Sweet Romance14 min read
The Bookmark, The Beach, and the Man Who Bought My Silence
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I never planned to be anyone's headline.
"I look horrible," I told the mirror, tugging at a curl I couldn't tame.
"You're fine," my mother said from the kitchen. "Aubrey, hurry. You'll be late for graduation."
"I know, Mom," I answered, but my voice betrayed a little tremble. I was twenty-two, but the butterflies in my stomach were stubborn. Today was the ceremony. Today they would put a silly black hat on my head and call me "graduate." Back home, my parents fussed and fretted like I was still seven.
"Don't spill anything on that dress," my father said as he kissed my cheek.
"I won't," I lied.
At the ceremony the air was hot and the principal spoke like he had been rehearsing the same speech for decades. People clapped politely. I stood in the back because of the flower ceremony—someone had to hand the bouquet.
"Now, please welcome our guest speaker, Griffin Bertrand, CEO of the city's largest group," the announcer said.
I knew who Griffin Bertrand was by reputation only: tall, cold, brilliant. The kind of man who made people feel like chess pieces. When he stepped up, everyone went quiet. He spoke about ambition and choices, but nobody cared. We were busy looking at him.
"Who is that?" Eileen hissed behind me.
"Shh," I said. I wasn't brave enough to stand out. And then my name was called. Someone had arranged for me to put flowers in his hands at the end. I walked up with the bouquet and smiled, a small, nervous smile.
He looked at me and said, very plainly, "Do you realize I have pollen allergies?"
The room laughed a little. I froze. My cheeks burned. The bouquet felt heavy and suddenly wrong in my arms.
"Please accept my apology," I said. "We didn't know."
He didn't take the flowers. He simply nodded and stepped away. I came back to my seat and felt like an oven.
Later, at a celebration with my classmates, we went to a karaoke room.
"Sing for us, Aubrey," Eileen urged. "You have that voice."
I sang because singing was the only time I could breathe freely.
"Spring wind, peach blossom..." I sang until I felt tears wanting to fall, until the song felt like a promise to someone I used to be.
From the doorway he watched. Griffin stood there, framed by the glass, looking at me like he was reading a book he couldn't put down.
"Who is she?" someone whispered.
"That's the girl who handed the flowers," Eileen said.
He left before we did. We were cleaning up when a waiter came in, all smiles.
"This bottle and the bill are on Mr. Griffin Bertrand," he said.
Everyone's conversation changed. "He paid? He left a bottle? Who is he?" came the usual murmurs. Eileen squealed with the kind of fan-girl delight only friends have.
Later that night, Eileen and I waited for a ride. A boy named Chase Austin was near us—our class monitor and the boy I had quietly loved for four years. He was taller than me, with a soft voice I liked to think belonged to people who cared. He had always been nice, but not more than that.
"Remember the first day?" he asked suddenly. "You were being hassled and I—"
"You saved me then," I said, trying to laugh. My heart pounded.
He asked, "Do you like anyone?"
I pretended not to hear. He kept talking. I felt foolish and small in the hollow between us.
That afternoon, Chase met Aurelie Dawson.
"Of course I'm staying," she said, sliding into his seat. Her voice was sharp as glass. "We're engaged, remember?"
"Chase?" I said, surprised.
She leaned to the side and announced, loudly, "We are engaged. In two months. See you at the ceremony."
I felt like someone had opened a door and thrown me out into rain. My throat tightened. I tried to reply, to explain that none of that was true, but Aurelie smiled like a dog who found a bone and meant to chew it.
"Don't lie to yourself," someone said. Griffin had walked in. He stood behind me like a shadow that blocked light, and then he spoke.
"I don't know why this has become a circus," he said. "But I suggest we stop."
Aurelie turned red with anger. "Who are you to tell me—"
"Leave," Griffin said.
People watched. Aurelie hissed and left, but not before muttering something ugly about me. Chase stood frozen. I watched him go. He didn't look back.
