Cerita Pendek Tragic Love & Novel Hypocrisy Cheating

It was the seventh year we spent living separately after the marriage. I came to see Blake Shaw, and once again, my key broke and was stuck in the keyhole. I quickly called Blake. He said, "You probably got the wrong key again. Stay in a hotel. I'll come back and open the door." I looked at the sticker on the key and froze. The key was right. He changed the locks. Before I could think further, my father called, and he laughed heartily. "Of course he's out! He came over first thing in the morning, and he brought gifts! Then, my best friend's call came in. She was drunk from the sounds of it. "He's drinking with Zack. Your man's growing to be a good drinker." Then, my brother's call came. "He's a busy guy. Finally found the spare time to help me out with my investments." My mind was reeling. They had no idea I just asked the guard if this house's owner was home, and they said he was. I stopped asking questions. Instead, I called a locksmith. A strange curiosity took hold of me. I wanted to find out what secret my friends and family were keeping from me.

Six years into our long-distance relationship, I secretly went to Riverport to surprise my boyfriend for his birthday. At the top-rated bakery in town, I noticed the custom cake a girl beside me had picked up. Written across the top were the words, "To Dawson Reed, with love." My boyfriend's name was Dawson Reed. Noticing my lingering gaze, she struck up a conversation. "You're here to order a cake? Good choice. I come here every year for my boyfriend's birthday cake." Her friend teased her. "Boyfriend? He's going to be your fiance soon!" The girl blushed and playfully shoved her friend. "Stop it." Then she pulled up photos of the cakes she had ordered over the years. "These designs are all really cute. Take a look. Maybe you'll find one you like." In the photos, the girl was in the man's arms, the two of them smiling happily as they held the cake together. Turned out it was not a case of two men sharing the same name. Her fiance was indeed my boyfriend, Dawson Reed.

On the anniversary of our child's death, my mother suddenly suffers chest pain, and my husband, Gavin Grover, accompanies her to the hospital first. Meanwhile, I go to the cemetery alone and leave my daughter, Miley Grover, various toys and snacks. It isn't until evening that I hail a cab home. A radio program is playing in the car when the host takes a call from a new listener. The moment the man speaks, I recognize the voice. "Two years ago, my wife had complications during childbirth. We lost the baby, and the doctors said it would be very difficult for her to get pregnant again. My in-laws are getting old and want us to continue the family line, so they asked me to have a child with another woman and pass it off as my wife's. She is giving birth today. I don't know whether I should tell my wife the truth." My entire body goes rigid. He goes on to say that he has been trying to have a child with another woman for the past six months. He says, "At first, I felt guilty. But now that the baby is about to be born, I can't just abandon Jenny." My mind goes blank. Jenny is my younger sister, who has been away from home for the past six months. With trembling hands, I call Gavin, but he hangs up. The next second, he sends me a voice message. "Your mom's fine. She's already gone home. I'm working overtime at the office. Go home. I made some food in the kitchen." He sounds as gentle as ever. But unmistakably, a baby is crying in the background. At this moment, I realize something. While I'm mourning the child we lost, he is with someone else, waiting for their child to be born.

Maynard Hansen planned a luxury birthday cruise for Darlene Thompson, but the cruise ship capsized when a violent storm swept in without warning. Without hesitation, Maynard gave the last seat on the lifeboat to Darlene. As I struggled in the water, my son, Waldo Hansen—whom I carried for nine months and gave birth to—cried out, "Don't let Mom up! She'll push Ms. Thompson off." Clutching nothing but a broken plank, I somehow made it to shore. By the time I collapsed on the sand, I was frozen, exhausted, and done. I had never felt so alone. Shortly after, I found myself clutching a diagnosis of severe depression in my hand. I was ready to bring this wretched life to a quiet end. But when my husband and son realized I truly didn't want to live anymore, they collapsed into tears. They wrapped their arms around me as they sobbed, "Please don't leave us. We really can't live without you."

