Breakup

To celebrate landing our biggest client of the year, the company rented out the entire terrace of a beachside bar.

When it was time for the team photo, the only open spot left was next to my boyfriend, Harrison Kent.

I'd barely moved over when he waved toward the back of the crowd. "Lacey, come stand here."

Lacey Monroe was my best friend. She squeezed in beside him with a smile. The second the...

Every anniversary, my boyfriend pretends to propose to me—just because his adopted sister thinks it’s hilarious.
One year, the ring box held nothing but a "Dream on" note. Another, he dropped to one knee—just to tie his shoe. Last year, he finally slid a real ring onto my finger. The band was lined with silver. While I screamed, he and Myrtle laughed themselves breathless. In the ER that night, he...

My fiancé, a ruthless mafia Capo, always had a convenient excuse for his betrayals.

Any trace of another woman was scrubbed clean.

Exhausted by the gaslighting, I planted a lipstick in his car just to see how deep the deception went.

When I confronted him, he put his phone on speaker.

The whole family stepped up to cover his tracks.

My brother claimed it was misplaced by my best friend. My be...

I thought I was the happiest woman in the world... until I clicked on that video.

The moment the screen lit up, my entire world came crashing down.

The woman on the bed was Calista - that girl who grew up with us since we were kids. And that hand caressing her skin was wearing the wedding ring I had personally put on Matteo's finger.

"I've missed you so much..."
"You drive me crazy, baby..."

T...

For three years, I smelled like nothing for my Alpha.
Scent blocker on my wrists and throat, every time another Alpha walked into the room. "Until it's official," Knox said. Until he marked me.
When the war's over. He promised me eighteen times.
I drank wolfsbane in his place at every feast. I drew the maps that won his war, then watched him stand up and take the thanks.
The morning after the wa...

My boyfriend, Ethan Whitmore, has prosopagnosia. He can't remember faces unless he's looking right at them.
At our wedding send-off dinner, my roommate blindfolded him and challenged him to name three things about the woman he'd loved for four years.
"Big eyes. Small face," he said.
My heart nearly burst with happiness.
Even blindfolded, he still remembered me.
Then he smiled and added, "And there...

Ethan Calloway and I had been together for eight years. Married for three—or so everyone thought.
We had the ceremony. The hospital chapel, the white dress, his boss giving a toast. But we never made it to City Hall to sign the papers. He promised we would. Eighteen times.
Every time, something came up. Or rather, someone came up—his young protégée, Chloe. She needed him at the hospital. She neede...

Three years together, and the texts I'd sent Nolan Garrett could probably fill an entire medical chart.

Pasta or salad for dinner. Rain boots or sneakers when it was pouring. I ran everything by him.

Then one night, right in front of me, he muted my texts.

"Can you grow up a little?" He didn't even look up. "Not everything has to go through me."

After that, I really did stop asking.

I signed ...

After the woman Adrian Cole had always loved pushed her out of a helicopter as it lifted off, Summer Bennett handed in her notice.
She remained the most dependable assistant in Cole Group's executive office. But everyone noticed small changes.
She no longer carried Adrian's coffee into his office herself. Lunch came from the company cafeteria instead of the private chef who had prepared his carefu...

In order to rush to comfort his assistant whose apartment was leaking, Richard signed his name hastily without even glancing at the documents on the table.
I put away the divorce agreement with a wry smile.
When he and my son completely disappeared, he finally panicked.
Three months later .
He knelt down on the streets of Chicago in despair, begging me to remarry him.
My six-year-old son looked co...

My attempts to marry Ethan Ward had been derailed exactly seven times.
The first time, Peyton threw him a "surprise" party, and he was too hungover to make our City Hall appointment. 
The second time, she got into a minor fender bender and hysterically convinced him her neck was broken. He rode with her in the ambulance. 
The third time, right as we were signing the papers, she swallowed a bottle ...

I sat alone at our engagement dinner, having waited for eight long hours.

When my phone finally buzzed, Jasper sounded rushed.

"Lira? I'm so sorry. Things went sideways on my end. Your parents didn't stick around, did they?"

I stared at the melted ice in the champagne bucket.

"No," I said, my voice hollow.

He sighed. "Let's push it to next week, alright? I'll call your parents tomorrow and ex...

At my wedding, I stood up to tell my groom how much I loved him.
I didn't even get through the first line.
He grabbed the cake beside him and smashed it into my face.
My ex-boyfriend stood up in the audience, clapping. "Cut! That's a wrap!"
Then he grinned at me. "Hazel, you actually bought it?"

"The Draganovs are moving on Celeste tonight. I'm taking her to the safe house. We'll do the claiming after this, Orla. I promise."
That's what my husband said the seventh time he chose Celeste over me.
Celeste. The girl he'd loved since before he had a wife to ignore.
The first time, she heard footsteps outside her window at two in the morning. Rafael sent his whole detail to sit on her house and...

In the ten years I was with Chase Holloway, I got used to him "forgetting" things.

The night he proposed, he showed up empty-handed and said the ring was still at the jeweler's. The day we went to City Hall for our marriage license, he dug through every pocket of his coat and said he'd left his paperwork at home. On our wedding day, he didn't show up at all.

I found out later he'd been in the ba...

At the company gala, in front of everyone, the man I'd been with for ten years asked me if he could have the first dance with the new intern.

I didn't argue.

I didn't make a scene.

I stepped aside, turned around, and walked out.

For ten years I'd been there.

The tiny apartment with no heat. The credit card debt I helped him pay off. Every rung of the ladder he climbed to get where he is.

I...

"Thanksgiving's at Garrett's new place this year!"

My sister Paisley dropped a location pin in the family group chat, followed by a string of party emojis. My fiancé, Garrett, ran a real estate company, and the pin pointed to a model home they'd just finished building.

That evening, I grabbed a pumpkin pie fresh out of the oven and caught a rideshare to the address. When we got there, the driver...

I waited ten years for Ethan.
He was in London getting his PhD.
I was back in the States, teaching.
I taught alone, moved alone, sat alone in the ER with an IV in my arm.
He said that when he came home, he'd marry me.
But the day he came home, he brought her with him. The woman who'd followed him all the way to London.

The day we moved into the new estate on the hill, every bedroom had a name next to it. The master suite for my parents. The east wing for my brother, Luca. And the best room in the house, the south suite overlooking the Hudson, was labeled Sofia's Room. My name wasn't anywhere. Out in the hallway, a workman was screwing brass nameplates onto every bedroom door. None of them said Chiara. Ten years ...

When my fiancé lets his new assistant put my name on the family purge list, he tells me it was only a joke. He expects me to apologize, come home, and keep standing beside him while everyone watches another woman take my place. So I let the order go through. I leave his family, his city, and the future he thought I would never dare abandon.