Scumbag Romance Short Stories & Novels

Victoria Blackwood was a completely different person after being reborn. She no longer woke up before sunrise to make breakfast for Sebastian Blackwood and deliver it to his military unit so he could enjoy a home-cooked meal. She no longer picked up their son from daycare every evening, holding his little hand as he excitedly told her about the new songs he had learned that day. Even after their son, Ethan Blackwood, was injured in a car accident and rushed to the hospital, Victoria ignored Sebastian's repeated calls. It wasn't until his 38th call that she finally answered, taking her time as if nothing were wrong. Sebastian's voice was filled with worry, but he was clearly holding back his anger. "Do you even know Ethan was in a car accident?" Victoria held the phone to her ear while looking over the documents in front of her. She replied calmly, "I know. Haven't you already called me dozens of times?"

It was our seventh anniversary. Christopher Quinton proposed to me with nothing but a ring pull. He got his true love a house. When I said no, he rebuked me like I was some sort of gold digger. "I thought my love for you was worth more than anything money could buy. I only got Rachel that house to pay her back for all she did for me. I can't believe you thought I still loved her. You disappoint me." I broke up with him and tossed the ring pull into the bin. Then, I walked off. The next day, Christopher took away my position as VP and told everyone he was getting engaged to Rachel. … Five years later, we ran into each other at a charity horserace. He was a successful businessman, and the woman beside him was Rachel, all dressed in custom-made clothes. I was dressed in janitor attire and stuffing plastic bottles into my woven bag. He mocked, "Look at you, Queenie Dean. Scavenging for a living. Bet you didn't see this coming when you ditched me, did you?" I ignored him. My son had run off, and I had to look for him. The boy noticed the plastic bottles that were strewn across the ground, and he insisted that we stay back to finish his social practice activity here.

I had been married to Jeremy Yeager for three years, and he had a strict rule. "We can't lend our money to outsiders. We help out during emergencies, but we don't support them endlessly. This is the bottom line." Thus, I begged him on my knees when my father needed 60,000 dollars for his gastric cancer surgery. He remained calm. "If we break this rule today, your entire family will be draining our bank account tomorrow. I have to be responsible for this family." I sold my dowry to raise the surgery fee and accepted that some boundaries needed to be kept in marriage. When Jeremy's childhood sweetheart, Celia Marten, returned to the country to start a business and her start-up funds were insufficient, he transferred 470,000 dollars from our joint account. I confronted him, yet he just laughed and replied, "It's different. Celia's doing legitimate business. It's guaranteed to turn a profit. Besides, she's not an outsider." Looking at the numbers on the transfer record, I suddenly understood everything. It was not a matter of principle. The 60,000 dollars for a life-saving treatment was for an outsider; the 470,000 dollars investment was not. What truly mattered was who wanted the money. I did not argue or make a scene. I took our marriage certificate out of the drawer and slammed it on the table. "She's not an outsider, huh? Just make her your wife, then."

My boyfriend of six years, Liam Sherman, proposes to his long-time crush, Vivi Johansen, on my birthday. With that, the passionate love between us is a thing of the past. I come to my senses and distance myself from him, choosing to put our relationship behind us. As such, I decided to go along with the arranged marriage my family has planned.

The day before the piano competition finals, my boyfriend deliberately locked me on the rooftop to help his childhood friend win. He stared at me intently, his voice low and steady. "You'll have plenty more chances. Can't you just let her have this one?" Later, to secure her spot in the orchestra, he went so far as to break my fingers with his own hands. I confronted him in anger, demanding to know why he would do this when we were supposed to be in a relationship. He looked at me solemnly and said, "Susan, Miranda's mother saved me all those years ago, and now I have to fulfill this wish for her." What he didn't understand was that for me, losing the use of my hands felt like losing my very life. After I made the decision to stop loving him, he shattered his own hand, hoping to get my forgiveness.

The tenth time my parents flew more than six thousand miles to meet their future son-in-law, Nathaniel Prescott refused to show up. He ignored my calls and never replied to any messages. After God knew how many cups of coffee, I received an update from my best friend, Isla Monroe. Eight photos of snowy scenery surrounded a picture of two intertwined hands. The caption read: “Check-in number ten. He's perfect in every way.” My fingers curled into tight fists. It took twenty-seven calls before Nathaniel finally answered. “Where are you?” Howling wind rushed through the phone, followed by his distracted voice. “Out. What’s up?” “What’s up? This is the tenth time! My parents flew all this way just to see you, yet you—” There was a brief silence. Then, with barely concealed impatience, he said, “Enough. Isla and I are having a great time at Mount Rainier. I lost track of time. “Just ask your parents to stay another three days. I’ll come see them after I’ve had my fill of the trip.” Before I could even question him, the call ended. I stared at my reflection on the dark phone screen, my lips trembling. Then I smiled and looked at my parents. “If he’s not coming, let’s meet someone else.”

