เรื่องสั้นแนว Feel-Good Story Romance และนิยาย Scumbag

When Ethan Lane came back from his business trip, he pulled two dolls out of his suitcase. One was pink, the other blue. His daughter, Nina Lane's eyes lit up for a second when she saw the pink one. But instead of reaching for it, she glanced over at Crystal Shaw, Vivian Shaw's daughter. That five-year-old girl had already stretched out her hand for the pink doll. So Nina pulled her hand back and said quietly, "I'll take the blue one." I froze. Nina's loved pink ever since she was little. Her backpack is pink, her water bottle is pink, even her hair clips are always pink. But the moment Crystal was in the picture, she stepped aside. Later, when Ethan drove Vivian and Crystal home, I asked Nina why she chose blue. She looked up at me timidly and said, "If I give up what I like, just like Mommy does, will Daddy come home more?" My throat tightened. I've given in so many times over the years. But looking at my daughter right now, I suddenly realized—I don't want to hold back anymore.

On my wedding day, my husband's female bestie showed up holding a torn bridesmaid dress and accused me of assaulting her in front of all our guests. I had no way to defend myself, so I turned to my husband for help. Instead, he looked at me with fake disappointment and publicly labeled me a lesbian. Then, to get his hands on my family's assets, he had me committed to a psychiatric hospital, where I was tortured and humiliated. I barely managed to escape, only to die in a car accident they'd carefully planned. It wasn't until my final moments that I found out the truth—the torn bridesmaid dress wasn't evidence of my crime. It was proof of their affair in the stairwell moments before the ceremony. When I opened my eyes again, I was back in my dressing room, minutes before the wedding. This time, I'm going to make sure those two pay for everything.

The stray cat I adopted had recently started looking at my boyfriend, Logan Bennett, and his female best friend, Chloe Dawson, like they were complete idiots. Then one day, Chloe climbed into the passenger seat of Logan’s car again and shot me a provocative smile. A fierce little voice suddenly rang out in my head: “Human, that woman is calling you an idiot in her head! She’s also planning to get your man drunk tonight! Hurry up and slap her! If you do, I’ll make sure you find money on the street when you leave!” I froze and stared down at Mochi in my arms. So my cat could not only talk, but also read minds and predict the future? Fine. From today on, Mochi and I would make these two shameless cheaters pay—and make sure everyone knew exactly who they were!

Upon discovering I was pregnant, I excitedly rushed to my husband’s company to put our baby down as our insurance beneficiary. However, I was shocked to read my husband’s file. Partner: Victoria Winston Children: Jack Hudson, Sophia Hudson. I froze. The HR manager said the woman was his legally wedded wife and the heiress to the largest hotel chain on the East Coast. Their children were already seven years old. It felt like my world was crumbling down around me. If she was his wife, what was I? His mistress of five years? His friend with benefits? Even more absurdly, I was now pregnant with his child. A child who would never be acknowledged by their father. An illegitimate child. I nodded dazedly. My whole body felt weak. The man I considered my husband was never mine. Even after death, his gravestone would not have my name!

I can hear what animals are thinking. Not even my husband, Corbin Whitmore, knows that secret. On our fifth anniversary, he gave me a limited-edition bag, pulled me close, and made me a promise. "From now on, I'll buy you one every year." For the past few years, he'd been swamped with work, while I'd been tied up at the animal rescue center. We hadn't even had time to celebrate our anniversaries. I thought he was just busy. I thought he still loved me. Then Banjo, the cat I'd had for seven years, jumped up on the dining table, stared at the bag, and spoke. "Mom, the lady with the red bracelet came again last night. "Every time she kisses Dad, Dad buys her a bag. "And her bracelet's missing a diamond." My heart sank. I'd given that bracelet to my cousin, Tamsin Weir. Just last month, she'd told me one of the diamonds had fallen out. When I looked up, Corbin smiled at me. "Do you like it?" I pushed down the chill in my chest and took the bag from him. "I love it." They wanted to use this bag to cover up their affair. Fine. I'd start with the bag and tear their lies apart, one by one.

