Plot Twists Short Stories & Unattainable Love Campus Novels

In my previous life, I practically dragged my useless childhood sweetheart to Harvard with me. My academic record was top-notch, and I spent three years tutoring him. I asked my father to donate a library to Harvard University, ensuring that they would extend an additional offer of admission to Felix. Finally—when he rejected the offer in favor of taking a gap year to go work in Australia with the girl he was infatuated with—I raised such a massive scene that I ultimately forced him to go to Harvard with me. After graduation, we got married. The natural ending. He built a tech empire and made me the wife of the richest man in the country. One regret. He died too young. Didn't leave me a single word at the end. Just went. And I — I inherited his billions, and lived comfortably all the way to eighty-eight. But when I died, I saw his soul. His eyes were blood-red. "You forced me onto this path. You took me from the only woman I ever loved. I died with regret. Pray we never meet again in the next life." ...What the fuck? He'd been in that much pain? And I was the only one — happily riding it out? Captions drifted across my vision. [Lmao — how thick is this side character's skin?] [Male lead dies young in agony, she breezes through to 88 as the richest widow in the country.] [The girl he actually loved was the one who flunked her SATs and ran off backpacking, hello???] [They both died young, missed each other, and the side character had the time of her life.] Even I felt bad. When I opened my eyes, I was back — standing in that basement he'd sworn would be his life of freedom, on the day he was supposed to reject his Harvard offer. This time, I am not stopping him from going to Australia.

At the Crestwood Academy gala, a voice cut through the noise. We stood before a wall of portraits, our past selves staring back at us. "To our time at the academy. Three words." Victoria, the academy's fallen golden girl, raised her glass. She'd been silent for years. "Strength. Passion." She paused. Her gaze, hot as an ember, locked onto the one wolf every eye was already on—my mate. "And... Caspen." A hush fell over the room. They were the academy's most tragic couple. Caspen, the reckless Alpha. Victoria, the radiant pureblood. Their love had been a wildfire, wild and consuming. But they had broken apart on the night of the Blood Moon, just before graduation. Every wolf here had witnessed their legend. Including me. I glanced at Caspen. His power was a physical weight in the air. That untamed wolf had sheathed his claws. He was my mate now. The Alpha of Alphas. Powerful. Composed. But his heart was not mine.

My brother, Gale Henderson, was the obsessive villain in a tragic romance novel, but he doted on his little sister even more. He loved me more than he had ever loved the female lead, Anna Umbridge. On my first day of kindergarten, I got into big trouble. Anna was threatening to throw herself into the river, but Gale left her there and rushed to the school to clean up my mess. From then on, he spent every day either bailing me out or on his way to bail me out. Before long, his life no longer revolved around Anna. Then one day, the school called my guardian after I got into a fight with a classmate. My brother stormed in, then froze when he saw the other child's mother. It was Anna, the woman he had loved for years but could never have. I lowered my head and did not dare make a sound. I was terrified that seeing her would bring back his old feelings. Anna gracefully played with her hair and looked down on me as she said, "It was only a fight between two kids. She doesn't look badly to hurt me. For the sake of what we once had, have your sister apologize, and we can consider this settled." My older brother's expression darkened. "Are you insane? Who do you think you are, comparing yourself to my little sister?"

I was a two-hundred-pound girl. But on the night of graduation, I slept with Nova, captain of the Ashbury Ravens hockey team. The next morning, laughter drifted down the hotel hallway from his teammates. "Nova slipped his room key to Sienna last night, right?" "What, you think he'd give it to the Zamboni? That tub of lard. One look at her gives you nightmares for three days." "Did you guys see her reporter's notebook? It's covered in Nova's name. She's actually got a crush on Nova. Disgusting." So the room key that had slipped into my notebook wasn't meant for me. And the name he murmured against me in the dark wasn't mine either. My eyes burned with humiliation. I got dressed, walked out alone, and disappeared for six years. Six years later, my mother, Diane Quinn, was three months behind on her dialysis bills, and the sports website I worked for was on its last legs. My editor, Claire Bennett, slapped a file on my desk. "Nova. Newly crowned MVP. Not one interview in six years. Land him, or you're out."