After Death Romance Short Stories & Marriage Novels

On the night of our wedding, Simone Laurent did not inject the promised capital into the Holt family's company. Instead, she had someone carry in a crate of scratch-off tickets. She undid the top buttons of her blouse, her eyes lazy with amusement. "Here are 2,000,000 dollars' worth of scratch-offs. Whatever you scratch off, that is what you get. Be good, Spencer, and maybe next time I will give you something real." I knew what she was doing. She punished me because yesterday I had ruined her evening, and I had thrown a glass of red wine all over her assistant, the one in the see-through shirt. I did not cry this time. I did not make a scene. My fingers found an ultra-thin condom in her pocket that was not my size, and I simply wiped my hand clean and said nothing. The surprise in her eyes lasted half a second before it softened into a satisfied smile. She wrapped her arms around me from behind, warm breath spilling against my ear. "That is right. Now you are starting to act like a husband who knows his place." She pulled out an unlimited black card and pressed it to my chest, the plastic cold through my shirt. "Take it. This should be more than enough for your family's company." I managed a stiff smile, pulled the card free, and handed it back. "I do not need it." She did not know this. During the days she spent breaking me in, my father had already been cornered by debt collectors on a rooftop and forced past the edge. Dead men did not need money.

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.

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.

I spend three years in prison taking the fall for Dwight Reed, the precious assistant of my hospital director wife, Gretchen Payne. On the day I am released, the first thing I see is yet another Medical Malpractice Liability Acknowledgment. "Sign it, Dustin. I want you to take the blame for this incident, too. Dwi has a bright future ahead of him. He can't have a stain on his record." Gretchen shoves a pen into my hand. "You've already served time. So, one more charge isn't going to make a difference." When I don't budge, she clicks her tongue impatiently. "Dustin, you're a convicted felon. You should be grateful for the chance to take the fall for Dwi! It's only five years! "Don't push your luck. Or is this about money? In that case, name your price!" I look at Dwight, who's sitting in the car with his arm around her waist, and let out a silent, bitter chuckle. My hand tightens around the late-stage leukemia diagnosis in my pocket. Gretchen, how am I supposed to serve five years when I only have seven days left to live?

Everyone said my wife, Zoey Harper, was an amazing wife and mom who'd do anything for me and our son, Leo. Leo's doctor warned us three times that he might not make it. Then he died. Zoey claimed she was overseas for work. She wasn't. She'd invited Peter Cole—the first love she'd never gotten over—and his family to our apartment for dinner. I came home carrying Leo's urn, ready to confront her. Instead, she tossed my luggage into the hall. "We have guests, and we're out of rooms. Go stay somewhere else for a few days."

To help her childhood sweetheart, David Middleton, take my place studying abroad, my wife, Sharon Griffin, destroys my records and deliberately fills in false information, ensuring that I'm permanently denied a visa. She even severely injured my hands before sending me to the Behavioral Reform Center. My mother-in-law, Paula Brown, who has always treated me with affection, takes Sharon's side. "Kyle is so ungrateful. We gave him everything, and he still wanted to get a PhD abroad to find his biological parents. Who's going to take care of me if he's gone?" Sharon snorts. "He's just vain. When he found out I'd turned down Westbridge's offer of admission, he gave me the silent treatment and threatened to divorce me. If I let him go abroad, he'd think he could do whatever he wanted. "As my husband, he has everything he could ever need, yet he still wants to take David's opportunities away from him. Maybe the Behavioral Reform Center can teach him to appreciate what he has." A semester later, Sharon goes to the airport to pick up David, who's returning from his studies abroad. For the first time in a long while, she asks her assistant, Adam Norris, "It's been so long. Has Kyle learned his lesson? Tell him he can come home for the winter break." She doesn't know that I've already died on the very first day she sent me to that reform center.

When I found Silas Pembroke, he was carefully untangling a strand of another woman’s hair from his tie clip. The two of them were wrapped around each other, far too close to pretend otherwise. He let out a mocking laugh. “Jenna, what exactly are you going to accuse Sienna and me of this time?” Sienna Vale smiled sweetly. “Mrs. Pembroke, you stayed away longer than usual this time.” I steadied myself and said, “I’m not Jenna. I’m her twin sister, Summer Sinclair.” Silas burst out laughing. “What is this, your latest stunt?” Then his expression hardened. “Keep pushing me, and I can’t promise you’ll stay Mrs. Pembroke forever.” I only looked at him and said quietly, “Silas, my sister left three keepsakes behind for you.”

