Ten Years Novels & Stories

*Celebrating ten years of the Aria Winters Foundation: A Decade of Survival, Strength, and Building. Ten years. I picked up the invitation. Read it again. One decade. And Grace already asking to be part of the next one.

The coffee and the pancakes and the notebook and the tablet and the explanation of the new system and the champagne from Portland and the bolt mystery on the porch and all of it. The specifically and permanently them of it. Twenty-one nights. Ten years. The next ten years. Beginning.

Her own speech was titled "Us in Ten Years." She'd traveled back from more than ten years in the future, and the decade ahead was a time she'd lived through herself. Ten years wasn't an eternity, but it wasn't short either. She'd written down every big and tiny change she knew would happen in that period in vivid, fun detail. But no matter how good it was, with Catherine's speech going first, hers would just look like a copycat. It didn't even matter what they said anymore. Darren noticed her pale face and asked, "You okay?"

"Stop calling me that. Just tell me where I am." He hesitated before speaking. "Everything ended ten years ago, after the golden light erupted." My hand flew to my mouth. Ten years? I stumbled backwards and landed on the bed. For a moment, I couldn't even speak. I stared at him, hoping I had misunderstood what he said. Ten years couldn't have passed. I had only just closed my eyes. I remembered the explosion, the light and Kade falling in front of me. I remembered trying to reach him. How could ten years have passed?

On our wedding day, the officiant asked, "Do you agree to spend the rest of your life with the man standing before you?" Bianca, the woman I had loved for ten years, hesitated. In the end, she shook her head as she clutched her phone and said, "I don't." Then, she grabbed my younger brother, who had just slit his wrists, and ran out of the venue, tearing off her wedding gown as she fled. She never once spared a thought for my dignity the entire time. Heck, she didn't even look at me. Afterward, she simply said, "We'll just make new wedding arrangements. There was an emergency that day. Someone's life was on the line. I couldn't just ignore it, especially

"Boys don't need to be pampered like that. Girls are different. My Mia is growing, and she needs proper nutrition. Don't you have any sense of priorities?" By the time I finished listening, my temper had shot straight up. What decade was this man living in? I was about to tear into him in the chat when Ms. Walker, the classroom teacher, suddenly jumped in. "Ethan, Mark is only thinking of the children. Our class has always encouraged sharing. "Since Mia likes Theo's lunch, perhaps you can help out a little. It will also help the children build a closer friendship." Reading her blatantly biased message, my expression went cold.

My girlfriend and my best friend never saw eye to eye. Ever since they met each other, they would always butt heads over trivial matters. Somehow, never spending anniversaries with me was what they had in common. In previous years, they would mysteriously become unreachable on that day, leaving me staring at the unanswered calls on my phone screen. This year, I mustered my courage to speak up in the group chat. "This year marks our tenth anniversary. Can't we celebrate it together?" The group chat, as though their earlier bickering hadn't happened, suddenly fell into silence after my message was sent. Both replied to my suggestion at the same time. "I'm not going to spend time around

When I am ten, Dad is diagnosed with uremia. To pay for his treatment, my family sell our house and rack up millions in debt. At 13, I drop out of school to work. I haul bricks at construction sites during the day, unload cargo at the docks at night, and wash dishes at a restaurant in the early hours of the morning. When I have a fever, I can't afford medicine. Even when I cough up blood, I can only wipe it away in secret. Every month, as long as I get my wages, I transfer every last cent to Dad. At 20, I am diagnosed with late-stage lung cancer. The doctor says I have at most a month to live. But when I think of how Dad still needs dialysis next week, I tear up my hospital admission form

After my miscarriage left me depressed, I stood on the rooftop the day I discovered my cheating husband was having an affair with my best friend. My best friend, Natalie Smith, regretted it so much that she slashed her own face with a knife before leaving the country. To make me feel safe, my husband, Steven Palmer, had a tracking device installed on himself. Every time he came home, he would hand me his phone. Even if he was only leaving for five minutes, he would always video-call me and tell me where he was. But when I became pregnant again and went to the hospital to start my prenatal records, I suddenly received a video call from myself ten years in the

For a limited-time event, my fiancée and the toxic guy who wouldn't let her go pretended to be a couple. They'd agreed to break it off after a week, but he kept goading her. "Valerie, don't tell me you've lost your nerve. How about we raise the stakes for real? We said we'd play this for life. Whoever backs out first is a coward!" Just when everyone assumed Valerie would give up the game for my sake, she gritted her teeth and refused to back down. She even raised the stakes further, turning the pretend relationship into a pretend marriage. For the next five Christmases, Valerie went home with Grayson Huntington instead of me. This year was no different. I stared at another text from my