I tried to die a hundred times to make him notice me. For two years, I was Shawn Scott’s wife in name only—an unwanted bride bound by a scandal, left to live in the shadow of another woman. My parents only saw my faults. My husband only saw my mistakes. As for me? I saw no way out. Every time I tried to end it, I’d wake up again, bruised and humiliated. I was greeted not with concern, but accusations such as "Why are you so selfish, Zoe Jennings?" or "Why can’t you be more like your sister Yvonne?" It wasn’t until my hundredth suicide attempt that I finally understood: I was the only one fighting for a love that never existed. So, I stopped. I walked away. I disappeared. I gave them what they wanted—my absence. However, when I left, the man who never looked at me twice started chasing the ghost of the woman he thought he knew. By the time he realized what he truly lost, I was already learning how to live again.

My wife is a pilot. We had our wedding three years ago, but she's stood me up 18 times since then when we agreed to register our marriage. The first time she stood me up was when her apprentice took his first flight. I waited outside city hall the whole day for her. The second time she stood me up was when she turned around after receiving a call from her apprentice. She left me by the roadside. Later, whenever we set a date to register our marriage, her apprentice would run into all sorts of trouble. Finally, I decided to leave her. But after I board a flight to Avalonia, she chases me all the way there like she's lost her mind.

Walter planned sixty-six proposal trips just to win me over. On the sixty-seventh, I finally said yes. The day after our wedding, I gave him sixty-six "forgiveness cards." We made a deal: every time he upset me, he could use one to earn my forgiveness. Over six years of marriage, every time he made me angry because of his childhood friend Janet, Walter would hand me a card. By the time he used the sixty-fourth, he began to sense something was off. I no longer reminded him to keep his distance. I no longer needed him the way I used to. However, the last time he left me behind for Janet, I reached out, stopped him, and asked: "If you go to her again… can I still forgive you with one of these cards?" He paused mid-step and looked at me, half helpless, half amused. "If you want to use one, use it. You've got plenty left, don't you?" I gave a small nod and watched him walk away. He still thought those forgiveness cards would never run out. What he did not know was— There was only one left.

When we got married, Luke Anderson swore that we would never end up in a divorce. Hence, when I learned that he had cheated on me, I only asked him two questions. “Are you going to break up with her, or is one of us going to die? “Which one of us will die?” Luke stared at the dagger in my hand. Then, he dropped onto his knees and chose me over his lover. After that, in order to ease my mind, no matter how busy he was, he would update me on everything he was doing. He would also return home every single night. My mother watched his behavior and nudged me. “It’s good that he’s learned from his mistakes. I think you should have a baby soon, then both of you could focus on raising your child.” My father agreed with a smile. “After all, he’s a man. Once he has a child, he’ll stop fooling around.” I did not share the same thought, but coincidentally, I got pregnant at the same time. In order to make me keep our baby, Luke transferred 90% of his company shares to me. He made a lot of preparations. Throughout my pregnancy, he did not let me suffer at all. However, just as I was happily looking forward to our family life, Luke brought two children forward to me after I gave birth. One of them was much older than the other. He insisted that they were twins. As he faced my questions, he was not frantic. He snorted and retorted, “Elly, why can’t you just act dumb for once? Do you think I’ll be as nice as I was three years ago?” I was shocked. A hint of glee flashed across his eyes. “Three years ago, you asked me to either break-up or die, and you threatened to kill either one of us. “So, I’ll ask you this now. Do you want your newborn daughter to lose her dad, or do you want her to lose her mom instead?” The memory shot through me like a bullet. It turned out that Luke had not changed his behavior three years ago out of remorse. He was just waiting for the exact moment when I had no choice but to give in to him.

My boyfriend proposed to me when we graduated from high school, but I made a deal with him instead of giving him an immediate answer. "We'll get married when we've collected 500 train tickets." In the first year, Marcus could hardly wait to come see me every day. Before long, our collection had grown to 280 tickets. He even laughed and said that he'd be able to take me home as his wife before graduation at the rate he was going. In the second year, we met each other halfway. Soon, the number of tickets climbed to 400. But in our third year, Marcus told me that his advisor had taken on a new project and that a junior who had just joined the research team needed him to show her the ropes. He became swamped, so I ended up visiting him most of the time. Meanwhile, he only came to see me occasionally. By the end of the year, we had barely managed to collect 460 tickets. In our fourth year, he said he was too busy with internship interviews, leaving me no choice but to pull several all-nighters to finish my assignments so that I could spend a weekend going to see him. We finally collected 499 train tickets just before graduation. I secretly put on a white wedding dress, slipped on the ring he'd given me when he proposed, and boarded a train. I wanted to surprise Marcus. I wanted to tell him that we had finally reached 500 tickets. I wanted to tell him that I was ready to marry him. But when I arrived at the foot of his dormitory building, my heart full of anticipation… I saw Marcus holding another girl tightly, surrounded by a large heart of flickering candles. He lowered his head and kissed her on the lips amid the cheers and teasing from the crowd.

