Historias cortas de After Death Romance y novelas ambientadas en Cheating

In the third year of my disappearance, Xavier Gardner has transformed into a powerful capitalistic mogul whose influence runs deep in the finance industry. At the celebratory party, he goes down on one knee and proposes to his first love, Nancy Lowe. "Back when my company was on the verge of bankruptcy, you were the one who sold all of your properties and assets just to help me tide over the crisis. Today, I want you to become the happiest woman in the world. Will you marry me, Nancy?" Amid everyone's blessings, Nancy puts on the ring while feeling extremely touched. "Mr. Gardner, it was said that your ex-wife, Victoria Zahn, had stolen all of your funds and fled with her sugar daddy when your company was in a financial crisis. "Now, she's gone missing for three years. If she ever comes back, will you choose to forgive her?" The reporter's sharp question makes Xavier's expression change drastically. His gaze shifts into one of pure ice. "If I ever find that traitorous gold digger, I'll make sure to skin her alive." As I float next to the crystal chandelier, I can only sigh while noting how deep his hatred runs in his eyes. Xavier, you will never be able to find me. After all, I already died three years ago when I was on my way to clear your debt with the loan sharks. Even the money that you've used to tide over your company's crisis is the funds that I gained from selling my family's manor…

It was my son's engagement party. However, my husband stopped me from giving my soon-to-be daughter-in-law her gift. "His mother will do the honors. This is not your place." I thought he was joking until he put his arm around his childhood sweetheart and sat down together around the main table. "I know Bianca mishandled your baby, but she had postpartum depression, and it was an accident. "She gave you Jason to make up for her mistake. It's time for them to be a family again. She has atoned for her sins." My nails dug into my palms hard enough to draw blood. Just when I was on the brink of losing it, my son raised a toast to her. "Someone has stolen your place for 30 years, Mom, but you'll never have to suffer again." Right now, my husband and son were like strangers I'd never met instead of my family. A bitter smile curled my lips. We'd spent more than three decades together. Time had left its mark on my graying hair, yet I was treated as nothing more than an outsider in a place I was supposed to call home. Perhaps this home was too small to fit all of us. Since that was the case, someone had to bow out and that someone… was me.

After seven years together, Ruby Longley ghosted me the day before we were supposed to get our marriage license. I freaked. While tearing through the city looking for her, I got into a nightmare crash. That night, she finally texted: [Steven cut his wrist. He's really fragile right now. He can't deal with any drama. He needs me at the hospital.] [Let's push the wedding back three years. Don't contact me until then. Let him heal.] [Handle our parents. And don't upset Steven. Just tell them you're the one who got cold feet.] The ER nurse's eyes were red as she pressed my bloody finger to my phone and typed back for me. [The PATIENT is in critical condition. Please come to the HOSPITAL immediately.] A second later, my phone lit up again. Steven Buffrey. Ruby's childhood friend. The social feed showed a photo of two hands locked together, fingers making a heart. In the middle sat a bandage over one tiny scratch. Caption: [She said my life matters more than anything. Bro, quit faking sick and sulking.] Ruby's friends smashed the like button. They called it true love. Not one person said my name. Like tomorrow's marriage license appointment had nothing to do with me. I laughed, bitter and weightless, floating above the ER as my heart monitor flatlined.

For five years, I paved the way for my wife, Samantha Cole. After helping her resolve the company's troubles one last time, I called her and asked, "Darling, I'm so cold. Can you come home and hug me?" On the other end of the phone, Samantha had only just pulled herself away from a moment of intimacy with her young lover, Oliver White. When she finally answered, her voice was impatient. "Joshua Davidson, will it kill you to stop being so dramatic?" Indeed, it would. I slammed the phone down and then died on our bed. Later, Samantha—the woman who had kept me trapped in that lonely house for five years—held my portrait in her arms and finally learned what regret felt like.

