fire," I said. "You locked the door. You wanted me gone."
She swayed. People turned their phones on like a flock of eyes recording proof.
Outside the hall, a thousand feeds spun the footage to the world. Inside, the air felt thinner.
Mason began to laugh, a harsh, falling sound. "This is insane," he said.
"Pull the recording," he demanded to the tech.
"There's more," August, one of Colton's aides, said. He pressed play. The audio was clear now: Mason demanding favors in exchange for parts. Mason insisting to a young actress that she "owed him." Mason boasting in voice memos.
He went from denial—"I never—"—to shouting—"It's a setup! I was robbed!"—to breaking.
Someone in the front row—an old veteran—clapped once. Then another joined. The room's reaction changed like weather. Phones recorded. People whispered. A woman behind me sobbed.
Mason's public face unraveled. He staggered back, hands against his head.
"You're destroying me!" he howled. "You think you can—"
"No," I said. "I think we can stop you. Right now."
He dropped to his knees, on the stage's hard floor, his suit creased, his tie askew. The sheen vanished from his hair. He looked like a man who had crawled under a bed and been dragged out only to discover he had been seen.
"Stop," he begged, voice brittle. "Stop, please. I didn't—please."
"Did you think we'd never talk?" a voice from the back asked.
People moved closer. Some took photos. Some streamed. A few people started clapping—not in defense, but in approval. The crowd's mood swung from circus to courtroom.
Mason's fall was total. The expression of control cracked into raw fear. He reached up, palms glistening, and looked at the crowd as if anyone there could put the pieces back on his face.
"Please," he mouthed. "Please, I'm sorry."
"No one is above this," Colton said plainly. "We cannot have predators in our industry."
Security moved in to escort him out. He flung a few curses. Someone shouted his crimes into a microphone so the streams repeated it. The public timeline filled with footage and commentary. For hours, the story trended at the top of every social feed.
Meanwhile, Louise—my sister—had slid into a nearby chair, shaking. Her face was a theatre of denial then slowly despair.
"It wasn't like that," she said, voice thin. "I didn't mean—"
"Then tell us," I said. "Tell everyone. Tell them why you put a match to that loft. Tell them why you wanted me gone."
The hall watched while she fought with memories like storms. People take the stage to confess in small bursts. People watch because confession is a rare and repulsive kind of clarity.
"She set it," my father, Blas Banks, said finally, voice a cracked reed. He stood as if the country had been re-drawn under his feet. "She should have told me then."
Louise's face changed in that second from a polished jewel to something raw.
"No—no—" she keened. "He—she—" She could not find a pronoun to anchor her.
"It was jealousy," Veronika said softly. "Or fear. But what matters now is the truth."
"What matters now is justice," Duncan Vorobyov said, striding up. He had been a figure in our industry for ages; his calm made the room breath.
The hall became a tribunal. Journalists pressed mics forward. The cameras feed into millions of living rooms. People outside who had only ever muttered accusations in private were suddenly part of the proof.
Louise's face collapsed. She folded into herself and then folded out again.
"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I was small. I wanted his attention. I wanted to be chosen. I didn't think—"
"You set a fire," I said. "There's a difference between being small and being cruel."
She began to shake. Her denial dissolved into confession. She tried to walk back every step and found the floor beneath her had become glass.
"I never thought it would—" she sobbed. "I never thought she would survive. I—"
"Get help," someone shouted. "Get help and go with it."
The cameras recorded the entire fall. The crowd's reaction was cathedral-level. Some people gasped, some whispered, some raised their phones until they became a constellation.
Mason's collapse had been like a demonstration. He went through the stages I had been told to saddle myself with as a child: smug cruelty, then stunned surprise, then fury, then frantic denial and pleading.
At one point he crawled to the mic.
"Please—" his voice cracked in the open. "Please! You're lying! I didn't—"
"Enough," Colton said coldly. He didn't raise his voice. His eyes were an iron gate. "This is not about retribution. This is about accountability."
The crowd began to chant, "Accountability," then "Shame," then "Justice."
