Tragic Love Romance Short Stories & Bias Novels

An hour before the college application deadline, I jolt awake in my hotel room in Chanont. My girlfriend, Evelyn Keate, and my adopted brother, Marvin Needham, are nowhere to be seen. I immediately call them, reminding them to get their applications in before the deadline. To my surprise, they burst out laughing. "We're already back home, and we got our applications in last night. You still haven't submitted yours?" I can hear my parents criticizing me in the background. My mom said, "He's always like this. He's so careless that he doesn't even take his own future seriously." "Marvin has always been so much easier," my dad remarked. Laughter and chatter fill the other end of the line, while I begin to shake with panic. I almost miss the deadline. After receiving our exam results, the three of us agree to apply to the same college. Marvin can't make up his mind, so Evelyn patiently indulges him and says, "There's no rush. We'll take our time and help you pick." However, she casually brushes me off. "Just go with whatever we choose and enjoy yourself in Chanont for the next few days." Just then, my phone buzzes. Evelyn sends me the application code for Solridge University. "Hurry up, or you'll miss the deadline." I stare at the application page, my eyes stinging with tears. My score is much higher than theirs, and I can get into a better college. It turns out that the compromise I'm making doesn't matter to anyone at all. With one second left before the deadline, I click the submit button and apply to Harburt University, the school farthest from home. The three of us are one too many, so I choose to walk away.

Seven years into my relationship with Isla Farrow, she legally marries Damien Calder, a student she sponsors who is also ten years younger than her. When I see the marriage certificate, I think it must be a joke. Then Isla rushes to explain, and I realize it is real. "Damien's school is really strict. He has run out of every excuse in the book to get time off for his volunteer trip to an underserved community. Wedding leave is the only one he hasn't tried. "I'm just helping him out with a cover story. He's doing a good thing. When he gets back, I'll file for divorce. "It's not that big a deal. Why are you so mad? Once I'm divorced from him, we'll get married. Isn't that enough?" I put the marriage certificate back in the drawer. "There's no need. I wish you two a lifetime of happiness."

Five years after our divorce, my ex-husband, Alex Walsh, reserved the most expensive restaurant on the Hudson for Lydia Grant's birthday. She was Hollywood royalty. I was the ex-wife he wanted the world to forget. I stood outside with a white cane in one hand and five-dollar bunches of red roses in the other, trying to sell them to strangers. A dark red carpet stretched across the entrance, with reporters and fans packed behind the barricades. Whenever camera flashes exploded, I knew from the cheers that another celebrity had arrived. Security had chased me off more than once, but the diners here tipped well, and I was still twenty dollars short of the ingredients for my son's birthday cake. Five years ago, I had taken a seven-hundred-thousand-dollar check from his mother and gone along with the affair scandal she staged. Now an advanced meningioma had crushed my optic nerves and left me completely blind. The moment Alex recognized me, he kicked over my flower basket and flung a stack of bills into my face. "You had no trouble taking that check five years ago. How'd you end up selling flowers on the street?" He pulled Lydia, a woman who looked disturbingly like me, against his side. His voice turned to ice. "Open your eyes and look. I replaced you with someone better." I dropped to my knees and felt across the pavement for the scattered bills. When my fingers found one, I turned toward his voice. "Sir, would you like to buy a rose?"

Lisa Jones had never expected how badly her long-distance relationship would go, when James Sachs loved her more than anyone else. As the chief of a hospital, he was a very busy man, but he had flown abroad countless times and clocking over 10,000 hours in travel for her. They could only meet briefly each time. She still remembered in that early winter, he had held her in the snow, saying that he found it all worth it. She received numerous gifts from him, ranging from thousand-word love letters to million-dollar necklaces bought from auctions. If it were just to make her smile, he would pluck the stars from the sky. That love that seeped into their very essence hadn't changed for three years. It was why Lisa forced herself to fly home through the night. But when she heard James' friends marveling at their love, only for James to quietly deny it, she had to admit that she felt like her heart was crushed with the agony of a thousand cuts.