On Christmas Eve, I giddily wait for my husband, Hunter Gibson, to come home while nursing my eight-month pregnancy. Unexpectedly, Hunter bursts through the front door with his childhood friend, Winter Jones, in his arms. I attempt to help him out, only to get shoved to the floor instead. My belly bumps into a corner of the coffee table, causing pain to shoot up my nerves. Cold sweat soon beads on my forehead, and yet Hunter doesn't even spare me another glance. "Get out of my way! Someone drugged Winnie's drink at the bar! If I don't purge the poison out of her, she'll die!" As I shield my belly, I dig out my phone. "I'll call an ambulance for her—" But Hunter snatches my phone away before hurling it at the floor, breaking it into splinters. Then, he grabs me by the neck angrily. "Are you trying to ruin Winnie's reputation? If word gets out, how is she going to live with her head hung high?" In order to prevent me from "ruining his plan", Hunter decides to trap me on the balcony while disregarding my pleas and the fact that I'm only wearing thin pajamas. "You should take some time to cool off! Once you've finally learned your lesson, you're only permitted entry!" I can only slam my palms onto the glass door desperately with tears running down my face. There, I'm forced to watch as Hunter and Winter go at it like desperate rabbits on the carpet in the living room, with the Christmas songs serving as their ambiance. A heavy snowfall has occurred that night. At the crack of dawn the next morning, Hunter finally remembers that I exist. He calls my number, yet my phone was turned off. Furious, Hunter yells, "Where the hell did you go? Winnie's stomach is in discomfort! Get your ass back here right now and cook her some soup!" What he doesn't know is that I'm right outside the balcony door. The thing is, dead people are incapable of answering phone calls, not to mention Hunter has already broken my phone, to begin with.

I made a deal with the Devil. My soul, in exchange for seven days on earth after I died. The eleventh hour after my death happened to fall on our third wedding anniversary. The moment I walked through the door, he had just come home from another woman's place. He had an anniversary gift waiting for me. A set of sapphires. But the card tucked beside them bore another woman's name. I spotted a pale lavender hair tie in his hand. Once, I would have fought him over a hair tie like that, all the way from the front hall to the study. This time, I said nothing. It was him who froze instead, staring at me like I was a stranger. "You didn't used to be like this. I almost miss the way you used to fall apart over everything." He was right. The old me would have thrown a fit over something as small as him forgetting to cut my steak. But ever since the miscarriage, my heart had been dying by slow degrees. When I found out I was pregnant, I was overjoyed. I wanted him to be the first to know. But I couldn't reach him, no matter how many times I called. I lost the baby. I hemorrhaged. That very afternoon, while I lay on the operating table, a photo of him and that woman hit the entertainment headlines. He never even knew I had carried a child. Now there was only one last thing I wanted from him. To drive me up to the northern coast, and bury me with his own hands. But when he realized I had truly vanished from this world, he came undone.

On my wedding day, I had just stepped onto the aisle when a ripple of laughter spread through the crowd. "Take it all off, and she's got a body on her! Look at her face, like she's enjoying it!" I turned toward the voices and saw my ex-husband's photos of me blown up across the giant screen. They kept changing, one after another, explicit and impossible to ignore. All around the room, phones were already coming up as people started taking pictures. My hands began to shake. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my mother collapse. Behind Leon Coleman, Allison Fleming slapped her thigh and raised her voice, loud enough for everyone to hear. "Oh, wow. Leon showed these to the guys yesterday, just messing around. Guess they accidentally put it on the big screen. Gemma, you're not gonna make a big deal out of it, right?" The groomsmen laughed. "Come on, Allison. Leon always lets you get away with anything. Gemma had to beg for this wedding. There's no way she'd dare complain." With all those eyes on me, Leon reached for my hand and held it, his tone easy. "Allison's one of my closest friends. We joke around like that. She didn't mean anything by it, so don't take it personally. It's just a few private photos. I'll have someone take them down. It's our wedding day, so just bear with it for now."

