The Choices We Made Novels & Stories

It was something you were building, choice by choice, day by day. Iris painted the name on a board of salvaged pine and spelled "Choosing" with two o's in the wrong place, and we hung it anyway, because correcting her would have been a very poor way to open. We taught people to see the threads of their own timelines. We taught them to recognise the choices they had made and the choices that had been made for them. We taught them that regret was not the same as being wrong, and that wrong choices made with intention were better than right choices made without choice.

I understood the terrain before I moved through it and I moved through it with the specific and deliberate attention of someone for whom direction was not a thing that happened to him but a thing he chose. I had chosen a contract. I had not chosen what the contract had become. Or I had not known I was choosing it. Which was, if I was being honest with myself in a parking garage at three in the afternoon, a distinction without a meaningful difference. You could not be in proximity to a thing every day for four months and not be making choices about it. The choices might not be announced. They might not be examined. They might exist entirely in the accumulation of small decisions that did not

That morning, sitting at the kitchen table as the sun rose outside and our children slept in the room next door, the four of us made the most important decision since the cruise. It wasn’t running away. It wasn’t submission. It was power. And, for the first time, I felt we were truly in control of our destiny.

“Would you like me to find someone, or would you rather choose?” “I want us to choose together. I don't want this to become another thing you handle without me knowing what's happening.” “Then we'll do it together.” She nodded and set her phone aside. It wasn't a solution, but it was the first decision they had made in several days that felt like they were moving toward the same goal instead of standing on opposite sides of the same wound.

But our unconventional choices threaten to disrupt that stability. A conflicted expression crosses my face as I respond to Mike, my voice filled with uncertainty. "I understand, Mike. We've always been driven by ambition, but we must also consider the potential consequences. Our actions have far-reaching effects, not only on our own lives but the lives of those we love."

Was he going to be closed off once again when he would show up again? That thought crushed me into a million pieces. I pushed it out of my head before it would develop and I would lose it. It was almost insane how desperately I wished for things to go in the positive direction for us. Whether we would rush things or we take them slow, I wanted us to take things forward. But only after I thought things through and we weighed our options and made the appropriate choice. At this point, I was convinced that there would not be an appropriate choice. Things would have to cross between wholly accepting Darren and the things we could have, and throwing care for the effects it would have on everyone

- I won't stay here. - It's not up to you to decide - I can bet that they are not going to decide where, at least my sister and I, are going to stay. - Do you only have one? - I only have one for which I am responsible. I didn't spend nearly 20 years of my life with the shitty Corfin's and then, in a nice way, be led by Montenegro's or Bouvier's. The Mothers always guided us, but in the end, it was us who decided things. We always have to make life choices and make decisions for ourselves and for them.

"Why does it have to be so black and white? Why can't people understand that life is complicated? I'm not a character in some story where the narrative is straightforward!" Jax finally stepped in, his voice quieter and filled with a sadness that broke my heart. "Sometimes, Lyla, choices have to be made. And those choices define who we are." I looked at Jax, then at my brothers, and lastly at Cameron and Samuel. In that moment, the gravity of what Jax said hit me. Choices define us. And standing there, amid the tangled webs of my relationships, I realized that a choice was exactly what I needed to make. However, the question remained: How could I choose without shattering my world, and the wo

I didn’t know if we could both walk away from this. But the choice had been made. The sacrifice was already in motion. And now there was no turning back.

I’ve heard a saying that goes thus; if you want to make enemies, choose them wisely. I don’t believe I chose mine wisely. And I don’t believe there’s a saying like that actually… But it still makes sense because I could have chosen enemies who were less powerful and cruel so that my life’s predicament wouldn’t be as brutal. But I went ahead and did the opposite. But then again, sometimes, we are choiceless when it comes to selecting our enemies. Sometimes, it just happens naturally and we find random cruel people hunting us down and aiming to destroy our lives.