Historias cortas de Tragic Love Romance y novelas ambientadas en Regret

The day I'm diagnosed with cancer happens to be the birthday of my wife's adopted son, Logan Smith. Before the party starts, I end up coughing up blood and ruining the cheerful atmosphere. My wife, Rosalie Smith, doesn't take me to the hospital. Instead, she locks me up in the basement. She looks down at me bleeding out on the ground and says coldly, "Xander Kastel, you really know how to pick your timing. Of all days, you had to cough up blood on Lolo's birthday. How dare you do it today?" I beg her to take me to the hospital, but she says she has already consulted the doctor and knows that early-stage cancer can't cause me to cough up blood. She's convinced I'm deliberately putting on an act to get back at Caleb Anderson, her first love. I pleaded desperately. "I am your husband! Rosalie, please take me to the hospital. I promise I'll never show up again." Rosalie's face darkens, and she grabs me by the throat. "Don't play these push-and-pull games with me. As long as you stay here quietly until midnight passes and Lolo's birthday is over, of course, I'll take you to the hospital. Once you've recovered, you'll still be the Smith family's live-in son-in-law." I keep screaming from the agonizing pain I'm in. Rosalie thinks I'm being annoying, so she takes Caleb and Logan to a hotel to celebrate instead. Some time later, she suddenly thinks of me, so she asks her secretary if my surgery has gone well. Her secretary's face pales as he answers in a trembling voice, "Mr. Kastel has… has left with Ms. Kastel."

When a massive hurricane headed toward our city, officials declared the entire area a high-risk zone and ordered everyone to evacuate. But my fiancée, Mabel Payne, refused to leave. Her adopted younger brother, Jason Payne, suffered from severe trauma, and he wouldn't budge. On the first day, Jason took a high-powered slingshot and shattered the expensive hurricane-resistant windows I had installed. On the second day, he flushed our entire supply of emergency medications down the toilet. On the third day, he opened the front door and let a pack of stray cats and dogs tear through all the emergency food I had spent so long stocking up on. With nearly everything we needed to survive the hurricane destroyed, I suggested hiring a professional evacuation team to get Jason and the rest of us to safety before the storm hit. Instead, Mabel flew into a rage. "Jason has PTSD! Taking him somewhere unfamiliar could trigger another episode! Are you trying to get him killed?" But when the hurricane finally hit, Mabel shoved me right out of the rescue helicopter, breaking my leg. "This is all your fault! You're taking up the space Jason needs for his things! You know he can't function without them! What if his condition gets worse? Just wait for the next rescue helicopter!" What she didn't know was that there wasn't going to be another helicopter. And without me, this one wasn't going anywhere.

The next time I saw Lindsay Reed was seven years after she forgot who I was. She stopped by my roadside stand with a little boy to buy some waffles. I held out the card reader, my voice steady. "That'll be five dollars." Lindsay stared at me for a long moment, sadness in her eyes. "Have we met before?" I smiled and shook my head. "No, I don't think so." But that was a lie. Seven years earlier, we almost got married.

Ethan Shaw is dead. His face has been destroyed and his limbs severed. When his body reaches the morgue, the person who performs the autopsy is his own wife, Dr. Vivian Sullivan. She is a cool, rational professor of forensic pathology, and she is the woman Ethan loved for more than a decade. Six years ago he lost his voice saving her life, and she married him because of it. In all the years that followed, she remembered every one of his follow-up appointments yet never once remembered his birthday. She tended his injuries, but gave every ounce of warmth and favor she had to his younger brother. Right up until the moment he died, Ethan was calling her, over and over. And she hung up on his last plea for help so she could film a meteor shower for his brother. Afterward, Vivian finds a scar she knows on the body, a red mole behind its ear, and the ring he died protecting--the one he'd meant to give her. She finally recognizes him.

