Tragic Love Romance Short Stories & Bias Female Growth Novels

Our wedding anniversary also happens to be our son's birthday. A month in advance, I carefully plan a family trip for the three of us—me, my husband, and our son. But right before we're supposed to leave, both of them suddenly disappear on me. I'm left standing alone in the pouring rain, dialing their numbers. On the other end, my son's young voice comes through, sounding cold and impatient. "Dad's having dinner with Ms. Moore. We don't want to go anymore." The call ends, and I'm blocked. Later that night, they intentionally lock me out of the house. I'm left standing in the freezing cold all night long. Soaked from the rain, I come down with a high fever and develop pneumonia. Meanwhile, my husband and son are off vacationing with Sophia Moore, smiling for a happy family photo with just the three of them. And in that moment, I know this marriage has truly come to an end.

After my husband topped the wealth rankings, he hired his first love as his personal housekeeper at a high salary. “Quincy, you hail from humble beginnings. I don’t want you embarrassing me in high society, so I specifically brought in Vivian to teach you the rules. From now on, everything you do must be reported to her for approval.” From that moment on, in public, I was the glamorous Mrs. Lane. However, behind closed doors, to even enjoy simple marital moments with my husband I had to write a thousand-word application seeking Vivian’s approval. Then, my adoptive father had a heart attack. I dropped to my knees, begging her to transfer me five hundred thousand dollars. She laughed coldly. “What kind of surgery costs half a million? Stop making excuses to pad your family’s finances.” “This isn’t a small sum. Write a 10,000-word application, and this time it’s denied.” Rage coursed through me, my body trembling uncontrollably as I spun toward Tyler and fell to my knees, begging him to save my father’s life. There wasn’t even a flicker of emotion on his face. “Vivian did nothing wrong. I know you’re still clinging to your old poor habits even after getting rich, but my money doesn’t grow on trees.” “This time, your father’s medical treatment will be put on hold as a lesson. Next time, don’t blame me if he’s kicked out of the VIP ward.” In the end, my adoptive father died on the operating table due to the delay in treatment. Completely disheartened, I finally asked Tyler for a divorce.

I went alone to my favorite singer’s concert. During the song selection segment, I was really excited and hoped that I would be lucky enough to be picked. But in the next second, I saw my husband, who was supposed to be on a business trip, appear on the screen. Next to him was Mia Louise, his first love. “I’d like to pick Back To The Past. I want to go back three years when I hadn’t broken up with Mia.” The entire stadium cheered and celebrated their love. I was the only one in tears. During the next song selection segment, I saw my teary face show up on the screen. “I’d like to pick Back To The Past as well. I want to return to the time when I never said yes to Samuel Gardner’s proposal.”

My son, Scott Gould, suddenly tells me that he has leukemia. Then, he goes on to say that his biggest wish is to see Ivanna Newman in a wedding dress. My husband, Theodore Gould, agrees with Scott. "I'll hold a wedding with Ivanna. Once Scott is done with his treatment, we'll get remarried." I gladly agree to the request and divorce Theodore. Not long after, I learn from Scott's social media that he's attending the wedding of Theodore and his childhood sweetheart, Ivanna. The caption he writes says, "I'm so happy for Dad. I can't help but shed tears for true love." I smile and turn off my phone. Holding the hand of the person next to me, I board a plane to Wismuth.

On our anniversary, Gus King overslept again. When he woke up, I was curling my lashes in front of the mirror. He looked apologetic. “I’m still adjusting to the time difference. Please try to understand.” For the past month, he and a junior labmate had been traveling around the world collecting marine samples. I calmly put away my mascara. “It’s fine. I made plans with a friend instead. This makeup is too nice to let go to waste.” He relaxed, though his expression turned a little strange. After all, in the past, I would have thrown a fit and cried at him. Gus hugged me from behind and smiled. “You’re getting so mature, sweetheart. By the way, I saw the new photos you posted. Where did you go?” “Oh, Seaview City,” I said casually. “While you were away in the North Isles.” He froze. I’d spent the whole first year of our relationship begging Gus to take me to Seaview City to see the ocean. He always said he’d take me when he had time. For our second, third, and fourth anniversaries, he kept telling me to be more understanding, then headed off with his junior labmate to their next destination. In the fifth year of our relationship, I suddenly stopped waiting. It turned out that traveling alone was pretty fun too.