On Griffin's car ride out he asked if I wanted to visit his office.
"Why?" I asked.
"Because," he said simply, "I think you deserve a better day."
His office was huge. The city spread below like a model. I walked around quietly, felt like a visitor in a life I had not been invited into. I found a worn copy of The Little Prince on a shelf. A folded bookmark slid out. On it was a cursive sentence: "Wait for the wind." No name, no date. I held the paper between my fingers and the words felt like a promise.
Then the rain came. Hard and sudden. I startled at the sound. Lightning cracked the sky. I hid under Griffin's arm the moment fear rose in me. He didn't seem surprised when I cuddled closer.
"Are you afraid of storms?" he asked.
"Of being lost," I said. "When I was little I got lost in a storm. It took forever to find me."
He listened like it was worth listening to. He asked if I wanted to go home, and then he suggested I stay while he finished a meeting. I tried to call a cab. Nothing answered. He laughed softly.
"Do you know how to make coffee?" he asked.
"I can try."
He gave me an impossible order. "Make one like I like it."
"I'll try my best," I said.
When he tasted my coffee he teased, "It's like a milkshake."
"I wasn't trying to make you a milkshake!" I said.
He smiled. "Stay until it stops raining."
When the night did not stop and my words failed, he led me to a guest room and left me. Then he came back, barefoot and calm, just out of the shower. He wore a simple black sweater. He looked softer, not the man who could fold a business in a weekend.
"Can I borrow an umbrella?" I asked.
"Just come with me," he said.
He drove me home in his black car. "Address," he asked, casually efficient.
"Block Two, Eastview," I answered. He nodded and drove. My phone lit up with messages from Chase. "Please meet me," he said. "I didn't mean—"
He sent five messages. I read them but did not answer. I watched the city lights go by. When he stopped at my gate he didn't say much. I thanked him.
"You're welcome," he said.
He left like a stone dropped in a pond—ripples where he walked.
The next morning a man named Klaus Conway—Aurelie's father—was at Griffin's office. Papers were spread like a net. Griffin did not smile.
"You cheated me," Klaus said. "You set me up."
"I gave you an option," Griffin said, as if this were chess. "Make good, or face consequences."
Klaus sweated and begged. "Please, give me time."
Griffin only smoked and watched him shake.
"Either you fix your mess in three days," Griffin said, "or you lose what's most valuable."
Klaus's face went white. He stood, made the faces of a man losing everything, and ran from the office.
It was the beginning of things changing.
That evening, someone put a rumor on the web. I became, overnight, "the girl with the CEO." The tabloids spun stories of my "secret nights" at Griffin's house. I cried when my mother read them.
"Who wrote that?" I asked.
"Boys out for blood," Griffin said when he visited, sitting very near. "People who want leverage."
"Then stop it," I told him. "Please."
He looked at me as though deciding whether my request amused him. "Do you want me to stop it?" he asked.
"It makes things worse with my parents," I said.
"Tell them," he said. "Tell them I'm not your target."
"Don't be childish," I said quickly. "I'm not trying to make you—anything."
He smiled faintly. "Do you think I'm childish, Aubrey?"
"I think you've been very kind and very confusing," I said. "Also very dangerous."
He laughed. The laugh was short.
Aurelie and her father did not stop. At the big event where Aurelie was to proclaim the engagement to Chase, the room smelled like bread and fake smiles.
"Welcome to our engagement party!" Klaus boomed.
"Congratulations," people clapped.
It was supposed to be a show of two families uniting. Aurelie stood in a dress smaller than her ambition, and Chase sat like a man who already knew he was walking away.
Aurelie found me in the crowd with a showman's smile. "Isn't this a pretty day?" she asked. Her voice had sugar and poison. She held a piece of cake like a weapon. "Why not take a piece, Aubrey? It's sweet."