The year Chelsea Shelton, a Hawthorne Bay heiress, hated me more than ever, she brought home one guy after another. And after she was done with them, she made me pay them off. I'd cursed, fought, even landed in the hospital after throwing hands with escorts. Eventually, I stopped caring and signed one million-dollar check after another. All so she'd keep paying Dad's medical bills. Then Dad went into cardiac arrest again. He was critical. Hands shaking, I called Chelsea. She told the hospital to kick him out of the ICU. "Rowyn Reynaud, that's not how you beg. I don't like it." I tore home through the rain and begged her to let him stay. She made me stand outside all night and listen to her hook up with another guy. By morning, I signed another check and handed it over. Before I could ask her to spare Dad, a fist cracked across my face. Chelsea's college-age boy toy glared at me, pissed. "Chelsea, does this freeloader seriously think I'm some escort? We love each other. Who the hell does he think he is, throwing money at me?" Chelsea frowned. "Rowyn, apologize. Or do you want Frederick dead?" But the hospital had just texted me. Dad was already gone. Sometime during the night, he'd bitten through his oxygen line and ended his life. With the last of his strength, he'd left me one final note in blood. [Rowyn, I can't keep being a burden to you.]

After losing his entire retirement savings to a scam, my father-in-law, Kyle Knight, tried to kill himself by overdosing on pills. I frantically called my husband, Joshua Knight, a psychology expert, hoping he could talk his father out of it. "Dad lost his entire retirement fund to a scam. He left a suicide note, and he's trying to kill himself. Come home!" Instead, Joshua snapped at me for making such a big deal out of it. "Your dad's made plenty of bad decisions before. Maybe this'll finally teach him a lesson. Don't bother me with stupid stuff like this again. I'm trying to watch a movie with Vanessa." For a second, I thought he hadn't heard me clearly. I was about to tell him that the man dying was his own father. Then Vanessa Morgan's voice came through the phone. The horror movie scared her. Joshua immediately turned to comfort her. Later, he casually told me to put together a PowerPoint on how my dad got scammed so he could use the case in one of his anti-scam livestreams. I swallowed everything I was about to say and obediently said, "Okay." After all, the person who scammed Kyle out of his retirement savings and drove him to suicide was Vanessa's mother.

As I was rummaging through the trash for leftovers, my wife, who had died three years ago, suddenly showed up. She stepped out of the Voyce and looked down at me from above. “Honey, you really did pass my test.” I was holding some moldy stale bread. I stared at her in bewilderment. It turned out that three years ago, at a class reunion, the school heartthrob she had once dated had suggested it. “I wanted to see if your love is real.”

The ninth time Julian Hale chose Vivian Cross over me, I held a knife to Vivian's throat and made her beg for forgiveness in the middle of a crowded downtown plaza. I thought that would finally be enough to end the affair. Instead, Julian made me pay for hurting her. He went after my father's company and destroyed it, leaving my family broke and buried in debt to loan sharks. In the end, my father, Martin Ellison, couldn't take it anymore. He swallowed an entire bottle of pills beside my mother, Diane Ellison. The shock was too much for her heart, and she died soon after. I lost both my parents in a single day. The day after the funerals, the doctor gave me more bad news. I had late-stage stomach cancer. I had three months left, maybe less. And just like that, I was done fighting. I moved out of our bedroom, threw away my wedding ring, and stopped calling him hundreds of times whenever he stayed out all night. Even when he brought Vivian home just to provoke me, I didn't argue. Instead, I hired a top chef to cook her favorite dishes. Julian thought I had finally learned my place. Then came Vivian's birthday. With a shy smile, she said her birthday wish was to marry Julian. I pulled the signed divorce papers from my bag and slid them across the table. Julian panicked. He ripped them apart and grabbed my wrist, his eyes bloodshot. "Nora, what game are you playing now? Trying to make me chase you? Where did all that fight in you go?" Before I could answer, I coughed up a mouthful of blood.

The day my boyfriend, Ashton Grant, ends up in the hospital, I find his will. Or rather, 214 of them. They're written on different dates, but every single one names the same beneficiary. And it isn't me. It's his first love. My hands go cold. I can't even confront him because Ashton is lying unconscious in a hospital bed. "Mr. Grant is addicted to extreme sports. The more dangerous, the better," his assistant explains. "He writes a new will before every trip. But only the most recent one was ever made official through his lawyer." I already know the answer before I ask. "And I'm still not in it, am I?" The assistant falls silent. After six years together, Ashton still disappears for weeks at a time, leaving me terrified that he won't come home one day. And all this time, whenever he risks his life, he's making sure that another woman is taken care of if he dies. His first love. If she's the one he thinks about when he might not make it home, then why should I be the one waiting and worrying when he leaves?