In her past life, Elara Newman had married Orion Baron, who turned out to be an absent husband. On the day she gave birth, she suffered a severe hemorrhage and lost consciousness. However, Orion was unreachable. After she was snapped awake by the doctor, she had to sign her name on the surgical consent form while her hands were still shaking. When her children caught a raging fever, Orion was still nowhere to be seen. She had to rush to the hospital all by herself, and after three consecutive days of looking after them, she was exhausted and passed out in the corridor. On the day when her parents passed away in a car accident, Orion was still absent. As she returned home with the urn containing her parents' ashes, she was greeted by a vicious slap across the face. Her uncle immediately berated her for failing to win her husband over. He blamed her that her parents never got a chance to see their son-in-law before they passed and could never rest in peace. By the time Elara turned fifty-eight, she was terminally ill with cancer. Her life was coming to an end.

My girlfriend, Emma Marshall, had hearing loss and was always claiming she misheard me. I asked her to pick up a gaming setup. She came home with two. "I must've heard you wrong again. Kevin can take the extra one." I asked her to order tacos. She got sushi instead. "Sorry, I heard you wrong. Kevin loves sushi, though. We should invite him over." Then I spent months planning every detail of the home we were supposed to build together and asked her to buy a place in Blackmere. On the day we were supposed to go see it, she drove straight to Carlifield instead. She didn't seem to notice anything was wrong until she realized I hadn't said a word the entire drive. "I'm sorry. I really thought you said you liked the scenery in Carlifield, so when I found this place, I bought it without thinking twice." But Kevin Stone, her childhood best friend, worked only a few minutes away. She hadn't misheard me. She just never cared enough to listen. Something inside me went completely still. For once, I didn't argue. I didn't ask for an explanation. I didn't even feel angry. I just looked at her and said calmly, "Emma, I think we should break up."

After my 99th proposal, I finally convince Bridget Sherman to go with me to register our marriage at the city hall. Instead, all we get is a stern warning from the clerk. "Ms. Sherman, our records show that you're already married. If you register another marriage with Mr. Peterson, you'll be committing bigamy. That's a punishable crime that could throw you behind bars for up to two years. "I strongly advise you to respect marriage and the law. Don't treat marriage like a game or test the limits of the law." I stand there dumbfounded, unable to accept that the woman I've loved all this time has already become someone else's wife. Before I can even question her, Bridget loses her temper. She hurls the forms at my face. She fumes. "I told you not to come, but you insisted! Will you only be satisfied when I end up in prison? I've never met a man as clingy and pathetic as you!" Only then do I learn that, just to help her young intern, Keaton Joplin, put on an act, she secretly registered her marriage with him a month ago. Later, after discovering that Keaton only married her to scam her, she comes to me in tears, begging for forgiveness. "Channing, as soon as the 30-day divorce waiting period is over, I'll marry you! Meet me at the entrance to the city hall. Don't stand me up!" 30 days later, torrential rain pours down. Countless people see a young woman in a wedding dress waiting from morning until night in the wind and rain, shivering from the cold as tears stream down her face harder than the downpour. She's waiting for me to appear. But this is just like waiting for a boat that will never arrive at an airport.

In my hometown, boys are expected to make their own wine by stomping on grapes from a young age. The wine will be given to their future wives and drunk on their wedding day. Since college, Suzanne Landon and I have left our hometown to make our fortunes elsewhere. Now that we've achieved success, we return home. The bottle of wine I've been keeping for 28 years can finally be opened. I know how much of a germaphobe Suzanne is. So, I deliberately replace my wine with a store-bought bottle for the Cherry Blossom Festival, even though I know it's against tradition. Just as I'm about to tell her the secret, I overhear her talking to her friends outside the door. "If you drink Finley's wine, then according to our local customs, you'd have to marry him. Wouldn't Chadwick be pissed?" "Exactly. Chadwick has already opened his bottle of wine. If no one drinks it, wouldn't it be embarrassing for him?" Suzanne laughs nonchalantly and says, "There's no way he'll leave me. He's even replaced the wine for my sake. Besides, his wine has been aged for 28 years. Who would possibly drink that? Finley's has only been aged for 20 years. I've heard that's the sweetest. "Even though I've chosen Finley, I won't mistreat Chadwick. If no one else is willing to marry him, I suppose I could always give him a place to stay by my side." It feels as though a hole has opened in my heart, and the cutting cold wind howled through it. I slowly pull my hand back. I'm not unwanted, and it's not like I have to marry her. I open the message that arrives every year without fail and type a few words before hitting send. "Are you still willing to marry me?" The reply comes almost instantly. "Wait for me."

