Scumbag Feel-Good Story Short Stories & Novels

In my past life, my boyfriend's childhood sweetheart, Kimberly Thatcher, claimed to be Lady Luck. She insisted on handing out sachets to keep our team safe for a hike. I, Priscilla Jensen, caught the scent and realized the sachets were stuffed with herbs that would attract wolves. So, I stepped in to stop her, saving everyone from an attack. But Kimberly thought I was looking down on her sachets, and that I was targeting her on purpose. Though she was the leader, she stormed off from the group in anger. We searched the forest under the raging storm. In the end, someone broke a leg, someone else was strangled by poisonous vines, and my shoulder was torn open. By dawn, we found Kimberly's corpse at the bottom of a valley. … On the seventh day after her death, her memorial service became an ambush. While everyone mourned for her, their eyes were fixed on me. My boyfriend, Fabian Lowell, was the first to lash out. He ripped off his bandage, revealing his wound. "If you hadn't stopped Kimberly from giving us those sachets, none of this would have happened! How dare you show up to her memorial service?" he yelled. Everyone turned to glare daggers at me. Suddenly, someone shouted, "It's all your fault! You're the reason we ended up like this! Go to hell!" In the next second, they hurled a pot of boiling stew at me. Then they set the private room ablaze and burned me alive. … When I open my eyes again, I'm back on the day of the hike.

Our daughter was diagnosed with a genetic illness. To save her, my husband founded a charity in her name. To raise the funds, he pushed himself to the brink—working three hundred days straight, surviving on three hours of sleep a night. His relentless drive moved countless people. The media hailed him as "Father of the Year." Everyone congratulated me on having such a devoted partner. Then came the day he rallied the entire nation, securing pledges for millions in donations to fund our daughter's cure. At the gala, with over ten million dollars moments from being transferred, I suddenly hit the pause button. "And now, we'll take a brief intermission for a signing," I announced. The room erupted. They shouted at me, called me selfish, a monster. My husband stared at me, utterly stunned. "Have you lost your mind? Children around the world are waiting on this money to survive! What in God's name are you talking about?" I lifted my gaze to meet his. "A divorce agreement."

I was the one who first spotted the pimple on my husband Ryan Bennett's back. It was plump, red, and swollen, topped with a whitehead that looked ready to burst at any moment. I rubbed my hands together in excitement and told him not to move. Once the extraction tool I'd ordered arrived, I was going to perform a little "operation" on it. He laughed and said sure, adding that he loved this weird little hobby of mine. Two days later, he came back from his business trip. I rushed over with my brand-new "surgical instruments," only to find that patch of skin smooth and clear, with nothing left but a faint red mark. My heart deflated just like that pimple. Someone had beaten me to it.

On the day my father died, his seven most trusted men all met violent deaths within the same twenty-four hours. Hugh Castillo sacrificed his legs to butcher the gang and put me in power. “Taz, don’t be scared. Those monsters are gone. You’re finally free.” In the years he lay paralyzed, I tried over a thousand experimental drugs and prayed at every church across the country. I hunted down every possible remedy, praying for just one that would bring him back to his feet. When Hugh learned of this, he swallowed a bottle of pills one night to end his life. After he was revived, he smiled and wiped the tears from my face. “Taz, I don’t want to be a dead weight. You deserve a better life than this.” That night, we held each other and wept. We swore that from then on, no matter what, we would never leave each other behind. But seven years later, a sweet-looking girl showed up at my door with a thousand photos I was never meant to see. “Every month, while you were praying to God in churches, Huey was busy trying out new positions with me. “Ms. Sheargold, don’t you know that used goods like you kill a man’s desire? It was no wonder he’d rather play the cripple than touch you.” I looked through every single photo, then put them up for auction underground.

I stood by Leo through three hard years. At last, his company launched. But at the celebration dinner, he didn't propose. He handed me a check for $30,000 instead. "Elena, take this money and go back to your little town. Stop clinging to me." Leo looked down at me with the smug pity of a man who thought he'd made it. "I'm going to marry Chloe, the governor's daughter. It's my ticket to Rockwell Ranch." He pinched my chin and said cruelly, "You're a penniless orphan. You didn't think sleeping with me for three years would buy you a place at the top, did you?" I looked at him and suddenly felt like laughing. I'd helped Leo build his studio from nothing. We couldn't afford staff, so I did everything and worked late every night. Once, my blood sugar dropped so low that I fainted and ended up in the hospital. Three years of love. Three years of giving him everything I had. And in Leo's eyes, a mere $30,000 was enough to settle it all. I studied him for a few seconds, then took the check. "Fine. Since Mr. Green is so generous, let me be the first to congratulate you on your marriage." He thought I was forcing a smile and strutted off to mingle with the important guests. Outside the banquet hall, I climbed into the black bulletproof sedan waiting for me. In the back seat, my father, the governor, was leafing through Leo's bid proposal. "Elena, you ran away from home and hid who you were for three years, all to test this man? "If you're done playing, come home. The papers transferring Rockwell Ranch to you are waiting for your signature."