"Congrats," I said, and meant it as politeness.
She smiled cruelly and pressed the cake into my hand. "This is yours."
I took the cake like an offered cross. I held it steady, until it slipped.
"Oops," she said.
The pink cake fell onto my white dress like a stain. The room froze. Cameras flashed. I stood with a smear across my chest as if humanity had painted me wrong.
"Do you mean to ruin my day?" she said, loud.
"Excuse me," I started, and then Griffin walked through the crowd like a winter wind.
"Is there a problem?" he asked, and everyone turned.
Aurelie brightened. "This girl tried to steal my dress—"
"She does not steal things," Griffin said. "She is the one you invited."
"And what of it?" Klaus barked.
Griffin's eyes cooled. "Tell me why you think you have the right to accuse her."
Aurelie's voice trembled. "He—he wrote those posts about her."
"Who wrote them?" Griffin asked.
"You have no right to—"
"Name them," he said.
Suddenly cameras were not the only eyes watching. Staff stepped back. People leaned forward. Griffin turned to the crowd like a man opening a box.
"I have a camera," he said. "I have receipts. I have messages."
He pressed a button. The big screen above the stage lit up. Images of invoices, hidden accounts, contracts with missing pages—Klaus's companies had been cutting corners, pocketing money. People in the crowd gasped.
"Klaus Conway, you stand accused of fraud, of falsifying bids," Griffin said, very calmly. "Tell us how you justify stealing money from your own projects."
Klaus's face collapsed in stages. One moment he was stunned, then furious, then pleading.
"This is slander," he said. "We had friends—"
"Are you saying you didn't sign this?" Griffin asked.
Klaus's cheeks sank. He started to stammer and stall, his voice going from arrogance to pleas.
"How does it feel to have your name read like this?" Griffin asked.
"You're a monster," Klaus said.
"A monster who cleans his teeth while you dodge the truth," Griffin said. "And you, Aurelie—what did you gain by concocting lies about this young woman? Were you trying to win an audience?"
Aurelie's cleverness failed. For the first time she looked small. Her false confidence crumbled into panic.
"She—she made me look bad," Aurelie said, voice cracking. "I did not—"
"You accused her of ruining your life," Griffin said, stepping closer. "You told reporters she was the third party. You forced your father to make threats."
People whispered at once. I could hear forks clinking. Someone snapped a photo. Griffin moved like a conductor. He pulled the curtain off the stage.
"You will make restitution in public," he said. "You will apologize in front of everyone. You will make clear that your claims were false. You will publicly renounce this 'engagement' if now you say it was built on theft and lies."
Klaus tried to interrupt.
"You will hand over the coastal land," Griffin said, turning to him as if naming a currency. "The one you were keeping for yourself as 'retirement.' You will sign the papers now, in front of everyone. And you will apologize to this young woman."
No one expected this.
Klaus lunged, then faltered. The guests watched as the man who had thought himself untouchable tried to bargain and then finally signed the papers. His signing hand shook. Aurelie sobbed at the side, then screamed, then begged her father to stop. People around us took out their phones. Someone called a reporter. Cameras flooded in like bees.
Aurelie's face changed more than in any moment before. She went from smug to shocked, from shock to denial, from denial to supplication.
"Father, no!" she said. "You promised we'd have everything!"
Klaus stood, suddenly hollow. "Forgive me, child," he said, the public apology sounding like someone who had been unmanned.
"Do you know what shame feels like?" Griffin asked, watching the rooms change their whispers into pointed accusations.
I could see the crowd's faces turn. Some looked ashamed for having believed Aurelie's lies. Some looked relieved that truth had come out. A woman in a green dress clapped softly. A man took a photo and laughed, meanly. A child in the front looked confused. People recorded, uploaded, shared. The internet would feast.
Aurelie's fall had three stages. She first tried to huff with indignation. Then she denied and attacked me. Then she pleaded with her father to stop. Finally, when the signed papers were pushed in front of her and her father's voice broke, she found herself without an audience. She crumpled and crawled to the floor and begged.
