Eat Like An Animal

My boyfriend has depression. To help cure him, I pass on the opportunity for a recital abroad. Instead, I accept commercial gigs so I can rake in the cash. After one performance, I see my boyfriend holding hands with a woman who looks like me in a private room. He wears a sharp suit and smiles so brightly that he doesn't even look ill. The people around him cheer and tease him. "You really are different with your true love back in the country. When are you two going to make things official?" "I heard you'd been dating another woman for seven years, though. Do you love her?" Charles Foster smiles indifferently. "I was just having some fun with her. Only an idiot like her would take me seriously." I sob with devastation while hiding behind a door. Suddenly, I feel like a fool for spending seven years with him. I call my mentor, who suggested that I take part in the international piano competition. "I will take part in the competition."

As best friends, both thought they know each other well- the one longing for romance and the other trying to prove himself. But what if both find something deeper from one another that can possibly change what they have right now?

"Tell me, Mr Blue. Was it worth it? Is it worth it? Will it be worth it?" It wasn't and it never will be. Not in Erin's eyes tinted blue. Not in the eyes of the hopeless young man doomed to the clutches of fate; doomed to eternal pain. Did beauty lie between the cracks of fate? Does the Moon know of the Sun who died every night to let the Moon breathe? Erin, a poor, hospital bound boy just wants to be like everyone else, to love someone. Every day, he escapes to the virtual world with his wings of freedom, creating his own reality where things goes the way he wants. That world gave him a real, painless body, with infinite possibilities. Life got that much harder when, Uriel, a rich boy enters this realm and steals Erin’s world. The man who says the ugliest of words with the smoothest of tones. Does he help Erin, or dig him deeper? OR Erin wanted love and got pain instead. Things changed, and so did Uriel. INCLUDES: futuristic virtual reality, Persian mythology (minor), romance, sci-fi, slow burn, enemies to friends to lovers, rich/poor dynamic, mythology, distance, cold families, battles, quests, stars and moon metaphor. WARNING: includes mentions of depression, swearing, and sexually explicit content.

"I'll accept the hospital's offer. I leave for Italvia in two weeks." Vanessa Jahn stood by the window, pregnancy report in hand. On the other end of the call, Rob Lambert, the hospital director, sounded thrown. "Wait—what? After all this time? I've been trying to get you on board for years." She let out a humorless laugh. "Guess it finally felt like time for a change. Anyway, I've got a lot to wrap up before I go. We'll catch up later." She hung up. The ache in her heart lingered as she glanced back down at the report.

On the night of my 30th birthday, I waited until the early hours of the morning, but my husband, Theodore Hawk never showed up. Instead, I came across an Instagram post from his childhood sweetheart, Emily Gallagher. [What romantic is not the starry night, it is having you by my side.] In the picture, she was wearing a delicate, sky-blue camisole that revealed just enough to charm and seduce. A man stood close behind her, his hand firmly gripping her waist. The scene was set in the seaside villa that Theodore had gifted her, their figures intimately entwined under the soft glow of the night. Someone had commented beneath the post: [I can’t stand you two being this lovey-dovey all the time! Just get married already!] Emily had responded with a shy-face emoji. I had just liked the post when Theodore, who I had failed to reach all night, blew up my phone with calls. "Are you out of your mind, Camilla? Emi and I grew up together! If we wanted to be together, we would’ve done so long ago! Why are you being so petty?" Looking at how Theodore gently held her in his arms, comforting her, I realized something. Letting go of someone you’ve loved for seven years... can take only a moment.

Nina Whyte finds herself trapped in a marriage that is going very differently from how she imagined. Being married to the gentle, handsome and wealthy Cody Whyte, she expects their marriage to be like a fairytale but reality dawns on her when she finds herself cuffed with a serial cheat. This leads her to make drastic decisions that lands her in a middle of a crime scene being targeted as the main suspect. It is in the toughest moments in her life that she learns that, sometimes letting go makes room for something new and that sometimes love finds you at your lowest and lifts you up to places you can’t imagine.

On New Year's Eve, I waited at home with a box of sparklers, hoping Jake Thompson would come. Instead, an earthquake struck. Trapped under fallen debris, I prayed for his safety. Little did I know, Jake was putting on a grand fireworks display across the city for his high school sweetheart who had just returned from abroad. The whole town buzzed with excitement, wishing them a lifetime of happiness together. Meanwhile, I had lost my hearing in the disaster, with no hope of recovery. When I tried to break off our engagement and leave town, Jake stood before me, his eyes red-rimmed and pleading. I couldn't understand a word he said. I simply wished him, “May you always have a day like today, year after year.”

In my sixth year with Nathan Bennett. "Nathan, I'm getting married," I said. He jolted, suddenly snapping back to reality, looking somewhat troubled. "Hannah, you know the company is at a crucial point with our financing. I'm not in the mood to..." “It’s okay,” I replied, my smile calm and composed. Nathan misunderstood. I was getting married, but not to him.

Jace Storme is the most popular guy in school, while Maxxie Gray is the superhero-obsessed nerd....who just so happens to be obsessed with Jace. After Maxxie drops a pair of underwear, Jace says those fated words: "I like your Batman underwear." The two discover the ups and downs of young love, navigating identity, friends, and family while trying to keep their relationship alive.

During my wedding, which is livestreamed all over the world, my fiancé, Marvin Keller, calls me a shameless woman who's gotten pregnant out of wedlock. Then, he calls off our engagement and marries my father's illegitimate daughter, Delilah Lambert. My mother is so incensed by this that she gets a stroke and ends up bedridden. Amid my despair, my childhood friend, Tristan Wright, proposes. He tells me he's had a crush on me for many years and is willing to treat my child with Marvin as his own. I'm moved by Tristan's promise and accept his proposal. Three years after we get married, I give birth to a stillborn. My mother is still in a coma and doesn't seem like she'll ever wake up. I'm hospitalized after getting into an accident for the eighth time. That's when I overhear Tristan's conversation with a private doctor. Finally, I discover the truth—he's never loved me. "You orchestrated eight accidents just to make sure Delilah would inherit her family's fortune? Are you out of your mind?" "I've done Lethia wrong with this, but I'll use the rest of my life to atone for my sins. She should be satisfied with that."