After marrying the woman I had been pining for for ten years, Nelissa Ford, I thought that my sincerity could melt the ice around her heart. However, she exposed my undercover mission to her first love, Jared Hiller, who was a journalist, just to give him a sensational story and boost his career. Her actions ultimately pushed me into the abyss. Later, I was retaliated against by a drug trafficking gang, stabbed multiple times, and died tragically. I was dumped on the street. Seeing the news, Nelissa finally lost her mind.

To get back at me for taking one extra piece of lettuce at dinner, Simon Quinn drugged me right after my surgery and left me with a stomach perforation. My wife finally managed to book a specialist appointment for me, but Simon suddenly claimed his own stomach hurt so badly he couldn't stand it and stole my slot. I begged my wife to take me to the hospital first. She told me to endure it. Then, when I called an ambulance myself, she punished me by having someone hang me upside down in the bedroom. "If we hadn't had to eat those awful health meals with you, why would Simon's stomach hurt? "I heard hanging upside down helps stomach pain. After a few minutes, you'll naturally feel better." The pain made my body convulse. I cried and begged her to send me to the hospital. Instead, she kicked me hard in the abdomen. "Stop acting. Don't think I don't know you're just jealous of Simon! "Someone as kind as Simon would never drug you. If anything, you're the one who might've slipped something into the food to make his stomach hurt. Once the results come out, I won't let you off!" I grabbed her pant leg in agony. "I'm not lying. He told me himself he drugged me. Please, for the sake of our eight years together, give the specialist appointment back to me." She stepped on my hand in disgust. "You just had surgery. How could anything happen to you? Stop trying to drive a wedge between us. If you weren't such good househusband material, I would've divorced you long ago." Later, after she saw that Simon was perfectly fine, she finally remembered me. But the housekeeper was trembling all over. "Mr. Bowman died a long time ago..."

Four years after my death, my wife—the CEO—was desperate. Her first love was dying of an incurable disease, and I was the only surgeon in the world who could save him. To force me out of hiding, she ran my mother down with her car, leaving her brain-dead with no chance of recovery. She had my father hanged from a tree beside my grave—while he was still alive. Then she went live on social media, threatening to burn my younger sister to death. She was waiting for me—the selfish man, in her eyes—to come crawling back, beg for mercy, and agree to operate on her one true love. But then her men finally looked into my records. "Boss... he's been dead for four years. "He died on the very day he gave you his heart."

Adrian Vance and I had been secretly married for ten years, and I had always been his perfect wife. He was the president of a hospital. But lately he'd fallen in love with playing broke. I asked him to pick up blackberries; he came home with bananas and a sad little story about money. I needed a ride to my own surgery; he drove me there rattling along in a beat-up van, because the van fit the part. And when our daughter was dying and the one person who could save her was him, he looked a stranger in the eye and swore he was nobody, just an assistant, certainly not the hospital's president. That was the moment it finally landed. He hadn't drifted into an affair on a whim. He had chosen, with his whole heart, to walk away from his wife and his child. Fine. I'd take our daughter and clear the way for his great love.

After being diagnosed with cancer, I look at the last meager 1,000 dollars left in my bank account and have no choice but to buy myself the cheapest casket for later. My boyfriend, Aaron Olsen, rushes back from out of town upon hearing the news. Then, he sells his car, takes out a loan, and uses all of the savings that he accumulated from his Uber deliveries to send me back to the hospital. He holds my hand tightly while I'm in the hospital bed, looking at my skinny figure while choking down a sob. "Let's make a bet, okay? Viola, let's make a bet to see if you'll get any better. Even if you lose, I'll still stay with you! "After all, the casket you bought is big enough to fit both of us." I chuckle and call him a fool for even saying that. However, the heavens decided to have mercy on me, and I successfully beat cancer for the first time. Later on, Aaron proposes to me in the same year, and I accept it. However, on the day before we are supposed to register our marriage, I catch him cheating on me inside the casket that I prepared for myself. Aaron's first reaction upon being discovered is to use his body to shield the woman's body from me. Tears blur my vision, and I lower my head, letting out a bitter laugh. "How can you do this to me, Aaron Olsen?"

