Tragic Love Short Stories & Hypocrisy Cheating Novels

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.

The last time I argued with my husband, he slammed the door on me and left. I was so upset that I died from a heart attack. Meanwhile, he took his lover and her son traveling to take his mind off things. The entire time, our daughter, who was just a child, was abandoned at home for seven days with my corpse. At last, when Eliott remembered me and my daughter, he returned home to see my corpse. Having fallen sick, my daughter was all skin and bones. When Eliott realized his mistake, he hugged our daughter tightly and broke down crying in front of my grave. My daughter pulled away from him and hid behind my gravestone. She hissed sharply at him, “Who do you think you are? Don't disturb Mommy’s rest!”

My fiancé is one of the country's top neurosurgeons. One day, he discovers that his childhood sweetheart has been diagnosed with cancer and only has a month to live. He wants to spend this time with her, so he feeds me a newly developed memory-wiping drug to make me forget him for a month. During that time, he throws his childhood sweetheart a wedding and goes on a honeymoon with her. As they stand amid an ocean of flowers, they vow to be together in another lifetime. One month later, he kneels before me in the rain. Tears stream down his face as he says hoarsely, "The drug's effects were only supposed to last for a month. Why have you permanently forgotten me?"

Imagine my shock when I found out that my husband, a professor who had proudly embraced a childless life for half of his years, had an affair with one of his own students. She even had his six-year-old son. The day I planned to report him to the university, Zia Thompson came to my door with the child and knelt in front of me. "Maybe you and Zeke were in love once," she said. "But he's over forty now. Who doesn't want to have a child? A legacy?" "I don't need a title," she went on. "I can give up the child too. I just beg you, don't tear our family apart." I looked at my husband, who stood protectively in front of them. I felt terrifyingly calm. "Cut ties with them," I said, my voice flat, "or prepare to be reported to the university. You choose." Without a moment's hesitation, he tore the report letter into shreds. I thought that was his answer. But on the fifty-second night of a bed grown cold and a home echoing with silence, he still hadn't returned. Instead, I received news that Zia was pregnant again. She had graduated by then. The report I never sent no longer posed any threat to them. Zeke didn't bother to hide his fatigue and irritation anymore. "Treat Zia and the kids well," he said, "or keep living alone in that empty house. It's your choice." My heart was already a wasteland. "I have one more option," I said. "I choose divorce."

At our seventh wedding anniversary party, Caleb Thorne shares a drink with his childhood sweetheart. My face darkens, and he publicly snaps at me in front of everyone. "It's just playful fun between friends—why are you so uptight? If I really had something going on with Emma, do you think you'd ever have become my wife?" He storms off in anger. That same night, his childhood sweetheart updates her social media banner to a photo of her holding hands with Caleb. In the past, I would've rushed to her house without a second thought, dragged Caleb out, and demanded to know if he ever truly loved me. But this time, I don't care anymore.

The day my husband left the country on a business trip with his assistant, I learned—by sheer accident—that his archenemy was plotting revenge overseas. Without a second thought, I raced to the airport and stopped him from boarding the plane. But his assistant went ahead, alone. And over there, she was killed brutally. Not a trace of her remains was ever found. When my husband received the news, he fell apart. Wracked with guilt, eaten alive by remorse, he spiraled into a relentless, violent mania. In the past three years, I'd been in and out of hospitals more times than I could count because of him. And this time, he pushed me so far—I lost our child. Then I overheard a conversation between him and his secretary. "Sir, Casey is still alive. Why keep pretending you're sick? Aren't you afraid your wife will find out and leave you?" "Leave me? What right does she have to be angry?" He laughed coldly. "If she hadn't stopped me from going abroad, Casey would've never been lured away by that bastard. Everything Linda's suffering now—she brought it on herself."

At the company team dinner, my boyfriend, Jax Vance, went out of his way to grab two drinks. He handed one to Chloe Ward, my best friend sitting across from us. He set the other one down in front of me. My friend smiled and bowed her head. "You're so thoughtful, Jax. You always remember my stomach can't handle ice." I looked down at the mango slush. I pushed the cup away without a word. "What's wrong?" Jax asked casually. "I'm deathly allergic to mangoes," I said. "Did you forget again?" He paused for a second. Then he let out a careless laugh. "It's not a big deal," he said. "Just scoop the fruit out." He remembered every detail about her. She didn't eat cilantro. She hated onions. She only drank her tea with thirty percent sugar and no ice. But he forgot that my throat would close up if I touched a mango. To him, that was just something I could "scoop out." I finally saw the truth. When someone didn't care, even life-or-death moments would mean nothing to them. On the ride home, I sat alone in the backseat. I watched the two of them in the front. They looked so good together. Suddenly, a strange wave of relief washed over me. A relationship where my life didn't even matter? I didn't want it anymore.