As soon as I get off the surgical table after my miscarriage, my husband, Presley Quinn, sends me a text message. "You were ten cents short when you paid your share of the power bill this month. Transfer the money to me immediately." I can only sit on the cold bench in the hospital on my own. The anesthesia has yet to wear out, but my belly is already hurting so much that I can practically feel it constricting on itself. The next thing I know, a new post appears on my social media homepage. It's a post made by Vivienne Ashford, the intern Presley is in charge of tutoring. In the photo, Vivienne can be seen holding a bouquet of flowers folded from money bills. A bright and radiant smile blooms on her face. The four-leaf clover necklace adorning her neck is the same necklace I've seen in Presley's purchase history two days ago. The caption of the photo writes, "I don't want a lot of money. I want a ton of love instead." Only then do I remember that today is Valentine's Day as well as my fifth-year anniversary with Presley. Over the past five years, Presley and I have been splitting every single bill, down to two decimal places. If I take a shower for more than 20 minutes, Presley demands that I pay extra for the water heater's power bill. When I cook myself some supper in the middle of the night, Presley wants me to split the gas bill generated by the stove. Even when my mom is hospitalized due to kidney failure and is waiting for her surgical bills to be settled, Presley refuses to lend me a single cent. Instead, he sends me a few links leading to web loans. As I stare at the social media feed, I chuckle all of a sudden. It turns out that Presley does know how to spend money. It's just that he doesn't have the heart to spend it on me. I smile once again as I leave a like on the post. Then, I transfer the ten cents to Presley. From now on, I don't owe him any single penny.

My husband, Matthew Glover, fabricates a scandal to help his childhood sweetheart, reporter Melanie Reed, boost her numbers. "Mrs. Glover Sleeps Around—Multiple Affairs Lead to Repeated Miscarriages." He uses it as a gimmick to grab attention. Next thing I know, my name's in the mud and the internet's tearing me to pieces. When I bring up divorce, Matthew says I'm blowing things out of proportion. "Melanie just started at the TV station. If she doesn't deliver, her coworkers will laugh at her. You're just doing her a favor. It's not like you're actually losing anything." I don't even bother arguing with him. I simply push the divorce agreement toward him. "If you want to help her, go ahead. But we're getting divorced!"

I spent three years on a medical aid mission in Afrikad. During that time, my husband and I could only video call twice a year. In our third year, I missed him so much that I secretly flew home, hoping to surprise him. The moment I opened the front door, I froze. A wedding portrait I had never seen before hung in the living room. In the photo were my husband and another woman. Then, I heard a burst of chatter. As I looked closer, I realized the plants in the house had started talking again. The pothos stretched its vines toward the living room. “She’s back! She’s back! That woman is wearing the doctor’s pajamas again!” The spider plant snickered, “She claimed they were a gift from her best friend last week. That old hag comes up with a new story every few days.” The cactus grumbled, “Quit arguing. She’s bringing that other man over for dinner today. How do you think she’ll explain this to her husband this time?” The pothos replied, “She’ll probably call him her cousin. That’s what she said last time.” Just then, a woman walked out carrying a child. She was startled for a moment when she saw me. “Who are you?” I gave her a faint smile. “I'm Justin's mother.”

"When is that desperate agent of Ace Davidson's finally going to get lost? Just looking at her makes me sick!" "Seriously! She's always clinging to our Ace. Does she really think she's his wife or something?" My finger stopped scrolling across the tablet. Without changing expression, I closed the fan post full of insults on Ace's fan page. As Ace's secret wife of five years and his agent, I'd grown numb to comments like these a long time ago. I turned around, took a box of arnica cream and a steaming hot lunch from my bag, and handed them to the chubby crew member sitting in the corner. "Pudge, eat first. Put some arnica on your face, too. You don't want it to leave a mark." Because of his heavy build and slow movements, the director had slapped Pudge in front of everyone that day. The entire crew had made a joke out of him. I was the only one who'd offered him any comfort. He took the items, his eyes reddening as he looked at me. "Alisson, thank you... You're a good person. There's something I can't keep from you." With that, he glanced around before pulling out a spare phone with a shattered screen. "Alisson, I accidentally caught this on video yesterday while I was organizing props in the underground parking garage." I tapped the video open. On the screen was Ace's private van, the one I'd paid for myself. The vehicle was rocking violently.

