5231 Book(s) Related to my childhood alpha hates me

In the dark underworld, Matthias Sterling is a feared mob boss and the only family I had left after my parents died. I used to be the girl he cherished, until I turned eighteen and confessed my feelings to him.

From that day on, the tenderness in his eyes turned to disgust. He brought home Rose Hartley and threw me away like trash.

In my past life, someone drugged him with a powerful aphrodisiac. I gave myself to him as the cure, only for him to call me a shameless whore. But when I got pregnant, he married me anyway.

On our wedding day, Rose ran to rival territory heartbroken and ended up dead. When he heard the news, he said nothing. Just finished the ceremony.

When I went into labor, he locked me in the house and said coldly, "If it weren't for you, I would've married her. She wouldn't have run to enemy territory and died."

He blamed everything on me. In the end, I died in childbirth. He wouldn't even let anyone call a doctor.

When I open my eyes again, I'm back on the night that changed everything.

My boyfriend looks at me like I'm trash. Too fat. Too plain. My clothes are ugly. He never misses a chance to tear me down.

I thought he was just mean. Then his "good friend" Sophie spilled coffee all over our ten-thousand-dollar control board.

That board was three months of work. Three months of all-nighters, twice I passed out from low blood sugar. It was our entry for the National Robotics Competition. The deadline's tomorrow. Now it's gone.

I confronted Sophie, and he stormed in, pulled her into his arms, and pointed his finger in my face. "It's just a stupid competition. Did you really need to come at Sophie like that?"

Turns out he's not just mean. He genuinely can't stand me.

I'm a figure skating prodigy from one of the wealthiest families in the country. I'm also an idiot.

I believed that if I was kind enough, people would be kind in return. So I sponsored Haley Dunning, a scholarship skater on our team, and treated her like my own little sister.

The day before the NCAA qualifier, she came up to me with a sports drink, said she wanted to help keep my energy up.

I drank it. Went down on the ice with a broken leg. Drug test came back positive for banned stimulants.

Overnight, I went from the queen of the rink to the face of a scandal no one could stop talking about.

Expelled from school. Torn apart on social media. Calloway Corporation's stock in freefall.

Haley stood in front of the cameras, tears in her eyes: "Piper just wanted to win so badly. I never thought she'd go this far..."

I fell into a depression. Couldn't sleep without medication.

Then one day, she showed up at my hospital room with my boyfriend, bearing "comfort": a cup of water and a few pills: "Piper, take your meds, okay? This is all my fault for being so stupid..."

Three minutes later, I'm coughing up blood, convulsing on the floor.

Right before I died, I caught the look on her face. That sweet, innocent face. A slow, vicious smile spreading across it.

She knocked over the pill bottle and started screaming: "I grabbed the wrong ones! I mixed up her antidepressants with some old person's heart meds! I'm so stupid!"

My boyfriend pulled her into his arms. Didn't even glance at me dying on the floor: "She meant well. Piper just had bad luck."

I was poisoned to death in that hospital room.

Then I opened my eyes, and it was the day before the qualifier.

I was the Sinclair family's lost daughter, missing for fifteen years. The day they found me, I thought I'd finally found the home I'd always dreamed of.

I didn't know they only brought me back to keep their other daughter alive. The one with the rare blood disease.

For three years, they drained my blood over and over. Took my bone marrow once.

My birth parents told me, "Eloise is fragile. You're the older sister. Take care of her."

My fiancé said, "You have such a good heart. You wouldn't want to see her suffer, would you?"

Today, I just gave six hundred milliliters of blood. I'm lying here weak in this hospital bed, and I hear them talking outside my door.

"Eloise is getting worse. We should take Aria's kidney now. Give it to her. We can't wait any longer."

That's when I finally understood. I was never their found daughter.

I was inventory. A blood bag. Spare parts waiting to be harvested.

If that's what their love is, I don't want it.

Two weeks before my due date, my husband Ethan is racing out the door into a stormy night.

All because his childhood friend Scarlett's apartment lost power, and she says her claustrophobia is kicking in.

I'm clutching my belly, telling him my water broke, begging him to look at the blood on the floor.

"You pulling this again? Last week wasn't enough? Scarlett's actually in danger."

He shakes off my hand. The door slams shut.