My adopted sister, Jasmine, lost a million dollars in a bad investment scheme. On that fateful day, a disgruntled client showed up before us, furious that his entire life's savings had disappeared overnight and desperate to exact his revenge. When my boyfriend, Connor Sanders, showed up to rescue us, both of us reached a pleading hand to him in fear, but he swatted mine away and snarled, "Rosie, cut the crap! I know you're just faking, and you better stop, or else karma will come back to you! Jasmine has a heart condition, so I'll need to send her to the hospital right away!" Faking it? If only he knew the truth—that the unfortunate daughter born with a congenital heart disease was, in fact, me! On the day of my funeral, my boyfriend Connor wept upon my grave and blinded himself out of remorse. From that day onwards, Connor "Hawk-Eye" Sanders would live in eternal darkness.

My family has always seen me as a lunatic. The day I catch Tiffany Egan cheating on me, I jump from the fifth floor with her in my arms. She survives, while I become a coma patient. From then on, that man makes a point of getting intimate with her right beside me every night, all to get back at me. In the first year, whenever Tiffany mentions me, her voice will catch with resentment. She says dying together would've been letting me off too easily. In the second year, she bites down on him in the heat of the moment and says she wants to set the three of us on fire and let us all burn to death. By the third year, they barely talk about me anymore. They spend most of their time calculating her ovulation cycle and picking a date for their wedding. The day they finally get married, I wake up. Under the harsh sunlight, Tiffany, visibly pregnant, rises onto her toes to accept a kiss from my best friend, Dominic Green. I lift my thin, frail hands and clap along with my old friends. The applause is so out of place that it startles everyone. My older sister, Sophia Young, is the first to rush over and block my way. She warns me coldly, "Don't start going crazy again, Zachary. Tiffany and Dominic registered their marriage years ago. If it weren't for you, they wouldn't have had to wait until today for their wedding." Dominic is Mom's prized student. She has always favored him. "Zachary, just think of Tiffany as having died three years ago when you jumped with her. Please, let them be happy." My eyes pass over Tiffany's anguished face, and I slowly nod. But the moment Dominic speaks, my empty stomach clenches on instinct. I grab the knife from the cake beside me. Three years of suffering is more than enough. I want something sweet for a change. I'm ready to let them go this time, but unfortunately, they don't believe I'm sane.

The first week after I married into Claire Smith's family, her grandfather looked at me across a table full of relatives and said calmly, "From now on, keep your mouth shut and do as you're told." Claire did not say a word in my defense. She did not even look up at me. Yet when we returned to our room that night, she bought me a brand-new watch that had just been released. For the next three years, her younger brother ordered me around like I was his servant, while her mother repeatedly pointed a finger in my face and accused me of living off her daughter. At the family Christmas dinner every year, I was never given a seat at the head table. At the company's annual dinner, I could not even get a proper seat. Every time it happened, Claire would make it up to me afterward with a gift and a few words of comfort. "Just hang in there a little longer. Once I become general manager, I'll finally have a real say in this family." I believed her, so I endured it for three whole years. That all changed when Hank Lawson, a young man Claire had been supporting through a scholarship, joined the company. Hank completely botched a multimillion-dollar project, yet Claire did not criticize him once during the meeting. Instead, she took responsibility for his mistake in front of the entire executive team. "He's still young. He needs time to learn." At the Christmas dinner that year, Hank clumsily knocked over an antique teapot that Claire's grandfather had treasured for years. It hit the floor and shattered, sending pieces of ceramic skittering across the room. Claire immediately grabbed Hank's hand and carefully checked his fingers for cuts, then she looked up at her grandfather. "Grandpa, don't scare him." On Hank's birthday, Claire rented out an entire ballroom at a hotel for the celebration. Almost everyone from the company showed up. They gathered around the two of them, laughing and raising their glasses, as if they were celebrating an engagement rather than a birthday. It was only then that I finally understood. Claire was not incapable of standing up for someone. She simply had never been willing to stand up for me. This time, I did not fight it. I pulled out my phone and called my brother. When he answered, I was silent for a few seconds. I finally said, "I lost. I'm ready to come back and help you."

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.