The day I found out I was pregnant, my fiancé, Shawn Gibson, told me he was going to marry the woman who was his first love, Suzie Sanders. Then, he asked me to marry his comatose older brother to help him get a wife. He said, "Suzie's family is forcing her into marriage. She's at the end of her rope. I'll marry her first, then figure out how to handle both families. We can still be together." I was shaking with anger and was about to throw the pregnancy test into his face. Suddenly, a young voice rang out in my head. "Mom, hurry and say yes! You mistook him for someone else that night! My real dad is his brother! And that coma? He's faking it! My dad is the richest man in the country! He's clearing out the traitors in the family and is about to make his grand return. "Marry him! This fortune is literally being given to us for free! We have to take it!" The richest man in the country? Then I was definitely marrying him.

To win Samuel Zane’s heart, I lost everything. My family was ruined, and I was forced onto an operating table so he could take my heart and save his adopted sister, Xenia Zane, whose organs were failing. At the critical moment, William Zane disguised himself as a doctor and rescued me. We left the country and started a new life overseas. I used all my points to change my target from Samuel to William. “Host, I need to remind you that if you fail again after changing your target, you will be reincarnated as an animal and never become human again.” I looked at William as he knelt before me with a ring in his hand. I said firmly, “I do.” But when I gave birth to our daughter, I saw two figures standing outside my hospital room. William handed our daughter to Samuel and said, “Samuel, you’re rushing this. We need to wait until her organs are fully developed before we can take them.” Samuel’s expression remained cold. “Thanks to your plan, we were able to grow a healthy, young heart for Xenia. Don’t worry. We can just use an organ maturation agent.” “But…” “William, don’t tell me you’ve fallen for that woman.” “Of course not!” I heard him deny it immediately. “I endured everything for Xenia.” The moment he finished speaking, the system’s robotic voice rang in my mind. “Host, your mission has failed. In one month, you will be reincarnated as an animal.”

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.

When my mom is rushed into the emergency room after a car accident, I call my doctor boyfriend, Henry Scott, eight times. Yet, he hangs up on every single call and only sends one message. "Mina twisted her ankle. I'm treating it right now. Tell your mom to wait." After eight years together, Henry has gotten used to making me wait. On our anniversary, he makes me wait while he watches the fireworks with his childhood sweetheart, Mina Stetson. When I am in extreme menstrual pain and book an appointment with him, he makes me wait because he is too busy replying to Mina's messages to see me. And now, my mom is seriously injured in a car accident. But Henry, her attending physician, still wants her to wait. Ultimately, I send him a single message. "Let's break up." I can wait for him, but I won't let my mom do the same.

A year ago, when Bailey Knight's side girl, Lucy Day, showed up in front of me, causing a scene, he had his people beat her until she lost the baby and tossed her out. Then he groveled before me for three straight hours, begging me to forgive him. Looking at the man I'd loved for ten years, looking so pitiful and broken, I eventually caved. Later, I caught Lucy sneaking around Bailey's villa in the suburbs, so I had her thrown out again. Three days before our wedding, Bailey grabbed me by the neck and shoved me up against the railing on the second-floor balcony, yelling so hard that his voice broke. "We already took Lucy's baby once! She can't handle it happening again. She's fragile. You're a woman—how can you not understand that? "I've given you the title of Mrs. Knight. I'd give you my life. Isn't that enough? Why can't you just accept her?" The next second, his secretary ran up to say they'd found Lucy. He shoved me down the stairs. The pain when my arm snapped made me feel like my whole body was being torn apart. But he didn't even look back. Staring at the cold, heartless man in front of me, I felt something inside me go completely dead. I picked up my phone and called Arnold Greenwood. "I don't wanna marry him anymore. Come get me."

