Sweet Romance13 min read
Two Million Reasons — A Sisterhood, A Script, and the Price of a Kiss
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I had two rules the moment I realized I was living inside someone else’s plot: keep breathing, and keep my feet on the ground.
"I need you to breathe," Baxter said once, calm as a breeze yet firm like a hand on my shoulder. "Slow."
I laughed then, the sound small and nervous. "You talk like a doctor."
"You like that," he said, and his eyes crinkled. "You like being cared for."
I felt warm right through my ribs. It surprised me how quickly his words could make my chest loosen. He wasn't loud. He didn't show off. He just...propped me up, always, with things I did not ask for.
But the story I had walked into—if it was even really a story—had rules of its own. In that story, I was a pretty, a bit greedy second female lead, who was supposed to be pushed aside by a perfect, pure heroine. I was supposed to die in a corner of my own choices, or be brushed off politely. I had my script, and I had five years to live on autopilot.
"Do you remember why you started acting?" Landry asked me once over champagne and neon city lights. She liked to say my name like a secret: "Jaliyah."
"I wanted to be useful," I replied. "I wanted to feel bigger than my old bank balance."
She tapped my wrist like she approved. "Good. Then do not be small now."
She was my dead childhood friend who had, impossibly, come back as someone else’s life. "Landry Carrillo"—to everyone else she was a careful, expensive lady who lived in penthouses and knew auction houses, who could make a bank transfer while sipping green tea. To me she was the same gonzo, messy friend who had once eaten sugar straight from the jar and called it therapy. She was the friend who had died years ago—except she hadn't. She had come back, and in a way the book had given her a new role: a rich mother who would block me, or buy me off, or approve of me.
"You look like the woman in that book," she said the first time we sat across from the actual 'evil mother' at a high-end restaurant. Landry's face was composed, but I could see mischief under the skin.
"Are you serious?" I asked.
She smiled with one corner of her mouth. "Be serious. The lady offered you two million to leave her son. It's an amazing line. 'Give her two million, and leave my son.'"
The waitress set down plates that looked like modern art and left. The lady in the chair we were watching flicked her fork like a queen. Landry said, quiet as a conspiracy, "Say it."
I stared at the woman's aristocratic nose, at the little disdain she wore like perfume. I had to, because if the book was true, I had to act the role until the plot changed.
"Two million," I said slowly, testing the currency in my mouth like it was a foreign word.
The woman looked at me then with a small, cold smile. "Two million. Goodbye," she said, voice precise. "And be happy."
Landry could not hold it. She covered her mouth and giggled like we were kids again. "Say that to yourself every morning," she hissed, still laughing. "Two million, be happy."
"You're absurd," I told her, but I wasn't angry. I was smiling inside. The idea of money as a kind of permission fascinated me.
We had plans. Landry had plans for everything. "You will go to the audition," she declared. "You will win a part. We will use every asset, legal and mutual, to make your light look unavoidable."
"You're doing too much," I protested, and she slapped my thigh with her palm, as if that could smash doubts into dust.
"Then don't be too small. Promise me you won't play their version."
I promised. I moved through the set like someone learning a familiar language with fresh ears. "Do your scenes. Be present," Landry told me. "But keep your hands on your own script."
The boy in the story—Baxter Long—was not what I had expected from a fictional alpha. He was steady and practical and never flashed his chest at anyone. "I noticed you were cold," he had said the first time I rode with him in his car and shivered. "Take my coat."
His coat smelled faintly of coffee and late-night files. He gave without grand gestures, giving me small things that felt like gentle truths: the jacket, a cup of tea when I fell sick, his shoulder when my heart churned.
"Do you remember the promise?" he whispered once, when the world shrank to the two of us in a small kitchen.
"What promise?" I asked, playing stupid, and his thumb brushed the scar under my jaw like it was a secret code.
"You promised to be honest with me," he said. "If you go, tell me. If you stay, tell me."
I loved how he asked for the thing that mattered—truth—like it was the only currency he cared for. In a way, it felt more intimate than money.
But there was the real book problem. There was the other girl—the true heroine. Her name was Keira Bianchi. She was small and fragile in the way some girls are fragile without trying, like porcelain that has not yet learned to stand. She walked through the set like sunlight through a window.
