We Were Never Here Novels & Stories

"You were never her, Aria. You were just... there." Jason's words echo in my head as I stand in the back of the church, watching him mourn another woman on her sister's wedding day. Isabelle. The perfect dead girlfriend. The ghost I've been competing with for three years. I thought I could be enough. I thought love could grow where grief once lived. But when I find the evidence, when I see the hotel receipts, the text messages, the photos of Jason with Isabelle's sister Violet, I realize the truth. I was never the love story. I was the intermission. What I don't know yet is that nothing about my marriage was real. Not Jason's cruelty. Not Violet's affair. Not the stranger's rescue. They've all been playing a game, and I'm the prize they're willing to destroy each other for. When the truth comes out, when I discover why Isabelle really died and who's been pulling the strings, I'll have to decide: Do I let them destroy me, or do I burn their whole world down?

After the plane crash, my body was never recovered. My soul drifted back to the home I hadn't stepped foot in for five years. They didn't know I was dead. They were still waiting for me to come home for Christmas. When my mom got the call from the airline, she froze for a long time, completely at a loss, before breaking down in tears. I followed them as they went to the memorial crash site. That was when I noticed something strange—I could see their levels of regret hovering above their heads. My brother's regret level read: 40%. My father's showed: 60%. Even my sister-in-law had 30% over her head. But my mother's regret level? It flashed a cold, unchanging 0%.

It is the third year of my marriage when the video of my bodyguard, Julian Sutherland, holding an umbrella over me in a downpour goes viral. Overnight, the internet becomes obsessed with the "Icy Protector and his Forbidden Heiress." Netizens are relentless; they dig through the archives until they unearth a ten-year-old clip. In the video, a girl was holding a pair of high-heeled shoes while sprinting through the Folander airport. My friend teased, "No way, Ms. Serina Brown. Are you really flying back home to confess to that poor man? What could you possibly see in him?" The camera shakes, capturing my youthful face. I was just a reckless 20-year-old. "I love Julian. I love everything about him." That night, after seeing the video, Julian loses his composure and bursts into my room. "I didn't know you loved me back then. I thought… I thought… God, it was never supposed to end like this." I pull my coat around me and stand rooted on the spot, remaining silent. Suddenly, a mocking laugh echoes from behind me. Someone places their hand firmly on my waist and says, "Are you trying to reminisce about your love with my wife right in front of me? Do I look dead to you?"

Millicent Andrews never expected her life to collapse right before her twenty-first birthday. One moment she’s a wife, a best friend, a girl with a future… and the next, she’s staring at her husband Brian Vel in bed and tangled in her best friend’s arms, the betrayal slices her open in ways she can’t begin to stitch shut. The divorce is brutal and the humiliation is even worse. With nowhere else to go, Milli returns to her mom’s house with her sick son. She reopens her small, struggling photo studio, just in time to learn the entire building has already been bought by Damon Hale, a forty-seven-year-old billionaire with a reputation colder than the steel hotels he builds. Damon wants the land, but Milli refuses to give up the last piece of her life that hasn’t been stolen from her. Their fight become heated, and combustible, until he makes her an offer she should never accept: marry him for one year to soothe his mother, live under his roof, follow his every rule…and in return, he’ll save the studio, every shop on the block and her sick son gets the best treatment possible, but she does. They hate each other and they’re nothing alike. The contract is supposed to keep their worlds separated, but forced proximity has sharp fangs. Meanwhile, Brian returns, desperate and regretful, determined to pull Millicent back into his life. While she tries to outrun her past, she discovers a painful truth about her own bloodline that changes everything she thought she knew, all while discovering Damon's darkest secret. What happens to their paper tie, when he discovers she knows the truth who he really is?

