Plot Twists Romance Short Stories & Teacher Novels

Victoria Cooper cheated on me with my student. I caught them in my office, locked in a kiss they couldn't seem to break away from. I took photos and posted them online, making sure the whole world knew. When I asked for a divorce, Victoria dropped to her knees in front of me, sobbing. "Alexander, I made a mistake. The lights were off in the office. I thought it was you. "Please, forgive me?" To prove it had been a case of mistaken identity, she put Tyler Ford on a plane and cut off all contact with him for good. After she came back to me, she was nothing but obedient. Out in the world, she was the sharp, no-nonsense CEO everyone knew as Ms. Cooper; at home, she poured her whole heart out to me. I thought the crack between us had actually healed. Then, five years later, I stumbled into the deleted-messages folder on her phone. One thousand three hundred and sixty unread texts, every single one from Tyler. [Victoria, I miss you so much. Can I come back and see you?] She'd never replied to a single one. But she'd saved every message, filed away by date, in that folder no one was ever supposed to find. My blood ran cold. I set the phone down in front of her. My voice didn't sound like my own anymore. "Do you need me to step aside? So you two star-crossed lovers can finally have your happy ending?"

When I missed the passing grade by one point, my best friend dragged me to a bar. She said there was nothing a drink couldn't fix. I drank until I blacked out. When I woke up, a man lay beside me, all cool eyes and tightly leashed control. I left two hundred dollars on the nightstand and ran for my life. I thought I'd never see him again. Then, on the first day of the new semester, the class I'd failed had a new professor. I looked up at the podium. The man from that night stood at the lectern, opened the roster, and read my name in a cool, even voice. "Vivian Harper, come see me in my office tomorrow." The color drained from my face. Convinced he was here for payback, I stayed up all night writing a transfer application. The next day, I clutched my transfer application all the way to his office. Before I could work up the nerve to speak, he pulled out a sheet of paper and studied me with an unreadable expression. "I've read the assignment you turned in." "Care to explain why a positive pregnancy test was bound into your term paper?"

For our ninety-ninth engagement ceremony, Julian booked us a skydive. He said he wanted to tell me he loved me at thirty thousand feet. My chute didn't open. I got tangled in a big tree. I survived, yet suffered multiple fractures all over my body. In the ward, I accidentally saw a message on the screen of our jump instructor's phone. It was addressed to Julian, and it carried a video. The video showed someone tampering with my chute before we boarded. So the "accident" was Julian's idea? I dragged myself out of bed on crutches, every bone in my body screaming, ready to confront him. I made it as far as the hallway. He was already there, talking to someone, and the moment I saw the other man, the floor tilted under me. The man across from him was the same driver who'd hit me with his car the night before our last engagement. The hit-and-run that should have killed me. "Mr. Veil, if you ever need me again, please reach out." Julian's voice was flat, almost tired. "There won't be a next time. I've tried everything I can think of. The engagement can't be postponed anymore." "And the woman you actually love, sir?" "I'll keep loving her," Julian said. "But Ada is the one I marry. Her mother gave my father a kidney. That's the debt. I have to pay it." I stood there shaking, and the truth rearranged itself behind my eyes. The camping trip he had planned, where I got lost and nearly died of hypothermia in the woods. That had been him. The vitamin C he had handed me, the one that put me in the ICU. Him too. And this time — the skydive, thirty thousand feet, “I want the sky to witness our love”. All of it. Every single one of those accidents was him trying to delay the wedding. But Julian, I thought, I could save you the trouble. The next morning I accepted an offer that had been sitting in my inbox for weeks: an invitation from a world-class orchestra on the other side of the planet.