He Chose Novels & Stories

Three days until the Whitfield Scholarship exam. Out of nowhere, a neighbor from our old street called to ask how much the villa had sold for. "The way that mother and son throw money around, it must have gone for a fortune." I had no idea what she was talking about. The villa was the wedding gift my mother gave me. I would never have sold it. Three years ago, my son had just won a place at the best public high school in the city. My husband said Noah was coddled and had no idea how ordinary people lived. To break him of it, we moved out of the villa and into a cramped, aging walk-up. Three years of high school. I lived that lean life beside him, buying marked-down produce. Noah tr

I looked at him. "When I rejected you," he said. "At the ceremony." He held my gaze. "I looked at you. I did it on purpose. I looked at you and I said the words and I looked at you because I wanted to be sure you heard it." He paused. "I have been thinking about that specific thing for three months. Not the decision — the looking." He paused. "I looked at you because I wanted you to know I was choosing. I was making it deliberate." He held my gaze. "I did not know that what I was actually doing was choosing in front of the Moon Goddess's Chosen. I did not know that looking at you directly was going to be the thing I would have to live with most." He paused. "I know now." I held his gaze.

He looks at me with the specific expression of a man who has spent fifteen years deciding not to love things he could lose and has finally, completely, irreversibly lost the argument. "Chosen," he says.

He was still standing. He was not looking at me. He was looking at the screens, at the documents that were still displayed, at the evidence that he had arrived at through his own research and his own questions and his own forty seconds of his father’s silence and his own Anchor Research folder and his own decision to come to this room tonight on his own without being asked or invited or orchestrated. He had chosen. I did not need him to look at me. The choice was the thing. The choice was everything.

On my first day after being appointed President of the Castellano Group, I had just reached the main entrance of the company headquarters when a female employee stopped me. “Only senior management is allowed through this entrance. Janitorial staff must use the side entrance.” I frowned slightly. “I’m not janitorial staff.” Instead of backing down, she took the senior employee ID badge from her chest and waved it in front of me with a mocking smile. “Not janitorial staff?” “Then you’re an intern?” “Interns have to use the side entrance too! This has been a long-standing rule of our company!” “If you can’t even follow such a basic rule, pack your things and get out right now!” I glanced at the

This woman looked hopeless, depressed, and tormented. "I ever wanted only one thing from my life. To be my man's first and only choice. So yes, it did hurt me when I learned I am not his first choice" Serena replied, for the first time admitting that she was indeed hurt because he didn't choose her first. Does she not deserve to be a first choice too?

I said and he laughed. "Ok fine, I'll stop." He said, pouting and I rolled my eyes at him before pushing him aside and walking pass him. "But honestly though. I don't get why you chose him over me." He complained and I stopped on my tracks and half looked his way. "You don't have to think much about that. I chose him because I know he's right for me. That's all you have to know." I said, opening the door and leaving him there with his head hung low.

He pulled back slightly and wiped away my tears. “That’s what I meant when I said you saved my life again,” he said softly, resting his forehead against mine. Aryk interrupted our moment. “You passed one of the hardest tests for any sorcerer. You could have easily chosen the path she’d shown you – the path to darkness and power.” He looked at the two of us. “You chose love and light, even at the risk of harm. Many seasoned sorcerers would have fallen for that trick. It’s not always easy to see the truth.”

he continues, “Life is complicated, choices are fluid, they don’t usually stay the same. When I was about your age, maybe two or three years older, I was faced with such a decision, y’know.” My brows automatically shoot up. “You were?” He nods. “I had to make a choice between discernment, common sense in my case, and desire.” “What was your choice?” “I chose desire,” he mutters, looking me straight in the eye. That’s a shock. “Was your decision triumphed by discernment?” He shakes his head, “I was an exception. I don’t regret a single day.” His eyes meet mine in a meaningful gaze and it hit me - he is referring to our story. Tears sting the back of my eyes, “Not even once?”

Dominic straightens his posture, his eyes soften for me. I close my eyes reviewing everything, I open them and with a deep breath I say "I choose him" "I choose... Theodore"