"Please—please don't take it all," she cried.
"That land is a rectangle of wind and sea," Griffin said. "Make sure you know what you sign for."
Klaus's composure failed. He slapped his daughter once, loud enough for the room to go still.
"Shut up," he said to her. "You ruined us."
Aurelie covered her face. She looked suddenly small.
"Look at them," Griffin said to the assembled crowd. "Watch how fast the strong can fall when truth is shown."
His punishment did not end there. Over the next hour he arranged for the press to show the contracts identifying the fraudulent invoices. He directed aides to hand copies to the chamber of commerce. He made sure the city's financial watchdog had a file. He told the project partner companies the truth—as plainly as a surgeon exposes a wound.
Aurelie tried to speak. "It wasn't me," she wailed. "I didn't—"
"Then explain this," Griffin said, pushing an email chain across the table. The room read it as if the chain were a confession.
Klaus tried to flee. Reporters circled. He was hounded by questions. People called for his resignation. "How could he?" whispered someone close to me.
Chase stood to the side, pale. He didn't move. When he saw me, his eyes were full of something that looked like regret.
That night the headlines roared. I did not sleep. I thought of the bookmark. "Wait for the wind." I did not understand the meaning, but the words felt like someone else's promise to guard me.
Aurelie's public collapse continued for days. The city's gossipers recorded every nuance. She lost sponsors. She lost a sense of self. She tried different defenses: denial, tears, anger, manipulation. The crowd's reaction changed at every step. At first shock, then ridicule, then some felt pity. A few young women laughed at her. Men who had cheered her smiled as if watching a spectacle. Her father begged. He blinked in interviews and lied. People took a variety of stances: some felt vindicated by Griffin, some felt remorse at how easily they had judged me.
Klaus Conway's company was investigated. Projects stalled. His retirement land became—by Griffin's design—a public gesture: the coastal plot was gifted to me.
"Why?" my father demanded when the news came home. "Why would Griffin do that?"
"Because he can," I said softly. "Because he wanted to right a wrong and put those who lied in a place that forces them to be seen."
"He gave you a gift," my mother said. "A plot of land?"
"Yes," I said.
The gift became a headline: "Coastal Land Given to the Girl." People debated whether I deserved it. Some painted me as climbing a ladder built with scandal. Others said it was justice.
Chase called. "Aubrey, can we talk?"
"I don't know," I answered.
"We made mistakes." He sounded small.
"You made promises and broke them," I said. "You let people dictate you."
He asked, "Will you forgive me?"
"I thought I already did," I said. "But forgiveness is not the same as trust."
Chase's silence said what words couldn't. He was being used in a world where families arranged marriages like chess pieces. He was stuck. He loved me, maybe, but he also knelt before the weight of family ties. I could not, in a moment, remake his spine.
In the weeks after the scandal, many things happened fast. I worked at my father's small design firm, learning what it felt like to be ordinary. I wore old shirts and used a real, small subway pass. People who had watched the spectacle on screens watched me now when I walked to the bus. They blinked with curiosity when I laughed. I learned to be quietly proud. The gossip continued to chase me. Griffin's life spun like a different coin.
One night, I got a text. "I'm leaving for France," it said. "Two months. I'll be working. I will come back."
"Why France?" I asked.
"To learn," he wrote. "To build something that lasts."
"Will you come back?" I typed.
"I don't know," the reply came. "But wait for the wind."
He left.
I did not wait like an empty girl. I lived. I painted small designs, I drafted room plans, I learned the lines of brick and wood. When I stood on scaffolding, I felt real. I planted my feet like a person who belongs.
Months later, when I was sitting at my small desk and staring at a new plan for the seaside plot he had given me, my phone blinked. "I'm back," it said.
I went to see him.