Sean Chase had once lost everything after being scammed by his ex-girlfriend. Even after he rebuilt his life, the trauma stayed with him. On the very first day we started dating, he told me he wanted us to split every expense fifty-fifty. "It's the only way I can believe you're with me for me, not my money." I was with him because I loved him, so I agreed. And for the next five years, that was exactly how our relationship functioned. We split the bill for Valentine's Day dinners. We split the cost of a $2.50 pack of birth control pills. We even split our $900 monthly rent. Then, one week before our wedding, my dad got into a car accident and was hospitalized. Almost at the same time, two bills came in. The hospital wanted $17,000 for my dad's surgery, and Sean wanted $1,700 for my half of the wedding dress. I checked my bank account and saw I had less than $14,000. With no way to cover everything, I asked Sean if he could front me the money. Half an hour passed before he finally replied. "Can't keep up the act any longer now that we're about to get married?" Then another message appeared. "Liana Zane, this is worse than what my ex did. At least she was upfront about wanting my money." I tried to explain, but before I could get a message out, he sent another. "How convenient. We're about to get married, and your dad just happens to get into a car accident. Maybe we're bad luck for each other." Maybe he was right. So I returned the wedding dress and walked out of his life.

I have just disembarked from the plane when I receive a call from my sister, Sienna Miller's, manager. "Bad news! Sienna's role was stolen from her." I immediately rush to the set only to see Sienna surrounded by a group of people. Her cheeks are red and swollen from being slapped repeatedly. A mixture of fury and panic rages within me. I'm just about to step forward when a young woman, who looks no older than 16 years old and is wearing a dress that is covered in ruffles and frills, slaps me across my face. I'm stunned by the slap. A murderous glint flickers in my eyes. "Do you have any idea who I am?" I hiss. The young woman scoffs and sneers. "Who do you think you are? How dare you try to intimidate me? You'll be offending the only daughter of Deslano's Miller family, Quinn Miller. You'll also be facing a fate worse than death if you dare to fight me for this role." The director's arrogance from before has disappeared. He rubs his hands together as he tries to smooth the situation over. "She invested a significant amount of funds when she joined the crew. You're no match for her. If you know what's good for you, you'll accept whatever role that is assigned to you." The only daughter of the Miller family? What does that make me and Sienna then? I immediately call Dad and coldly demand answers from him. "It hasn't even been a week since Mom passed away. Are you in that much of a rush to bring your mistress and other children into the family?"

In my previous life, our packs made peace, and the enemy Alpha sent his son, Kael Voss, to us as a hostage. He barely reached my shoulder. He spoke in a tiny voice, and none of the other pups wanted to play with him. My sister, Selene Vale, was next in line to lead the Silver Moon Pack. But she felt sorry for Kael. She brought him home and cared for him herself. We often played a game called “scent tracking.” We smelled Selene's clothes and tried to find where she was hiding. I thought it was an innocent game. Then one full-moon night, Selene's scream woke the entire pack house. We found her curled up in a corner. A silver blade was buried in her chest, and the bed was covered in blood. Kael stood in the moonlight. The scared little pup was gone. His eyes were cold and mature beyond his age. That was when we learned the truth. He was the enemy Alpha's firstborn son. For twelve years, he had taken a bone-shrinking drug to make himself look like a child. The game had been a trick. He had used Selene's scent to track her every move. Pure silver kills werewolves. Selene was badly wounded, and there was no saving her. She died that night under the blood moon. When I opened my eyes again, I was six years old. Kael was being led into our home. He shyly tugged at the corner of my shirt and looked up at me. “Leo, can you take me to Selene?” I gripped the pure silver chain and smiled. “Sure. But first, let's play a new game: putting the bad wolf in a cage.”

