Healing Romance 단편 소설 & Bias Female Growth 소설

At the Davenport family dinner, I arrive wearing the same dress Tucker Davenport's true love once wore. His face darkens immediately. He glares at me coldly and orders that my dress be burned on the spot. "Damn it, Willow, can't you show a little self-awareness? Shelby might be too naive to notice, but there's no way I'm letting you appear like this in front of her." The intense heat rushes toward me as the flames consume the fabric. A sharp, burning pain shoots between my legs, crashing over me like a tidal wave. The pain drags me under, but I suddenly jolt awake, barely able to gasp a plea for mercy. Tucker doesn't spare me a glance. He simply turns away to help Shelby cut the cake. Days later, he finally remembers I exist. "As long as you behave and don't bother Shelby again, you'll still be Mrs. Davenport." I stare at the burns on my legs as my tears dry up. I refuse to beg any longer. I'm done being Mrs. Davenport.

The three boys I'd grown up with approached me about sailing around the world and asked if I still remembered our childhood promise. After graduation, the four of us were supposed to set sail on a two-year voyage around the world. But I'd just received a full-time job offer from a top Wall Street investment bank. Arthur Blackwood took my hand. "You'll have years and years to work. You're only young once." Noah Fletcher and Theo Lancaster laughed and slid their tickets across the table toward me. "Come on. We made a deal. Whoever backs out is a coward." So I turned down a job offer anyone would have killed for and signed up for the two-year voyage right then and there. Arthur finally agreed to date me after I'd spent five years pursuing him. At a party at Arthur's house, I noticed he'd left his laptop open. On the screen was a group chat I wasn't part of. But Claire Ashton was in it—the girl next door who had been missing for years before recently being found. "Relax. She turned down the job and signed the sailing agreement." "Arthur got the worst of it, though. He even had to agree to date her." "We had no choice. As long as Evelyn's in London, Claire will always feel like an outsider." "Evelyn's always been good at adapting anyway. Two years on her own won't kill her." That was when I realized the three tickets on the table were fake. The so-called round-the-world trip for four. From start to finish, the only real ticket was mine.

For three years, we held a wedding in name only—my husband, Kit Rutgers, a pilot, canceled our marriage registration eighteen times. The first time, his female trainee, Katy Ferguson, had a test flight. I waited outside the county clerk’s office the whole day. The second time, he got a call from her mid-drive, made a sharp U-turn, and left me standing on the side of the road. After that, every time we planned to make it official, some crisis with Katy mysteriously arose. Eventually, I chose to walk away. But the moment I boarded a plane to Solara, he lost his mind—and chased me there.