Plot Twists Romance Short Stories & Best Friend Cheating Novels

Before I turned fifteen, I lived like a weed. Cold, damp, barely surviving. Then I met Ethan Hayes and Summer Reed. The first home-cooked meal anyone ever made for me was made by Summer. The first dress I ever owned was bought by Summer. The first birthday anyone ever celebrated for me was something Summer planned down to the smallest detail. She would carefully put ointment on the chilblains covering my hands. And she would tell everyone, over and over, that I was her best friend. As for Ethan... He was the one who pulled me away from a group of laughing street punks. He was the one who kicked open a door and rushed me to the hospital when my fever reached 104 degrees. He was the one who broke my drunken stepfather's head open with a single punch, the night the man came at me again. The day he confessed his feelings, his hands were trembling and my heart was pounding so hard that tears filled my eyes. "I swear I'll protect you for the rest of my life." I often thought that in the bleak, gray life I had been given, meeting the two of them was the greatest luck I could ever have asked for. Until my twenty-third birthday. I heard Ethan shouting at Summer. "I can't control what I feel! I fell in love with you. So what? You feel the same way, don't you?" Summer looked into his red, tormented eyes. At last, she burst into tears and threw herself into his arms. "But... what about Mia?" Hidden around the corner, I smiled bitterly. What else was there to do? They were the two people I loved most in the world. I couldn't bear to make things harder for them. So I called my advisor and said calmly, "Can I apply for that twenty-year Antarctic research program?"

Yves Riverson had a new razor. It was royal blue, wrapped in red silk, and he placed it at the very bottom of his suitcase as though it were some priceless treasure. During the flight, the plane suddenly hit turbulence. The alarm screeched through the cabin, and in that moment, the thing he clutched was not my hand. It was the razor someone else had given him. Only after the plane landed did he seem to remember I was there. He gently caressed my hand and told me not to be afraid. I said nothing, nor did I push him away. After we left the airport, I watched him eagerly pick up his phone. "Yeah, yeah, it's fine." Then he turned and saw me. The smile on his face froze. "Just talking to my parents." I nodded and ended the call with his parents. The car was moving slowly, and he was happily chatting with that person. I was scrolling the screen. The jewelry purchases made through our linked-payment account. That person made sure to note that the razor must be royal blue. "To Ms. Samantha Shaw." Samantha's laughter drifted faintly from the phone. I looked at my tired reflection in the car window and suddenly blurted out, "When did you start having an affair with my best friend?"

My best friend passed away from postpartum hemorrhage. Ethan said he didn't want his child to grow up without a mother. To repay my best friend for saving my life years ago, I became the child's mother. I gave up my career and ambitions, willingly becoming a full-time housewife. For seven years, I cared for both father and son as if it were my life's mission. Yet, he always remained distant, his tenderness surfacing only in the quiet intensity of late nights. Afterward, he would hand me a few birth control pills. On New Year's Eve, my throat felt strange. I swallowed the pills, only to immediately vomit them all out. Ethan was furious and accused me of harboring ulterior motives. As punishment, he locked me outside on the open balcony in the rain. Our son came running with an umbrella in hand. But he walked past me without a glance and handed it to the housekeeper who was heading out. In that moment, I made up my mind—I would leave.

I've had severe acrophobia since birth. My legs weaken, and I get dizzy even when I'm just standing on the second-floor balcony. For the past six months, my fiancé, Oliver Bayley, has been arranging "desensitization training" for me. First, he puts me on a 33-foot-tall platform and leaves a single ladder for me to climb down. I grip the handles and cry until I'm dehydrated, but he just records my anguished expression through the surveillance cameras. Later, Oliver takes me cliff swinging. He also forces me to walk across a glass bridge that's built high in the sky. He sighs and shakes his head every time I scream in terror, kneel on the floor, and refuse to move. "My marital home is on the top floor of an apartment with a river view, Holly," he says. "How are you going to marry me if you can't even conquer your fear?" I assume Oliver's frustration stems from wanting to cure my phobia. However, I realize that's not the case when he takes me to an abandoned observation tower in the suburbs. The glass observation deck at the top of the tower is in disrepair. The railings have also come loose. Oliver blindfolds me when he leads me up the tower. He then suddenly disappears. When I rip the blindfold off, I realize that I'm over 300 feet above the ground. A wave of dizziness crashes over me, and warm liquid trickles uncontrollably down my thighs and drenches the hems of my pants. In my panic, I pick up the Bluetooth earbud that Oliver accidentally leaves behind. I hear the raucous laughter of my best friend, Carrie Kirby, and my brother, Elias Alden, echo through the earbud. "Did you film that? Holly wet herself out of fear!" Carrie stifles her laughter and says, "I got it! Her pants are soaked, and she's crying on the floor like a baby. Lydia will definitely laugh when she sees this." "Oliver's really something else," Elias chimes in teasingly. "How did he come up with the idea to make Lydia happy by showing her Holly's humiliating appearance when Holly's acrophobia leaves her terrified? Lydia's depression has improved a lot recently." Oliver lets out a nonchalant chuckle. "Lydia wouldn't have been harassed by the netizens and developed depression if it wasn't for Holly. This is just Holly's way of compensating her, making her feel better by showing her humiliating side." The freezing winds that billow past me feel like blades slicing against my skin. The biting cold burrows deep into my bones. It turns out that, for the past six months, my "desensitization training" has been an elaborate ruse they came up with to make Lydia feel better. As for me, I'm the only clown on the stage.

