Never Let Go

There are monsters in this world. And they used to be us. Now it's time to euthanize to survive in a hospice where Emily, a woman haunted by her past, only wants to do her job and be the best mother possible. Post-infection Chicago. Christmas. Inside The Hospice, Emily and her fellow nurses do their rounds. Here, men and women live out their final days in comfort, segregated from society, and are then humanely terminated before fate turns them into marrow-craving monsters known as ‘Smilers.’ Outside these imposing walls, rabid protesters swarm with signs, caught up in the heat of their hatred. Emily, a woman haunted by her past, only wants to do her job and be the best mother possible. But in a world where mortality means nothing, where guns are drawn in fear and nobody seems safe anymore – at what cost will this pursuit come? And through it all, the soon to be dead remain silent, ever smiling. Such is their curse. It won't be long before that snow-speckled ground will be salted by blood. ©️ Crystal Lake Publishing

I hid behind a thick tree trunk and watched silently as a grizzly bear attacked my husband. In my previous life, I was a guide. I led my husband—an environmental photographer—and his female colleague into a nature reserve to film wildlife. While scouting the route, I discovered a nursing grizzly bear and immediately warned them not to take any photos and to retreat slowly. To my shock, they intentionally bumped into me, causing my right leg to be cut and bleed. The scent of blood enraged the bear, and it charged straight at me, sinking its massive jaws into my abdomen. After the bear left, my husband calmly stripped me of all my equipment. Then, wrapping his arms around his female colleague, he kissed her. He turned to me with a sinister smile creeping across his face. "Kate," he said, "I'll be honest. I never loved you. You're dying. Now, all your assets will be mine." I bled out and died. When I opened my eyes again, it was the morning of the day we entered the mountains.

After the plane crash, my body was never recovered. My soul drifted back to the home I hadn't stepped foot in for five years. They didn't know I was dead. They were still waiting for me to come home for Christmas. When my mom got the call from the airline, she froze for a long time, completely at a loss, before breaking down in tears. I followed them as they went to the memorial crash site. That was when I noticed something strange—I could see their levels of regret hovering above their heads. My brother's regret level read: 40%. My father's showed: 60%. Even my sister-in-law had 30% over her head. But my mother's regret level? It flashed a cold, unchanging 0%.

The Ashford family opposed my relationship with Everett Ashford. To separate us, they drugged him, and his fiancée ended up pregnant with twins. Everett threatened suicide if I left him. He begged me to stay, swearing he would never see them again. He even told me the pregnancy had been terminated. Three years later, I spotted him at a parent-teacher conference. Enraged, I kept the twins after school and, on their way home, they were kidnapped. Everett blamed me for everything. To force me to reveal where the twins were, he strapped my mother onto a high tower ride. However, my mother had a heart condition. I sobbed that I did not know anything. Everett screamed at me. "I've been good enough to you! Why the hell would you go after those kids? Tell me where they are right now or I swear I'll push your mother off this thing!" He shoved her toward the platform's edge. The safety harness hung loose on her frail body. I had no idea where the twins were. Everett shoved my mother off anyway. Just then, someone found the twins. Everett walked away without looking back, leaving my mother dying of a heart attack. While he rushed to pick up his children, I stood in a hospital room pulling a white sheet over my mother's face. That was the moment I finally stopped loving him.

Millicent Andrews never expected her life to collapse right before her twenty-first birthday. One moment she’s a wife, a best friend, a girl with a future… and the next, she’s staring at her husband Brian Vel in bed and tangled in her best friend’s arms, the betrayal slices her open in ways she can’t begin to stitch shut. The divorce is brutal and the humiliation is even worse. With nowhere else to go, Milli returns to her mom’s house with her sick son. She reopens her small, struggling photo studio, just in time to learn the entire building has already been bought by Damon Hale, a forty-seven-year-old billionaire with a reputation colder than the steel hotels he builds. Damon wants the land, but Milli refuses to give up the last piece of her life that hasn’t been stolen from her. Their fight become heated, and combustible, until he makes her an offer she should never accept: marry him for one year to soothe his mother, live under his roof, follow his every rule…and in return, he’ll save the studio, every shop on the block and her sick son gets the best treatment possible, but she does. They hate each other and they’re nothing alike. The contract is supposed to keep their worlds separated, but forced proximity has sharp fangs. Meanwhile, Brian returns, desperate and regretful, determined to pull Millicent back into his life. While she tries to outrun her past, she discovers a painful truth about her own bloodline that changes everything she thought she knew, all while discovering Damon's darkest secret. What happens to their paper tie, when he discovers she knows the truth who he really is?