At the pack gathering, I ran into the ex-mate who had betrayed me. His Beta sneered at me with open contempt. "Well, well. Isn't this the rogue who got banished for breaking pack law? This isn't a place for just anyone to wander into." "Alpha already has a Luna. What are you doing here, shameless as ever?" With that, he called for guards to throw me out. I cut him off, my voice cold. "I'm here to pick up my mate." My ex-mate stared at me, his gaze thick with disgust—like I was something stuck to the bottom of his shoe that he couldn't scrape off. "Alice, I already dissolved our mate bond. I have Tina now." I tilted my head, genuinely confused. What made him think I'd come crawling back for a mate who'd betrayed me?

As the Cavallo family's consigliere, I had a perfect record. Time and again, I'd planned hits that left rival territories soaked in blood. But today, they were calling the escape route I'd spent three months perfecting for an operation across the border a trap. They said I'd set our own men up to die. Not one of our men made it out. Every last one of them was dead. Back at the estate, every gun in the room was aimed at me. No one wanted to hear another word out of me. They pinned me to the floor and beat me until my face was a bloody mess. They didn't stop until someone pulled up the dark-web transaction records. Just an hour earlier, someone had put my escape route up for sale on the dark web for 30 million dollars. "Elowen, you'd sell out your own people? What, the family didn't pay you enough?" Riccardo Lombardi, the fiancé I'd grown up with, pressed his gun to my forehead. My adopted sister, Sophia Cavallo, pulled up my bank records. The most recent deposit was for exactly 30 million. Her voice was cold. "Father, the proof is airtight. Execute her according to the code. We owe the men who died that much." The evidence was right there in front of everyone. My father, the Don, looked at me with nothing but disappointment. In the end, he had me strapped to an iron chair and strangled with a wire until my neck snapped. I died with one question still unanswered. How had the plans I kept locked in my safe, behind a combination only I knew, ended up on the dark web? When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day before they accused me.

At the National High School Football All-Star Game, my boyfriend Evan had just been named MVP. Sophia, the cheer captain, immediately posted on Instagram. Caption: "Guess who got a little something from the champion himself~" The photo turned out to be a pair of Evan's worn underwear! Scrawled across them in lipstick were the words: "For my dearest Sophia." She held them up with her long acrylic nails, pouting for the selfie. The internet exploded. "Why does she have his underwear?" "Isn't it obvious? They're totally together." "Sitting here waiting for the official couple photo." Within seconds, a close-up of the two of them cheek-to-cheek surfaced in the comments. Congratulations and teasing flooded the feed. I gripped my phone, a chill spreading through my entire body. Evan had promised to go public about us ages ago but kept putting it off, saying he needed to prove himself first. He'd been stalling ever since. Now here I was, his actual girlfriend, and I didn't even get an invite to his victory party. I took a deep breath and called him. "Explain." On the other end, Evan's voice was lazy, almost amused. "The fans grabbed everything off me. Jersey, pads, all of it. Sophia insisted on keeping something as a souvenir, so I gave her the underwear. No big deal." "The Instagram post is just riding the hype. Don't be so uptight about it." Then Sophia's voice chimed in. "Yeah, honey, Evan and I are like brothers! I've seen everything on him already. It's just a pair of boxers, so don't be so petty." I listened to their increasingly flirtatious banter through the speaker, then slowly pulled off my engagement ring and tossed it aside. "Fine," I said to Evan. "I'll be the bigger person. Why don't you skip the 'girl bro' thing and just make her your girlfriend? I'm tired of watching this act."

I'd been married to Aurelio Moretti, the most powerful Don in Italy, for five years, and his lovers outnumbered the guns we ran through our underground deals. But I no longer got angry, because we'd signed a contract when we got married. The first clause said I had to respect Aurelio's private life. No interfering, no scenes, or I'd face the consequences. I'd already learned what breaking it would cost me. My father, Lorenzo Silvestri, lost the funding for his treatment and was thrown out of the hospital. After that, whenever he brought a lover home, I handed him the condoms myself. So when Aurelio announced he was going to marry Marilyn Shaw, his young lover, I smiled and clapped. His men all said Aurelio had finally tamed me, the thorniest rose Italy had ever seen. Only I knew that wasn't true. I was just getting ready to leave for good.

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.

