Short Romance Stories & Novels

Calista Arden has tried to seduce her husband, Theodore Montclair, for the 999th time, only to fail in consummating her marriage with him as always. Afterward, she calls her older brother, Elijah Arden. "I'm planning on getting a divorce, Elijah." Elijah remains silent for three whole seconds over the line. Finally, he speaks up in a deep, gravelly tone, "I already told you before that it's impossible for you to drill through Theodore's stone-cold heart no matter how hard you try." With reddened eyes, Calista can only chuckle quietly. "Yeah. I'm the overconfident fool here." "Come to Nordland," Elijah says lightly. "There are plenty of hunks here who are as good-looking as Theodore. Since that idiot doesn't know how to cherish my amazing and adorable sister, he can just spend the rest of his life as a devoted man of religion who has no family of his own."

Chase Grimm's aide-de-camp sent me a screenshot of an Instagram Live status. Guess who it came from. His new secretary. She was showing off a meticulously prepared lunch from a lunchbox. My handiwork, no less. I made it for him. The caption read: [He's a dark, cold CEO… and a shiny knight who saved a hungry princess with a gastric problem from eating mac 'n' cheese again!] Chase almost never posted on Instagram. Yet there he was, sharing a photo of a cup of ridiculously spicy mac 'n' cheese, captioned: [I have missed this.] The nerve of this prick. Then my mother-in-law sent an entirely unsolicited text: [What the heck were you doing?! You're supposed to make him a proper lunch! He can't stand spicy food!] After all that, I decided to call a supermarket. "Hi! I'd like to order 100 cups of instant super-spicy mac 'n' cheese and have them delivered to Grimm Co. Please and thank you." "Ain't I generous?"

It's my third year living with ALS, and my 11th day since losing the ability to speak completely. My wife, Renee Sutton, bursts into my hospital room with a lawyer and a notary in tow, gripping a so-called expert report that concludes all of my symptoms can be faked. She throws it onto my bed. "Miles, you're really a hell of an actor," she says. "You had me fooled for three years. Today, you're finally going to tell the truth." I look at her and open my mouth, but no sound comes out. She shoves a divorce agreement in front of me. "Sign it. Admit you faked your illness to swindle marital assets. You're not walking away with a single cent." I look down at the pen, then at my right hand lying motionless on the sheet. Her eyes hold nothing but a cold sneer. "Still faking? Fine. Keep faking. "Back then, you told me you didn't love me anymore, and I believed you. You said you wanted to marry that older woman, and I believed that too. "Now you've circled back and landed flat on your back, needing someone to take care of you. Did you really think I'd go soft on you again?" A nurse rushes in from the hallway and forces a writing board into my stiff left hand. "Ms. Sutton, he had a tracheotomy just yesterday! This board is the only way he can speak!" Renee stares at the board. Her expression slowly shifts as she lowers her head to look. Scrawled across it, in two shaky words, is my answer. I pour the last of my strength into every stroke. "I'm sorry."

On the day a dispute broke out between my students, I saw Samantha again—the girl I had broken up with ten years ago; the girl who had been fighting wiped away her tears and cried out for her mother. Samantha froze when she saw me. After a long moment, she seemed to remember herself and quickly apologized. "Mr. Brooke, I'm sorry for causing you trouble." I handled the compensation matter strictly by the book. When everything was settled, she lingered behind the others, clearly wanting to speak but hesitating. "I remember you didn't want to be a teacher back then," she said. I smiled faintly and walked her to the office door. "People change. So do their thoughts." Just like my feelings for her—those had been turned over long ago.

During the school holidays, I took my daughter to a park. I had barely entered the park entrance with my daughter when a supercar crossed the solid line and rear-ended us. The man who jumped out came storming toward me, furious. "Do you even know how to drive? Do you know how much this car costs? You can't afford it even if you went bankrupt!" I was about to argue back since he was clearly the one breaking traffic rules. But I froze. That car looked painfully familiar. Wasn't that the supercar my mother gave me the first year I took over the Milton Group? Even the license plate was identical. My wife, Hazel Bishop, had told me the engine was broken and that she'd sent it to the dealership for repairs. I met the man's arrogant stare. "Is this car really yours?" He paused, then grinned smugly. "My wife bought it for me. It's limited-edition. Someone like you wouldn't understand. Go call your family and sell your house. You owe me 200 thousand dollars." Sneering, he added, "Don't try anything clever. My wife's the GM of Milton Group. She has serious connections. She'll be here any minute." I let out a cold laugh. So Hazel canceled on our daughter today, not because of a business meeting, but because she was out spending the holiday with her lover and his kid instead.

