Corny Lines Novels & Stories

"So she makes you... hungry?" Cain sighed and rolled his eyes. "Horny?" Daniel asked, trying again to guess. "Somewhere in between," Cain said. Daniel raised his eyebrows. "That's somewhat concerning seeing as the two shouldn't go together." Cain raised the stainless steel cup to his lips and took a long swig of the thick, bitter liquid. "I'll make sure you get some more of that," Daniel said, backing away. He began to walk out of the room before Cain stopped him.

“His jaw looks like his skull doesn’t have any skin on it. Like, all boney and shit.” “So, chiseled?” Jade asked, voice a little too excited. “Too chiseled,” I snorted. “With eyes that are too blue to be human. And muscles that practically scream steroids. Oh, and not to mention the veins in his hands that would kill him if he held a piece of paper the wrong way.” Silence greeted me from the other end. “Jade?” I asked, trying to make sure my friend wasn’t dead. “Are you there?”

My hands gripped his shoulders as I pulled him closer, the intensity of the moment overwhelming everything else. It wasn't a gentle kiss. It was a collision—the raw, terrifying relief of finally stopping the pretense. As we moved together, the windows began to fog, blurring the rest of the world until there was nothing left but the heat of the moment and the weight of everything that had been denied for too long.

Cute lips, sharp jawline, and his gelled hair neatly combed to the side. He was breathtaking. I mean, he literally took my breath away…

Nails left crescent marks in the skin. “I’m — shit — ” Marcus pressed their foreheads together. His breathing came in harsh pants.“Come on. Let go.” Ethan shattered first. His back arched. A choked groan tore out of him as he spilled hot and thick over Marcus’s fist, streaking their stomach. The sight of it — Ethan’s release painting their skin — pushed Marcus over the edge seconds later. He came with a low, guttural curse. Hips stuttering. Adding messy stripes to the mess already there.

] The post had just gone up when a new friend request popped up at the top of my phone. I opened it. The profile picture was a girl standing with her back to the camera by the sea. At first, I only thought it looked familiar. Then I noticed the strip of ocean in the upper-right corner of the photo, and realization hit me. That was exactly Simon's profile picture. I used to tease him for being so old-fashioned at such a young age, using a landscape as his avatar. Only now did I understand. It had never been a landscape. It was a cropped corner from Ivy's photo.

It wasn’t something I could name, but it felt like something pulled in two directions and refused to tear. My fingers tightened slightly around the brush. “…I don’t know,” I said finally, dipping the brush into the orange and stroking along the canvas. It came out quieter than I intended. Behind me, I heard him shift, just slightly. “Mm,” Ernest hummed, like he hadn’t expected anything else. I dipped my brush back into the paint, dragging a darker stroke through the center; cutting through the softer colors like a line being drawn where it didn’t want to be. “He can’t do both,” I added after a moment. The words slipped out before I could stop them.

Elara had resisted, but now, sitting in front of the polished workstation with a cup of cold coffee at her side, she almost regretted agreeing. Almost. Because that was when she saw it. Buried deep inside one of CrossTech’s mirrored servers was a fragment. Not much, just a line of corrupted metadata, something that looked like it had slipped past her initial sweep. A trace. Her fingers froze above the keys. She never left traces. ShadowByte didn’t make mistakes. A chill crawled down her spine as she leaned in closer, analyzing it. The fragment was too… obvious. Not sloppy like a hacker’s residue, not random like corrupted code. It was neat. Planted. A lure.

"Annie! Annie Carter! Wake up! You, the boy next to her—give her a nudge." Someone gently nudged my elbow, pulling me out of the endless darkness. The blurry scene in front of me slowly cleared. I turned my head and saw Wade's face, and my heart skipped a beat. "For question sixteen, the answer's C," Wade whispered, covering his mouth. I ignored the answer and just stared straight at Wade, reaching out to touch his face. It was warm.

Not again. As I take the third corner I’ve seen so far, my heart is pummeling against my ribs, I finally see the source of the commotion. The sight that greets me is stark and disturbing. A younger boy, I can tell by his uniform pattern, his face contorted in a mask of unimaginable fear, lay on the floor, his body wracking from the tremors. It all feels so wrong. He looks too delicate for whatever made him like this. His eyes are wide and unfocused as he claws at his throat, his mouth open in a silent scream.