One month after Mom died, Dad brought his mistress home. I screamed, cried, and hurled a glass at the woman and her daughter. The mistress immediately put on her fragile little act. Clutching her head, she leaned against my father and insisted she was fine. Dad flew into a rage. For the first time in my life, he yelled at me and ordered me back to my room. I was so furious that I ran away from home. He nearly gave himself a heart attack. “If you walk out that door, don’t ever come back!” But I left anyway. I didn’t even take a single cent with me. I wanted him to regret cheating on Mom. I wanted him to regret losing both of us. Only after I left did I realize how brutal the real world could be. I hadn’t even finished high school, so the only jobs I could get were manual labor, food delivery, and hourly gigs. I made just six hundred dollars a month. I couldn’t afford a decent apartment, so I had to share a cramped basement with strangers. Then one night, while rushing to make a delivery, I ran a red light. A semi-truck hit me head-on. I died alone in a morgue, unclaimed. Meanwhile, Dad was hosting a one-month birthday celebration for his newborn son at the family estate. He had a gentle wife, a son and a daughter, and a picture-perfect, happy family. And I died alone on a freezing winter night. But when I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day his mistress and her daughter first showed up at our house. This time, I didn’t cry. I didn’t make a scene. I simply slipped my father a drug that would leave him infertile.

The night before I was supposed to leave for my study trip to Bath, my boyfriend Ethan suddenly tagged me in our three-person group chat. "Nora, check your train ticket. There's a surprise." I opened the railway booking app. The ticket from London to Bath had turned gray. The page read clearly: Trip cancelled. Refund issued to the original payment method. The cancellation had been made yesterday afternoon. Before I could even type a reply, messages started flooding the chat one after another. My best friend Sophie sent a string of laughing emojis first. "Ethan, you lost again. You're covering all the coffee this month! I told you she wouldn't notice even the day before." Ethan replied quickly, "Fine, you win. Nora, you're so oblivious. Hurry up and buy an open ticket without a reserved seat. Sophie and I will take turns giving you ours once we're on the train." They chatted away enthusiastically, the screen filled with emojis celebrating their winning bet. Just like the camping trip, when they'd bet on whether I would cry over beetles and deliberately broke my tent zipper. Or the time before that, when they'd bet on how long it would take me to start wheezing after accidentally eating peanuts, and hid my EpiPen in the highest kitchen cabinet. Every time I told them with red-rimmed eyes that I really did mind, their answer was always the same. "What's the big deal?It was just a joke." I stared at the group chat for a long time. In the end, I said nothing. I left the three-person group and bought a plane ticket to Inverness for the next day. I wanted to see the lakes of the Scottish Highlands in winter, to see just how blue the sky could be when the wind swept across the moors. On my own, done with toxic people for good, the scenery might be just right.

The night before the wedding, I'm about to share the news of my pregnancy with Chester Miller when I see Giselle Thorne sitting in his lap intimately. I'm about to storm in and confront them when I notice a man standing beside them. That man looks exactly like Chester, my boyfriend. I freeze, holding my breath as their voices carry clearly through the room. "Chester, this is ruthless. You actually proposed to her. From what I know, Miranda poured so much effort into this wedding," Giselle says. Chester snorts. "Giselle, she ruins your work and costs you the chance to win. I can't wait to see her, all dressed in her wedding gown and beaming with joy, only to watch me walk down the aisle holding your hand. Just thinking about it gives me a thrill." My eyes widen. It's clearly Giselle who has threatened me to hand over my work, and when she fails, she tears up her own painting in fear of losing the competition. Before I can react, the man who looks like Chester suddenly speaks. "Chester, who's walking down the aisle with her—you or me?" Chester chuckles. "Of course I am. Felix, have you forgotten? Miranda belongs to you only at night." In that instant, I finally understand why Chester Miller is cold by day and passionate by night. It turns out they aren't the same person at all. He and Felix are twin brothers. I clutch the pregnancy report tightly, pressing it against the doorframe as I glare at the three of them through the crack. "I won't let any of you get what you want," I vow silently.

On the night before I'm set to officially marry Shawn Ford, he keeps losing to his godsister, Tiffany Lynch, at the poker table on purpose. "We're just playing for fun. Aren't we a family? Everyone here knows that Tiffany and I are as thick as thieves since young." Tiffany plays with a poker card absent-mindedly. "Surely you don't mind, right? Shawn told me that if I were to win this round, he'd give me the funds meant to renovate your marital home so that I can buy myself some bags." The other players begin to cheer on Tiffany at that moment. "Hell yeah! Tiffany is really lucky when it comes to poker! Joanna, there's no use saving that meager salary of yours. Why don't you just bet everything on the table to spice things up?" I don't bother speaking afterward. All I do is pull out a chair and sit across from Shawn. Then, I dig out a property deed from my bag. "You wanted to spice things up, right? I just bought this property at full price. Do you have the guts to put everything you have on the stake?"