"She's actually very sweet," Landry told me, with a twist of alarm. "Keira—she's not a threat because she is mean. She's a threat because people believe she is pure. Our job is to be better than the role they wrote for us."
So we made plans and little wars. Landry bought breakfast for the crew. She sent rain on cue. She hired special catering that read like a review in a five-star magazine.
"You are insane," I told her once in the car, eyes on the city. "You are buying me like I'm a painting on auction night."
"You're not for sale," she said, meeting my eyes. "I just want the world to see what I see."
The big fight came in slow motion, as most things do. A week of favor turned into a week of headlines. An old post got dug up—someone had called me a gold digger years before when my old life had been small. The post spread like spilled oil. People love to set things alight.
"Don't look," Landry said as we watched numbers tick upward on a gossip feed. "They will say anything."
"Why would they?" I whispered.
"Because it makes their days louder," Baxter answered, appearing in the doorway. He held my hand as if it were a shield.
They said I had climbed on his wealth. They said I had staged a friendship with Landry to float upward. "Gold digger" became the word like a slow bruise.
We tried to fight back gently. My manager, Charlie Gardner, wrote statements. My director, Dax Clemons, posted grateful notes. My agent's contacts painted balanced portraits. But the smear had momentum.
Then the oldest trick in modern drama happened: someone invented a story. A journalist, Katharine Simon, ran a piece insinuating that the friendship with Landry was a PR stunt, that Landry's gifts were payoffs, that my career had been bought. The article used unnamed sources and the things people like to believe: that fame is made, not earned.
"She wrote like she wanted a leash," Landry said, opening her hands as if to catch an animal. "We need to expose her."
I did not want to be dragged into another fight. "Let it die down," I pleaded. "We can't drown in every rumour."
Landry tightened her jaw. "If you let it slide, it becomes a fact. If you let them keep painting you, you will never win an award because they will always say 'bought'."
So Landry decided on a public answer. She called a press conference not to charm, but to show the truth. "We will not only deny it," she told me. "We will show the seam that created the lie."
On the day of the press conference, the room smelled of polished wood and the tang of coffee. Cameras blinked in rows like patient beetles. Reporters rustled as if warming up. Katharine Simon was there, as she always was, cross-legged with the posture of someone ready to pounce.
"Good morning," Landry said, stepping up to the podium. She wore a suit that did not ask for attention, but still held it. "I am Landry Carrillo. This is the woman you have called many things."
She gestured and I saw myself on the screen behind her: photographs of Landry and me, of us in a tiny kitchen long before any headlines. "We were friends before either of us knew what a film contract was," she said. "We stayed friends when life became expensive and complicated."
A reporter shouted, "Why give gifts? Why the rain, the catering?"
"Because she needed sleep," Landry answered bluntly. "Because I can. Because friendship is not a transaction."
Then Landry did what I had not expected. She named names. "We have traced the origins of several recurring posts," she said. "We will now play a timeline exposing a network of planted articles." She flicked a remote and a string of articles and payment records scrolled across the screen—advert bills, IP addresses, a fake 'source' email that traced back to a PR firm owned by an entertainment company that had lost a client to our set.
Katharine frowned. "These are claims."
"Not claims," Landry said. "Evidence."
"Are you going to accuse journalists?" a man in the third row asked. His voice trembled between ethics and spectacle.
At that point, Landry's calm broke into a kind of holy fury. "We aren't accusing journalists. We are exposing a pattern of people who pay for narratives to raise their own influence. We are here to remind the press that the truth matters."
Baxter stepped forward then, a silent blade of presence. He put his hand on my shoulder like a parent might. "We will also hand over all transactions relevant to the set and my mother's philanthropic gifts to your editorial board," he said. "If there was a payment intended to buy praise, let it be proven. If there wasn't, show me the proof and I'll sign."
Katharine shifted, and the crowd waited like a held breath.
"Do you have proof that I took payments?" I asked for the first time, my voice small but steady.
"No," she said, too quick. "No direct proof."
"Then why the article?" Landry asked, and her voice was a blade. "Why peddle an allegation you cannot document?"
Katharine's eyes hardened. "Because the pattern was there."
