Breakup

Three years together, and the texts I'd sent Nolan Garrett could probably fill an entire medical chart.

Pasta or salad for dinner. Rain boots or sneakers when it was pouring. I ran everything by him.

Then one night, right in front of me, he muted my texts.

"Can you grow up a little?" He didn't even look up. "Not everything has to go through me."

After that, I really did stop asking.

I signed ...

I thought I was the happiest woman in the world... until I clicked on that video.

The moment the screen lit up, my entire world came crashing down.

The woman on the bed was Calista - that girl who grew up with us since we were kids. And that hand caressing her skin was wearing the wedding ring I had personally put on Matteo's finger.

"I've missed you so much..."
"You drive me crazy, baby..."

T...

To celebrate landing our biggest client of the year, the company rented out the entire terrace of a beachside bar.

When it was time for the team photo, the only open spot left was next to my boyfriend, Harrison Kent.

I'd barely moved over when he waved toward the back of the crowd. "Lacey, come stand here."

Lacey Monroe was my best friend. She squeezed in beside him with a smile. The second the...

In order to rush to comfort his assistant whose apartment was leaking, Richard signed his name hastily without even glancing at the documents on the table.
I put away the divorce agreement with a wry smile.
When he and my son completely disappeared, he finally panicked.
Three months later .
He knelt down on the streets of Chicago in despair, begging me to remarry him.
My six-year-old son looked co...

My attempts to marry Ethan Ward had been derailed exactly seven times.
The first time, Peyton threw him a "surprise" party, and he was too hungover to make our City Hall appointment. 
The second time, she got into a minor fender bender and hysterically convinced him her neck was broken. He rode with her in the ambulance. 
The third time, right as we were signing the papers, she swallowed a bottle ...

In the ten years I was with Chase Holloway, I got used to him "forgetting" things.

The night he proposed, he showed up empty-handed and said the ring was still at the jeweler's. The day we went to City Hall for our marriage license, he dug through every pocket of his coat and said he'd left his paperwork at home. On our wedding day, he didn't show up at all.

I found out later he'd been in the ba...

I waited ten years for Ethan.
He was in London getting his PhD.
I was back in the States, teaching.
I taught alone, moved alone, sat alone in the ER with an IV in my arm.
He said that when he came home, he'd marry me.
But the day he came home, he brought her with him. The woman who'd followed him all the way to London.

The day we moved into the new estate on the hill, every bedroom had a name next to it. The master suite for my parents. The east wing for my brother, Luca. And the best room in the house, the south suite overlooking the Hudson, was labeled Sofia's Room. My name wasn't anywhere. Out in the hallway, a workman was screwing brass nameplates onto every bedroom door. None of them said Chiara. Ten years ...

When my fiancé lets his new assistant put my name on the family purge list, he tells me it was only a joke. He expects me to apologize, come home, and keep standing beside him while everyone watches another woman take my place. So I let the order go through. I leave his family, his city, and the future he thought I would never dare abandon.

I didn’t come from money, so Julian’s friends decided I was a gold digger.

His best friend, Sloane, was the worst. She liked to say she used to be a gold digger herself, so she knew my type.

To prove her wrong, I spent three years with Julian without accepting a single expensive gift.

Sloane had an answer for that, too: “She says she doesn’t want anything, but she’s really waiting for him to of...

Typically, brides swap bouquets for good luck when wedding motorcades cross paths.
But in Liam’s Southern hometown, they had a twisted tradition: they swapped brides.

When our limousines met bumper-to-bumper, Kinsley leaned right past me. She pressed a lingering kiss to my fiancé’s cheek.
"Hope you don't mind, Rachel," she purred with innocent malice. "I’m stealing your groom."
The groomsmen ho...

For eighteen years, Ethan Caldwell was the person I trusted most. Then, on the night meant to celebrate my future, he handed me another woman's hotel key and asked me to protect her reputation.

I gave him one final chance: meet me at the airport and choose our promised trip. Instead, he lied about a car accident while I watched him wrap a matching scarf around Vanessa Reed's neck.

By the time Et...

To celebrate his startup's funding, my boyfriend Liam forced me to eat a cake baked by his female best friend, Mia.

I immediately smelled peanuts. He knew I was deathly allergic, but he pressured me to take a bite anyway.

When the reaction hit—my throat closing, hives burning my skin—I reached for my EpiPen.

Mia snatched it first.

She turned my only lifeline into a party trick, tossing it in t...

The night I found out I was pregnant, my seven-year-old son pointed at a little girl in a mommy vlogger's video on his iPad and said, softly:
"That's my sister."
I laughed and flicked his forehead.
The vlogger lived all the way down in New Orleans. He'd never even met them.
"She has a million followers, sweetie. Don't make stuff up."
"If you want a sister that badly, how about Mommy gives you one?...

I got pregnant the year we could barely afford to eat.

My boyfriend, Mason Caldwell, took out an online loan to pay for the abortion. At least, that was what he told me.

While I was recovering, the best thing I ate was a $2 chicken leg from the discount grocery store.

It broke my heart to watch him work construction all day and deliver food all night. So after three days in bed, I took a servin...

For years, I'd covered everything for my mate's family. The house, the car, the bags, the clothes.

So when they planned a family vacation, I thought I'd finally earned a spot.

Instead, they booked tickets for the whole family, plus Sloane, the childhood sweetheart who never quite left my mate's side. Even the dog had plans.

I was the one they expected to stay home and keep working. They called ...

I can see other people's net worth.

The day my boyfriend learned he was the long-lost son of the richest man in this city on the East Coast, he came home and lied to my face.

"The DNA test didn't match," Caleb Foster said with a sigh.

Above his head, his net worth climbed past $14 million.

I did not expose him. I only smiled and said, "Don't worry. As long as you can take hardship, there'll al...

Grant postponed our engagement three times. First, because Vivian was in the hospital. Second, because she was feeling low. Third, because her concert mattered more than our future.

So I asked the man who’d always been there—Adrian Kessler.

“Are you interested in marrying me?” He said yes without hesitation.

We set the date for the same night as Vivian’s concert.

While Grant was clapping for h...

Only after I lost the promotion did I find out that my broke boyfriend secretly owned the company I worked for.

He'd voted against me.

One of his friends asked him, “Aren't you worried Nora Bennett will find out you've been lying to her and raise hell?”

Blake Whitmore gave a casual laugh.

“Why would I be? It doesn't take much to make her happy again.”

“Chloe's different. She's been a princess...

I woke up at twenty-seven again, still tied by a sacred mate bond to the most powerful Alpha in the Northwest. We had twin cubs. Everyone said I was lucky.

Before my first life ended, that bond had helped destroy me.

This time, I took the contract that could dissolve it to my mate's first love.

“Ronan's yours,” I told Vanessa. “The cubs, too. Get his Alpha mark on this, and after the bond-break...