While I'm waiting for my wife, Anna Fulton, I happen to come across a popular post on social media that's posted by someone who lives in the same city as I do. "What should I do if my husband clings to me too much?" Among the comments that make fun of the original poster for flaunting her happy marriage on the Internet, the lengthy comment left by a masculine ID attracts my attention. "You gotta pretend to be ditzy and dumb. My childhood friend was forced to marry the man she doesn't love, so I suggested to her that she should pretend to be a directionally-challenged idiot. She kept up that facade for five years so far. "After that, her mother-in-law kept urging her to give birth to a baby. So, she secretly coated the stairs with grease, leading to her husband falling down the stairs. When she drove him to the hospital, she pretended to lose her way and drove a few laps around the suburban area. In the end, her husband could never get his manhood up ever again because the treatment got delayed. "Her mother-in-law thought it was an accident. She was afraid that my childhood friend might abandon her husband, so she bought her a house and a car. You have no idea how much that mother-in-law sucked up to her! "Today is her husband's professor selection day. She even suggested to him that she'd drive him to the campus. But the truth is, she plans on pretending to lose her way in the traffic just to drag the time out so that I can replace him in the selection. "Once her husband fails the selection, she'll use the opportunity to convince him to resign from his job. He's already a loser, to begin with. Once he loses his job, she'll have a valid reason to divorce him once and for all." The familiar experience makes my heart skip a beat. Before I can ruminate about the details, I hear Anna's guilt-ridden voice drifting into my ear. "I think I'm lost, Claude. Surely you can make it to the selection on time, right?"

Three years after my fiancé fell off a cliff while on a sketching trip in the mountains, I walked straight into his solo art exhibition by accident. And there he was, the man I hadn’t been able to forget for a single day, gently adjusting the scarf around a young woman’s neck. Every wall around us was filled with portraits he once promised he would only ever paint for me. Yet now, every single one of them was of her. Beside me, Timothy Hansen, his closest friend, the one who had helped me handle the aftermath back then, grabbed my arm. “Lexie, don’t do anything rash. Ethan had his reasons. He was rescued by Jane after the fall. He hit his head and lost his memory. It wasn’t on purpose that he didn’t come back.” I gave a wry smile. “So he lost his memory. Did you lose yours, too? If Ethan was alive all this time, why didn’t you bring him back? You watched me spend the last three years drowning in pain, surviving on sleeping pills. Was that entertaining for you?” Timothy said nothing. He didn’t even dare to look at me. Meanwhile, the girl—Jane Green—shrank back, hiding behind Ethan like a frightened animal. Then, Ethan finally looked at me, his expression cold and distant. “Ms. William, I didn’t come back because I didn’t want to. Jane is the one I love. As for the past, since I don’t remember it, just think of it as something from a past life.”

By the time I hit twenty without a husband, I'd become the joke of Butcher's Alley. I wasn't about to just take it, so I marched out to the pauper's graveyard and dragged home a half-dead man I found there. He was gorgeous. More handsome than any portrait I'd ever seen. It didn't matter that he'd lost his memory and wasn't quite right in the head. It didn't matter that he couldn't lift a crate or carry a load, that he nearly fainted dead away the first time he watched me slaughter a pig. I slapped my knee and made up my mind. "You're the one. You handle looking pretty, and I'll handle bringing home the bacon." I named him Walt and treated him like he was made of glass. I fed him well, kept him comfortable, and slowly nursed him back to health until his cheeks were full and his skin was soft. Then I started planning the wedding. On our wedding night, I'd just gotten his wedding coat off when the front door flew off its hinges. Hundreds of royal guards dropped to their knees all at once, their voices shaking the walls. "Welcome back to the capital, Grand Chancellor!" I looked down at the man beneath me. The warmth in his eyes was gone, replaced by something cold and sharp. The belt I'd been holding snapped right in two. I was done for. I'd been bossing around the most powerful man in the empire for six months and using him as a house husband. Was I looking at death by slow torture, or would they wipe out my entire family?