My wife was diagnosed with a terminal illness, and the specialty medicine that kept her alive was expensive enough to strip my whole family down to nothing. I worked day and night on less than four hours of sleep, all of it to buy her a little more time. My father sold one of his kidneys through a black-market broker to raise the money, and died in the hospital of a postoperative infection. My mother took a job at a factory that cut every corner, breathed in toxic fumes for months, and came away with her lungs destroyed. My wife cried until she couldn't see straight and said it was her fault, that she was dragging our whole family down with her. Then, on a delivery run to Havenford's most extravagant private club, I watched her spend a fortune throwing a birthday party for someone else. "Ms. Calder really doesn't hold back. She bought out the entire club for her boyfriend's birthday. That has to be hundreds of thousands." "His actual birthday isn't until tomorrow. Tonight is just the appetizer." My dying wife lay in a strange man's arms, smiling, without a trace of illness on her. With the whole room egging them on, the two of them kissed long and deep in front of everyone. The message she'd sent me an hour earlier was still sitting on my phone. "Julian, I'll be home late. Don't forget to pick up my medicine." Vivian Calder, I'm done treating your illness.

My wife, Vicky Charleston, a lawyer, dragged me to court for the eighth time over custody of a dog. Partway through the trial, she finally caved and sent me a message. [Name whatever terms you want, as long as you hand the dog over to Derek.] She used to be someone who wouldn't bend, not even a little. To avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest, she'd once stood by and watched my father, Austin Fletcher, get framed and thrown in prison without lifting a finger. Now, to help her foster brother, Derek Charleston, win a dog we'd raised together, she'd forged twenty-six pieces of fake evidence, faked the dog's birth certificate, even its purchase records. I'd refused to give in. We'd fought over it seven times. But this time, to everyone's shock, I didn't argue at all. "Your honor, I'm done contesting this." Then I sent Vicky a message. [The only thing I want is for you to help me get my father's financial case reopened.] On the plaintiff's side, Vicky let out a long breath of relief. What she didn't know was that, while she'd been signing the custody transfer agreement, a divorce agreement had been slipped in among the pages.

My boyfriend, Ty Hyland, and I both had normal hearing, yet we communicated only in sign language. Our friends all praised Ty for being so kind. They thought he had encouraged me to change the way I communicated because he wanted to master sign language and help people with hearing loss. But they did not know that he did it for only one person. In the beginning, Ty suggested that we practice through complete immersion. We would avoid speaking or texting as much as possible. One day, I messaged him during a downpour and asked him to pick me up. He told me to video-call him and repeat the question in sign language. After I struggled through a few clumsy attempts, he hung up on me. In the end, I walked home in the pouring rain and developed a fever of 104 degrees Fahrenheit that very night. When I begged him aloud to take me to the hospital, he merely looked at my hands to imply that I should sign it. I was too sick even to lift my arms. He waited for only a few seconds before rolling over and going back to sleep. Eventually, I learned. When an old injury flared up, I broke out in a cold sweat and signed with trembling hands. “My stomach hurts. I need to go to the hospital.” Ty smiled and pinched my cheek. “Not bad. But I’m taking Luna to an exhibition, so you’ll have to bear with it for now.” Luna Winter was a deaf girl he had met while volunteering. A moan escaped me as the pain intensified. He remained unmoved. “I don’t understand. Use sign language.” Tears streamed down my face. He was not trying to teach me sign language. He just did not want to hear my voice. That was fine. I was leaving. After that, even if he wanted to hear my voice, he never would again.