In the fifth year of our marriage, my firefighter husband, Mike Anderson, who never had the time to have a wedding ceremony with me, suddenly found time to do so. On the day of the ceremony, I could not contact Mike at all. It all became clear when I saw the video that had been sent into the firefighter family members’ group chat. His junior, Mia Scott was holding his arm as he received a heroic award from the mayor. Everyone in the group chat was making envious remarks. [Chief Anderson’s wife is so beautiful. She doesn’t look like a regular house wife like my husband claimed to be.] [That’s right, she looks so elegant and poised. She must be a great wife to Chief Anderson.] My rough hands were trembling. I was just about to tell them I was Mike’s wife, when I heard a loud explosion from my kitchen. As the searing heat consumed me, I called him for help. However, he interrupted me impatiently. “Why are you bothering me? I lied to you about the wedding ceremony because I was afraid of you coming up with such nonsense. “Mia’s father died because he saved me, so I let her accompany me to receive the award as my wife. Isn’t that reasonable?” I was stunned. Then, he hung up on me.

By their tenth anniversary, Claire Carlisle and Elliot Paulson were Auremont City's most infamous feuding couple. He lit up the skyline with a public love confession—to another woman. Claire fired back by burning down the private estate where he kept his mistress. In two years, their fights had landed them in the hospital ninety-nine times. Everyone thought the cycle would never end. Then eighteen-year-old Elliot showed up. He looked nothing like the cold, polished man he'd become. Just a faded T-shirt and eyes full of fierce, reckless love for Claire. Young. Clueless. Completely devoted. The second he saw how pale and frail she'd become, he stormed into Paulson Tower, tackled his older self, and beat him like he'd lost his mind. "She's the person I love most. How could you do this to her?!" From that day on, Claire finally had someone willing to stand between her and the world.

In my third year overseas as a war correspondent, I get seriously injured during a grenade explosion and lose all my memories. I develop severe PTSD and spend two years in a psychiatric hospital. Two months ago, I finally remember who I am. On the day of my return, my best friend, Beckett Jobling, and my wife, Gina Spencer, come to the airport to pick me up. They cry even harder than I do. Gina's eyes are red, but her voice is still as gentle as ever. "I've tidied up our new home. You move in first. I'll come keep you company after work tonight." However, I go back to the villa where we used to live. The moment I push open the door, I see a wedding portrait hanging on the wall. The groom isn't me but my best friend, Beckett. The sound of the key turning in the lock comes from outside. Gina, who is supposedly busy at work, walks in hand in hand with Beckett. In her arms, she's holding a little child. In a sweet, childish voice, the child calls her, "Mommy." I stand frozen. I am so stunned that I even forget to breathe. I've only been away for two years. How can their child already be three years old?

The day I have only 220 dollars left in my savings, I buy a 200-dollar ticket to a piano recital. When my friend finds out, she asks if I have gone crazy. I reply without a hint of emotion, "I just want to see what kind of woman is worth taking all our savings and spending it on a concert grand piano for. "That money was supposed to save our daughter. Summer was counting on it for her surgery." The recital lasts two full hours, and everyone praises the beautiful music. But all I can think about is the woman onstage and my husband, Zander Stafford, sitting right in front of her. He's dressed in a sharp suit and looks so refined that I barely recognize him. At the end of every song, Zander is always the first to applaud. There is a fervor in his eyes I have never seen before. It isn't until the recital ends that I finally receive a message from him after two months of silence, along with a bank transfer. "I'm sorry, Sabina. Things are tight at the construction site right now, so I'm using some of the money from that account," he writes. "My boss says he'll pay me back as soon as the money comes in. "Didn't you say Summer is sick and in the hospital? Take these 5,000 dollars for now." I look up at the two people embracing in the center of the stage. I return the money and reply, "It's not necessary." I no longer need it. I will never need his money again. Summer is already dead, and nothing matters anymore.

