Confessions Novels & Stories

Every fear, every doubt. I couldn’t stop replaying the conversation we had. The way he was so confident in his belief that I would eventually be his. That no matter how much I resisted, no matter how much I told myself I wouldn’t fall for his games, he would have me. He said it so casually, as though it were a simple fact. And, damn him, part of me—no matter how much I hated it—almost believed him.

He merely thought it was a waste of money when he assumed it was my mother who got into an accident. He never expected his own mother to be the one who got injured. Zachary was overwhelmed with regret. Not only did he regret not trusting me and giving me the money I asked for, but he also regretted believing Gigi and getting her acquitted.

After the first thirty minutes of forced pleasantries and blessings, I retreated into the confessional to listen to people confess to cheating on their partners and stealing from their employers. And those were the lighter sins. They all confessed the same things every week, not bothering to change and not bothering to repent. Just rinse and repeat. Sin and confess. Sin and confess. It was almost laughable if it wasn’t literal torture for me. People acted holier-than-thou in public, but in private, they carried the filthiest secrets and hatred towards one another. But of all the confessions I’d heard since arriving here, none unsettled me the way Arya’s had.

she said. I hesitated. “We?” The word was a promise that tasted of iron and salt. I smiled. “We.” And for the first time in months, my chest didn’t ache with memory or maps of betrayal. Instead, I felt its opposite: that blazing potential of partnership. I moved forward, unzipped my jacket. Cassian tensed only half-protective. He knew me too well. Knew even danger had changed me. Inside was a folder. Top sheet: “CONFESSION: ARIA QUINN & CASSIAN VALE”. The camera inside captured every moment. A confession. Not a comeback but a reckoning.

The dried wax that clung to the edge of my ribs. And the collar. I ran my fingers across it feeling not restrained, but claimed. Underneath the pillow, I found another card. Rest. Breathe. You're not broken. You're opened. When you're ready, write your next confession. There were no flowers. No demands. Just space. And the echo of everything we’d shared. Somewhere between heat and silence, I smiled. Because I wasn’t just a submissive anymore. I was a story unfolding. One confession at a time.

Cried. He fell to the floor more than once, groaning with a pain that had no name a spiritual labor. Every memory of compromise, fear, failure surfaced like smoke drawn from a deep chamber. He began to confess them aloud. Not just sins. But weights. “I confess every time I ran from my voice. I confess the bitterness I swallowed in silence. I confess my father’s absence and the shame I buried. I confess the moments I believed I was too broken to carry purpose.” Tears fell freely.

My notebook lies open on the bed, pages scattered with scrawls that don’t look like journalism anymore. I stare at them, ink smudged by my own fingertips, and realize with a slow rush of shame—and something darker—that I’ve stopped writing articles. I’ve started writing confessions. Entry 1 “Pain is not pain when it’s chosen. It becomes something else. A doorway. A release.” That was Jennifer’s voice echoing in my head tonight. I had scribbled it down after watching her work with Leo, but the words feel like mine now.

she said calmly, “it will be revealed, and you will remain exiled. But if you speak the truth, the moon will reveal that as well.” I stared out at the sea and looked into the waters to see my distorted reflection. For a moment I felt fear, not fear of the truth, but fear of being judged. That maybe everything I would say was not going to be honest. But then I inhaled deeply. “I acknowledge my past,” I began, my voice steady. “I was exiled under false judgment, punished for a crime I did not commit. I stand before the sea and the moon and confess that I had no hand in the attack of Damien Blackthorne. I did not harm him. I did not conspire against him. I did not wish him death.”

he stammered, his voice now shaking. I could almost hear my heartbeat in my ears as he finally confessed, his words tumbling out in a hurried, desperate rush. "Sharon, my ex-girlfriend… She’s the one behind this. She was the girl at the hotel that day. It wasn’t my fault! She tricked me! She said she’d pay me if I pretended to sleep with her, to pretend that I raped her... I didn’t know what I was getting into," he continued, his voice cracking with the weight of his confession.

His voice through the lattice is quieter, closer, intimate in the way that small dark spaces make everything intimate. “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned,” I say. “It has been ten years since my last confession.” “Tell me your sins.” I take a breath. The confessional smells like a hundred years of whispered secrets. His breathing is audible through the screen, and I can hear him controlling it, performing calm. “I’ve been having impure thoughts.” A pause. “What kind of impure thoughts?” “Sexual thoughts. About a man.” “This is not uncommon. The flesh is –”