My tycoon husband was a charmer. But I never worried about it. Not when I still remembered throwing myself in front of a car to save him, losing both my legs in the process. Sebastian Walker had promised he would love me for the rest of his life, even if I could never give him a child of my own. When I was rushed into the hospital after the accident, the doctor said my spine couldn't handle the weight of a pregnancy. If I ever got pregnant, my back would break. So Sebastian made the call himself. He cut back on how often we were intimate, and he even set aside his pride as a man to get a vasectomy. Everyone said I was the one thing that mattered most in Sebastian's life. I believed it too. I thought he was the lifeline heaven had sent down to save me. But now I was staring at the eight-month swell of another woman's belly, laughing until I cried. Sebastian knelt in front of my wheelchair, gripping my hand so hard his own was shaking. "Ruby... someone drugged me, and I took her innocence while I wasn't in control of myself. I'm a man. Let me take responsibility for her, just this once. "Once the baby's born, I'll send her abroad. Everything will go back to how it was between us. "But the baby... I... I really need this child." I looked at the man in front of me, his eyes red-rimmed, and let a tear slide down onto my leg. I sighed. "Fine." Since he wanted a child that badly, I'd let him have his happy little family. But I wasn't sticking around for it.

For the fifth year of our secret relationship, Diego Barrett went on a blind date behind my back. I happened to catch him in the act. My gaze lingered on him for only a heartbeat before I looked away as though nothing had happened. A moment later, a text from Diego appeared. [My mom set this up. You know how she is. If I'd turned her down, she would've nagged me for days.] I watched the "typing..." indicator flicker beneath his name. Then I smiled and replied with my usual patience. [It's okay. I understand.] After all, I was only here because my parents had pressured me into going on a blind date too. My date had already been waiting in the private dining room for quite a while.

At the party, friends teased us, asking when Rosalie Diaz and I would finally get married. I looked at her, smiling. She said nothing, and stiffly changed the subject. The friend who'd started the teasing glanced at me awkwardly, apology in his eyes. My smile didn't waver. I took a sip of my drink. I've always been a bit of a procrastinator, though not a hopeless one. So I decided to let Rosalie go. And to let myself go, too.

I stood at the airport in a downpour and waited four hours. All I got for it was a message from Nicole McKenna: [Something came up at the office. Just grab a car and head home on your own.] I called a ride, but with the storm outside, it took another hour before a driver actually picked up my request. As unlucky as that was, I felt strangely calm once I finally climbed into the car. I even felt a flicker of relief when I saw the post from Freddy Sandler, Nicole's college junior. The photo showed the two of them at a candlelit dinner, captioned: [I said the rain was boring, so you came to keep me company.] None of it stung anymore. I'd finally made up my mind to leave her. The realization put me in such a good mood that I tapped "like" on the post without even thinking twice. Afterward, though, Nicole came to me with her eyes rimmed red and begged, "We've been together for years. You're really just going to let it go?"

My father was dying. There was no time to waste. Every flight and express-train seat to Meadowridge was sold out that day. The only remaining option was a last-minute business-class airline ticket costing twelve hundred dollars. My wife, Marissa Langley, a corporate president earning eight figures a year, frowned at the price. "Do you know what that much money means to this family?" "You're a stay-at-home husband who gets to live comfortably while I work. You never think about how hard I earn our money." Then she froze my cards. She took my phone. She kept my driver's license so I couldn't buy the ticket. Because of her, I missed my father's final moments completely. After the funeral, I saw a social-media post showing her celebrating the birthday of Tyler Beckett, the college intern in her department. The cheapest present she gave him was a custom Velvet Swan cake that cost thirty-three hundred dollars.

