18 And Ruined Novels & Stories

When I was 18, I ignored Dad's desperate attempts to stop me as I cut off ties with him and unapologetically eloped with Leonard. When I was 20, I got pregnant with Leonard's child, but he only had to tell me we couldn't afford it, and I aborted my first child just like that. When I was 22, I broke my leg and lay on the ground in the rain for an entire night, which resulted in a condition that would haunt me for life. I realized that all this looked like I had done it willingly. I did this to myself. I didn't know any better. I blindly rushed into my own ruin.

“Careful, stepsis, the cameras see everything.” I fled to the garden, the cool night air biting into my skin. I found a stone bench near a fountain and collapsed onto it, pulling my knees to my chest. Tears finally came hot and silent. At 23, with my photography dreams, I was supposed to be building a life. Instead, I was trapped here, broken in my billionaire stepfather’s mansion, ruined by him and now blackmailed in his home. The sound of gravel crunching made me tense.

She instantly regretted saying that. She hated sounding helpless. Hated sounding like she wanted sympathy. But Lucien didn’t respond with sympathy. Instead he asked quietly: “How long have you been handling it alone?” The question hit harder than it should have. Because nobody asked things like that. Nobody noticed things like that. Aria swallowed carefully. “Since I was nineteen.” Silence settled between them again. Heavy. Quiet. Lucien leaned back slightly against the sofa, his gaze still fixed on her. “You sacrifice too much for other people.” The statement caught her off guard. “You barely know me.”

Reality came crashing back hard. The tears I'd been holding back suddenly escaped and Heather immediately wrapped her arms around me. “It's okay” She whispered but I knew it wasn't. All I had wanted was to start a new life in college and now it was all ruined. For a moment, I buried my face against Heather's shoulder and allowed myself to fall apart because I was tired. Tired of defending myself, tired of surviving. Heather sniffled as she pulled away then wiped my tears away with her thumb.

The way her white shirt clung to her, the way her eyes didn't just leak tears, they leaked a soul-crushing disappointment that had aged me a decade in a single second. “You are dead to me.” Those four words had been my death sentence. I’d spent the last sixty months trying to resurrect myself with money, power, and the kind of success that makes people stop breathing when you walk into a room. I’d finished college in a blur of alcohol and high-distinction grades I didn't care about. Then, I’d poured my inheritance and my rage into this. I didn't just build a club. I built an empire. New York, Miami, and London, three massive, high-end cathedrals of flesh and gold in two years, all constructe

"A chance? You turned a healthy person into a cripple, and now you talk about second chances? Get lost, Carl, you're nothing but scum! "You and Lucy are both insane. What kind of sane person claims to repay kindness by inflicting pain? Lucy was a fool. Are you just as pathetic as her? "If you truly want to repent, then swear, right here in front of me, that you'll never interfere with my life again." Carl dropped to his knees, pleading, "Losing you is the greatest punishment. Reily, come back with me. I've already taken care of the Camden siblings. Let's start over. I promise I'll make you the happiest woman in the world."

He didn't even care when Brandon abused her to the point of making her feel less, much less, of course he didn't care now. "You can't be here, dear Crystal," said the grandfather as he took the only photo he had of his granddaughter from his drawer, and it was the same one that was a photo of Crystal, no more than ten years old. Such an innocent girl who he had destroyed no matter what. She was just Crystal, the delicate Crystal that they ended up breaking into a thousand pieces so that she herself could pick up the broken pieces. ******* Back to reality, where destinies coincided without her being able to realize it. With her arms crossed over her chest, Crystal was talking to her cousin.

They had either pitied me, ignored me, or bullied me. “I am sorry I was not there,” Matt says. “I do not think you could have helped. I shifted weeks before my eighteenth birthday. Nobody expected it to come early. Everything that should have been amazing was devastating,” I murmur as I am lost, once again, in the moment.

I was eighteen when my life finally took a turn for the better after crashing around me in a painful twist of fate. But before I get ahead of myself, how about I start from the beginning?