Historias cortas de Melodramatic y novelas con Scumbag ambientadas en Marriage

In the three years I spent unconscious in a hospital bed, Julius Carter took care of me day and night without complaint. The very first thing he did after I woke up was get down on one knee beside my hospital bed and propose. That night, while scrolling through social media, I came across a female influencer who looked strikingly similar to me. [Another date with my boyfriend today!] [He took me to an upscale restaurant for dinner and bought me the diamond ring I wanted. He's the sweetest!] The top comment read: [You're showing off so much. I bet you're just a sugar baby!] She fired back immediately with a reply. [Being a sugar baby takes skill, too. Looking like a pig won't get you that kind of treatment.] [My boyfriend is the heir to the Carter family. Another nonsense from you, and I'll have my lawyer sue you!] My breathing hitched. Since when did Julius Carter have a girlfriend? Rage overcame me, and I tapped on her profile, ready to send her a private message. That was when I noticed a post pinned to the top of her page. The photo showed a pair of long, elegant hands placing food onto someone's plate across the table, and on the back of that hand were two small moles. They were the exact same two moles Julius had.

Someone replaces the eye drops with industrial cleaner, causing my patient to go blind in both eyes and jump from the 20th floor. As the attending doctor, I am arrested for intentional harm and sentenced to five years in prison. After my release, my husband, Sebastian Lester, and son, Carl Lester, come to pick me up and bring me home. While everyone else treats me like trash, the two of them stay by my side without abandoning me. I am deeply grateful for that. So, I obey their every word without complaint. But one night after a banquet, I accidentally overhear Sebastian talking to Carl when I am bringing him some hangover remedy. "Dad, Ms. Short really wants to win the top photography award, so I switched the eye drops Mom prepared for her patient. But Mom went to prison because of it. And now, all my classmates call me the son of a murderer." Sebastian quickly covers Carl's mouth and sternly warns him, "Never mention this again. Back then, Jolene's competitor was too talented, so that was the only way I could help her. Your mom's prison term serves as a lesson for her that she shouldn't side with outsiders." So, the five years of darkness and suffering I endure in prison is the doing of the people I love the most.

My boyfriend, Timothy Wells, thought I was overly sensitive, so he created an emotional price list. Crying cost $50. Questioning him cost $100. Mentioning his female friend, Camilla Lane, cost $500. He reassured me, "A relationship can only last if both people are emotionally secure." Last week, while I was trying on wedding dresses, Camilla suddenly stepped on my dress train. I fell to the floor, tears spilling from my eyes from how much it hurt. Without even blinking, Timothy deducted $50 from my account. "Be good. Don't cry. Camilla didn't do it on purpose. You're just taking a joke too far." Then, on Valentine's Day, Timothy stayed out all night with Camilla. While tidying his study, I discovered another emotional price list. "$5,000 for Camilla eating her meals without fuss. $50,000 for acting sweet. If she gets upset, grant her a little wish to make it up to her." My phone suddenly buzzed with a notification. Camilla had posted on social media. "Someone said that even my little mood swings deserve to be taken seriously." In the photo, Timothy had his head slightly bowed as he carefully fastened a luxury necklace around her neck. The comments were full of people expressing their envy. I texted Timothy. "Did you buy Camilla a $60,000 necklace?" A second later, $600 was deducted from my account. Then his reply came through. "$100 for questioning me, $500 for mentioning her. That's a $600 deduction." I stared at the transaction for a moment. Then, I called the wedding planner and canceled the wedding. "The bride is perfectly emotionally stable. Stable enough to decide she doesn't want to get married."

For five years, Cora Mitchell had been secretly married to Ethan Caldwell, yet they maintained a strictly professional superior-subordinate relationship at work. During the day, they treated each other like any other boss and secretary. At night, they couldn’t keep their hands off each other. No one knew they were husband and wife—until a video of Ethan pinning Cora against his office desk went viral. In the footage, Ethan gripped her waist with bloodshot eyes, his voice still hoarse with desire. “Cora, keep moaning. I love hearing you.” The video had barely surfaced when Cora was branded a homewrecker and dragged to the police station. One side of her face was swollen, and her clothes had been torn off, exposing bruises and marks all over her body. The people surrounding her pointed and sneered with contempt. “Have you heard? She’s a mistress! She used her position as his secretary to seduce Mr. Caldwell. She deserves whatever she gets, even if she’s beaten to death!” Cora struggled to defend herself. “I’m Ethan Caldwell’s wife, not his mistress!” A slap came out of nowhere, sending her stumbling back and nearly toppling to the ground. "Mr. Caldwell belongs with Madison Parker!"