For eight years, I stayed by John Harlem's side, even without a title. I was there when he recovered and rose from his wheelchair, and I was there when he clawed his way out of depression. I thought that one day, if I endured long enough, he would see my sincerity and affection for him. And we might end up together. But when his first love returned to the country, all my hopes turned into delusions. He told me to put away feelings I should never have had and remain by his side as nothing more than his "sister". For her, he deceived me, humiliated me, and pushed me away. What he never knew was that in helping him heal, I had absorbed far too much of his darkness. The very day he stopped taking his medication, I was diagnosed with severe depression. In order to save myself, I chose to let him go… and married his uncle instead. But at my wedding, he set aside his pride and dignity, dropped to his knees before everyone, and begged me for nothing more than a single glance.

Vivian Grant lost her memory and forgot everything about me. Her memory stopped in the year when she loved her ex-husband most. No matter how the people around her tried to explain it, she still believed I was the third party who had come between them. The doctors said her amnesia might be treatable, so I held on to that hope and refused to let go. For three years, we got divorced and remarried over and over again. We became the biggest joke in the city's elite circles. Some people even started betting on us. They bet on when I would finally give up, and when Vivian would finally remember. Then news of our eighth divorce hit the trending charts again. Reporters rushed into the law firm with cameras on their shoulders. They shoved microphones in my face, their questions full of provocation. "Mr. Sterling, as a divorce attorney, how does it feel to have been divorced eight times yourself?" The firm's sign was smashed. The commendation banners clients had given me were trampled underfoot. Before I could respond, my supervisor fired me for damaging the profession's reputation. "Julian Sterling, let me give you some advice. Have some self-respect. Stop clinging to Ms. Grant." I clenched my trembling hands and suddenly felt exhausted. They were right. This time, I really should give up.

On the day of our road trip, I got up at four in the morning to pack my bags. The moment I opened the front passenger door, Patrick Farr grabbed me by the wrist. “Sit in the back. Dolly’s used to riding up front.” My best friend, Dolly Smith, immediately stood up for me. “Yuna came all the way from Southvale just to be with you. Don’t treat her like that.” Patrick cheerfully fastened her seat belt. “Relax. She cares about you.” Throughout the drive, they chatted about a new restaurant in Northvale and a mutual friend's wedding. I was the odd one out, having gone to college in Southvale, and couldn’t keep up with their conversation. Dolly suddenly frowned and said she felt carsick. Without even turning around, Patrick said, “Yuna, get the first-aid kit from the trunk.” I obediently got out and searched through the trunk. In the blink of an eye, the two of them were deep in conversation, and they drove away without me. I hurried after them, but my foot caught on something, and I fell hard. My knee struck the ground, and blood trickled down through the dirt. My phone buzzed, and I received a video call from Patrick—from five years in the future. He stared at my disheveled appearance, his eyes red-rimmed. “Yuna, I finally found you.” “Are you all right?” I said nothing and turned the camera around. On the screen, Patrick and Dolly sat side by side in the car before vanishing into the distance at the end of the highway. The smile instantly faded from the man’s face. A hand reached through the screen and gently placed a bandage over my wound. His voice was cold yet filled with concern. “Give him one last chance. Otherwise, I’ll take you away.”

I'm in the middle of my pediatric shift when an emergency call comes in. A three-year-old boy arrives, hemorrhaging and unconscious from a car crash, but there is no matching blood type in the bank. Then, it hits me that my husband, Ethan Stone, has the same blood type, so I ask him to donate blood right away. When he arrives and stands frozen to the spot, I can no longer hold back my rage. "What are you waiting for? Saving his life is the priority here!" That's when the boy's mother sprints over and screams, "No! Close family can't donate! He's the boy's father!"

"Daddy? When are you coming home? Mommy's on the bed, and she won't wake up." Luca's voice shook, breaking up with tiny, hiccuping sobs. "If she's not getting up, wake her. She's just being lazy, " Bill barked. "Look, I'm busy. Go ask your mom if you need something, and stop calling me for every little thing!" Then he hung up, just like that. He was too busy flirting with his secretary to care. Me? Luca? We weren't even on his radar. What he didn't know was that I was already dead. But later, when reality slammed into him like a truck, he clung to my photo, sobbing and begging me not to leave. Too late.