When Celia Moore was dying of liver failure, I signed the living-donor consent form and gave her my right liver lobe, nearly sixty percent of my liver, to save her. The independent evaluation doctor asked me again and again whether anyone had coerced me. Through the glass, I could see Adrian Grant standing at the end of the hallway. He didn't come in. He just stood there, head bowed, reading the critical-condition update Celia had just sent him. I said, "No. This is my choice." That surgery nearly killed me. But on the eve of the wedding ceremony we were finally supposed to have, Adrian was still at Celia's bedside. He didn't leave once all night. I left my wedding ring, the divorce petition, and my attorney's engagement letter in the car that was supposed to take him to our wedding. Then I walked away without waiting for him to look back. The day I was discharged, I signed every document alone. There was no one beside me. Three years later, I walked into the Grant Architecture firm's tenth-anniversary gala with a new face, on the arm of the one competitor he feared most. Adrian crossed the entire ballroom and seized my wrist in a crushing grip, his eyes rimmed an alarming red. "Elena, you're alive?" I smiled, pulled my hand free, and straightened his crooked tie. "Mr. Grant, please don't touch me. My fiance has a temper when he gets jealous." Leon Hart slid his arm around my waist and raised an eyebrow at Adrian with a polite, wordless challenge. Adrian's hand froze in midair, as if he'd just been slapped in front of everyone. I turned and walked away without looking back.

My husband, Dominic Moore, insists on having his first love, Irene Cobb, at our wedding ceremony. Just when it's time for the bride to enter the hall, he suddenly asks for the ceremony to be paused for three minutes. Then, he gets off stage and pulls Irene, dressed in a white gown, out of the crowd. Right in front of all the guests, he takes her by the hand and walks her down the aisle, saying, "I promised Irene I'd walk her down the aisle someday." The tearful Irene throws herself into Dominic's arms before saying to my in-laws, "Mom, Dad. Although I won't get to be your daughter-in-law, I still want to address you as Mom and Dad just once." She turns back to Dominic and kisses him passionately. The guests exclaim in shock and whisper among themselves, eager to revel in my humiliation. However, I simply open the doors with a smile. I take off my veil and place it on Irene's head. "Why do you say you won't get to be their daughter-in-law? Since you like this cheating scumbag so much, I'll give him to you."

At a major press conference, my husband, Julian Winslow, is about to publicly introduce me as the love of his life when his young assistant suddenly walks onto the stage carrying a girl. "Go on, sweetheart. Daddy's calling for you." The room erupts. Reporters start firing questions about Julian's relationship with his assistant, but instead of correcting them, Julian simply takes the little girl into his arms and fastens the company's multimillion-dollar new necklace around her neck. "Yes," he says. "We have a daughter." As I stand silently in the crowd, the reporters turn their attention to me. "Ms. Aldridge, you've been with Mr. Winslow and the company for years. Surely you have something to say on such a special occasion?" I smile. Then I take the designs I spent an entire year perfecting and toss them straight into the assistant's hands. "You can have the designs too. Consider them my gift to your happy little family."