My mistress tries to take Scarlett Astin's place as my wife, so I kill her, burn her body to ashes, and bury her in the middle of nowhere. Five years later, I become a general manager. Scarlett gives birth to twins, a boy and a girl, and we settle into a happy life together. I gradually forget about the past. Then, after Scarlett is discharged from the hospital, she suddenly says, "Don't forget to invite Madeline Brown to the twins' sip and see. She's an old friend of yours, right? She took such good care of me during my hospital stay." A chill ran through me, and the hair on my arms stood on end. Madeline Brown is the name of my dead mistress.

Cancer was killing me, and my husband worked through every night building a human cryonics program to save my life. Before they put me under, he held the baby I had nearly died giving birth to, and said through tears: "Lina Virga, our son and I will wait together for the day you can wake up. Seven years from now, a drug that can treat my illness exist, and the hospital brings me back. When the nurse asked me to settle the bill, I stared at her blankly and asked her to call my husband for me. "Contact Vito Ranieri of the Lucchese family. Tell him his wife is awake." But the nurse laughed under her breath. "Please, don't joke. Mr. Ranieri and Miss Bellini have a son who's seven years old. Everyone in Sicily knows they’re a devoted couple. "I'll have the neurologist come by and evaluate you shortly." I assumed she was teasing me. I didn't give it another thought. Then Nora Bellini arrived, hired as a photographer to document me, the medical miracle. Vito's interview was playing on the television, and I said it with pride. "That's my husband. The best researcher there is." Nora's brows lifted in surprise, and the corners of her mouth dipped. "As far as I'm aware, Vito has exactly one wife. Me. "So how is it I've never heard about anyone else?"

When Clara Jones learns that her son has leukemia, her world crumbles. After several failed donor matches, she still can't reach her husband, who's away on a business trip. In the end, her best friend, Monica Spencer, rushes to the hospital and turns out to be a compatible match. Carrying a basket of nourishing supplements, Clara visits Monica. When she arrives at her hospital room, she sees Monica wrapped tightly in a man's arms. That man is none other than Clara's husband, Luther Tanner, whom she had remarried three years ago. "Why would you offer to donate your bone marrow without telling me? That needle was so long. Do you have any idea how worried I was? You've been avoiding me for the past three years. Have you forgotten how to look after yourself?" Monica reciprocates the hug affectionately and chokes out, "I'm Sean's biological mother, after all. Now that he's sick, I had to come back." Frozen outside the door, Clara feels as though she's been thrown into a frigid pool. Those words root her to the spot. How can Sean Tanner not be her biological son? How's that even possible? Back then, she endured three days and nights of obstructed labor just to bring him into the world. She suffered massive blood loss after giving birth, and nearly all the blood in her body had to be replaced. But the second Sean lay in her arms, she felt she had no regrets left in this lifetime. So, how on earth can he be Monica's?

Lucas Harlow and I have been together for seven years, and we plan to get married next year. When I accompany him to his hometown to meet his parents, we happen to arrive just in time for his cousin Spencer Harlow's wedding. Following a local tradition, the older relatives cheerfully urge Lucas to sleep in the newlyweds' bed the night before the ceremony for good luck. Lucas' mother, Beatrice Collins, takes my hand and explains with a smile, "Katherine, I hope this doesn't make you uncomfortable. It's an old custom around here. "Before the wedding, a man who's still a virgin blesses the couple's bed by sleeping in it. It's supposed to bring the newlyweds good luck and a happy marriage." I lower my head in embarrassment, for Lucas and I are saving ourselves for our wedding night. No matter how difficult the wait has been for him over the past seven years, he's always respected that boundary and insisted on doing right by me. When I finally look up, my cheeks still burning, I see that Lucas has gone pale. Flustered and visibly uncomfortable, he frantically waves everyone off and adamantly refuses to go anywhere near the bed. "I can't do it. You're going to have to find someone else…" As I watch my boyfriend avoid everyone's gaze, my heart drops.