After Heath Renwick abandons me and our daughter for Celeste Worthing's dog for the seventh time, we finally learn our lesson. He parades around with Celeste and the dog, trending online, landing magazine features, and I don't say a word. He even tears up our daughter Maisie's favorite sketchbook to line the dog's bed, and she doesn't cry or make a fuss. Then the dog chases Maisie down a flight of stairs. She hits her head and ends up in the ER with a concussion, and only then does Heath bother to show up. "Raven! Why didn't you tell me? I'm Maisie's father too!" I spend the whole night sitting outside the emergency room. I look at him, my voice perfectly calm. "It's nothing serious, just a mild concussion. She'll be out in a couple of days. We know you're busy, so Maisie will understand." Heath freezes. "A concussion is serious, and you're telling me it's nothing? What kind of a mother are you?" He wants to blow up, but the whispers around him stop him short. "Mr. Renwick really is better suited for Ms. Worthing. If she hadn't gone abroad back then, a small-town woman like Raven would never have had a chance." "Exactly. She can't even keep her own child safe." Heath frowns. "There's nothing going on with Celeste. She's like a sister to me!" I nod. "I believe you. "Maisie fell down the stairs because Prince chased her. I know that dog means everything to Celeste, so I didn't bring it up. I didn't want to put you in a difficult position." A flicker of shame crosses Heath's face. "I'll find the best doctor for Maisie. Prince is everything to Celeste, you know that. She has mental health issues." "Mr. Renwick, I understand. Maisie doesn't need to call you Dad anymore." He panics. "If you're upset, just say so! Stop putting on this act and dragging the kid into it!" I nod. "Okay. I got it." I'm not planning to make a scene. I already have plane tickets to Eraly. In five days, we'll have nothing to do with each other anymore.

The fertility clinic called to inform me that my embryos were ready for transfer. I touched my abdomen, still numb from the anesthesia of that morning's egg retrieval. Even with cutting-edge medical technology, embryos couldn't be prepared this quickly. Before I could call back to clarify, my husband stopped me. "Mom's been pressing us hard. I pulled some strings to fast-track the process so you can get pregnant sooner. Imagine twins! My buddies will be green with envy." Silent, I drove straight to the clinic and dialed 911 on the way. "Hello? I'm reporting a fertility clinic involved in illegal surrogacy."

On my first day at a new hospital, I treated a pregnant woman in critical condition. With the nurses’ help, we stabilized her condition and safely delivered her baby. As soon as she could speak, she reached for her phone. Her voice was filled with pride as she said, “Honey, I gave birth to a son!” The voice that came through the speaker made me freeze. “Baby, you’re amazing!” Those few words were enough to send me spiraling into despair. I had known that voice for ten years. It belonged to my husband, Liam Stretton.

For all seven years of our marriage, I believed Nolan Harris was an orphan who'd never been to school and could only find work hauling cargo at the docks. Nolan brought home so little money each month that I worked two jobs every day to help make ends meet. Nolan practically lived at the docks and was hardly ever home. Every day, I cooked for him and had someone take him the food. Then complications during labor sent me to the hospital. There, I saw Nolan in a room with a woman I'd never seen before. She was crying in his arms. Nolan wore a sharp, expensive suit, and a crowd of his men stood behind him. That was when I found out Nolan had never been a dockworker at all. He was the Don of the Harris family. The woman in his arms was Christine Walsh, the widow of his best friend. Matthew Walsh had died saving Nolan's life. To repay that debt, Nolan had given Christine the best of everything and kept it all from me for seven years. And now a rival had brutally murdered Christine's child, Jamie Walsh. To comfort Christine, Nolan wanted me to give her my baby. Once I learned the truth, I gave up on Nolan completely. I decided to walk away from our seven-year sham of a marriage and break free of Nolan for good.

On our son's fifth birthday, the three of us went to watch a meteor shower. In the middle of it, my husband answered a phone call and left in a hurry. Late that night, our son had an asthma attack. The only medicine he needed was in my husband's car. I clutched my son and ran through the empty wilderness, stumbling in the dark as I called my husband over and over again. All I got back was an icy message: [Something urgent. Do not disturb.] The next day, he finally called. However, the voice on the other end was not his. "Last night, my dog suddenly fell ill and died. Elias was worried I wouldn't take it well, so he stayed with me all night. He has just fallen asleep. If you have anything to say, you can tell me." I stroked my son's pale, bluish face. "Tell him," I said, "we're getting a divorce."

It was common knowledge that the Marsh family was the family with the strictest household rules in upper-class society. They adhered to the rules unyieldingly, and there were so many of them that the rulebook was thicker than ten legal codices. One of the rules was: If any woman wanted a divorce, she had to roll on a bed of nails for half an hour before she was allowed to leave. In the past, Violet Stane insisted on marrying River Marsh and never thought about getting a divorce. After all, she had spent ten years pursuing this aloof ice prince. Once she married him, she gave up on her flourishing career, stopped being so aggressive, obeyed the ridiculous number of house rules, and became the perfect wife for River. But she no longer wanted to do that.