The night before her wedding, Morgan Hayes was hit by a car while trying to save Sebastian Cole. She was thrown into the air, suffering multiple fractures, and her face was severely disfigured from the impact. Despite her injuries, Sebastian didn’t turn away from her. He still married her and continued to cherish and protect her as he always had. Everyone said Sebastian loved her more than life itself, that his love for her went beyond superficial appearances. She once believed that too until half a month ago when she discovered he was having an affair with their housemaid.

In the seven years that I have been bound to my Alpha heir mate Garrett, he had slept with every single friend around me. I pretended I saw nothing. I kept fulfilling my duties as the future Luna. Until the day I gave birth, his new mistress led rogue wolves straight to me. Their claws pierced through my belly with cruel precision. My mother was even killed by them when she tried to save me. In that desperate moment, I used the mind link to contact Garrett and begged him to save us. "Aria, when did you learn to pull these tricks? Don't think your pathetic acting will make me care about you." After saying that, he shut down the mind link. But he did send a car—to pick up his new mistress. By the time the patrol found me and rushed me to the hospital, the baby in my belly had been clawed out. My mother died too. The rogue wolves' poison coursed through her wounds until her body gave up. When I woke up, I stared numbly at Garrett's grandfather, the current Alpha of the Shadowmoon Pack. "Let me go," I said flatly. "Whatever I owed your pack, I've paid it back with my life."

Three years after my husband, George Martins, cheated and begged to come home, I cheated too. He rushed home to find me lying on our marital bed. My skin was covered in fresh love bite marks and dark bruises. "George, no wonder you cheated on me so many times. "I get it now. It feels amazing." George's eyes snapped wide. His gaze turned bloodshot. He grabbed my throat and slammed me into the mattress. "Clara, do you really hate me this much? "I came home! I became the perfect husband! What more do you want from me?" He wasn't lying. For three years, he did everything to make me feel safe. He handed over his phone every night. He video-called me every five minutes whenever he left the house. He knew his infidelity made my skin crawl. Every time he wanted intimacy, he scrubbed his body three times and disinfected himself five times. My fingertips trembled. I stared straight into his eyes. "Your body came back, but what about your mind? "Every time you get drunk, you scream Maya's name! Every dress you buy me is a white gown she would wear! “You bring home her favorite roses on our anniversary! Even the anniversary ring you bought me was fitted to her finger! "You cut physical ties with her, but you're forcing me to turn into her!" George's hand shook against my neck. He forced a twisted smirk. "Clara, you have no right to lecture me now. I cheated, sure. But are you any better?" "We’re both trash. We deserve each other." His shameless words turned my three years of silent agony into a complete joke. Exhaustion settled heavy in my chest. I didn't want this marriage anymore.

I did not get pregnant in the five years that I was married to Julian Gunter. He claimed that there was something wrong with his body and asked me not to leave him. But one day, I was sent to the hospital because of a stomach ache and continuous bleeding. A nurse came in and gave me an injection. She muttered impatiently, “Can’t you hold yourself back? You’re pregnant, but you had such vigorous love making. It serves you right that you lost your baby.” I endured the pain and walked out. “Mr. Gunter wanted Mrs. Gunter to have a permanent contraceptive injection after her fifth miscarriage. Don’t worry. Mr. Gunter has a way around it.” “The heir of Gunter Group can only be Mr. Jack Gunter.” Jack was the son of Julian’s sister-in-law.

At the team dinner, everyone started hyping Peggy Madoff and me up to call our partners. Before I could even move, Peggy—runner-up to my top spot—whipped out her phone. "Babe, everyone's making me call you!" she giggled. On the line? Gerard Busch. Yeah, the CEO. He laughed. "Guess I'll be counting on you all to look after Peggy," he said. Cue the gasps and cheers. I just kept downing my wine. Because Gerard? He was my husband.

Even after more than three years of marriage, Samuel Ferguson still seemed impossible to satisfy. After the third round, he brushed a tear from the corner of Tania Russell's eye, a roguish smile playing at his lips. "Did you cry from the pleasure? Want me to carry you to the shower?" Tania turned her head, avoiding him, her fingers digging into the sheets until her knuckles went white. Steam rolled through the bathroom, wrapping a set of broad shoulders and a narrow waist in a haze of heat — but that heat could not thaw the icy chill in her heart. An hour ago, in the throes of passion, the name "Lulu" had slipped from his lips, and it still lingered in her mind. All those years, he had always called her simply "Tania." After a moment, she wiped her tears, reached for the phone on the bedside table, and stepped out onto the balcony. "Elias, investigate Samuel for me. I think… he's cheating." "A lead?" Elias did not waste time. "He used to call her 'Lulu'".