On the day of our wedding anniversary, my husband, Xavier Marshall, gave me a bangle. I tried it on and found it a size too big, with the bangle almost dropping off my wrist when my arm was down. I asked casually, “Why is it so big?” My husband stood in a daze for a second before wrapping an arm around my shoulders and saying with a smile, “I found this bangle beautiful, but it didn’t come in your size. You can still wear it even if it’s a little big, right?” I thought nothing much of it and happily put it back on. During a family gathering, I saw my husband’s best friend, Melissa Shanks, wearing a glass-grade jadeite bangle on her wrist. She smiled as she answered someone’s question, “This? It’s a birthday gift from Xavier. There were two of them, but I didn’t fancy the other ice-grade one, so I just kept this. “It’s hard to find a bangle in my size. I didn’t expect him to find two at one go.” I quietly hid my wrist under the table as my face flushed with embarrassment. The gift I had so treasured turned out to be a leftover from Melissa. Melissa, and not me, turned out to be Xavier’s priority. In that case, I no longer wanted the man or the bangle.

Eight years after I broke up with Greyson Tromp, we met in the hospital. He brought his wife for a prenatal checkup and happened to have their consultation with me. I wore a mask and carefully examined the condition of her baby. The intern beside us asked how they ended up together. Elise Jacob said smugly, "You have to fight for a handsome guy. To get the best, you have to fight for it! He used to like someone else. To win his heart, I stirred up trouble between them, causing them to misunderstand each other and gradually drift apart. "Later, they had a really bad argument, and I hid the apology letter he asked me to pass on to that woman. I still keep it as our token of love. That woman was pregnant at the time, and I used every means to get rid of her baby!" After they left, I removed my mask. My hands instinctively rested on my stomach. There was an ugly scar beneath my clothes. It was from when Greyson forced me to abort our baby. A few days later, Greyson came kneeling before me, holding that apology letter and a divorce agreement.

Throughout our four years of college, Derek would always book train tickets for me and my best friend, Giselle, whenever we traveled home for semester breaks. He always claimed he was too late in getting the tickets, so we never ended up sitting together. Every time the tickets were issued, Giselle would tear him apart in our group chat. "Seriously, Derek? You booked three tickets and somehow managed to put us in three different cars. "Next time, you’d better at least make sure you’re sitting next to Iris, or I’ll be coming after you." Derek fired right back. "Who the hell do you think you are? I’d sit at her feet if she asked me to. It’s none of your business." I bought their story. Even when I spent hours sitting alone, or when I came down with a fever during the night ride and tried Derek’s number more than a dozen times without success, I told myself he was probably asleep in another part of the train. Then came our graduation trip. Someone asked if I would switch seats with them. I grabbed my suitcase and made my way down the aisle, only to find Giselle, my jacket propped over her shoulders, and her head resting on Derek’s shoulder. The two of them were sharing a pair of earbuds. Spotting me, Derek pulled out his earbud and straightened his back. "Just so we’re clear, we’ve been careful about boundaries. "I was worried you’d feel uncomfortable knowing we were sitting next to each other, so I kept it from you." Giselle patted the seat next to her. "I’m your best friend. Wouldn’t you rather have me sitting next to your boyfriend, making sure he behaves, than some random girl?" Before I could say a word, a conductor came over carrying two matching luggage tags with a smile. "According to our records, you always booked two seats together on all of your sixteen trips in the last four years. Here is a little something to commemorate your journeys with us." The conductor noticed me and reviewed the booking information again. "You must be the friend who always travels with them. "That’s strange. Why do you always book a seat separate from them?" The entire car went silent. The truth dawned on me when I saw the discoloration on Derek’s face. They had never once been apart during the train trips. For four years, the single seat left apart from theirs had always been mine.

