Contemporary

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...

I dropped out of Harvard and took on massive debt to save my dying brother.

For five years, I starved. I worked five jobs a day. I let debt collectors break my ribs just so I could afford his "life-saving" meds.

Until I saw him at a VIP club.
No wheelchair. No illness. Just a bespoke suit and a glass of expensive whiskey.

"You've faked this terminal illness for five years," his friend laughe...

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 was supposed to be Caleb Ward’s Luna. Then Blair, the sister my parents chose over me, sent rogues to destroy my life. Elliot pulled me from the river and swore he loved me. For two years, I believed him—until I learned I was pregnant and overheard the truth: Blair hired them, Elliot paid to hide it, and my parents knew. Now Blair lives in my home, carrying Caleb’s heir, while Elliot keeps her s...

Three years ago, Grant divorced me while I was pregnant.
That same day, I was in a car accident, and our baby didn’t survive. Grant never found out because he was celebrating another woman’s birthday.
Three years later, he decided that the son I had raised was his. He took the boy away without permission and exposed him to a cat, triggering a severe allergic reaction that nearly killed him.
When G...

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 was dead, and the whole world was celebrating for my sister.

For twenty-two years, I had been the hardest-working but most invisible daughter in the Sterling family, forever living in the shadow of my gymnastics prodigy sister.

Running a high fever, I begged my family to take me to the hospital, only to hear: "Don't you DARE ruin Bella's award ceremony!"

When I was tricked into the abandoned ...

I waited two years for a donor heart. When one finally came, my husband gave it to Odette Ashworth, the girl who had been living my life.
My cardiologist gave me one week. So I made arrangements to have my body cryopreserved.
And I donated it to the very lab where Odette worked.
The day I signed the papers, my son threw his arms around me and said he was so glad Mommy and Aunt Odette were friends ...

My name is Elena Ross, and I’m a sex addict. This is the secret I guard with medication. But right now, the blizzard has sealed the road and cut off my escape. In this narrow car, the man sitting beside me is the one forbidden fruit I absolutely cannot touch—Silas Thorne. He’s not just my boss; he’s my ex-boyfriend’s stepfather.

The day I get diagnosed with stage four lung cancer, I can finally stop selling plasma.

For five years, I thought I was paying for the fire that killed my parents and son, left my brother disabled. Selling plasma, joining drug trials, doing the worst jobs imaginable, all to pay back a debt that wasn't even real.

The doctor says I have a few weeks left. I clutch the diagnosis report and head home...

My best friend murdered me.

Before the team tryouts, Mia handed me a pink energy drink. I didn't know it was laced with sleeping pills.

Thirty feet in the air. Top of the pyramid. My body went limp, collapsing like a puppet with cut strings.

I can still hear my bones shattering.

Mia threw herself into my fiancé Carter's arms, sobbing: "Oh God, I grabbed the wrong bottle! The vitamins and sleep...

I married the same Mafia Don nine times.

And nine times, he divorced me for the woman he believed had saved his life.

Taviano Ruscello ruled one of New York's most feared Mafia families. Yet whenever Isolde Carenza returned, his own Donna had to step aside.

"She risked her life for me, Vespera. I won't let anyone call her a homewrecker."

Nine weddings. Nine divorces.

Every time Isolde came ho...

On our wedding day, my fiancé gave the wedding dress I had made by hand to his sick sister—and let her marry into the DeLuca family in my place.
Everyone told me to give in because she was fragile, while I was strong enough to endure it.
That night, I walked away, revoked my access to the family, and left my mother’s atelier.
Later, his sister’s fake illness was exposed, and my fiancé got down on ...

On our seventh anniversary, my fiancé left me standing outside the courthouse so he could drive another woman to the hospital. It was the ninety-ninth time he'd called off our wedding for her.
That night, he booked the restaurant where we'd had our first date. He wore the tie I'd given him. For a few minutes, I let myself believe he finally understood.
Then he asked me to eat faster. She wanted de...

My ex-boyfriend wrote a hit song about me. He told the whole world I dumped him for being poor, painting me as the heartless ex who took nothing but his dog when I left.
I let him believe it. It was easier for him to hate me than to watch me decay.
A year later, he was on national television, his arm wrapped around a beautiful new starlet. When the host brought up our sudden breakup, Evan laughe...