The Love I Begged For Was Never Real Novels & Stories

Mom and Dad looked at me lovingly, hoping I would genuinely accept Grace. Seven-year-old me was genuinely happy in my previous life, believing I had gained another warm family member. I was willing to share my love with this gentle-faced girl. Yet I never imagined Grace to be a thief who didn't want to share my love—she wanted to steal it all. "Wendy, I know you're a sensible girl. Grace isn't well. Although you're younger, we need you to help us care for her. Can you do that?" Dad asked. Tears were already forming in Grace's eyes before I could answer.

“Vivian has a bad temper, so I’m taking her on a one-week vacation to help her relax. Tell the doctor to postpone your surgery until I get back.” Whenever Vivian threw a tantrum, he would shower her with tens of thousands of dollars without hesitation. However, when it came to me, even his apology amounted to a pathetic fourteen dollars and three cents. He still tried to romanticize it, claiming that the amount did not matter. It was the thought that counted. Those numbers had special meanings and it was his special kind of love for me. I used to believe nonsense like that. However, now I understood — follow the money and one would find where the love really was.

she whispered, so soft I almost missed it, her whole body trembling faintly against mine. I stroked slow lines down her back. “I love you.” She didn’t respond. Silence settled over the room, heavy enough that I could feel her disbelief without her saying a single word. “I mean it, Annie.” I pressed my lips to the top of her head. “I never stopped. Not once, not for a single day in ten years.” Still nothing. I sighed, pulling her closer. “Courtney and I never dated in college. Whatever she told you back there wasn’t true. I never loved her that way. I looked after her because she’s my friend’s little sister, that’s all it ever was.”

I had excellent grades, but my terrible luck resulted in me ending up as the son of a rapist. So even in death, I was never going to have Mom's love. I tried drifting farther away from her. I waited for my consciousness to fade like the endings in fairy tales, but a distant voice echoed in the wind. "You have unfinished business…" Just like that, I became an invisible shadow, trapped here with no way out.

"The man you were ten years ago is not the man you are now. Even if some of that part of you remained, I would understand. What Valentina was suggesting is on a whole different level. It's vile and inhumane, and you would never agree to it. I know that deep in my bones. I couldn't love you if I thought you were capable of being that kind of person." He sucks in a breath and looks at me with hope. "You love me?" he asks, searching my eyes for the truth. "You already know the answer. You said it yesterday," I say, having a hard time being direct. He pulls me in close, our faces now just inches apart. "I need to hear it to really believe it. I need to hear those three words more than I've ever

On the fifteenth of every month, Rowan Hawthorn and I would swap homes. Eighteen years ago, a hospital accidentally swapped our embryos during IVF and put them into the wrong mothers. When the truth came out, my biological parents, Frank and Ronnie Hawthorn, wanted to keep Rowan. But his biological parents, Eugene and Rowena Cooper, wanted him back. They decided that he would live with each family for one month. Then, we would switch on the fifteenth of every month. I, on the other hand, became the unwanted burden. Wherever Rowan went, the house would be fully stocked with snacks and drinks. He would receive a thousand dollars as his monthly allowance, and the sunlit room would always b

The entire family had always mocked me as the crazy one. On the day I found Jacob York, my fiancé, cheating on me, I grabbed him and jumped down from the fifth floor. He survived, but I became comatose. From that moment on, every night, he held Ella Stone, his affair partner and my adoptive sister, and made out with her beside my bed. During the first year, when he spoke about me, he would choke up and be filled with resentment. He said that dying together would have been letting me off too easily. In the second year, he had kissed her passionately while saying that he wanted to burn us all to death. By the third year, they seldom talked about me again. Most of the time, they tal

My best friend, Jake Lawson, caught his fiancée, Lyla Sterling, cheating right in the middle of their engagement party. Instead of apologizing, Lyla just sneered at Jake in front of the entire crowded room. "Oh, please. As if any other girl in the world would actually want you." Jake balled his hands into tight fists, his knees buckling like he was about to collapse. In a moment of pure, reckless impulse, I grabbed my own girlfriend’s hand and shoved it directly into his palm. "Who says nobody wants him?" I demanded, my voice ringing out across the hall. "Starting right now, she's his girlfriend." My girlfriend, Nora Mitchell, froze, totally stunned. A heartbeat later, she played along.

On the fifty-fifth day after my fiancée blocked me, I canceled the wedding I'd waited eight years for. She was still at a mountain abbey with her childhood friend, helping him heal from his depression. She'd had Havenlight Abbey, which never went a day without visitors, closed for six full months. Meanwhile, because she'd vanished without a word, reporters hounded me until I had no home left to go back to. With no other choice, I went to Havenlight Abbey to find her. She sent me back down the mountain, saying I couldn't disturb the peace of a holy place. In the dead of winter, I collapsed at the foot of the mountain and nearly died. When I came to, I saw Claire planting a whole field

“Just a few minutes ago you looked so happy. Talk to me princess, tell me what happened, you know you can always trust me, because … I care about you.” “You care about me … but you don't love me.” She shook her head as she smiled bitterly and the first of many tears that began to fall uncontrollably came into her eyes, spoke slowly because the lump that had formed in her throat prevented her from even breathing normally. Her desperation to want to achieve what was unattainable had already overcome her. “I have begged enough in this life … too much … for food, for a roof, for freedom and mainly for the love of a mother and a family. Why Carlos? Why the hell should I beg also for the love of a