The Day I Choose Myself Novels & Stories

Didn't check her phone. In her room, she opened her journal—not the one Dante knew about, the one with the code they'd developed, but a second one, hidden, hers alone. She wrote: Tonight I refused him. Tonight I chose myself, or tried to. I don't know if there's a difference between choosing myself and performing independence for him. I don't know if I'll ever know. But I didn't take the dare. I didn't make Grayson Hayes into a test. I want to look at him tomorrow and just see him. Not a game. Not a proof. Just a boy who runs into girls in hallways and makes them look up. She closed the journal. Lay down. Checked her phone—2:14 AM—and saw Dante's text, sent two minutes ago:

But I paid them no attention and carried on looking at the paintings to kill time. The largest portrait in the hall was covered with a white cloth. Right at that moment, a draft blew through the hall, lifting a corner of the cloth and revealing part of the portrait's chin. For some reason, it looked strangely familiar. Meanwhile, Samuel was saying to the crowd, "I only managed to achieve this level of success today because I chose Sienna back then. As for Isabella, she was just the most ordinary one among all my admirers. In fact, she's not worth mentioning at all."

"Save Elara! What are you all doing? Please, go to her!" Her tears streamed in perfect paths down her cheeks. In the moment of my death, I finally saw my dear sister's true face. So when our Alpha father asked me who I wanted, I offered a faint smile. "Since my sister Selene is being so considerate, I'll accept her kind offer." "I want Liam." "What did you say?" The fake smile on Selene's face froze, and tears instantly welled in her eyes. "Elara, you know that Liam and I..."

I lowered my gaze, hiding what flickered in my eyes, and answered as calmly as I could, "Didn't your dad tell you? I've divorced him. I'm not your mom anymore. You won't have someone as useless as me around again." Claude panicked immediately, his voice breaking as he cried. "No! I only want you as my mom. I'm sorry. Can you forgive me? I'll only want you from now on." There was no way I felt nothing hearing that. But I had already chosen to leave. I wasn't turning back. I forced everything down and said quietly, "But Claude, I don't want you anymore. I don't want your dad, either." I hung up before he could say anything else.

Every inch of this land was welcoming me home. "Julian, I was never going to Crimson Peak." "What?!" "I said, I was never going to Crimson Peak." My voice was calm. "Go be with your Elodie. I'm going back to my real home." "Vesper!" Desperation filled his voice. "You can't do this! We're fated mates! We have a bond! You promised you'd come with me to Crimson Peak!" I stopped. I looked at the familiar mountain in the distance. My grandmother was buried there. My mentor. Everyone I ever loved. Ten years. I was finally back. "Did I?" I asked coldly.

“Not erase what came before. Every moment, every struggle, every quiet hour we spent together led us here. But I want to stop letting it own us. I want to choose you every single day. Only because I love you. Not because of a paper. Not because of a promise made to anyone else. Not because of anything other than you.” My throat tightened, and tears pricked my eyes, but I smiled through them, a bright warm feeling spreading through my chest so deep it felt like it might spill over. “I chose you the day you knocked on my door,” I said, steady and sure. “I chose you when you sat with me through nightmares and never asked for thanks. I chose you every time you stood between me and whatever came

On Christmas Day, my parents decided to add my sister Chloe's name to the family trust. As the lawyer prepared the documents, he glanced at me. "And this young lady? Should she be included as well?" My mother waved a hand dismissively. "No need. She's just a foster child." Ever since Chloe was brought back home, I—their biological daughter—had become the outsider. All because Chloe insisted she was the only daughter in the family. If anyone so much as mentioned that I was blood-related, she'd have a PTSD episode—screaming, crying, the whole breakdown. Eventually, everyone just accepted it: "The Haper family only has one real daughter. The other one's a foster kid." At first, I tried to

After saving money with Justin Pierre for five years, we finally went to view a house. My best friend, Maria Houston, came along too. "The master bedroom needs a walk-in closet. Can we knock down this wall?" she asked Justin while pointing at the floor plan I had been looking at for the past six months. "I'll get a designer to take a look tomorrow. You can change it however you want." The two of them discussed everything, from the direction the apartment faced to the tiles, from the floor-to-ceiling windows to the bathtub. Meanwhile, I stood in the corner, unable to get a word in. When it was time to sign the papers, he seemed to suddenly remember I was here and said, "We'll put this pla

For the third time, Mom complains that the fridge isn't cooling properly. I know she's waiting for me to offer to buy a new one. Mom's always saying I'm the one holding this family together. She constantly reminds me that my younger sister, Celia Kessler, only makes 2,000 dollars a month and can't be expected to help. So everything falls on me. When Mom says her bedroom is too hot, I grit my teeth and buy her a new air conditioner. When Dad complains about his constant neck pain, I scrape a living for a month so I can afford a neck massager for him. Last year, I even paid for most of the renovations on the house, scrimping and saving to cover the cost. I've been working for five years

Noah would make a joke about racing us to marriage. Missy would cry. The public would eventually learn. Reporters would ask questions. There would be more games. More mistakes. More choices. Our lives would not become perfect because a ring rested on my finger. But perfection was no longer what I wanted. I wanted a life that was honest. A home where love did not require surrender. A man who stood beside me without asking me to disappear inside him. I had once believed happiness meant being chosen. Now I understood. The most important choice had always been my own. I chose freedom. I chose trust. I chose Chase. And this time, I chose myself too. The End