Everyone in South City knew that Stella Wallace and Julian Quinn were famous for never getting along. As Julian’s fiancee in name only, Stella had laid out three rules. He was not allowed to go street racing. He was not allowed to stay out all night. Above all, he was not allowed to go see his crush, Yara Xenford. Julian deliberately went against her. He would either race along every inch of South City’s mountain roads or spend the entire night drinking at a private club until he could barely stand. On Stella’s birthday, he even purposely kissed Yara under a sky full of fireworks. He made a complete fool of Stella in front of everyone. Everyone was waiting for the drama to begin. They were sure that Stella, South City’s most sought-after socialite, would see the photos of Julian and Yara kissing all over the internet and storm over there and would drag that reckless playboy home. An hour after the photos went viral, Stella finally showed up. But she did not lose her temper, and she did not drag Julian home. She simply walked up to him and held out her hand. Her voice was so soft that it almost seemed to disappear into the air. “Julian, seven years ago, I gave you a lucky charm. Can you return it to me?” The private room went completely silent. Julian froze too. He instinctively reached up and touched the red lucky charm around his neck. Seven years ago, he had gotten into a car accident while street racing. He remained in the ICU for an entire day and night before he finally woke up. The first person he saw was Stella.

At our baby's one-month celebration, my wife, Emilia Hayes, decides to hold a vote. Anyone who thinks the baby should take my last name votes A. Anyone who thinks the baby should take her first love, Alex Mitchell's, last name votes B. Every relative and friend at the table votes for Alex. And yet, when Emilia's family is at its lowest, I am the one who gives her the money to start her business and helps put her younger brother, Elliot Hayes, through college. Elliot, who used to proudly tell everyone I am part of his family, laughs the loudest. "Ryan has been devoted to Emilia for 15 years. There's no way he'd risk losing his wife and son over a last name." Emilia notices my discomfort and frowns as she defends me. "Don't say that. He has his pride too." Then she places our baby in Alex's arms, takes his hand, and asks, "Have you decided what to name the baby?" My mom, Winona Williams, looks at her grandson with tears in her eyes. Afraid I'll really lose my wife and baby, she forces a smile. "It's okay if your first child takes his last name," she says. "You can always have another baby later." I open my mouth to argue. But watching my mother lower her head alongside everyone else just to keep my family together makes me realize there is no point. What they don't know is that tomorrow, along with the application to change my son's last name, I'll also be serving Emilia with divorce papers.

It is New Year's Eve, so I fix a big spread of dishes for my girlfriend, Lily Heath. Lily doesn't even spare me a glance. She continues to pack her luggage, saying coldly, "I can't spend New Year's with you this year." I say nothing at all and simply eat my meal in silence. Lily's first love, Forrest Zimmer, posts a photo on his social media right as the clock strikes midnight on New Year's Eve. Lily is leaning affectionately on his shoulder in the photo, with dazzling fireworks lighting up the sky outside. He even has a caption that says, "She said that all I have to do is ask, and she'll leave it all behind for me." I refrain from throwing a scene or questioning her, merely giving the post a like. Lily calls me, her voice tense and frantic. "Please don't be upset, Ethan. I'll definitely spend next New Year's with you." I chuckle bitterly. "It's just a shame that there won't be a next year for the two of us."

Jenson Clarke lives his life like a report card. When we were dating, he used to say that anyone or anything scoring under 90 wasn't worth his time. After we get married, he grades everything I do. On our wedding anniversary, I cook a whole table of his favorite dishes. He takes a single bite and says, "89." Then he sets down his cutlery and leaves to have dinner with Aleena Walton because she has a poor appetite. For his company's anniversary gala, I try on 27 different dresses. He glances at me. "88. Not good enough to take you out." That night, he attends the gala with Aleena on his arm instead, who wears nothing more than a plain white dress. To earn a perfect score, I quit my job, earn seven certifications, and learn four foreign languages. Yet no matter how hard I try, my grade stays stuck at 89. Aleena does nothing at all, yet simply standing there makes her a hundred. "What does a 90 even look like to you?" I ask Jenson. He looks over at Aleena and says nothing. At that moment, I suddenly smile. His grading system only ever has one metric, and it isn't me. I take off my wedding ring and drop it into his wine glass. "My turn to grade you, Jenson Clarke. Your loyalty? Zero. As a husband? Zero. And as a human being? You fail."