Valentine's Day falls on the same day my boyfriend's company goes public. I spend one million dollars reserving an entire hotel, certain that Michael Cosby is finally going to propose. After all, he promised to marry me once he made something of himself. I wait for ages, only to receive a curt message saying he has something to take care of. Feeling crushed, I go on Instagram and unexpectedly come across a post from my best friend, Winona Ashe. "Back in Mr. Cosby's hometown for the wedding. Congratulations, Lylia! After everything you've been through, you're finally getting your happy ending!" The photos show a small-town wedding, with Michael as the groom and his secretary, Lylia Sutton, as the bride. Unable to believe what I'm seeing, I leave a single question mark in the comments, and that exposes everyone else who has been betraying me behind my back. Linda Cruz, the manager who personally got hired at the company, is the first to comment. "Holy shit, Winona. Did you forget to hide this from the golden goose?" The receptionist, who constantly fawned over me as the future Mrs. Cosby, joins in, "Great. Now the spoiled princess is going to throw another fit." Even an intern I've sponsored chimes in, "What if she gets petty and pulls her investment? Wouldn't we be screwed?" Finally, Peter Crane, the deputy CEO I personally mentored, reassures everyone. "Relax. Ms. Jenner only gave us the seed money. The company's already public, so even if she cashes out, it won't make any difference." How ironic. I spent six years helping Michael build himself up from nothing, only for him to betray me, and every person at the company I bankrolled all the way to its IPO betrays me right along with him.

The night I found out I was pregnant, my six-year-old pointed at a child influencer on his tablet and said, perfectly calm, "She's my little sister." I didn't know whether to laugh, so I flicked him on the forehead. The girl posted from Harborcrest, halfway across the country from us. Caleb had never so much as met her. "She's got millions of followers. Don't make things up. "You want a sister that badly? Should Mommy have one for you?" I watched him, nervous and hopeful at once, afraid I'd miss whatever crossed his face. Instead he pulled up one of her older posts, no expression on him at all. "The purse in this picture, that was from me. Dad says she's the only sister I'm getting, so I have to take care of her." My stomach dropped, and the smile set on my face. "Mom. Dad and I are tired of pretending." He put a hand on my belly and looked up at me with flat black eyes, nothing behind them. "I promised Dad I'd protect her. So you can't have another annoying baby. "You'll do what I say. Right?"

Commander Samson Gardner was my fiance. In his family was an iron-clad rule—no divorces. Before my brother died, his last wish was for Samson to marry me. So, even after falling in love with his childhood sweetheart, Samson still decided to marry me as promised. However, everything changed the day said childhood sweetheart destroyed the only watch my brother left me. When Samson sided with her again, I didn't argue. I simply reached out to my mentor overseas and started preparing to become a foreign correspondent. Before leaving, I gave myself ten days to put things in order. On the first day, I quietly hid the marriage application I was supposed to submit. On the third day, I turned in my resignation to the military. The day I was to leave, Samson finally remembered the watch and promised to take me to buy a new one on his next day off. Right after that, he ordered me, "Celia is inviting friends over for dinner tonight. Make sure the food is ready before you go." I agreed with a smile—and then never showed up in his world again. Afterward, Samson would stare blankly at the marriage application inside his drawer every time he saw my name in the news. There, within his drawer, were the memories of an autumn not yet fully arrived, the lover he could never win back, and the watch he could never give...

At a gathering with friends, my boyfriend, Donovan McPherson, suggested we play a game of “I Have, Have You?” The winner would get to make one request of him. Everyone there knew I had been trying to get him to make me, Celeste Campbell, Mrs. McPherson for five years, and for as long he had not obliged. Now they all assumed he was giving me a chance. So, tacitly aligned, everyone held back to let me win. But his childhood sweetheart, Lily Kensington, would not relent. “Donovan watched the first snowfall with me. “He gave me a scarf he knitted with his own hands. “The tattoo on his wrist is my initials. “His passenger seat is permanently adjusted to fit my height.” After those four, I had only one finger up. Yet she was not done. Tilting her head, she flashed a smirk at me. “Donovan only started this game to make me happy.” My heart dropped, while my eyes darted instinctively to Donovan. He wore a doting smile, choosing to side with her, just as he had every single time over the past five years. I slowly dropped my finger down. “I lost.” In that split second, something dawned on me. There was nothing left in this relationship worth holding onto.

