The Year Of Living Danishly

On New Year's Eve, I went to court for the last time. The judge asked if I still wanted to file for custody of my daughter. I shook my head and said, "I'm here to withdraw my case. I'm going to stop fighting for custody anymore. I agree with the divorce." Vivian and I had been married for nine years, and the divorce had dragged through six hearings. I spent six New Year's Eve in court. There had been no joy, only hysterical accusations. I was tired. My daughter was tired, too. So, I finally stopped holding on. I had already booked my flight home for the year.

Look woman I never begged to be your husband, you gave me that opportunity” Min Jun yelled. Mei Xing a 22 year old and the only daughter of multi-billionaires is diagnosed with cancer but doesn’t want to go through chemotherapy, with only a year left to live, she wants to explore. Min Jun a jobless 23 year old, finds himself a jackpot and agrees to be her contracted husband for the money and all the benefits of being with a billionaire’s daughter. EXCERPT: “Will you marry me?” Mei Xing asked a stranger she met walking on the streets. “What did you just say?” he said and was about to walk away. “I will pay you, a hundred thousand dollars, if you be my husband for a year” she said. “A year?” he asked and she nodded. She scanned through her wardrobe and wore a flowery dress, it wasn’t summer but by summer she might be too sick to wear it. “You only live once, more like a year," Min Jun finally arrived in jeans and a polo, “A summery dress in fall” he said as he took his seat. “The deal is I get fifty thousand dollars before we start the arrangement, then after the wedding I get the other half” Min Jun asked and Mei Xing nodded in approval. “You just have to be with me for a year, I probably won’t be alive by the end of the year” she joked. “Do you have some kind of transferable deadly disease. Covid?” he asked her. “No just cancer” she assured. “So I’m going to be free in a year and you'll be dead” he narrated.

The night before our group trip, Raymond Kane tags me in the group chat and tells me to check my flight ticket. When I open the booking, I discover my ticket was refunded three days ago—without anyone telling me. Before I can even type a reply, the messages start pouring in. Madelyn announces, "I bet Ray that you wouldn't check the booking before we left. He got you to look it up yourself. That's cheating!" Raymond shrugs it off. "Doesn't matter. You still lost. She only just found out. Just book another one. We'll just have to sit apart." Their casual banter brings back a familiar ache. It reminds me of the time they bet on how long it would take me to realize my hotel room has been downgraded from a standard double to a shared triple, leaving me to sleep on a folding cot. And before that, they bet on whether I'd notice the art museum on our itinerary had been replaced with an escape room. Whenever I tell them it hurts, they always give the same tired reply. "How were we supposed to know you cared if you never said anything?" But they never ask. I close the booking app and open another one, searching for flights to Isvind. I imagine myself surrounded by the silence of a 5°F night, with the northern lights painting the sky above me. Perhaps a solo trip is exactly what I need.

I was Johan's secretary for seven years. After another night together, he tossed me a check. "I'm bored with you." I gave him a teasing smile. "I've got less than three months left. Couldn't you wait a little longer?" He frowned. "Yara Yelton, you should know your place." My smile froze. He had no idea. I never joked about that. Later, he panicked. By then, it was too late.

21 years old Soraya Rivera has spent her entire life fighting for everything she has. A full scholarship is her only ticket to a better future, and with her father's mounting medical bills threatening to bury her family, failure isn't an option. So when a heated confrontation at a nightclub turns into a public scandal, she's one mistake away from losing everything she's worked for. Declan Shaw has his own future on the line. At twenty-five, he's hockey's golden boy the league's favorite player and captain of the ice. But after one reckless night involving Soraya, lands him in trouble with sponsors and team management, he's given an impossible ultimatum: clean up his image or kiss his career goodbye. The solution? A legally binding marriage. For 365 days. One year of pretending they're happily in love. One year of living together, smiling for cameras, and convincing the world their relationship is real. If they fail, Declan loses the career he's sacrificed everything for. If Soraya refuses, she loses her scholarship and the chance to help save her father. The rules should be simple: no feelings, no complications, and absolutely no falling in love. But when hatred starts feeling dangerously close to attraction, and every stolen glance blurs the line between fake and real, Soraya and Declan discover that surviving 365 days together may be the easiest part. Because the biggest risk isn't losing everything. It's losing their hearts to the one person they swore they'd never love.

After seven years together, I called off my wedding to my fiancé, Jordan, two days before we were supposed to get married. The wedding planner looked at me in shock. “The wedding is less than 24 hours away. Aren’t you going to wait for the groom to come back before making the decision?” I simply smiled and glanced at the venue I had spent three months setting up, my voice indifferent. “Nah. He doesn’t have time for this. He’s busy getting married to his ex in Slandsdeca.”