After my husband got into a car accident, he started acting strange and unpredictable. I went to countless doctors, and every one of them told me the same thing—he couldn't be provoked, and I had to go along with whatever he wanted. When he said he didn't want me in the master bedroom, I moved my things into the guest room next door. When he said his childhood sweetheart had cancer and he wanted to spend her last days with her, I even brought her into our home. One night, when I went downstairs to get some medicine for my stomach, I heard Harvey's voice, his tone oh so tender. "Katie, you have to live on. If you don't, I'll die too." Katie's breathy, trembling voice followed. "Are you sure Jenna's willing to donate her bone marrow to me?" "Of course. Even if she had to die for me, she'd do it willingly." I froze in place. Tears streamed down my face. That's right. Five years ago, I had donated one of my kidneys to him. Back then, I loved him so much that I really would have died for him. But now, all I wanted was to leave.

The first month of school, I found out the whole school was calling me a leech behind my back. That vicious nickname was coined by my childhood friend Sebastian's new influencer friend, Chloe. Because as far as they were concerned, I always rode to school in Sebastian's car, spent his Venmo, and lived near the old Rivers family estate. But that wasn't the truth. I brought my ruined homework to Sebastian and asked why he let them smear me. He just laughed. "It's a high school joke. Chloe just likes to joke around. Don't be so sensitive." "Besides, you're always riding in my car, following me around. People thinking that... well, it's kind of normal." I froze. Cold went through my whole body. So this. Over a decade of quiet company and quiet protection. In his eyes, I was just a leech. I didn't explain anymore. I applied for early graduation. Off to Columbia University. But when he found out I was leaving, Sebastian went insane, searching everywhere for me. "Maya, where are you going?!"

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 day she found out about the tumor, Noemi Rosales made one wild choice—she'd give her corneas to her blind husband, Daniel Gomez. Quietly. No spotlight, no drama. Too bad Daniel only cared about Ivanna Lopez. He ate up every lie she fed him and iced Noemi out like she was nothing. "I want you out of my life." Cool. Noemi could do that. "Ms. Rosales, are you certain you want Mr. Gomez listed as the cornea recipient?" "Yeah. Give them to him. Once I'm gone, the hospital can use the rest of me for science or whatever." She scrawled her signature. "Don't tell him."

At the start of graduation season, my boyfriend took more than two hundred photos of Madison Vale. Chase Whitman was president of Westbridge University’s photography club. He knew how to find flattering light and how to coax people out of stiff smiles. Madison stood beneath the maples outside the library in a white dress, her graduation cap tucked under one arm. “Am I taking up too much of your time?” she asked. Chase checked the last few shots and smiled. “You make my job easy.” When it was finally my turn, he barely looked at me. “Stand by the tree.” He clicked the shutter twice and lowered the camera. “Done.” I stared at him. “That’s it?” He turned the screen toward me. In one photo my eyes were half-closed; in the other, a branch shadow slashed diagonally across my face. “Can we try again?” Chase sighed. “Avery, you always tense up. Fifty more takes won’t change that.” Ten minutes later, my phone buzzed. He had posted in the Westbridge Buy: Twenty dollars for someone to spend ten minutes taking a few graduation photos of my girlfriend. Nothing fancy. She just needs something usable. Half an hour later, a stranger replied. I sent him my location, then added: Just so you know, I’m not very photogenic. His answer came almost immediately: That usually says more about the photographer than about the subject. When Rowan Hayes arrived, he looked at Chase’s two photos and said, “He didn’t even try.” An hour later, he sent me the raw files. No filters, no heavy retouching. Just me on the library steps, my hair loose in the wind and my eyes brighter than I remembered them being.

My fiancé, Skyler Grant, barges into the art gallery where my work is being exhibited and trashes the place. "You plagiarized Leah's work and pushed her to jump off a building! I can't believe you have the gall to have an exhibition here! I have to seek justice for her!" He sets the gallery on fire, leading to stray glass shards damaging my eyes. I'm tormented by the pain of losing my work and vision when Leah Rivers returns. She says indifferently, "It was April Fool's yesterday, and I was just fooling around. You're not mad at me, are you?" I charge at her hysterically, but Skyler shields her. "They're just some canvases—so what if they're gone? You can paint them again." He has no idea that I'll never paint again.