I won a hundred million. Without a second thought, I quit my job, the one that paid me twenty thousand a month. My husband, who earned barely six thousand, assumed I had been laid off, and in that instant, he showed his true colors. "Let's get a divorce," he said calmly. "You're not good enough for me anymore." Even my mother-in-law, who had always seemed so gentle, turned on me without hesitation. "Get out of this house," she snapped. "And take your sick daughter with you. From now on, you're on your own." That was the moment I gave up on both of them. I did not argue. I did not try to stay. Meanwhile, they were thrilled, convinced they had finally rid themselves of me and my daughter, the burdens they no longer wanted. What they did not know was that inside my bag was not just a lottery ticket worth a hundred million. There was also a diagnosis. My husband, Wade Zeller, had late-stage stomach cancer.

On the day of my wedding, I waited on the stage for six long hours with the wedding ring in my hand. The bride never came. Instead, I was greeted with the sight of my older sister's bloodied corpse. To make things worse, my wife, Winona Graham, was the one who defended the murderer in the court. I demanded answers from Winona like a madman, only to be locked up in an oven that was toggled to 200 degrees Fahrenheit by her. "Are you done, Arthur? It's Annabelle's own fault that she died in the first place! This has nothing to do with Hudson at all! He has just started his life as a young adult, and I won't let you ruin his life! "Just sit here and reflect on yourself! The moment you decide to sign the Letter of Understanding is the moment I'll get someone here to free you from the oven!" After that, I was trapped in the oven for 12 hours, resulting in my death from getting burned alive. When I open my eyes again, I've returned to the day Winona throws the Letter of Understanding in my face.

My mom needed heart surgery. There were only three surgeons on the planet capable of performing the operation. My husband, Caleb Rhodes, was one of them. People called him the miracle doctor. Yet on the day of my mother's surgery, he walked out of the operating room and boarded a plane to care for his first love, Olivia Hayes—all because she had caught a cold. At my lowest, my childhood friend Ryan Walker scoured the world for the best surgeon he could find and rushed him in to try to save my mom. Still, it was too late. The delay cost my mother her life; she died on the operating table. Three years later, Ryan proposed to me. I was ready to say yes. Then I overheard him talking to my ex-husband. "Emma's stubborn. If she ever finds out her mother was never actually sick, and that we killed her to save Olivia, she'll lose it." A chill swept through me. Ryan cut him off. "Enough. Olivia's condition kept getting worse after everything that happened. Emma's mother was the only compatible heart donor we found. Was I supposed just to stand there and watch Olivia die? "Besides, I've already given Emma a home and a future to make up for it. She should be satisfied." That was the moment the truth crashed over me. My mother had never been sick. Every detail had been orchestrated. They had murdered her to save another woman.

My CEO boyfriend, Dylan Abbott, has a phobia of getting married. Because of that, he sets up a weird rule that requires me to pass all 99 trials set up by his secretary, Lynette Woods, before finally agreeing to marry me. The first time we're about to get married, I wait for Dylan at the marriage registration department for three hours. But that's when I'm informed that Lynette has lost Dylan's ID, causing our registration to get delayed. The second time we're about to get married, Lynette happens to be driving around in my car. She stages a brake failure and hits a passerby on purpose. By the time I'm done dealing with the accident and rush to the City Hall with Dylan, it's already closed for the day. The 98th time we're about to get married, Lynette laces my glass of water with rat poison. Because of that, I'm taken to the hospital immediately to have my stomach pumped out, hence missing out on the marriage registration. When it's the 99th time for us to get married, I'm under the impression that I've passed Lynette's trials, which means Dylan won't flake out on me anymore. But I spend the day waiting for Dylan at the City Hall till nightfall. I've spammed so many phone calls and text messages to him, and yet he never shows up. In the end, I come across a post Lynette has made on her social media feed about her and Dylan being officially married. "My boss loves me far too much! All I said was that I wanted to get married as well, and he was quick to marry me at the City Hall! I love him so much!" I just leave a like on the post without losing my temper or kicking up a ruckus. That's when Dylan calls me on the phone all of a sudden. "Don't misunderstand the whole thing, Felicia. This marriage is just a joke. Lynette is a graduate hailing from an overseas university. I merely married her because I want her to keep working for my company without any complaints. "Once the divorce procedures are over, I'll marry you immediately before throwing you the grandest wedding ever, okay?" What Dylan doesn't know is that I've already signed an agreement with the system. If I can't get married with Dylan in five years, that means I've lost the bet. My time will be up in three days. By then, I'll get annihilated by the system. There will no longer be a future for me and Dylan.