My husband has azoospermia. After trying all the options available, I finally conceived. However, my husband is worried my child will hurt his first love's feelings—she had a miscarriage. He tricks me into going for a prenatal checkup. In truth, he conspires with a doctor to induce labor when I'm only five months along. He says, "You must be the one with the problem. Why else is it so hard for us to have children? The baby won't be healthy even if it's born! We can have more children when you're healthier. Julie has just had a miscarriage; I don't want to aggravate her." He doesn't know he has azoospermia. I only managed to conceive this child after trying out IVF countless times and taking countless folk remedies. He will never have a child of his own in this lifetime, and I discover his true colors. I ask for a divorce, and that's when he loses his mind.

Shannon Gray loved Sean Ford wholeheartedly, regardless of her loneliness or feelings of lack of accomplishment.She once believed that he would be her forever until the end. However, things happened the other way around. Finally, she woke up when he pushed her to the edge of the cliff for another woman, only then did she know that she was just a passerby in his life and he would never be hers…Sean, you will regret this one day. In fact, no one can escape from feeling helpless. Perhaps, I will be gone when you decide to come back...

It was not until after I married Bennett that I found out he had a clingy little childhood friend who loved to play the victim. On the very first day of our marriage, at dinner, I simply asked Bennett to pass me a bite of food. She immediately exploded. "Holly, you're disgusting! Bennett already used those utensils, and you seriously asked him to serve you food? What, don't you have hands?" I froze, completely blindsided. Before I could even react, Bennett put down his spoon and went straight to her, wrapping her in his arms like she was the one who had been wronged. Then he turned to me and said I should just get my own food from now on. However, honestly, wasn't it normal for a husband to serve his wife a bite? What was so outrageous about that? I barely got a word out before Bennett shut me down in a low, firm voice. "That's final. If Rosie doesn't like it, then we're not doing it. End of discussion."

She was reborn soft, sweet, and touched — surrounded by women who never learned to let go. Evangeline “Eva” Claire Maxwell — Lioré was once a brilliant, overworked woman from a cold, futuristic world. When exhaustion finally claimed her, she didn’t expect to wake up as a baby in the arms of luxury — a second chance in a modern world where time moved slower, kisses came warmer, and desire wore velvet gloves. In a world without magic, desire is its own spell. And love? It’s the most dangerous kind of possession.

She returned with secrets that could destroy them both. He hates her. He wants her. And he’ll never forgive the only girl who still owns his heart. ***** I moaned into his mouth as Noah pressed me harder against the railing, his body solid and demanding against mine. One of his big hands slid down to grip my ass through the thin silk of my dress, squeezing possessively as he ground his hips forward. Gosh, he was rock hard. I could feel every thick inch of him. “Feel that?” he rasped against my lips. “That’s what watching you with him did to me. I’ve been hard all night thinking about dragging you somewhere dark and fucking the attitude right out of you.” My breath hitched, but I forced a smirk. “Poor baby. Jealousy looks good on you, Hale. Too bad you don’t deserve any of this.” He bit my bottom lip hard enough to make me gasp, then soothed the sting with his tongue. “You talk so much shit for someone whose nipples are hard enough to cut glass right now.” His free hand slid up my side, his thumb brushing the underside of my breast through the silk, sending heat straight between my legs. “Bet you’re soaked too. Bet if I pushed my hand between your thighs I’d find you dripping for the man you claim to hate.” “Keep dreaming,” I shot back, but my voice came out breathy and weak. My hips rolled against him anyway, chasing the friction I desperately needed.

She felt like she was constantly walking on a tightrope, balancing life and death. The weight of the world was on her shoulders and she was suffocating, unable to escape the constant mistreatment and disrespect she faced every day. Death seemed like her only hope to escape the misery. But fate had different plans for her. When she stumbled upon the Alpha of the most notorious pack, her world flipped upside down. He was the epitome of power, with piercing eyes that seemed to look into her soul. She was caught in a dangerous game, forced to make a choice that could either save her life or seal her fate forever. Will she be able to escape the claws of the Alpha or will she succumb to his wrath?