The day I was diagnosed with late-stage stomach cancer, I curled up alone in the hospital hallway, trembling from the pain. I called Ethan Ford ninety-eight times. He rejected every single call. On the ninety-ninth try, he finally picked up. But instead of his voice, I heard Claire Leedon laughing. Then Ethan spoke, his voice cold and impatient. “Stop pretending you're dying. Claire's afraid of the dark. I can't leave her.” I opened his social media page. His latest post was a photo of them kissing beneath the Northern Lights. “You're the only one I'll ever choose.” I laughed until I coughed up a mouthful of blood, staining the diagnosis report in my hands. Then I tore it to pieces and tossed them into the trash. Ethan Ford, you got what you wanted. I’d never bother you again.

Neville had set up a special wish jar just for me. Every month, I was allowed only three draws to claim his time and attention as my husband. If I drew Dinner, he'd grace me with his presence for a brief meal, as though he were doing me some enormous favor. If I drew a blank, I wasn't even allowed to see his face. I used to tell myself that this was simply his cold, overly analytical, STEM-brained way of expressing love. That was, until Thanksgiving night, when our three-year-old daughter suffered a sudden, severe asthma attack. It left her gasping for air, her lips turning purple. I grabbed Neville by the sleeve and begged him to let me use all my remaining draws if he'd just drive us to the ER. He frowned and violently shook off my hand. "Rules are rules. Stop using our kid to guilt-trip me." Terrified and desperate, I reached into the jar for my final slip. It read: "Don't disturb each other today." Relief washed visibly over his face. Without even glancing at our daughter, he grabbed his car keys and walked out. When our daughter's condition had stabilized, I stood alone at the hospital billing desk with her in my arms. That was when I spotted Neville in a VIP treatment suite in the ER. He was gently pressing an ice pack against his assistant's knee, which had barely a scrape on it. The girl blushed and cooed, "Mr. Murphy, I didn't even have to draw a slip. Why would you take time off work just to stay with me?" Neville's expression softened with a rare tenderness. "The wish jar is meant to keep ordinary people in line. You have unrestricted VIP access." I held our trembling daughter and struggled to keep my tears from falling. It turned out that only the unloved had to leave their happiness to chance. I turned around, tossed the wish jar straight into the trash, and called my lawyer to draw up a divorce agreement.

After five years in a secret relationship with my boss, Eric handed my hard work to his childhood sweetheart, Shelly. Suddenly, they were the perfect power couple. And me? Just the girl he kept hidden. He never even looked my way. So why was I still holding on? One phone call later, I was done. Time to leave—and see what else was out there.

When I reach the underground parking lot, I find out that my husband, Victor Blake, has parked his car in a slanted manner. Great, his car has taken over my parking slot again. I call him and tell him to get his ass downstairs so that he can move the car out of my parking slot. While waiting for him, I come across a post on the Internet. "I'm screwing the brains out of my mistress right now. What should I do to avoid getting discovered by my wife, who might be home anytime soon?" The comment section goes nuts. Apparently, the original poster has left a like on one of the comments. "Park your car in a way that it eats into your wife's parking slot. That way, she'll have to call you every time she gets home. Not only do you have time to clean up the scene and protect your mistress, but you also get to tell your wife in a righteous manner that you're reserving a parking slot for her." I frown immediately. As soon as I tap on the WhatsApp chat, I hear someone knocking on my window. Victor can be seen jiggling his car keys outside the car. "What's with the rush? I did this just so I can reserve a parking slot for you, you know."

Today was the seventh anniversary of the plane crash that took my twin sister, Chloe. My husband, Julian, checked the watch on his wrist and urged me on. “I’ve only blocked off ten minutes for this visit. Hurry up and lay the flowers.” He was a pathological stickler for time, meticulously managing every minute and second of his life. Shopping was sixty minutes, intimacy was fifteen minutes, and dinner was ten minutes… As he walked back to the car to grab an umbrella, his phone slipped from his hand, hit the ground, and lit up with a cloud calendar notification. It was his hidden master schedule for family. I stole a glance at it, and my blood instantly ran cold. The entry for me read, “Spend two hours.” And the very next entry ten minutes later read, “Cemetery visit ends. Head to the Southside residence immediately to pick up Chloe and our son for his toddler’s gym class.” I stared at my sister’s photo on the tombstone, finding it all ironic. So the past seven years, spent racing against the clock, were nothing more than an extreme time-management strategy Julian had devised for her while she was pretending to be dead. Julian walked back over under the umbrella. He picked up his phone and frowned. “Riley, your ten minutes are up. Stop dawdling.” Wiping the rainwater from the tombstone, I let out a liberated smile and said, “I'm not dawdling. It just struck me that Chloe must be having a wonderful time in hell. With the Devil and his demons keeping her company, I’m sure she’d never want to leave.”

