S M O O T H Unscramble

Maya is twenty four, independent and very good at keeping people at a comfortable distance. After a night she never planned with a stranger she never expected, she does what she always does — she leaves before morning and tells herself it is finished. It is not finished. The stranger is Caleb Reed, her brother Derek's best friend, and he has just moved back to Chicago. He knew who Maya was from the moment he saw her at the party. He said nothing. Now they are forced into the same orbit — family dinners, group hangouts, shared spaces — pretending a night that changed everything never happened at all. The tension between them builds slowly and then all at once. A secret relationship begins. Feelings neither of them planned for take root. But the closer Maya gets to Caleb the more unsettled her world becomes, because Derek is not handling any of it the way a brother should. His anger runs too deep. His protectiveness feels like something else entirely. When Derek finally explodes and the truth comes out, it reshapes everything. Maya was adopted. Derek has known for years. And the feelings he buried under a lifetime of playing the protective older brother were never entirely brotherly at all. Maya is left to grieve an identity she thought she knew, forgive people she loves for lying, and face a love that was built on a secret. In the end she has to decide who she is without the version of her life she always believed in — and whether Caleb, the man who knew her before she knew the truth, is the one she wants to walk into whatever comes next. She chooses him. Not because it is easy. Because one night was never going to be enough.

At the age of thirteen, Ashley secretly fell in love with a man. The man looks cold and lazy, talks like a bad-boy, often comes to her house and spends an afternoon playing games in her brother's room. Seeing Ashley come in to deliver some snacks, he would raise his eyelids carelessly, smiling like a tempting devil, "Kiddo, what's the matter with you? You always blush when you see me. "

My roommate was a classic bimbo. When I went to arrange a jogging meetup, she mistyped it as a hookup and sent it straight into the group chat, then burst into tears and claimed she didn't know how to retract the message. When I went to meet my jogging buddy, she told everyone that she ran into my "hookup buddy." At the end, she even covered her mouth and giggled sweetly, saying, "I always mix words up." After a few stunts like that, my reputation was utterly ruined, and the entire class shut me out. Later, she used her "clumsiness" as an excuse to spike my milk with sleeping pills, causing me to miss a major exam. She even dropped toxic bacteria into my water cup and killed me outright. And all of it was over something that stupid: the guy she had a crush on had casually helped me carry my luggage on the first day of school. When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the very first day of freshman orientation. This time, I am going to let her experience what it felt like to be ruined—and killed—by a so-called idiot.

Everyone knew William had turned his back on the entire Jamison family for me. He refused the marriage alliance with the Wyndham family in public, and the Jamisons locked him up for it. He even lost his right to inherit. When they finally released him from the cellar, he collapsed into my arms, pale and shaking. "Stephy, even if I die, I will never marry anyone else." Later, the Jamisons relented. Since I could not have children, they agreed to let us be together on one condition: William had to give Elvira an heir. From that day on, he repeated the same words to me: "Just wait a little longer." The first time, I caught him and Elvira in bed with my own eyes and broke down on the spot. He held me and said, "Just wait. She'll be pregnant soon." The second time, after she safely gave birth to a daughter, he said, "Father still wants a grandson. Just wait a little longer." Hence, I kept waiting. I continued to serve Elvira. I saw the marks on her neck every day and said nothing. By the third spring, she finally gave birth to a son. I thought everything was finally over. But at the baby's one-month celebration, he suddenly went into allergic shock. Everyone decided I was responsible. William locked me in the cellar with his own hands. Then he looked at me with cold eyes and said, "Stephanie, no matter how desperate you were, you should never have hurt my child." At that moment, I finally understood how ridiculous I had been all those years. Thus, when the cellar door opened again, I called his father, Brent Jamison. "Didn't you always want me gone? Fine. I'll leave. But I'm leaving clean. And when I'm gone, William will never find me again."

My adopted daughter, Phoebe Marsh, possessed an evil ability. Whenever she got hurt, the pain would also be inflicted directly on my biological daughter, Maisie Shaw. She deliberately hurt herself, covering her body with wounds and bruises. Then, she would turn around with cold eyes, watching Maisie writhe on the floor in agony until she passed out from the pain. With no medical solution available, I broke down and held Maisie close, begging my husband, Brandon Shaw, to send Phoebe away. However, he would erupt in fury. "It's obviously Maisie who's been faking illness for attention, and you're making up this ridiculous story to get rid of Phoebe. She's just a fragile, helpless child. How can you be so vicious?" After that, Phoebe escalated her self-harm even more viciously. Meanwhile, Maisie spent every day curled up in the corner of her bed, refusing to let anyone touch her. On Maisie's birthday, Phoebe threw herself from the fifth floor. Just as Maisie was blowing out her candles and making a wish, she suddenly began bleeding from all her facial orifices, and she died instantly. Yet, Phoebe only suffered minor scrapes. I died from overwhelming grief shortly after. When I opened my eyes again, I had returned to Phoebe's first day in our home. Maisie was playing with her Legos when she suddenly clutched her ankle and started crying. This time, I grabbed the broom from behind the door and swung it toward Maisie, shouting, "I'll beat you up for faking illness and seeking attention!"