Someone recorded Mason on his knees, the polished man whose suit was ruined, begging. Women around me wiped their eyes. Men folded their arms and felt the slow burn of the righting.
Louise was escorted away by a clinician. She did not look at me. Before they closed the door, she mouthed a broken "I'm sorry" and then was gone.
Outside, the world screamed with a million takes. The hashtag went viral. The day felt like a watershed.
Afterwards, in the wash of news and coffee, people called. My phone filled with messages of solidarity and of simple hunger: "How are you?" "Do you need anything?" "We stand with you."
Alaric sat with me on the couch that night, thumb smoothing circles on the back of my hand.
"You did something brave," he said.
"We exposed monsters," I said. "But it wasn't only me. It was everyone who'd been quiet, everyone who'd been tired of being small for the sake of others' appetites."
"You're not small," he murmured. "To me, you are impossible to be without."
We held each other in a silence that felt like healing. The world would settle itself into new patterns. The Sun Hall footage would replay on consoles and newsfeeds. Mason would face formal charges. Louise would receive clinical help and legal consequences. My father would struggle to be a father again.
"You're my home," I told him softly.
"And you," he countered, "are mine."
The days after the big reveal were loud. Colton's company offered me new roles with protective clauses. Orange Light turned my world into a horizon. Veronika's line into the agency grew steady with offers I could measure and choose. I had power now, and I learned how to wield it without letting it wield me.
On the rooftop that overlooked the city, Alaric and I planted sunflowers, because he had promised he remembered. As the seeds took to the wind and the sun softened into gold, I thought of my mother and how I had once thought there was only loneliness ahead.
Now there was a house, a husband, an award, and a truth that did not burn silently anymore. I had been small once. I had been pushed, and I had fallen through flame. But the people who thought in power they could turn life into fuel found themselves burned by daylight instead.
"Do you ever regret it?" Alaric asked one evening.
"Regret?" I laughed.
"I mean—everything. The award, the marriage, the fight."
"No." I looked at the skyline. "I would not be this person without all of it. Besides…"
"Besides?"
"Besides," I said, smiling, "we finally have a kitchen that smells like home."
He kissed my temple.
We ate dinner with the royalty of my messy, repaired life. We lived like two stubborn people who choose each other daily. We held hands in the supermarket and announced to no one who we were but to each other, over and over, with the little rituals of living.
When the court summoned Mason months later, the hall had flashes and a chorus of whispers. He lost more than an award that day. His privileged grin was a past relic. He had been made to stand before the people he had trampled on. The cameras recorded his pleading like a lesson that would be handed down on feeds for years to come.
Louise, too, reached a place where she had to answer. She stood in the same courthouse, the same city, and her voice trembled. She looked at me and then at the judge and said, "I was wrong. Please let me help in any way."
Public punishment had been long and messy. Some nights I lay awake and let the grief come back because the loss of childhood cannot be made neat by an accusation. Some nights Alaric held me while I sobbed and the house kept our grief like rain. There would always be a scar, but the scar is now a line that proves survival.
"You're not alone," Alaric said once, into the dark.
"I know," I answered. "I have a home. I have you. I have my own voice."
"And you have a stage," he said. "One you won't let them take."
"One I will use," I said. "To keep others safe."
He pressed his forehead to mine.
We stayed like that for a long time—facing the city, the trophies, and whatever else the future insisted on bringing. The world had tilted and righted itself a little. The monsters had been seen and had stumbled.
And me? I learned to take off the mask and place it somewhere on the shelf. I learned to sleep in a bed that smelled like bread and lavender. I learned the fierce arithmetic of standing up for myself and of letting people stand with me.
I had been bruised and sang for it. I had been married for a night to a man who saved me from a black edge and would stand by me through the long rest. I had won an award, and I had reclaimed a childhood that had been stolen.
"Do you ever think of forgiveness?" I asked him once.
"Forgiveness is for those who learn," Alaric answered. "For those who grow. For the rest—consequences."
He kissed my knuckles.
Under the window, the sunflowers shook in a late wind. They were stubborn and tall, turning always to what gives light.
"Welcome home," he said.
I tightened my hand on his.
"I'm home," I said.
The End
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