My mom's dying wish was to see me marry Callum Sinclair. Callum, who lived and breathed surgery, finally agreed to put down the scalpel and come with me to get our marriage license. But just as our number was called over the speaker, my best friend, Helena, stopped him. "The cryo-transplant in Cardiology has gone wrong. The heart muscle is rejecting irreversibly after rewarming." Callum walked away from the window at once. I grabbed his arm. "It's our turn. Sign first, then go. It's three minutes." Callum yanked his hand free. "A life is on the line. I'm a doctor. Three minutes is enough to kill someone." "But my mom is dying too. She wants to see me get married." My tears soaked the front of my dress, and Helena rushed over to pry my fingers loose. "Rosalie, stop this! Your mom is terminal. Nothing can save her now, but other people still have a chance. "You can't let Callum be branded negligent just because of your pathetic selfishness!" But the hospital had just called. My mom's oxygen levels had crashed, and she wouldn't make it through the night. The two of them walked out of the hall, one after the other. I would never fit into their world. They'd both gone to medical school. They never ran out of surgical cases and ideals to talk about. They ate off the same plate and debated the same patient's treatment plan. And me? I could only cook their late-night meals at home and wash their white coats that reeked of disinfectant. They were on the same wavelength. I was always the outsider. A world of life, death, and ideals I could never squeeze into—suddenly, I didn't want to try anymore.

I rushed back from out of town overnight when my best friend, Siobhan Coventry, went into labor. After learning that both mother and child were safe, I got teary-eyed with emotion. "Have you decided on the baby's name yet?" I asked. Her smile stiffened unnaturally for a moment. "Leonard Kessler. We'll call him Leo." "Kessler?" I stared at her in surprise. "I thought you said the baby would take your last name. Is his biological father's last name Kessler?" She gave me a vague hum before quickly changing the subject. "Ginny, I've been craving the wraps from that place in the college town." I nodded, forcing my doubts aside, and went out to buy one for her. It was only when I reached the hospital entrance that I suddenly remembered I hadn't given her my gift yet. I hurried back upstairs, only to see my husband—who had been away for two years, supposedly carrying out a classified project and never once returning home—walking into my best friend's hospital room with a bouquet in his hands. He sat down beside her bed and took her hand, his face full of concern. "You were so amazing, my love." My mind went completely blank, and all the blood rushed to my head. My hand was still on the doorknob when I saw my mother carrying the baby over to them, beaming with delight. "Look—the baby smiled as soon as he heard his daddy's voice." So her baby's last name was taken from Vincent Kessler—my husband's last name. The classified project… The whole story about having a child without the father in the picture… It had all been a lie. Even my own mother had helped her goddaughter and son-in-law deceive me. The people I loved most in the world didn't want me involved with this family at all.

My best friend, Susie Young, broke a bone while saving my boyfriend's mother. So my boyfriend, Josh Wagner, had to take care of her after work every day. At first, he still came home afterward. Later, he got tired of going back and forth, so he simply started staying at the hospital dorm. Whenever I asked about Susie's injuries, he always looked helpless. "It takes at least three months for an injury like that to heal. She's probably got a long way to go. If it weren't for repaying her for saving my mom, I wouldn't even bother taking care of her." When Susie heard that, she rolled her eyes. "You think I want you here? You can't even peel an apple properly." They acted so openly that it seemed like there was nothing going on between them. Then one day, my blood sugar dropped, and I accidentally fell down the stairs. My arm was dislocated in the fall. Drenched in cold sweat from the pain, I called Josh. He sounded helpless. "Susie has rehab today. I really can't get away. Take a cab to the ER yourself." I dragged myself to the hospital, my arm limp and weak. I stopped by Susie's room. When I pushed the door open, the room was empty. A nurse told me Susie had been discharged two weeks ago and was recovering at home. I stood frozen in the hallway, my hands and feet cold and numb. Then a post from Josh's mom popped up on my phone. "Josh is all grown up now. He finally brought his future wife home!" In the video, Susie and Josh were fooling around in matching aprons. They both saw the post and liked it at the same time. Neither of them offered an explanation.