She fell in love with a lie. Elena Cross has nothing. No money, no safety net, no parents left to call. She has a voice that stops rooms and a stubborn refusal to let the world win. When she meets Danny Miller, a quiet sound engineer with sad eyes and steady hands, she does the one thing she swore she wouldn't do: she trusts him. He falls for her too. For her fire. Her music. The way she fights for her little brother and refuses help from anyone. Danny Miller wanted someone to love him without knowing his last name. Because his last name is Ashford. As in Ashford Global Industries. As in billions. When the truth explodes in public, his family goes to war. Not against him. Against her. His mother smiles for the cameras while orchestrating Elena's destruction. His brother, who wants Daniel erased from the inheritance, uses Elena as the weapon. A famous ex-girlfriend pretends to help while twisting the knife. Elena loses her career, her home, her reputation, and the man she loved in the same week. She discovers she's pregnant in the wreckage. She runs. She rebuilds from silence. She turns her pain into songs that millions hear. Daniel walks away from everything to find her. No money. No name. No family. He becomes the nothing she always was, searching for the woman who loved him when he pretended to be nobody. But his brother has one final lie: he tells the world the baby is his. Now Elena and Daniel have to fight an empire, a public scandal, and every person who ever tried to keep them apart. Some love stories are fairy tales. This one is a war.

Maya hates werewolves. Why wouldn’t she? They killed her parents in the Blood War and they killed her adoptive parents only son. They were welcomed in the town but left only pain, grief and ruin in their wake. The town life is simple after the Blood War, live your life and hate werewolves. Her life becomes a bit complicated when a mysterious boy moves into town and joins their elite private school. Their attraction is magnetic and intense and this new emotion gives Maya a different sense of things, she falls for him, fast and hard. But what happens when he tells her what he truly is? And even worse, when she finds out what she is? Will their messed up relationship stand the test of the truth coming to light or will it break just like the trust she had in him?

To cheer up his pretty assistant, my boyfriend brought her to attend a party. I had to bail him out after he was arrested by the police. The charge? Public indecency after consuming illegal substances. When I arrived at the police station to pick him up, he was still trying to comfort his assistant, paying no heed to the possibility that I might have seen the lipstick marks on his neck. After seeing that I wasn’t saying anything, my boyfriend assumed I was upset and explained impatiently, “Winnie was in a terrible mood that day, and I was just there to keep her company. We didn’t take part in any public indecency! It was the other guests who were messing about!” What a terrible excuse. If it was any other day, I wouldn’t be this calm. This time was different. I will no longer press him for answers like a mad woman. As I walked past the police station entrance, an officer looked at my boyfriend and his assistant, who were still all over each other. With eyes full of sympathy, he asked me, “Your partner?” I glanced at my boyfriend, whose focus was entirely fixated on Winnie, and shook my head. “No, just an acquaintance.” At that moment, Winnie was leaning against him, seeking his comfort. I pulled out my phone and texted my dad silently. “I agree to marry President Lee. I’ll leave the wedding preparation to you guys.” “I’ll be back in five days.”

I had avoided Snow Judson’s father for the entire five years of our marriage. My career never matched Snow’s, so in his eyes, I would always be beneath them. That day, Snow had a work dinner and asked me to take his father for a medical checkup. When we reached the hospital, the staff told us that the appointment was not scheduled for today. Snow’s father blew up on the spot and swung his cane at me. When I tried to call Snow, I accidentally opened a video that had been posted three minutes earlier. Snow wore a lace camisole in the video. She stood at a sink in a bathroom and washed a man’s shirt by hand. I looked at the caption. [Dinner is over. My boss took great care of me. If I had a wife like her, I would want nothing more.] Snow smiled so gently in the video that I suddenly felt empty. I left a comment under the video. [Wow, is he confessing?]

Though Micheal loved me deeply, When he was deceived by Ruby's lies,He lost the ability to distinguish right from wrong. He believed that I had killed his grandfather for the inheritance and that I had slept with other men and was pregnant with that man's child.So he cruelly subjected me to humiliation again and again. When he personally pushed me into the abyss, all the love turned to ashes—never to return in this lifetime...