William Parker is a mafia boss. Everyone knows that I'm his weak spot. When I was abducted back in the day, he gave everything he had—including his gun—and ran the risk of being shot to get me back. To keep me from being bullied or mistreated, he's constantly toeing the line between the authorities and the underworld. After I fall pregnant, he's by my side around the clock and doesn't even let my feet touch the ground. Rumor has it that he has a secret lover that he dotes on to no end, but I've never believed it… until she appears before me to challenge me. William slices one of his fingers off to beg for my forgiveness. The very next day, his secret lover throws a pregnancy test in my face. "Will's so desperate to knock me up that he can't keep his hands off me—I can't take it anymore!"

The day I caught Drake cheating for the eighth time, I went mad and snatched up the still-burning cigarette butt, pressing it viciously against his crotch. "Just do whatever you want." Faced with my near-hysterical state, he neither dodged nor resisted. Instead, he simply closed his eyes wearily. His response stopped me in my tracks, my hand frozen in midair just as I was about to throw caution to the wind. I froze, suddenly at a loss, no longer understanding what exactly I was trying to do. After all, there was almost nothing I hadn't done just to keep him by my side. I had slit my wrists, jumped off buildings, stormed into hotels with the media in tow to catch him in the act, and even set a gas cylinder on fire, threatening to take all of us down together. While I stood there in a daze, the lighter slipped from my hand. Then, my five-year-old son picked it up and placed it back into my palm, his eyes eerily solemn. "Mommy, are you going crazy again and trying to drag everyone into dying with you? If Daddy and I agree to die with you this time, can you please leave Aunt Elise alone?" I stared at him blankly, only to find his young face looking back at me expressionlessly. "What do you mean?" I murmured. "It means we give in. Whatever you want to do, we won't stop you anymore. We only ask that you stop making things difficult for Elise." My mom walked over with a defeated expression and sighed. "Layla, everyone has been exhausted by you all these years. Aren't you tired too?" Tired? How could I not be? But at that moment, I stared dazedly at the three most familiar faces before me. The wariness and resentment in their eyes made everything I had clung to all these years seem like one enormous joke. In that instant, an overwhelming sense of helplessness came crashing down on me. Suddenly, I thought that maybe it was time to let myself off the hook too.

The night before my mom, Josie Swift, remarries another man, she suddenly barges into my room. "Colin, I'm getting married tomorrow. I don't need you to be my ring bearer anymore." The makeup artist is carefully applying concealer to my left cheek, so I don't catch what she says at first. Mom frowns, her voice laced with frustration and disdain. "Don't bother. The scar on your face won't just disappear like that. The more you try to cover it, the more hideous it looks! "The guests attending my wedding tomorrow are important business associates of Gavin's. Are you trying to embarrass me on purpose? You know how hard it is for me to marry him with you tagging along. They are already gossiping about me behind my back. It's so humiliating." The makeup artist pauses, then awkwardly steps outside. I stare expressionlessly at my reflection in the mirror, saying nothing. My stepfather, Gavin Dunn, stands outside, his head bowed as he adjusts his son Chris Dunn's bow tie. He shows absolutely no reaction to what Mom has just said. Mom sighs and slips into her usual self-pitying tone. "You've been a good boy ever since you were little. You should know how hard it is for me. I need to look dignified and presentable. Tomorrow, Chris will be my ring bearer, and the three of us will take a family photo on stage. You stay backstage and don't cause trouble for me, okay?"

Zane Mercer and I had grown up together. Both our families took it for granted that we would end up together after graduation. He never bothered to hide it, either. Whenever someone brought us up, he would say, “Vivian gets scared so easily. She can’t manage without me.” I believed him for over a decade. Until the first department dinner at college. The prettiest girl in our department carried her drink over and sat beside him, smiling as she asked, “I heard you have a childhood sweetheart. Is she your girlfriend?” Amid the teasing and excited chatter, my cheeks flushed. I waited for him to nod. But Zane hesitated. “No. She’s just the girl next door.” Someone nudged the girl beside him. “Then you’ve got a chance!” She smiled brightly. “I’ll be counting on you to look after me from now on.” Zane didn’t pull away. Instead, he smiled back. “Sure.” In that moment, I remembered how he’d worried about me getting sunburned during the summer camp and gone out in the middle of the night to buy me sunscreen. I remembered how he’d held my hand while we filled out our college applications and promised we’d keep walking through life together. So all those years of affection meant nothing compared to one smile from her. On the way back, he caught up with me to explain. “Selene’s pretty straightforward. I just didn’t want to embarrass her.” I asked, “So it’s fine to embarrass me instead?” He frowned. “Vivian, since when did you get so sensitive?” I said nothing more. That night, I changed all our photos to private. From then on, I would be nothing more than the girl next door.

"I don't want to go with you on this business trip," Lucy Landon said at the dinner table. Her voice was calm, so calm that no one could sense anything unusual. Steven Cooper's trip was set for June 1st. It wasn't their wedding anniversary, nor was it anyone's birthday. Just an ordinary Children's Day. Three days ago, she had stumbled upon a voice message on Steven's phone. A child's soft and childish voice had said, "Daddy, for Children's Day, I want to go to Maldove to see the fishes!"