My husband has azoospermia. After trying all the options available, I finally conceived. However, my husband is worried my child will hurt his first love's feelings—she had a miscarriage. He tricks me into going for a prenatal checkup. In truth, he conspires with a doctor to induce labor when I'm only five months along. He says, "You must be the one with the problem. Why else is it so hard for us to have children? The baby won't be healthy even if it's born! We can have more children when you're healthier. Julie has just had a miscarriage; I don't want to aggravate her." He doesn't know he has azoospermia. I only managed to conceive this child after trying out IVF countless times and taking countless folk remedies. He will never have a child of his own in this lifetime, and I discover his true colors. I ask for a divorce, and that's when he loses his mind.

It was not until after I married Bennett that I found out he had a clingy little childhood friend who loved to play the victim. On the very first day of our marriage, at dinner, I simply asked Bennett to pass me a bite of food. She immediately exploded. "Holly, you're disgusting! Bennett already used those utensils, and you seriously asked him to serve you food? What, don't you have hands?" I froze, completely blindsided. Before I could even react, Bennett put down his spoon and went straight to her, wrapping her in his arms like she was the one who had been wronged. Then he turned to me and said I should just get my own food from now on. However, honestly, wasn't it normal for a husband to serve his wife a bite? What was so outrageous about that? I barely got a word out before Bennett shut me down in a low, firm voice. "That's final. If Rosie doesn't like it, then we're not doing it. End of discussion."

It is the third year of my marriage when the video of my bodyguard, Julian Sutherland, holding an umbrella over me in a downpour goes viral. Overnight, the internet becomes obsessed with the "Icy Protector and his Forbidden Heiress." Netizens are relentless; they dig through the archives until they unearth a ten-year-old clip. In the video, a girl was holding a pair of high-heeled shoes while sprinting through the Folander airport. My friend teased, "No way, Ms. Serina Brown. Are you really flying back home to confess to that poor man? What could you possibly see in him?" The camera shakes, capturing my youthful face. I was just a reckless 20-year-old. "I love Julian. I love everything about him." That night, after seeing the video, Julian loses his composure and bursts into my room. "I didn't know you loved me back then. I thought… I thought… God, it was never supposed to end like this." I pull my coat around me and stand rooted on the spot, remaining silent. Suddenly, a mocking laugh echoes from behind me. Someone places their hand firmly on my waist and says, "Are you trying to reminisce about your love with my wife right in front of me? Do I look dead to you?"

"You were never her, Aria. You were just... there." Jason's words echo in my head as I stand in the back of the church, watching him mourn another woman on her sister's wedding day. Isabelle. The perfect dead girlfriend. The ghost I've been competing with for three years. I thought I could be enough. I thought love could grow where grief once lived. But when I find the evidence, when I see the hotel receipts, the text messages, the photos of Jason with Isabelle's sister Violet, I realize the truth. I was never the love story. I was the intermission. What I don't know yet is that nothing about my marriage was real. Not Jason's cruelty. Not Violet's affair. Not the stranger's rescue. They've all been playing a game, and I'm the prize they're willing to destroy each other for. When the truth comes out, when I discover why Isabelle really died and who's been pulling the strings, I'll have to decide: Do I let them destroy me, or do I burn their whole world down?

I begged for his love. I did everything for him even if he treats me like trash. while he treats his first love like a queen. But when our baby died because he chose his first love over our child, my love with him died too. He did not know that day it wasn't just his child who was going to lose, he lost the woman who only wanted a complete and happy family.