The night before our wedding, Edward Fowler's friends gather for a celebration. A full set of sex toys lies in the gift box from his tomboy bestie, Winnie Spencer. I freeze, and Winnie shouts boisterously, "Don't you dare go easy on him, Sarah. That pup might look like someone who's abstaining, but he's actually pretty wild in the sheets. "During the start of the year, he only used three of these, yet he landed me straight in the hospital with injuries that took me half a month to heal!" She then hooks an arm around Edward's neck. "Let me give you a piece of advice as your buddy—you need to learn how to be gentle once you're married. "Sarah looks so delicate, so you'd better not pull the same stunt as last time. I was just recovering, yet you dragged me into it for two whole days. I almost died in bed!" My face darkens. Winnie covers her mouth in exaggerated shock. "It's just us buddies messing around. You're not mad, are you, Sarah?" Everyone is anticipating for me to snap. But instead, I let out a soft chuckle before replying, "Why would I be? I should be thanking you for being a free tutor instead. After all, someone who's in your line of work would charge at least three hundred dollars per night just for the same lesson."

On my fifth birthday after getting together with Kimberly Rivers, I sit at a table filled with dishes that have gone cold, just like I have for the past few years. Much like she did last year, Kimberly promises to celebrate my birthday with me this year, but then she goes back on her word. This year, her excuse is that her childhood friend, Gregory Morales, has invited her and several of her best friends to appear in his glamor shoot. Hence, she stands me up once again and runs off to him without any hesitation. At 11:00 pm that night, Gregory uploads a photo onto his Instagram and sets it so that only I can see it. In the photo, four women in skimpy bikinis are partially kneeling around a man who stood with the unshakable confidence of truth itself. The attached caption read, "I want more than just your heart—I want your body too." I take a screenshot of the photo, then send it to the boyfriends of Kimberly's three best friends. Since they look down on me so much, they'd better hope that they won't need to come begging me on their knees in the future.

I'm a born egotist. I never spiral or beat myself up over anything. If someone screws with me, I screw them right back. As a kid, my parents always favored my elder sister. One Children's Day, they bought her a cake and got me nothing. I flipped the table and smashed the cake into a complete mess. "Who are you trying to bullshit? If you can't afford two kids, don't have two. If you're that broke, why didn't you just get sterilized back then?" In high school, my cousin snatched one of my toys. My aunt said that he was still little and that I should let him have his way. I didn't even bother holding back. I kick him so hard that he howled in pain. "He's not my kid. Why the hell should I baby him?" After enough incidents like that, everyone around me learns not to test me. When I grew up, I got engaged to Liam Zeller, my childhood sweetheart. But the day before the wedding, I caught him cheating on me with my best friend, Mia Shaw. Liam leaned back against the couch and drawled, "Erica, I'll be honest with you. I'll admit I really did like you before, but after being with you, I realized you're just way too selfish. Any man who stays with you would lose his mind. You really ought to reflect on yourself once in a while." None of that got to me. I straddled him and slapped him across the face over and over again. "You knew I was selfish and still had the balls to cheat on me? You've got some nerve!"

The year I became one of the country's top defense attorneys, I received a case request from my ex-boyfriend, Julian Sterling. We'd loved each other for four years, yet I couldn't marry him, couldn't have children with him, and couldn't even meet his family. All because the Sterling family had a rule: whoever cast nine blessed oracle blocks in a row would be the daughter-in-law recognized by their ancestors. I begged for that blessing a thousand times. Every cast came back cold. Everyone in Harbor City laughed and said I was born without the fortune to marry into wealth. Then my adopted sister returned from overseas, casually cast nine blessed blocks, and became engaged to Julian Sterling. At last, he told me the truth. "I weighted those oracle blocks with lead. No matter how many times you cast them, they were never going to bless you. "Celia had a difficult background. I had to do this to win her the dignity and status she deserved." So the humiliation I endured for four years had all been his way of paving a road for another woman. On the day of the Sterling family's century wedding, I left Harbor City for Capital City and joined a law firm. Now I was a top attorney with a perfect win rate. Julian Sterling, trapped in a legal crisis, sat across from me and pushed over a check. "You're the only one who can win this case. "Take it, and fifty million is yours." I gave a soft laugh. Then I opened my drawer, took out a pair of oracle blocks, and set them in front of him. "The Sterling family has Sterling rules. I have mine. "If you can cast nine blessed blocks in a row, I'll take your case."