On the day of the wedding, Tiffany Blake publicly slipped a wedding ring onto her secretary's finger. "I'm pregnant. The baby is Chad's. Once the child is old enough, I'll marry you." Guests whispered among themselves, convinced that I—the one who had chased after her for a year—would just swallow my pride and take it. But that very night, I accepted the marriage arranged by my family and vanished from her world without a trace. A year later, I attended a charity gala with my wife, Nicole Cooper. She had a last-minute conflict and sent someone from her regional office to pick me up. I never expected it to be Tiffany, whom I hadn't seen in a year. "You're back just in time. My maternity leave is almost up. From now on, you'll be the one taking care of the child."

When my wife, Sandra Lane, finally returns from her business trip, I pin her against the wall, my lust overwhelming my rationality. Halfway through our session, Sandra's phone starts ringing all of a sudden. She quickly pushes me off her body before grabbing her phone. "Sandie, I'm feeling a little uncomfortable. Can you check out what's wrong with me?" A racy video is soon sent to Sandra's private chat. Angered, I question Sandra, "Has William gone nuts? Why did he send you these videos? Is he going to keep badgering you just because he can't find himself a wife?" Sandra responds by slapping me instantly. "What the hell are you talking about, Steven? What's with that gutter mind of yours? I've just rescued William from another city! His parents are already dead, so I'm the only one left in his life! Naturally, I'm obligated to take good care of him! "You disgust me to no end, Steven! Hurry up and apologize to me right now, or else we're getting a divorce!" Sandra and I have been married for six years. During these years, she has used divorce as a threat against me multiple times. But when I'm with Sandra, I've already confessed 1001 times to her. Upon noticing my silence, Sandra just smiles smugly, thinking that there's no way I will ever leave her. But this time, she's wrong.

Brian Stanton was the definition of a textbook husband in everyone's eyes. He left work on time every single day, rain or shine, and whenever he traveled for business, his video calls arrived like clockwork to report his whereabouts. If a dinner involved even a single female colleague, he would call me first to ask for my explicit permission. Even the honey-ginger tea he prepared for me during my periods had never skipped a single month in half a decade. Yet, the better he treated me, the more it felt like I was serving a life sentence. Five years ago, his assistant had shown up at our wedding, her heavily pregnant belly protruding as she begged me to let them be together. Brian had violently dragged her away. When he finally returned, he was covered in blood, collapsing before me and trembling. "Honey, I was wrong. I've taken care of her. She won't ever show up again." He hadn't slipped up once since then. In fact, he had been so flawless and so completely beyond reproach that I thought it was finally time to forgive him. I went to his company, hoping to ask him out for lunch. But a child's voice drifted out from inside his office. "Dad, it's Mom's birthday today. Let's go home and celebrate with her." "Okay." In the next instant, my phone screen lit up with an incoming message. [Honey, I'm working late tonight. Will be home later.] Peering through the narrow crack in the door, I looked at the father and son, who looked as if they had been cast from the same mold. All at once, I flashed back to the moment when his assistant begged me, her belly so massive she was on the absolute verge of giving birth. The pregnancy test result I had been clutching so tightly in my hand slipped from my fingers and fell to the floor.

To attract more potential customers, my wife decided to join the cycling community. During the two months I was away on a business trip, she posted new cycling routes every single day on the map and became a well-known cycling socialite in the local scene. A neighbor suddenly sent me a video. The location tag pointed straight to my backyard. [Dude, your wife is something else. Already found herself a riding partner? Looks like the bike’s not the only thing getting ridden.] In the video, an unfamiliar lace panties hung on the handlebars of the bicycle. The lush grass swayed rhythmically, with an undulating figure occasionally peeking from behind it. I dialed her number. “What are you doing?” She squealed, “I’m out for a ride, honey. I’ve been landing a lot of high-quality clients lately. I’m working really hard to make money!” “Oh?” I smiled. “With your body?” I tightened my grip on the phone and enunciated each word, “It’s pretty dark in the backyard. Want me to turn on the lights for the two of you?