He had been away to a city of light and fashion, but when he saw me he was the same: tall, a little tired, softer than a winter coat. He had come to the city to build a new project, and to be honest, to build a life that could hold a person like me.
We did not rush. We had small, odd, beautiful moments: him teaching me to tie a necktie for a meeting, me making him a sandwich, the way he would pull out the old bookmark and show it to me.
"Do you remember this?" he asked once, opening the little page. "Wait for the wind."
"I remember," I said.
Griffin's hands were clumsy when he tucked my hair with that little pin he'd first put in my hair at the beach. "You suit sand and sea," he said.
"Do you think I belong to you?" I asked, fingers tracing the skyline from his window.
"I think you belong to whoever sees you now," he said. "But if I am allowed, I want to be on that list."
"You done causing trouble?" I teased.
He smiled, small and dangerous. "My favorite trouble is the kind I can fix."
I laughed. "I don't want you to fix me. I want you to stand with me."
"I will."
We built a little house on the coastal plot later. We invited my parents. My father said it looked like a small palace. My mother cried and hugged me. For a while, I finally felt like a person with a shore.
Months later, at a public dedication when I placed the first stone for the seaside project, the crowd was huge. Aurelie was not there. Klaus had been fined and had to sell other holdings. Chase had apologized and retreated to a small life of engineering away from public glare. He wrote me once: "You were brave." I wrote back: "You were young."
At the dedication, a reporter asked Griffin, "Why give such a plot to a girl with no background?"
He looked at me, then at ocean, then back. "Because sometimes we know what is true. Because people deserve a second chance. Because every city needs a shore where someone can wait for the wind."
I took the small bookmark and slipped it into my palm. The little paper had gone from Griffin's book to my pocket to the desk to my heart. I tied it to a small stone and placed it in the foundation.
The press wrote stories: "CEO Builds Beach for Brave Graduate." People cheered. The same people who once watched me fall now witnessed me build. Their faces were different; gratitude took the place of whispering. People pointed and smiled. A child on the front row waved a plastic flag I felt something shift.
Aurelie's fate was quiet: she moved to a smaller company and kept her head low. Once in a while I read that her reputation had been repaired slowly, but there was an ache where entitlement had survived. Her father, Klaus, did not appear often in public. He had lost money and the mood of importance. He walked with a different gait now.
Once, months after the scandal, I went to the city market wearing a simple dress. A woman recognized me and said, "You are the girl who got the land." She smiled like she meant well. "You're doing something good with it."
"We are," I said.
When the wind came off the sea that night, it felt like a hand on my back. I remembered the bookmark and Griffin's words. There were many suns and storms left. There would be days of heat and nights of cold. But I had the shore now—and the kind of company I had chosen.
"You built this for me?" I asked Griffin once, on a roof near the sea.
"I built it with you," he corrected.
He kissed me, brief and certain. It was not the clumsy dream-kiss of a hospital hallucination. It was real. The paparazzi had long since stopped following us because the story had changed. People kept telling stories of how I had found my own small life and of how a cold man had learned to be less cold.
On the night we sealed the charity house—my project for elderly people who had nowhere else to go—I found the old bookmark folded in my palm. The writing had not faded.
"Wait for the wind," it said.
I looked at the sea, at the lights threading the horizon. I had waited, not with empty hands, but with plans and patience. The wind came, and it did not take me away. It made me steady.
We put the bookmark into the smallest corner of the house, where someone could find it years later and remember a promise.
"Do you still collect promises?" I asked Griffin.
"I collect the right ones," he replied.
We laughed and walked inside together. My life had been written by many hands—some clumsy, some merciful. I kept the bookmark because it belonged to the moment when everything tilted. It was a small scrap of paper that had become a map.
And when nights came when I worried I had been too bold, I would rub the tiny paper thumbed between my forefinger and say out loud, "Wait for the wind."
It was not a hope. It was a direction.
The End
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