My husband's first love posted a video on her social media. In the video, the two of them were passing a playing card with their lips. When the card fell, their lips met in a kiss. They didn't stop—lost in the moment, they kissed passionately for an entire minute. Her caption read: [Still the same clumsy piggy! PS: Steve's skills are as good as ever!] I quietly liked the post and left a comment: [Congrats.] The next second, my husband called, yelling at me furiously, "No other woman is as dramatic as you! I was just playing a game with Lanie. Why are you acting crazy again?" It was then that I realized seven years of love meant nothing. It was time for me to leave.

The day I got promoted, I could barely contain my excitement as I told my boyfriend the good news. Instead of celebrating with me, he suddenly went quiet. His eyes fixed on the wall behind me as if he were staring at something I could not see. "Sunny, I think I can see something." He lowered his voice, putting on an air of mystery and concern. Then, as if to prove what he was seeing was real, he reached over and gently turned my head toward the wall, so I was looking in the same direction. There was nothing there, just a blank wall. I stared at him in confusion, but his expression suddenly grew tense. "It says you shouldn't take the position at the new office. "If you go, you'll get caught up in a serious scandal. Your reputation will be ruined, and you'll end up jumping from a building." I almost laughed at how absurd it sounded, but despite myself, I still asked what I was supposed to do if I wanted to avoid such a terrible future. His eyes immediately lit up. "It's obvious. We need to get married as soon as possible. "You should have a baby sooner rather than later, then put your savings and promotion bonus into our joint account. Look, that's exactly what it says here…" He smiled at me with such warmth and certainty that, for a moment, it almost sounded like he was doing all of this for my sake. "I'll make sure you're happy for the rest of your life." My fingers tightened around my phone until my knuckles turned white. Because twenty minutes earlier, I had come across a post on an online relationship forum. [How do I get my more successful, stronger-willed girlfriend, who believes in astrology and spiritual signs, to finally do what I want?]

My husband Jim Sully and I kept our finances separate. We lived our own lives and stayed out of each other's way. Today, he suddenly decided to compare our savings. "In three years, I saved 300,000 dollars. That's pretty impressive, right? If I had handed my paycheck over to you back then, you'd have blown it all!" I smiled without saying a word and tossed my bank card onto the table. It held a seven-figure balance. "Right back at you." Suddenly, he exploded in anger. "Are you taking advantage of me? Half of that 1 million dollars is mine!" When I didn't answer, he snapped, "You take 30 minutes to shower, while I take five minutes. That's not fair!" He said we had to split the cost of everything from the past three years all over again. "You use more water, so you have to pay more!" My expression darkened as I pointed at the cherries. "One, two, three…" I added, "I bought 40 cherries for 10 dollars. You ate 18, so you owe me 4.50 dollars." "We're married! You're seriously keeping track of how much fruit I eat?" Jim snapped. His expression darkened. "Fine, then. Let's split the cost of all the emotional support you've gotten from me over the past three years too!"

An app had been making the rounds online lately—one that let you text your future self. Right before the final paper of the SATs, I decided to jump on the bandwagon and fired off a message: [Future me, do I end up marrying Liam Tinsley?] The screen flickered, and a reply from an "Unknown Number" popped up almost instantly: [Yes. You had a big, grand wedding.] I clutched my phone and typed back fast: [And Mia Thompson was my maid of honor, right? She's my best friend!] The response came just as quickly: [She was. But she wasn't just the maid of honor, she slept with Liam on your wedding night.] My smile froze mid-expression. Then a second message hit: [Truth is, you didn't need to go through all that trouble tanking your scores just to match his. He bombed the math section on purpose—so he could end up in the same city as Mia, who was at the bottom of the class.] [He pushed you to turn down that top-tier university—not for your sake, but because he didn't want Mia to feel inferior next to your grades.] The pre-exam warning bell cut through the air. But I was frozen, my body ice-cold, unable to move. One last message slammed into my screen: [If you don't believe me, head straight to the motel behind the school after the test. You'll see the truth for yourself.]