At my wedding, the giant screen that's supposed to show our photos suddenly switches to the groom's assistant's prenatal exam report. It clearly shows that he is the child's father. The assistant looks flustered and panicked as she rushes to apologize to me. The groom, on the other hand, stays perfectly calm and offers an explanation like it's no big deal. "I took pity on her because she got pregnant out of wedlock, so I went with her to the appointment and left my name. I'm going to be her kid's godfather, too." The day of her exam was also the day I went for my very first prenatal checkup. Everyone thinks I'll break down, but I simply reach up and tear off my veil. Then, I calmly schedule an abortion. "She really is pitiful, being pregnant without a partner by her side. She deserves this wedding more than I do." Then, I raise my champagne glass to congratulate him. "Congratulations to you both. May your shotgun wedding be a happy one, especially since it's happening with a bun in the oven."

On our wedding anniversary night, my husband, Lucian Moore, comes home with a seven-year-old orphan named Chloe Martin. He even hands her the necklace he bought me for our anniversary and lets her play with it like a toy. Because of her, my son, Ryan Moore, shouts at me for the first time. "You're a bad woman! I don't want you to be my mommy!" I watch the three of them sitting together, warm and cozy, and I say nothing. Instead, I buy a ticket to leave the country. At first, they think I'm just acting out and will come home in a few days. But when they return from Feanland after celebrating Chloe's birthday, they find out I've joined a ten-year classified research project and will not come back again. At that moment, they fall apart.

Back when we were still in love, I heard from someone else that Charlie Grant had been getting unusually close to his secretary. He never offered an explanation. He let me dig for the truth on my own. Over the past five years, I quietly collected countless photos of them together—having lunch, leaving late-night meetings, even traveling for business—but none of them offered conclusive proof of cheating. Until the day he proposed to me. There was a giant screen set up. It was supposed to play a romantic video Charlie had prepared just for the proposal, but the screen suddenly cut to something else. A video of Charlie at a hospital, standing beside his secretary as she underwent a pregnancy check-up. In the video, the doctor clearly referred to Charlie as her husband… and the father of her child. His secretary burst into tears on the spot and apologized to me repeatedly. She sobbed as though she were the victim. Charlie, however, stood there with a cold expression and said flatly, "She's an unwed mother. She was helpless. I was just accompanying her for the checkup. The doctor must've misunderstood." Everyone braced for a dramatic scene. However, I didn’t scream. I didn’t cry. I only reached up and slowly removed the delicate flower hairpiece from my head. I set the hairpiece down. Then I looked Charlie in the eyes and spoke calmly. "You're right. It is sad that she’s pregnant and all alone. "This marriage proposal was meant for her. Not me." I gave a faint smile. "May you enjoy a blissful life. And… congratulations on the baby."

My husband, Richard Hayes, hated special treatment and refused to make exceptions for anyone. So when I begged him to get my seriously ill father in to see a specialist sooner, his face went cold and he flatly refused. "The hospital has rules. Everyone waits their turn. Why should your dad get to cut the line?" He even dismissed the blood my father was coughing up as a flare-up of his chronic bronchitis. He said we were overreacting and wasting the hospital's time and resources. Seven months pregnant, I spent three nights camped out in the hospital waiting room so Richard wouldn't have to bend the rules for us. By the time my father finally received treatment, the delay had already taken its toll. He spent night after night in pain and was left with permanent damage. In the end, it was my father who told me not to blame Richard. Doctors couldn't make exceptions for people, he said. I needed to be more understanding. I believed in his high-minded principles, right up until today, when I left work early to bring him a meal at the hospital. I saw it with my own eyes. My husband was soothing another woman in her hospital bed. His first love, Daisy Lawson, had undergone a simple appendectomy, yet she was staying in the hospital's only VIP suite. Three of the hospital's best private-duty nurses took turns caring for her around the clock. Richard had even pulled strings to get her a hard-to-find painkiller overnight. Daisy whined that the medicine tasted bitter. Richard's face filled with concern. He unwrapped a piece of chocolate and fed it to her. "Daisy, sweetheart, take your medicine. You'll feel better soon. I've rescheduled all my upcoming surgeries so I can stay here with you." The thermos fell from my hand and hit the floor with a crash. Hot soup splashed all over my foot. It hit me all at once. There had never been any ironclad principles. He'd simply saved all his exceptions for someone else.