I’d been in love with Cassian Cross—my brother’s best friend, the one and only mafia boss in the NYC—for as long as I could remember. On the night of my twentieth birthday, my brother promised me a surprise. I didn’t expect that surprise to be a very drunk, very kissable Cassian. One reckless night. One baby boy. Cassian agreed to marry me after giving birth. But the day I gave birth to Leo, Cassian said nothing. He just packed up and vanished to France for nearly five years. Then he returned with Alessia. His first love. And when she saw Leo and me, she ran away and disappeared. After that, Cassian never left my side. Like he was trying to be the man I needed all along, that we were finally going to have our chance. But fairytales are lies wrapped in pretty paper. On Leo’s sixth birthday, we were driving to dinner. The brakes failed. The car spun onto the highway, flames licking at the engine. Cassian got out. And then he locked the door. “If it weren’t for you, Alessia would still be by my side. Now? It’s your turn to suffer.” It wasn’t until that moment I understood—Cassian had never loved me. When I opened my eyes again, I was back at my twenties birthday. Cassian was in my bed, exactly where I’d left him in the past. This time, I didn’t hesitate. I ran. And on my way out, I made the call I should’ve made the first time. To Alessia.

Right before I hit forty, my husband hit me with: "I want a divorce." For the past ten years, I had been driving a truck outside every day to support my family, while he had been cheating on me at home. Even our child was no longer close to me. "Bad Mom! You hit Jenny! Bad Mom!" Willy cried. "I don't want Mom. I want Jenny. I wanna stay with Dad and Jenny!" Jenny. The neighbor. Single mom. Her kid and ours were tight. Ten years of grinding, running myself ragged—for two ingrates? All right! Wish your family of four a happy life! I didn't want my husband or son anymore.

To the Moretti family, I'm nothing more than the Don's trophy wife of five years. Five years into our marriage, I found a used condom in his study. We were trying for a baby, so we never kept condoms in the house. I was still staring at it when Alessandro Moretti walked up behind me. "Olivia, Daisy is back in the country. We slept together last night." Daisy Ward was his first love. On her first night back, Alessandro had brought her straight into our home. He picked up the condom and tossed it back into the trash. "I promised Daisy I'd marry her in three days." I turned to him in shock. "So you want a divorce?" He answered without hesitation, "Olivia, I'm not leaving you. I just want to make up for the one regret I've carried all these years." Before he could mention divorce, I beat him to it. "I understand. I'll move out tomorrow. We should start the divorce process too." Alessandro froze. He clearly hadn't expected me to take it so calmly. "Don't worry. I won't shortchange you after the divorce. You'll get fifty million dollars and all my shares in the Sicily Group." I smiled and nodded. That night, I sent a message to my hacker friend, Nina. "Once the assets clear, get me a new identity." Alessandro, I gave you five years of my life, but I was never the woman you chose first.

In the hall where we held my daughter's wake, I reached for my phone to call my parents. That was when I saw it. My stepsister had posted a video of herself giving birth on social media. In the video, a man cradled the newborn in his arms and wept over her. It was my husband, the man who had supposedly died in a car accident five years ago. The comments below overflowed with likes and congratulations from our relatives. My mother had left three comments of her own: [You worked so hard, my precious girl. Your family of three is finally together again.] My entire body went cold. I called her and demanded an explanation. She dodged every question before finally saying with a resigned sigh, "We helped him fake his death in that car accident years ago. He and Rachel had already been together for a long time. "We only lied to you because we didn't want you to suffer. Your sister just gave birth. It's time you let this go. Don't ruin their happiness." I hung up. Still dressed in mourning black, with the cold seeping into my bones, I called my closest friend, Angeline Brook, a lawyer I had known for ten years. Through my tears, I begged her to help me sue my husband for marriage fraud. Angeline sighed, almost as if she were relieved. "So you finally know. The truth is, I forged your marriage papers all those years ago. You were never legally married. Just consider it a good deed and let them have this." The phone slipped from my hand and shattered against the floor. Everyone had known. They had all kept the truth from me and watched me suffer. At my lowest point, I had nearly died. Still, not one of them had told me the truth. I reached out and touched my daughter's memorial photo. The glass felt cold beneath my fingertips. A violent cough seized me, and blood-flecked foam rose in my throat. I forced it back down and let out a bitter laugh. "Fine. I won't intrude." My bone cancer had already spread throughout my body anyway. I had only days left to live.