When my husband, a college professor, suddenly asked to sleep in separate rooms, I knew he had developed feelings for one of his female students. Then that student hit our seven-year-old son with her car, leaving him paralyzed. I gave Cedric Langley two choices. Either send her to prison, or make sure she never graduated and force her to spend the rest of her life paying for what she'd done. But when Cedric came home, he dropped to his knees beside me, his eyes rimmed red. "She was so ashamed that she took her own life. I'll never betray you or our child again." He smashed the student's gravestone, burned everything connected to her, and became the devoted husband and father he had once been. Three years after our son was paralyzed, I happened to see a file open on Cedric's computer. "100 Reconciliation Coupons: Usage History." "Coupon No. 100: Forgive Elara for her unintended mistake and help her evade legal punishment." A loud buzz exploded inside my head. Elara Beaumont—the woman who should have been burning in hell for what she had done—was actually his teaching assistant, Evelyn Montrose, living under a new name. One reconciliation coupon was enough for him to completely forgive the woman who had left our son paralyzed. But there was something Cedric did not know. That very day, the last reconciliation coupon between us had just been used up.

My husband, Mason Crawford, is a renowned obstetrician-gynecologist with more thank-you greeting cards from patients than I can count. But when I start bleeding during my first trimester and rush to the hospital to see him, he kicks me out. "Family doesn't get special treatment. Hospital rules. You have to register and wait in line like everyone else." I take his words to heart. I never bother him, not once, for any of my prenatal checkups. That is, until his first love, Vivian Werner, who married and moved abroad, comes back pregnant. That's when everything changes. When Vivian comes in for her prenatal checkups, he personally pulls strings to arrange a VIP room for her. And the checklist of tests he draws up for her is even more detailed than the one he gave me. Vivian says she's scared something might happen to her baby, so he brings in the best medical team to watch over her 24/7. I find this unfair, so I complain to him about it a lot. But Mason simply wipes away my tears gently. "She's divorced and pregnant. She's already got it hard enough. Do you really have to be jealous over this, too?" Since I can't think of a comeback, I have no choice but to bite my tongue and bottle up my feelings. Then, on my way to get a fetal heart-rate monitoring test, I get into a car accident. I call him countless times, but he never comes to sign the consent forms. The surgery ends, and I hold our stillborn baby in my arms. I want him to come see our daughter one last time, but he still doesn't pick up. It isn't until the sun goes down that his buddy calls me with the "good news". "Leah, Vivian's given birth. It's a boy. I've never seen Mason's hands shake like that before. You should go get a gift and bring it here as soon as possible. Mason says he wants to become the baby's godfather." So this is why he hasn't picked up. He's busy delivering his ex-girlfriend's baby.

At my wedding to my longtime boyfriend Adrian Grey, my younger sister Lydia Hastings burst through the doors in a wedding dress and announced that she was carrying his child. My parents shielded her. Everyone urged me to step aside. Adrian held my hand, his voice gentle. "Let her have today's wedding. Go stay at the southern estate. Once the baby is born, I'll make it up to you." He wanted her as his wife and me as the woman he loved in secret. I slipped off the engagement ring I had worn for five years, placed it in his palm, and walked out of the church alone. But yielding only brought an even more brutal reprisal. Lydia locked me inside a burning room, and my parents and the man I loved sent me to prison to take the blame, all to preserve the family's reputation. Lydia even had me tortured. Wearing my navy blue coat with Adrian's brooch pinned to the collar, she smiled at me through the iron bars. "Evelyn, you look pathetic in there." Three days later, my mother finally arrived at the prison with the bail papers. But all the warden handed her was a stamped death notice. "Too late. Miss Hastings is dead."

It's the third year since my wife, Joyce Sinclair, cheated on me. I spread her intimate photos with her male assistant, Bryan Long, on the internet. Then, I doused myself in gasoline and threatened to drag everyone down to hell with me. Bryan's so scared that he flees the city that very night. I think I've won. However, to settle my lawsuit and cover the damages, my older sister, Rachel Lovett, sells her house and takes out high-interest loans. In the end, the burden becomes too much for her, and she jumps from a high-rise building. Her voice is hoarse in the recording she leaves me. "That's enough, Ray. We've lost everything. Mom and Dad have aged overnight, and I can't take it anymore..." Mom clutches Rachel's belongings and cries until she passes out. Dad's emaciated hands clamp around my neck as he demands at the top of his lungs, "How many more lives do you have to destroy before you're satisfied?" Tears silently trail down my cheeks, and I finally come to my senses. I no longer neurotically look into every single man around Joyce, and I stop badgering her with questions about the scent of men's cologne on her. Even when I walk in on her staring at a photo of her and Bryan and reminiscing about the past, I take the initiative to bring him back. It all comes to a head when Bryan wishes to become Joyce's lawfully wedded husband on his birthday. Without the slightest hesitation, I print out the divorce agreement, sign and seal it, and deliver it to him. To my surprise, Joyce rips the agreement to shreds. She grips my chin and demands hysterically, "Raymond Lovett, what happened to the stubborn man who'd rather die than divorce me? Where is he now?"