Cerita Pendek Tragic Love & Novel Scumbag Entertainment Circle

"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.

The night Cameron Baxter won Best Actor, I was backstage cleaning up his ninety-ninth dating rumor. When a reporter asked whom he wanted to dedicate the award to, Cameron looked straight into the cameras and smiled. "To someone who waited for me for years—and someone I've let down far too long." Standing just outside the spotlight, my heart stumbled in my chest. After all, Cameron and I had been secretly married for eight years. Back when he was a broke actor who could not even get a callback, I sold the last piece of jewellery my mother had left me to pay for his acting classes. When a scandal nearly destroyed his career, I stayed up night after night, writing statements, calling publicists, and practically begging a director not to cut him from the film. Then Cameron became a star, and somehow, I became the part of his life he wanted to keep hidden. Still, he always told me the same thing. "When I win Best Actor, I'll tell the world about us." For eight years, I believed him. So that night, as I listened to him speak from the stage, I thought I was finally getting the answer I had waited so long to hear. The awards ceremony was not even over when I headed to his dressing room with the coat he had left behind. I was about to knock when I heard his manager's voice from inside. "Rose called again. She's crying. She said you promised you'd finally give her a real place in your life." There was a long silence before Cameron answered, "I owe her. If I hadn't been marrying Noelle that day, I would've answered her dad's last call." His voice dropped. "She's hated me for it ever since." His manager was quiet for a moment. "What about Noelle?" Cameron did not even hesitate. "Noelle understands me. She won't make a scene." Standing outside that door, I almost laughed. For eight years, I stood steadfast at his side, swallowing disappointment after disappointment, sacrificing pieces of myself for a life I thought we were building together. But to Cameron, none of it meant what I thought it did. I was not his wife. I was simply convenient. At three o'clock that morning, my phone buzzed with a breaking-news alert: Cameron was seen leaving the hotel with Rose Berger, their hands clasped together as cameras flashed. But that was not what made my breath catch. It was the ring on Rose's finger. I recognized it immediately. It was my wedding ring. The same ring Cameron had slipped onto my finger eight years earlier at our quiet city hall ceremony. No guests. No flowers. Not even a single photograph. Then I saw Cameron's post. He had uploaded the picture himself and added only four words beneath it: "The answer, long overdue." I stared at the screen for a long time before finally turning off my phone. I did not call him. I did not demand an explanation. I did not even cry. By then, I felt too exhausted for any of it. Instead, I opened my laptop and booked the first flight I could find to Rimevik, a remote northern country thousands of miles away. By sunrise, my suitcase was packed, and for the first time in eight years, I was ready to leave him behind. I had spent far too long standing on the sidelines while Cameron lived his life in the spotlight, always believing I would be there no matter what he did. But not anymore. After eight years of watching his story unfold, I was finally done being his audience.

Cecilia Langston is one of the A-list stars in the film industry, the actress every director dreams of working with. That is, until she boards a plane to accept the Best Actress award she's sure to win. Explicit photos of her flood the internet and go viral. By the time she steps off the plane, everyone goes from admiring Cecilia to despising her. She checks the news on her phone. The announcement says she's been stripped of her Best Actress award nomination. When she looks up, hundreds of nude photos of herself stare back at her. "You shameless woman! Get out of the entertainment industry!" "You use nude photos to get ahead, and you think you deserve an award? Don't insult everyone watching!"

When I threw myself in front of a falling stage light to save my adoptive father, movie star Richard Crane, I came close to being disabled for life. Before they wheeled me into surgery, he gripped my hand, his eyes red-rimmed. He'd always kept his distance from me, but putting my life on the line for him had finally moved him. He promised that if I lived, he'd make me his bride. I thought he had finally returned the love I'd kept hidden for all those years. But after struggling through rehab, I learned that Richard was engaged to Hollywood's rising star, Daisy Morgan. When I arrived at the engagement party, the press was already waiting with cameras, hoping to catch me making a scene. Richard immediately stepped in front of Daisy and ordered his bodyguards to stop me. "Eve, Daisy's innocent. Don't hurt her." Calmly, I held out an audition invitation from a top director. "I crossed the line before. Consider this opportunity my engagement gift to you." Camera flashes erupted around us. Surprise flickered across Richard's face. Swallowing my pain, I gave him a gracious smile. "Since you're starting a new family, please sign the papers to end your legal guardianship. And while you're at it, give me back the screenplays my mother left me. From now on, we're nothing to each other." In my last life, I used the fact that I'd taken a near-fatal blow for him to pressure him into coming back to me. Because of that, the entire internet branded Daisy a homewrecker and tore her apart, sending her into a deep depression. Furious, Richard blacklisted me and confined me to a remote estate, claiming I needed rest. The endless isolation drove me to a mental breakdown, and I died there. Meanwhile, Richard stood by Daisy's side as she won the Oscar for Best Actress for a film based on my mother's screenplay. Now that I'd been given a second chance at life, I finally saw everything clearly. I would never expect anything from this man again.

I stand by my husband Adrian Quinton's side as he works his way up from being a struggling actor to an award-winning superstar. Then, I discover that he's cheating on me with a rising actress, Ella Sutton, who looks almost exactly like me. When I ask for a divorce, he breaks down in tears and begs me not to leave. In the end, I soften and give him three chances. The first time, he posts a public statement that night, putting an end to all the rumors linking him to Ella. He cancels all his work and stays by my side for seven straight days and nights. The second time, on my birthday, he publicly declares that Ella is his soulmate and even releases intimate photos of them. Holding me in his arms, he defends himself with righteous conviction. "Ella is struggling with depression. I did it to comfort her, but you're the only woman in my heart. This is the last time. Trust me!" Yet, the next moment, he abandons me in the middle of the wilderness over a tiny cut on Ella's hand. The third and final time, my father is critically ill and urgently needs a huge sum of money for surgery. However, Adrian refuses to give me a single cent. "I invested all my money in Ella's new movie. Your father won't die from that little illness. He can wait." That night, my father misses his critical window for emergency treatment and dies on the operating table. My heart gets shattered once and for all. When Adrian finally comes home late that night, I ask him for a divorce again.