In the third year after my fiancée, Iris Ford, falls off a cliff during a sketching trip in the mountains, I accidentally walk into her personal art exhibition. The person I have longed for day and night is right there, gently adjusting the scarf of the young man beside her. The walls are covered with portraits she once promises to paint only for me, but every subject of her paintings is that young man. Violet Bardot, Iris' best friend and the one who once helps me handle her funeral affairs, grabs me anxiously. "Graham, don't do anything rash. Iris has her reasons. After Jack Glenwood saved her, she suffered from a head injury and lost her memory. She didn't mean to stay away." I smile at how ridiculous she is. "It's one thing if Iris lost her memories, but did you lose yours too? Since Iris is still alive, why do you not bring her back? You've watched me live in pain and misery for three years. I had to rely on sleeping pills just to get by. Do you find that amusing?" Violet falls silent and doesn't dare to look at me again. The young man named Jack hides behind Iris timidly. In the next moment, Iris turns to look at me with a frosty expression. "Mr. Stevens, I do not wish to go back. The person I love now is Jack. Since I've forgotten my past, just treat it as memories from a previous lifetime."

I was getting my 18th fertility injection, but my husband snatched the syringe away from me. "That thing's tormented you for three years. I heard we'll get a child of our own if we adopt a kid. Maybe we can go with that." He brought home an adorable baby girl that afternoon and called her Cece. He would make a lot of faces to make her laugh and loved her like she was his own. My husband rarely smiled after we got married. It wasn't every day he made a request, and I, cradled by my fantasy of having our own baby, went along with his plan. Three years had gone by since we took Cece in, but I had gotten no child of my own. I was also slightly concerned that she couldn't utter a single word even though she was already four years old. I made a lot of trips and put in a lot of effort to help her. One day, I came home only to find out there were voices in the room. "I miss you, Mom. Please come back soon." Ecstasy caught me in its grip and stopped me in my tracks. I wanted to call out to Cece, but I saw her in a video call through the ajar door. My husband was right by Cece, and his eyes were glued to the screen. They were filled with the kind of devotion I had never seen before. My footsteps went quiet before I realized it. My silence was rewarded when a voice came from the phone, saying, "Mommy's coming back next week, Cece."

On Valentine's Day, I paid in full for a sports car and gave it to my wife as a gift. But when my wife arrived at the private dining restaurant, she brought her parents—and her childhood sweetheart—along with her. The moment my mother-in-law saw it, she slammed her hand on the table, furious. "Tyler, do you have so much money that it's burning a hole in your pocket? Is all this really necessary just for a meal? "Megan pinches every penny at home, and here you are throwing money around outside—just to show off?" Embarrassed, I tried to explain that this was simply a token of my love for Megan. My father-in-law, however, kept a stern face. "No matter how expensive the car is, it's still going to get stuck in traffic during rush hour! It's not even as useful as the electric scooter Brandon gave her. If you ask me, you didn't put any real thought into this. "Oh, right. I heard the salesperson who sold you the car was introduced by Brandon. How exactly are you planning to repay that favor? No matter how busy you are with work, you can't just push everything onto Brandon to handle for you." I could hear the hidden meaning behind his words. So that was what this was really about. They were still holding a grudge because a week ago, when my father-in-law had twisted his back, I hadn't gone to the hospital to visit him. But at the time, I had been busy cleaning up the mess Brandon Hayes had caused for the company. I'd even kept him out of prison. Yet, instead of gratitude, they were turning the blame on me. After a long silence, my wife finally looked at me. "Tyler, transfer ten percent of the company's shares to Brandon as repayment." "And if I don't?" My father-in-law barked angrily, "Then I'll have Megan divorce you!" I laughed. Then I calmly pulled a divorce agreement from my pocket and placed it on the table. "Go ahead," I said. "Sign it."

It all started when my fiancée's adoptive brother, Afton Jackson, claimed I had used a dirty scalpel in his private parts enlargement surgery, and that had given him Syphilis. My fiancée, Mia Jackson, flew into a rage. She stomped on the hand I had used to perform surgery. Then, she stripped me naked, forced me into humiliating poses, and put me up for auction on the black market for free. [Second-hand. Free.] Her best friend tried to talk her out of it. "You and Ryan Hathaway are about to get married. Are you really going to destroy him like this?" Mia's voice was calm. "He operated on Afton so recklessly and made Afton break down after catching that disease. Afton almost jumped off a building, yet he still refuses to admit what he did. He doesn't deserve to be a doctor. I'm only trying to scare him. It's not like I'm really going to give him away and let him catch some filthy disease too." I stood in the doorway, my face pale. When our eyes met, she spoke as if every word were justified. "You made a mistake, so you deserve to suffer for just a little while. As long as you cure Afton and then apologize to him, you'll still be the fiancé I love most." I silently held back my tears and reposted the auction link to my feed. It was claimed in seconds with a single comment. [I'll take him.] But Mia's face darkened as she threw the wine glass to the floor.