The night Dylan Smith—the heir to one of the most prominent families in Valenford—breaks up with his first love, Phoebe Hayes, he chooses me on a whim while I'm delivering drinks. He gives me a luxurious mansion, jewelry, and a black card with no limit, transforming me from a penniless woman who can't even afford her mother's medical bills into the lady of the Smith family. Everyone claims he marries me only because my features bear a slight resemblance to Phoebe's. Initially, I merely want to repay him for his kindness. However, over the course of seven years, I learn to navigate through high society and manage our household. I stay by his side through the hardest days of his battle for control of the Smith family, and without even realizing it, I fall hopelessly in love with him. Later on, when Phoebe returns to the country, Dylan doesn't divorce me. She joins Smith Group and becomes his right-hand woman, while I stay at the Smith residence as his lawfully wedded wife. I begin to believe that seven years of marriage must count for something. Surely, the life we've built as husband and wife can outweigh the feelings he carries for his first love. That all changes on the night of our seventh wedding anniversary, when a fire suddenly breaks out at the hotel. Dylan scoops up Phoebe, who only suffers minor injuries. He doesn't hesitate to leave me, who's pregnant with his child, behind in the thick smoke. When I come to, I've lost my baby. The doctor tells me I'll never be able to have children again. As I look at his belatedly teary eyes, I suddenly realize these seven years have been nothing but a joke. He once pulled me out of the mud, only to throw me into a sea of flames with his own hands. Now, my baby's gone. I've finally repaid the debt I owe him. I take off my wedding ring, sign the divorce agreement, and discreetly leave Valenford. From this moment on, Dylan's wife has perished in that fire. The woman who survives has nothing to do with him anymore.

[No matter how carefully you plan, fate can erase everything with a single stroke.] The moment I confirmed that Delilah Carter was cheating on me, that post appeared on my phone. I opened it calmly and scrolled to the comments beneath a thread titled "Unfaithful". Then I added a few lines of my own. [How unbelievable can it be?] [A coworker snapped a casual vacation photo and posted it online. Out of thousands of people in the background, my fiancee and my best friend just happened to end up in the same frame.] [Our wedding is in three days, yet here I am, rushing across the country in the middle of the night to catch them together.] After posting the comment, I locked my phone. The wallpaper display happened to be our wedding portrait. Leaning against the white wall of the hotel corridor, I closed my bloodshot eyes in exhaustion. Only after the intense, frenzied noises inside finally stopped did I raise my hand—still wearing my wedding ring—and knock on the door. "Who is it?" Delilah opened the door wearing a silk camisole. I pushed past her and walked inside. Marcel Graham froze when he saw me, unsure how to react. "Cedric Davenport..." Before he could say anything else, the beautiful Delilah threw herself in front of him. "It was me! I seduced Marcel! Whatever you want to do, take it out on me! Leave him alone!" They clung to each other like tragic lovers facing the end of the world, desperate to hold on to one another. I stood silently in the darkness, my expression vacant, as I breathed in the lingering musky scent in the room. I didn't argue or make a scene. I simply committed the moment to memory. I told myself not to look back or forgive. Then I opened the invitation to Europe that had been sitting untouched in my inbox for months. On the final day before it expired, I accepted. From that moment on, the two things I treasured most—love and friendship—became nothing more than illusions.

Three years ago, my best friend was hit by a car trying to save me. She had been in a coma ever since. I sat by her hospital bed, holding her hand. "Serena, you promised you'd be my maid of honor, remember? Julian and I finally set the date. Please wake up soon, okay? I miss you so much." My choked sobbing was cut short by a phone call. The nurse was asking me to come pay next month's hospital fees. But when I came back, I heard the voice I had been desperately waiting three years to hear. "Julian, you told me to wait for you while you broke things off with her." "I've waited three years for you! She comes to see me every single day, and all I can do is lie here." "Now you two are getting married. What about me!"

An underwater volcano has been detected showing unusual activity, with the potential to erupt at any moment. Evacuations in the surrounding sea area have already begun. My husband, Ethan Gibson, boarded a lifeboat with his true love, Aria York, leaving me—his pregnant wife—behind. Not only that, he scolded me for being jealous at the worst possible time. "Aria can't swim. I have to take her first. What more do you want? I left the life jacket for you—isn't that enough?" "I'm pregnant… I'm scared…" I tried to plead. "Enough! Wendy, what's wrong with you? Why do you always have to be so dramatic?" That night, I was still nowhere to be found. Furious, he sent me a message: [Wendy! Where the hell are you? Do you have to take things this far?] [I'm telling you; I'm not coming to look for you. If you come back now, I'll act like this never happened. But if you don't, then don't bother coming back—ever!] However, Ethan… I couldn't come back anymore.