On the day of my coming-of-age ceremony, a group of bandits stormed into my home. They robbed us of everything we owned and burned our estate to the ground. Then they used my six-year-old sister as leverage, forcing me to show myself. More than a dozen bandits dragged me back to their hideout and tortured me for three days and three nights before selling me to a brothel. I had thought about dying, but even death was beyond my reach. When I was at my most desperate, Duke Landon Knight paid for my freedom and asked if I was willing to go home with him. After crawling through the darkness for so long, I suddenly saw a light that had never gone out. Three years into our marriage, I once asked him why, among all the flowers in the world, he had chosen this withered one—me. "When I caught my first glimpse of you as a child, I swore I'd never marry anyone but you." I thought he truly loved me. I thought that was why he was willing to marry a brothel girl whom everyone else called a woman who had been with countless men. I spent those three years healing from my wounds, hoping that one day I could give him a son or daughter of our own. Until I overheard a conversation between him and his closest friend in his study. "Lucia Bellamy is arriving in the capital tomorrow. Are you really planning to bring her into the estate? "Isabel has already suffered the loss of her family and been humiliated and sold to a brothel. Her life has been tragic enough. Can you really bear to bring Lucia into the estate and hurt her all over again?" Landon answered without hesitation, "What do the lives of a few dozen Conrads matter? If the Conrads hadn't reported the Bellamys back then, Lucia wouldn't have been exiled to Southvale, and we wouldn't have been prevented from marrying. "As for Isabel, I bribed the bandits to sell her to a brothel. I did it only to spare her life and leave her alive long enough for Lucia to come back and take her revenge herself." So that first glimpse he'd never forgotten had been of Lucia, and I was nothing more than a tool for him to use in taking revenge for the woman he loved. The next day, I used the Conrad family signet my grandfather, Leonard Conrad, had left me to secure two imperial decrees. The first was my own request for a divorce, so Lucia could enter the estate as his legal wife. The second ordered a full investigation into the truth behind the massacre of my family, so that their names could finally be cleared.

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.

At the party celebrating the multimillion-dollar deal I've landed, my husband, Nick Ferguson, is about to announce my promotion and raise, but Ruby Holm, his secretary, deliberately interrupts him by feeding him her drink. My germaphobic husband doesn't even flinch. Without thinking, he puts the straw she has just used into his mouth. The employees immediately start teasing them, asking when they're getting married. Instead of denying it, Nick promotes Ruby to department manager. A coworker nudges my elbow. "Chloe, you've been with Mr. Ferguson for ten years. You're really not going to say anything?" I let out a cold laugh and toss my equity transfer agreement to Ruby. "Mr. Ferguson, don't be so stingy. A promotion isn't enough. Take these shares too. Consider them my wedding gift to the two of you!"

A blizzard had buried the mountain, turning every road into a death trap. Locals called it Deadman's Pass—seventy-two icy switchbacks with zero room for error. As the only person who had ever made it through without a scratch, I'd just gotten a million-dollar rescue call from beyond the final curve. Ten years ago, I went there once. My seventeen-year-old daughter, Maya, was skydiving with her classmates when a violent air current forced an emergency landing. The rescue came too late. She died there. Later, I learned my husband, Jayden Boone, had ignored Maya's safety. He poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into the rescue effort and redirected every team to save his ex's daughter instead. The girl had only sprained her ankle on a hiking trip. The day Maya died, I walked away from my career as a professor and stayed here, living as a broke driver. I risked my life running Deadman's Pass again and again until I knew every turn by heart. In the ten years since, no one else had died on that road. Today, a friend shoved a million-dollar rescue job in front of me and told me to leave right away. I looked at the face in the photo—the one I could never forget. Then I smiled and tossed my keys onto the table. "I can't take this job."

I spent twenty hours on a train in coach, traveling more than 1,800 miles to see Harry Berger. I texted him to vent. "I'm so tired. My back feels like it’s about to break." It took him more than ten minutes to reply. "So? Do you want me to praise you for it, or feel sorry for you? "I didn’t make you come. You bought the ticket yourself, too. Don’t act like everyone owes you something." I stared at those words. The "I miss you" sticker I had intended to send remained unsent. Then he sent me an airport location. "Gemma heard you were coming and bought a ticket at the last minute. She wants to meet up with us. She has a lot of luggage, so I’m going to pick her up first since I’ll be passing by. Take a cab over yourself." After that, he transferred me twenty dollars for the cab. But the train station and the airport were on opposite ends of Westhaven. Then the notification sound for my starred contact went off. Gemma had posted on social media. In the photo, Harry was pulling her suitcase, one hand protectively resting at her waist. She proudly held up her first-class ticket. "Thanks to Mr. Berger for the first-class ticket! Five-star service. Definitely recommended!" I zoomed in on the picture and looked at the $2,000 ticket. Then I sent the twenty dollars for the cab back. I struggled to drag my suitcase down the steps and headed toward the airport. This time, I knew I wasn't going there to see him. I was going there to say goodbye to the version of myself who was always running toward him.