"Because looking for patterns is not the same as finding facts," Landry said. "Now, if you will, Ms. Simon, come forward and answer this." Landry pointed to a chart with a line that mapped the IPs.
The crowd murmured. Katharine's fingers curled around her notebook. She had built a small empire on scent and suggestion, on being the one who smelled drama where others smelled only work. Now, for the first time, Landry pointed a microscope at the smell.
"You are alleging we paid to plant stories," Katharine snapped. "Are you claiming I was paid to write?"
Landry's next move would become the talk of the industry. "We are not alleging yet," she said. "We are showing you evidence and asking you to answer. But we also contacted the platform hosting your article, and we have the email thread. If you will open your accounts to independent audit, we will show the board that you received 'tips' from anonymous groups linked to an agency that profited from scandal."
The room shifted. Faces turned to Katharine.
"You expect me to open my accounts?" Katharine asked, thin with danger. "I can go to court."
"Do it," Landry said. "We will see what the court says."
The next hours unspooled like a net. Calls were made. Documents were faxed and emailed and printed. A young tech reporter discovered a series of automated accounts that had fed into Katharine's stories; another found a payment trail that connected to an agency whose clients had a history of orchestrated hits. The press conference turned into a forensic theatre.
Katharine changed her expression from one of annoyance to one of tight control. Her mouth made small sharp sounds. "You can't prove that I knew," she said.
"Knowledge is not required for accountability," Landry replied. "If your career depends on being first and loud, you have a responsibility to verify. If you give pass to rumor, you are part of the machine that destroys."
Then something happened that I will never forget. A junior reporter from a rival paper stood up and asked Katharine—calmly and plainly—if anyone in her own network had ever benefited from a sudden wave of articles.
Katharine's face crumpled for the first time. "When you chase traffic," she said slowly, "you don't always check the boots on the ground."
"Then check them now," Landry said. "Open your books."
For the rest of the day, the press asked the hard questions. People who had followed the click trail began naming people. One by one, the supporting evidence came forward: a PR firm had paid for a cascade of 'exclusive' tips the week an alternative film flopped. Another local magazine had been offered 'scoops.' When the publication owning Katharine's platform realized the risk, they froze the piece and demanded a retraction.
The public punishment was not a single act of cruelty. That was important. Landry refused to turn it into humiliation. She insisted the process be transparent. She wanted the truth nailed, not a scapegoat paraded.
Katharine's empire was shaken. Her editors demanded an apology. Her social accounts folded under a wave of "prove it" and "audit your ethics" messages. She posted a defensive statement, but it looked like a thin bandage on a deep cut. The net of people she'd trusted as signal turned their heads. Sponsors pulled ads. Invitations to panels vanished.
Most of the room had reacted with shock when Katharine was named. A few cheered gently when a magazine printed a headline that read: "Investigation Finds Networked Smear Campaign; Journalist's Sources Under Review."
Later, I learned how a fall happens. At first there is denial. Katharine called friends, then called her editor, then called lawyers. She groped for control. When nothing returned, she tried to deny that her words had consequences. Then the denial cracked; she started to apologize, but the apologies were small and private, not public and full. At the worst, she cried in dim hotel rooms and called people who did not pick up.
"How do you feel?" a reporter asked her at the final live conference, the one that sealed the story.
"I...never meant to hurt anyone," she answered, voice thin. It changed nothing for me. Her confession came too late.
The public reaction was something else. People who had enjoyed her gossip now looked at the harm her stories had done. Fans who had once applauded her investigative style now logged notes about ethics. Editors made statements about verification. The coverage shifted from personalities to process.
"Is this revenge?" someone asked Landry afterward.
"It is not revenge," Landry said. "It is correction. We will not let rumor define reality."
I watched Katharine's unraveling and felt a strange, quiet pity. Her reaction moved from anger to denial to a brittle, pleading stance—"I was only doing my job." People snapped pictures, some posted videos of her apology; others recorded how she avoided questions. Friends of the accused came forward—some sided with Katharine; others said they had never seen proof. The crowd's reaction varied: some clapped at the truth being shared, others whispered about the spectacle, some posted pictures and memes.