Joel Gleason, my childhood sweetheart and fiancé, promised he'd marry no one but me. But then, to help Jenny Swisher, my adoptive sister, get through her depression, he secretly married her. I didn't hesitate for a second before agreeing to marry Conrad Lennon, Jasselton's most untouchable heir, who'd been in love with me for years. After seven years of marriage, he still spoiled me rotten. He clung to me every night like he couldn't get enough. And there was nothing he wouldn't do for me. I really thought I'd found happiness at last. But one day, after we'd slept together, I heard him talking to his best friend. "Jenny's an international best actress now. When are you dumping Jean?" "It doesn't matter. I wouldn't end up with the person I love either way. Besides, I have to keep an eye on Jean. I can't let her ruin all the happiness Jenny worked so hard for." I booted up the computer in Conrad's study and stumbled upon a hidden folder. Inside were over 100,000 photos of Jenny, plus 100 unsent love letters. I'd been fooling myself long enough. It was time to wake up. I got myself a fake body and got ready to start a fire. That was it. Conrad and I were done for good.

We had been married for five years, but Chuck Gorman spent more than half his time at the condo opposite the river. He claimed that his older brother, Calvin, had passed away at a young age, leaving behind his widow, who had no one to depend on, and that as Calvin's brother, he was responsible for taking care of both families. This was a Gorman family value of upholding loyalty and kinship. I had believed his words then. To help him uphold his loyalty and dignity, I tolerated it whenever he was absent during important holidays and said nothing when he split his time between his sister-in-law and me during Christmas dinner. I even had to hold back my tongue when others mocked me for being a weak woman who was willing to 'share her husband'. However, Chuck had always been gentle yet distant when he spoke to me. This continued until we were involved in an accident with several collisions. The car we were in was wrecked. As I shielded my heavily pregnant belly, I broke out in cold sweat from the pain. I kept hitting the window while shouting, "Chuck! Save the baby…" Chuck climbed out from the driver's seat and glanced at my bleeding body, only to turn away to pry open the car door of the back seat. He shielded Sandi Lemming tightly in his arms, holding her against his chest despite her suffering only minor scratches on the forehead. "Don't look, Sandi. It's okay. I'm right here." He patted her gently on the back while comforting her over and over to calm her nerves. As for me, I was stuck inside the car due to the dented car door. I realized that it was not loyalty and kinship he was practising. He was just unable to see Sandi come to harm at all.

For eight long years, Bryan Millan and I were married, but you’d never have known it by looking at his life. He never once acknowledged our relationship in public. Not a single post, not a single mention of me on his social media. Then came our anniversary. The day that was supposed to be about us. Instead, Bryan made an announcement on his Instagram account—just not the one I expected. There he was, hand in hand with his assistant, her draped in a wedding dress. The caption read: [When you're in love, you want the whole world to know.] The comments flooded in. [Bryan finally got married!] [Congrats! Wishing you a lifetime of happiness together!] In that moment, I could no longer lie to myself. Bryan wasn't reserved. He just never loved me. So, I decided to let go. But he wasn't ready for that. He clung to me, desperate now. But I pried his hands off and laughed—a real, genuine laugh, the kind that comes from somewhere deep inside when you realize you're finally free. Then, I looked him straight in the eye and said the words I'd been holding in, "Don't beg me to come back. Because now that I don't love you, I've never felt better."

On Christmas Eve, while her husband takes their son to watch fireworks with his first love, Justine Payne finally makes up her mind—she's getting a divorce. They've been married for five years. To everyone else, she's the lucky woman with the perfect life. She has a devoted husband and a smart, adorable son. But only she knows the truth—her husband has never let go of his first love. Even worse, the child she nearly died giving birth to can't wait to replace her with someone else. So, Justine decides to set them both free—a husband whose heart doesn't truly belong to her and a son who can't wait to replace her. She refuses to keep holding on to love that isn't returned.

My husband, Adrian Locke, was obsessed with saving money. He said we needed to cut unnecessary spending, so I went three years without buying new clothes. He said our bills were too high, so I handed over my entire paycheck and lived on a 200-dollar monthly allowance. I ate at the hospital cafeteria, took the bus, and used the cheapest skincare products I could find. Then Jenna, the new intern in his department, had a birthday. Adrian spent 28,000 dollars on our joint credit card. He booked a luxury restaurant and filled a room with balloons and flowers. I texted him to see what he'd say. "The cafeteria raised the price of lunch by five cents, so I'll skip it." His reply came instantly. "Okay. Just eat more at home tonight." Then I got a notification. Jenna had posted nine photos on Instagram. The caption read, "Adrian said the internship has been exhausting, so I deserve to treat myself." So he wasn't frugal. Just with me. I cut that joint credit card in half, then called a lawyer. "Hello, I need legal advice about dividing marital property in a divorce."