I pick up my husband Ethan Fuller's phone to transfer 200 dollars to myself for poker, but I stumble across his buddies' group chat, where they're planning a proposal. "Saturday at 7:00 pm, on a yacht on the river. Everybody dress up a little, guys. Let's give the future Mrs. Fuller a moment she'll never forget." "Jordy, you're in charge of keeping his wife occupied. Whatever you do, don't let her find out. That woman's sharp as a tack." "Don't worry. My wife says they'll be playing poker all night. There's no way she'll get there in time." "Hahaha, I'm dying. Once Ethan gets her to say yes, his wife won't even have anyone to go crying to." "By the way, Ethan, is the ring well hidden? We don't want a repeat of last time, when she almost dug it out." "I hid it in the company safe. She doesn't know the combination." "Once this is a done deal, I'd like to see her try to make a scene." The messages keep scrolling up, and the latest one is a voice message from Ethan. I tap it, and there's a smile in his voice. "Thanks for going to all this trouble, guys. When this is all taken care of, drinks are on me. Keep a close eye on her, and don't let anything go wrong." The light from the phone screen falls on my face. I stare at the group chat, then switch screens with a tap and decide to transfer another 20,000 dollars to myself. It's poker, after all. My luck had better be running hot.

Chris Shaw promised that we would finally get our marriage licence next month. He told me he had secured the first appointment slot in the coming month. It was the third time he had brought up marriage. The first was during Valentine's. Chris called to say that city hall had unexpectedly opened a few last-minute slots and told me to hurry over and wait in line. It was pouring with rain. I waited the whole day and only received a video from his best friend. Chris was playing snooker as he mocked, "Told you she'd do everything I told her to. Just like a dog." The second time was on Labor Day. Chris sent me an address for another city hall, dozens of miles away in the middle of nowhere. I spent two hours rushing over, but there was no one there. It was just a construction site. My best friend sent me snapshots of a bet they made, and she guffawed. "I bet she would actually go, and I won a thousand." And this time, everyone looked at me with mockery in their eyes. I dressed up for the occasion. "You actually showed up. How gullible are you?" I clenched my papers and said nothing. The car door opened, and out came Chris, his arm around Yvonne Gray, his true love. It had been a month since we met, yet he was still cavalier, and he casually waved the marriage application in his hand. "Yvonne's family is rushing her into a marriage, so we'll get a license to shut them up. Do as I say, and I'll consider getting one with you." I stared at him. Ten years of love, patience, and waiting. And suddenly, whatever I had once felt for him withered away like a plant that had gone too long without water. So I took out my phone and called someone else. "I got the slot. What's your ETA?"

After the car accident, one of the Johnson sons was dead and the other gravely injured. When my devout, devoted husband woke up in the hospital, he called out, "Dorothy." He claimed that his body then held the soul of his brother, Elias Johnson. I went mad, calling doctors, priests, anyone I could, desperate to bring my husband back. It was not until that night that I overheard his conversation with our son: "Father, you've loved aunt for years. You even kept yourself chaste in your private prayer room, waiting. Now, finally, you can be with her openly." The man in the bed reached out to stroke our son's hair. "If it weren't to stop your mother from destroying her relationship, I wouldn't have married her." I hid in the shadows, still reeling from their words, when I saw what happened after our son left. The husband I had always known, icy, composed, and ascetic to maintain his devout faith for seven years, was then holding his sister-in-law close on that tiny hospital bed, sharing a warmth meant for lovers. The next day, I applied for Jim Johnson's death certificate and burned our marriage certificate. At his grand wedding, I climbed aboard the helicopter sent to fetch me. However, my once-cold husband went mad, chasing after us down several streets, desperate and unhinged.

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."

At the sip and see a month after Suzanne Lynch's baby is born, I find out my husband, Mike Harris, is the father. However, he insists he hasn't cheated on me. Mike explains that Suzanne, his childhood sweetheart, has always wanted to be a mother but doesn't want to find some random man to have a child with. So, he donated his sperm once. No kissing, no feelings, and certainly no betrayal. Suzanne chimes in through tear-filled eyes, "Nadia, I only borrowed his genes. I didn't borrow your husband. I never even let him stay overnight during my entire pregnancy. I've already shown you plenty of respect." My mother-in-law, Rita Harris, holds the baby and beckons me over for a family photo. "Nadia is Mike's wife, and the other is his child's mother. There's no conflict between the two." When I don't move, Mike's expression darkens. "Our relatives are all here today. Don't turn this into a spectacle and embarrass everyone." I take off my wedding ring and place it inside the baby's gift box. I'm done with this man.