In that room of lights and microphones, I saw the arc of a public downfall. Katharine had gone from a high seat to a place where she had to answer to the evidence. Her agency's phone calls that week were frantic. But the thing about a public fall is that it is not only about the person falling. It is about the people who decide that the fall is deserved, and the people who decide the fall is too public.
I felt no pleasure. I felt relief. Landry had insisted on truth, and truth meant my name would not be drilled into a rumor. Baxter stood with me. Charlie sat by the side and muttered, "You don't need two million to be happy," and I wanted to laugh.
"That's what she said in the book," I murmured.
Landry winked. "Then take the line. But mean it."
We turned the moment into our own: clear, upright, unborrowed. The industry learned something. Katharine lost contracts and invitations. She wrote the kind of apology that people stop reading two lines into. Scenes of her in airports went viral—no gloating, just an account of how the quick-burn rumor industry works.
I had an odd moment of empathy. "Do you hate her?" I asked Landry after the press flurry ended.
"No," she said. "She has a job. She lost track of the people under her."
"What would you do if she comes back?" I asked.
"Make sure she remembers how to verify," Landry said, smiling. "And then give her a book to read about friendship."
In the weeks that followed, the story of how a friendship had been weaponized turned to the story of how that same friendship pushed an actress into the light. The film we were shooting found an audience. The internet spun its cyclical moods: first horror, then forgiveness, then fascination.
Baxter and I grew. There were small fireworks and several heart-tremble moments. He would appear on set with my favorite almond milk coffee and place it before me without fanfare. "You forgot your lines yesterday," he would say once, gently. "I liked the way you breathed before you spoke. It made the scene honest."
"That is the stupidest compliment," I told him. "Tell me something impressive."
"Okay," he said, leaning closer. "I like the way you hold your scarf when you're scared. It's small, but I know it."
He would take off his coat in a busy dressing room and wrap it around my shoulders because the AC was too cold. "You look ridiculous," I complained, shivering.
"You look mine," he answered, and for a moment I felt like I could be brave.
I won small awards, and then larger ones. The films landed. Reviews mentioned me as "a jewel of subtlety" and "an actress who seemed to carry life in her hands." Most nights I called Landry and told her the numbers, and she always said, "I told you. Do not be small."
There was a quiet scene one night when we had both returned from award rehearsals. Baxter pressed his forehead to mine and whispered, "Do you remember the day in the restaurant? The two million?"
I did. I could hear the clink of silverware and Landry's giggle.
"Tell me again," he said. "Tell me the words you want to live by."
I thought a moment. Then I said, "Be happy. Be honest. Keep breathing."
He kissed me then, simple and long, and I realized that the life I had stolen from a book had rounded into my own.
Months later, at the film festival, the story arc wound tight: the small movie that had no budget became a cultural earworm because truth had been defended. Keira Bianchi, the girl who might have been the heroine in another life, won a sympathetic mention in the press because she was, in the real world, a good person trying her best. I went to her and hugged her, and we were not enemies. We were actors who had been handed strange roles.
"Thank you," she said quietly to me. "For the space."
"No," I told her. "Thank you for reminding me why the real work matters."
At the end of it all, I stood by Landry on a chilly May afternoon. Baxter had his arm around me. Landry looked at us as if she could see every misstep we had been kept from.
"You took my offer," I said, laughing—the offer Landry had mimicked when we saw the rich woman in the restaurant. "Two million, leave his son."
"You would have been poorer for it," Landry said. "You would have lost yourself for an idea the book told you to be."
"No," I answered. "I would have been smaller."
"Then be big," Landry said. "And remember to be happy."
I tucked her hand into mine. The word "happy" remained a silly promise and the truest currency I had ever been given. I had money now, and trophies, and a career. I had also something that mattered more—a friend who had come back and built a kingdom where truth did the work of rumor.
"Do you ever think about the original ending?" Baxter asked that night as we walked home.
"Only sometimes," I said. "When I do, I tell myself the story again. But I change the parts where they hurt people."
He stopped and looked at me. "Good," he said. "Because I like the book where you stay."
I laughed and kissed him in the empty street. "I like that one too."
And the city kept turning, with its lights and its people who loved to invent stories. We kept working, kept breathing, and kept being honest with each other. That, in the end, was more than any curtain call or cash offer.
The End
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