My son, Yale Foster, had what they called school-pickup anxiety. Every afternoon before dismissal, he needed to know I was home waiting for him. So when he called from his smartwatch yet again to tell me not to come get him, Yates Foster looked genuinely troubled. "Winnie, don't come to the school. "If Yale sees you at the gate, he will start panicking that you're going to leave him. Once he starts crying, no one can calm him down." I stood there with my car keys in my hand, unsure what I was supposed to do. Yates sighed. "Mom's already gone to pick him up. Just stay home and wait for him." That was how three years passed with me almost never picking up my own son from school. Helen Foster handled pickup in my place and went with him on the school's family field trips. Whenever I wanted to go myself, someone always had a reason why I shouldn't. "The entrance gets so crowded. You'll only make him more anxious." "His teacher says Yale's finally getting used to the routine. We shouldn't keep changing who picks him up." "Winnie, you already work so hard. Leave little things like pickup to us." I believed them. Until today, when I happened to see a group chat on Helen's phone. Buried in the group's photo album was a password-protected folder: [Yale's Growing Up] I opened it and found everything I'd missed: school performances, parent-teacher conferences, family field days, graduation photos. Three hundred twenty-seven pictures. In every one of them, Yates, Yara Xavier, and Yale stood together. I wasn't in a single shot. In one photo, Yara even had a name tag pinned to her chest that read: [Yale Foster's Mom] The last file was a video. Yale was holding up an award when he asked, "Dad, why isn't Mom here yet?" Yates smiled and corrected him. "Mommy Yara is already here, isn't she?" Everyone behind the camera burst out laughing. And just like that, I understood. For the past three years, while they kept finding reasons to shut me out, they'd been letting another woman take my place throughout Yale's entire childhood.

Everyone in Sparrowville said that Margaret Chapman was the happiest woman in town. Gavin Hartley showered her with gifts—a sapphire ring, an asteroid after her name—treating her like she was the center of his universe. Margaret had always believed it, too. Until the day she accidentally discovered the woman he had been hiding in his villa. For ten years, he had kept her there—his childhood sweetheart. After she lost herself to schizophrenia, she had said, "Margaret is me." And so, for nearly seven years, Gavin had courted Margaret and cherished her, playing out a love story that had never truly been hers. Margaret's heart crumbled to ash after she found out the truth. She left without looking back, moving to a country thousands of miles away. But she never imagined that Gavin would lose himself to rage, his eyes burning red as he nearly tore Sparrowville apart. "Where the hell is Margaret?!"

"We partied too hard last night and forgot to use protection—don't forget to buy morning-after pills for your wife." Looking at the woman's smooth bare back and the red mole on her neck in the photo, I felt absolutely nothing. Again. Five years of marriage, and this wasn't the first time. Kathy liked to test me this way. She called it her "little experiment." The first time, she "accidentally" left a receipt for condoms on the nightstand. I got angry and confronted her, but she just smiled with contempt. "Why are you so petty? My girlfriends and I bought that on purpose just to see how you'd react." The second time was on our wedding anniversary. A guy showed up at our door with a bouquet of roses, ready to propose to her right then and there. I got into a fistfight with him, fell down a flight of stairs, and broke three ribs. That's when she finally strolled out and told me the guy was an actor, and the whole thing was supposed to be a surprise for me. Five years. Her games kept getting more extreme. From flirty texts to explicit photos, she kept pushing my limits. And I'd gone from furious to completely numb. Since she loved testing me so much, fine—I'd give her exactly what she wanted.