The Wasted Ten Years Novels & Stories

But he was really serious. We would finally have an agreement. An understanding. Not forced labor. It felt… exhilarating. A portion of the weight I had carried for so long slipped from my shoulders. Some of the tension that had lodged itself in my bones since our third meeting—since the moment my fate was sealed—finally began to drain away. Still, ten years? As beings that live very long lives, a decade was not much. It was a blink in the grand scheme of things. But for living the life that is my presence, every day was long enough. Ten years sounded like ten centuries.

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?"

Jared immediately leaped to his feet, agile as though he had turned back the clock to become twenty years younger, and crooned, "Dr. Doyle, what did you just say? Did I hear you say that—that I can live another ten years?" He was so astounded by this that he could not even stop himself from stuttering, and no one could blame his excitement. Although Jared had, by this age, accepted that he had led a long and fulfilled life, one could never resist the temptation of another decade on this earth. How could one say no to more time to spend with loved ones and to explore the world?

Then Helen and Richard left, saying that they would come to see me tomorrow. Jeffrey stood outside the door, hesitant to leave. "Audrey, we can never be together again, right?" Hearing this, Kash wanted to go up and hit him, but I stopped Kash. "Yes. "I’ve been unhappy for the past seven years. Jeffrey, how many seven years are there in one’s life?"

“I once thought I had everything, all the happiness in the world. I thought our love was straight out of a romance novel, filled with sweetness and passion.” “I had a lover who loved me without reservation. We’d find traces of love in the everyday moments of life.” “We’ve been together for ten years.” I paused, my gaze deepening, as though recalling every little moment. “There should have been another twenty, thirty, forty years ahead of us… until the end of our lives., but now I’ve come to realize that ten years is enough.” I lifted my eyes and stared straight at him. “Carter, our story has come to an end.”

“You weren’t ready.” “That’s not an excuse.” “No, but it’s the truth.” I shake my head, the weight of everything pressing down on my chest. “I don’t deserve you.” Rook sighs, gripping my chin, forcing me to look at him. “You don’t get to decide that.” I exhale sharply, my jaw clenching, my whole body locking up. “I wasted five years.” “Then don’t waste five more.”

Maya had dragged everything out into the open, and Emily had been left to pick up the shattered pieces of her life. I could feel the anger clawing at me, a deep, searing pain that had nothing to do with Maya’s sick game. It was all the missed years, all the time I’d spent standing on the outside, watching her fall apart from a distance. Ten years, Emily. Ten years of my life that I had wasted, thinking of her, wanting her, but never being able to say a damn thing. And now, all I could do was hold her as she cried over the man who never deserved her.

"Ten years." "Ten years," Don said. "Which contains you, and the estate, and Thomas and the foxgloves and the quince trees and the east wing and the trips. The ten years as the accumulation that the book has been about — not in the abstract of cities and landscapes but in the specific of the life that produced the argument."

He walked toward the window overlooking the harbor. The afternoon sunlight reflected across the water. Bright. Peaceful. Completely disconnected from the storm inside him. When he finally spoke, his voice sounded different. Not angry. Not bitter. Something else. Broken. “I wasted ten years.” The words hit harder than anything else. Because they were true. Painfully true. Ava looked toward him. And for the first time since all of this began, she saw the full depth of his regret. Not the regret of recent weeks. Not the regret of recent months.

"It was a lesson I learned late and hard. She came to it early. She is cleverer than I was." "She is the cleverest thing I have ever seen." He said it simply, wonderingly, a man reporting a fact that had rearranged his whole world. "I stood there and I watched her argue about eggs and I thought, that is mine. That came from me and from you and it argues about eggs. And I have missed five years of it." His hand closed and opened at his side. "Five years of eggs. Of everything. I will never get them back. I know that. I am not asking you to give them back, I know you cannot. I am only telling you I understand now, finally, exactly what the arithmetic came to. You told me in the alley I had was