My fiancé sent me overseas and immediately burned my wallet, threw away my phone, and tore up my visa. He did it all to make sure I couldn't return home and ruin his wedding to his first love. His friends tried to warn him. "Don't go too far. What if your fiancée really gets angry?" But my fiancé didn't care at all. "She's gotten too spoiled because I've always treated her too well. I'm just teaching her to be more understanding. Besides, Yvonne and I aren't really getting married. I'm only doing this so her dying grandmother can pass away without regrets. Nothing will happen between us. Once the wedding is over, I'll make it up to Winnie." The moment his wedding ended, he rushed to find me and apologize. But he never got the chance to see me. Later, he even took my documents and planned to register our marriage first as a way to make it up to me. It seemed he truly had no idea that I had already died the night he sent me overseas.

On the day of her daughter Nina’s funeral, before the pastor could finish the eulogy, Rosalind answered Samson’s phone call. “Change of plans. Let’s meet earlier. I’m on my way now.” Ethan held the small cremation urn in his arms. His knuckles turned white from gripping it too tightly. Nina had been critically ill with leukemia. Only Samson’s bone marrow matched hers. Driven to the brink, Ethan desperately begged Rosalind to go along with Samson’s request. She promised that she would only be playing pretend and would not fall for Samson. However, as time passed, she eventually fell for Samson and indulged him in every way. On the night when Nina needed the transplant the most, Ethan called her, frantic. However, she was unreachable because she was camping deep in the mountains. Ethan helplessly watched the three-year-old die in the emergency room. Later, Rosalind even protected Samson and let him stomp on Nina’s cross necklace. She even forcibly confined Ethan to a sanatorium and forced him to donate blood to Samson. It was not until Rosalind learned that Samson had deceived her from the very beginning that she felt piercing regret. She gave him fifty percent of her shares, knelt for hours at the cemetery, and tried to make amends wherever she could. However, no amount of regret could bring back the man she had deeply wounded.

Every time my wife, Jocelyn Seacross, visits her childhood sweetheart, Levi Anderson, who is terminally ill, she hints to me that maybe we should get a divorce. She says it's because Levi's dying wish is to have a proper place in her life. Today, she hints at it again. I don't kick up a fuss and simply say, "Okay." Because this conversation has already happened 99 times. This is the hundredth time this conversation has come up, and I finally find a reason to convince myself to let her go—our child is dead. Now, all that remains between Jocelyn and me are two certified copies of the marriage certificate.

To help my husband, Julian Parker, pay off the debt from his stock-market losses, I agreed to sell one of my kidneys. But on the day of the surgery, our six-year-old daughter, Ella Parker, ran to the clinic all by herself and frantically called Julian for help. Julian sounded conflicted. "Mom's only having one kidney removed. It'll get Dad out of this mess for good. But if she doesn't do it, Dad's whole future is ruined." Ella kept begging him to stop the surgery, but Julian simply hung up. Then he hurried toward a private hospital suite nearby, his face filled with worry. Inside lay Claire Morgan, the woman he'd never gotten over. Her face was deathly pale. "Don't worry. We've got a kidney for you. You're going to be fine." He lowered his voice. "And don't feel guilty. I'm the one who chose to lie to her. She's still young. She can live just fine with one kidney." Claire's transplant was a success. Julian was in such a good mood afterward that, for once, he even suggested taking Ella and me on a trip, calling it a belated honeymoon. But he had no idea I was already dead. After my kidney was removed, I couldn't even afford $9.90 for the antibiotics I needed. The wound became infected, and I died. And Ella finally gave up on her father, too.