My boyfriend, Simon Hepworth, gets down on one knee for the 66th time. Moved by his persistence, I finally say yes. But on the eve of our wedding, he drops a bombshell on me. He tells me he wants to have a child with his stepsister, Fiona Hepworth. I find it ridiculous and get into a huge fight with him. But I never could've imagined what would come next. On our wedding day, I wait at the altar for three hours, bouquet in my hands, only for him to dismissively tell me that the wedding is postponed. All because he and Fiona have an IVF appointment that very day. "Fiona was abused by her father growing up. She'll never be able to marry," he explains. "I just want to help her fulfill her dream of being a mother. It's just IVF. It's not like we're actually sleeping together. Stop being so sensitive." He then hangs up, leaving me alone at the wedding under the gaze of countless guests and flashing media cameras. The shock sends my father into the ICU. Standing by his bedside, I make a vow. "Dad, you were right. I won't marry Simon. Next week, I'll come home and take over the family business."

When my best friend and I realized we had been reborn and traveled back several decades, we locked eyes, collapsed into each other's arms, and sobbed, shouting that we wanted to break off our engagements. The entire neighborhood whispered that we had lost our minds. But only we knew the truth. In our past lives, this was the day everything was sealed: she married a battalion commander, Ned Stark, and I became the wife of a high school teacher, Robbie Stark. My husband betrayed me. For the sake of that pretentious whore, Scarlett Wheaton, he stole my university admission letter and let her take my place on campus. The world mocked me as a failure, and Robbie stood by in silence. After we married, every time he touched me, he would immediately write another love letter to Scarlett—atoning for his supposed guilt. "Scarlett, even if I can't be with you in this life, my soul will always belong to you alone." Even my own child despised me, calling me an ignorant village woman, urging me again and again to divorce so that his father could be with his "true love," Scarlett. And my best friend, Rachel Croft—born the daughter of a factory director—was tricked by her husband, Ned, under the pretense of buying a house. He drained her savings and her wages for twenty long years. It wasn't until she fell gravely ill and went to sell the house that she discovered the deed he had given her was a forgery. The real house—the one paid in full—was in Scarlett's name. One of Scarlett's dresses cost more than my friend's entire monthly salary. When Rachel begged to reclaim what rightfully belonged to her, she was met only with contempt from Ned and her child. "All you ever care about is money. You're nothing like Scarlett, who isn't materialistic at all. Your illness is retribution," Ned had said. "Exactly. Only someone as noble and kind as Scarlett deserves to be my mother!" her child had said. Rachel and I both spent our lives working ourselves to the bone, only to end with nothing—dying bitter and broken from the injustice. But this time, fate has given us another chance. I will go to university. Rachel will become a wealthy woman. This time, without us paving the way, those shameless men and that wretched woman think they can still live happily ever after? Dream on.

For ten years, I was the messenger between Gabriel Moretti and my sister, Vivian. Every time he and Vivian fought, he trashed the whole studio. As the kid sister who tagged along, I was the one running around the neighborhood at midnight for bandages and hangover pills. They couldn't stand each other's stubbornness. And yet, whenever the mood struck, they kissed like they never wanted to stop. Then, no matter what he did to stop her, my sister got on a plane to California for grad school. Gabriel caught me outside the airport security checkpoint. His eyes were red as he gripped my chin. "She thinks she's the only one who gets to walk away from me? Vera, I know you've been in love with me for years. We're going to City Hall." It was how he got back at my sister. For me, it was a pit I couldn't climb out of. In three years of marriage, he never once held my hand in public. But late every night, he pressed me down into the bed in the master suite and wouldn't let me go. I thought he'd finally accepted me as his wife. Then, last night, my sister posted a boarding pass on Instagram. Gabriel told me to move out of my own home that same night. "Gabriel, I'm your wife." He looked at me like I'd said something ridiculous and gave a thin smile. "You know better than anyone why we got married. Greed doesn't suit you, Vera." I didn't say a word. I just took the unopened box and, right in front of him, dropped it in the trash by the door. "You're right." I smiled at him. "I'm done being greedy." What Gabriel didn't know was that just this morning, I'd signed up for an exchange program in Switzerland. By next week, that little tagalong who did nothing but carry messages would be gone from this city.