I'm standing in a pool of blood, watching his taillights disappear into the rain.

My baby won't have a father anymore.

At the Morello family’s Christmas dinner, I stood beside Vincent, waiting for him to announce our engagement.
Instead, in the very next second, he walked in holding a little boy and claimed him as his son.
And the woman he said he was going to marry? Scarlett Morello. The one he had always introduced as his “sister.”
The whole room erupted in applause. I stood there frozen, like a nail hammered into the floor.
Later, in his study, he took my hand and said, “Scarlett is dying. Late-stage breast cancer. She only has six months left. After she’s gone, I’ll marry you.”
But there was no guilt in his eyes. No love, either.
Then he told me to go to his villa that afternoon, to take care of the woman who was supposedly “dying.”
I opened the photo he sent me. Scarlett was lying in a hospital bed, pale-faced, an IV in the back of her hand.
A professional tennis player who had been playing in an exhibition match three weeks ago, and who had dropped three grand at Louis Vuitton on Fifth Avenue just five days ago.
But sure. She was “dying.”
At three in the morning, I was curled up by the front door of my apartment, crying so long I lost track of time.
Then my phone lit up. A text from an unknown number:
[Elena, I’m downstairs. When we were kids, you told me that once I controlled the docks on the East Coast, you’d marry me. The docks are mine now. Does that promise still stand?]
I pulled back the curtain and there he was. Ethan Vitale, my first love, leaning against the door of a black Cadillac, lifting a hand in a lazy wave.
Three years ago, when he left New York, he was only a Capo.
Now, he was the Don of the Vitale family.
He didn’t rush me. Didn’t pressure me to come downstairs.
He came for one reason only, to let me know he was back.
I wiped away my tears and texted back:
[It still stands.]
Because I wanted to see for myself just how long that woman could keep up her act.

Sold into a marriage with a stranger she'll never meet, Aveline Reeves loses everything. Six years later, one drugged night of desperate passion with Manhattan's most dangerous billionaire changes everything.
She flees his bed, leaving only a priceless ring—never knowing she's just marked herself for hunting.

"Nancy has returned. I'll have my secretary prepare the divorce settlement."

Andrew Lopez, the superstar and my secret contract husband of three years, buttoned his shirt coldly. For three years, I was his perfect, obedient wife in the shadows. I fulfilled his every need and never caused a single scandal. But the moment his first love returned, I became entirely disposable.

"Very well, I will sign it," I smiled, understanding my place.

I packed my bags and prepared to step aside. But the script didn't go as he planned. When his "innocent" first love tried to bully and humiliate me, I refused to be a pushover, tearing off her fake mask. And when my handsome former classmate showed up to protect me, Andrew completely lost his mind.

He pinned me against the wall, his eyes burning with intense jealousy. "You're still my wife! Stay away from him."

I let out a cold laugh. "We're getting divorced, remember? You chose your true love. Now, watch me shine and live my best life without you."

I was cleaning coffee from my husband's suit sleeve when the news alert lit up my phone: Vivian Lane had come home, and Adrian Shaw had gone to the airport himself to meet her.

In the photo, he wore the charcoal suit I had pressed that morning.

He held her suitcase with one hand and looked at her with a smile I had spent three years trying to earn.

That was the first time I understood I had not been building a marriage.

I had been keeping someone else's place warm.

Everyone in this city knows that the king of the underworld, my husband Vincent, is crazy about me.

Three years ago, when that bullet tore through my abdomen, it took away my chance of ever being a mother. He held my blood-soaked body and swore to God he'd make the shooter's entire family pay. A month later, that family was wiped off the map in this city. No one dares speak their name anymore.

He sat by my hospital bed, holding my hand. "I don't need kids. I only need you."

I believed him.

Until six months ago, when his brother died in an accident, leaving behind his wife Serena. The family pressure came like a tidal wave. An heir. A bloodline. That's all they cared about. And that woman became everyone's golden ticket to keeping the Caruso name alive.

That's when my husband stopped coming home at night. Every night, I hear them through the wall. Sounds that used to be mine.

But today, the doctor told me my body is healing. The chances are slim, but there's hope.

I clutch the medical report and rush home, imagining Vincent's face when he sees the results. Maybe everything can go back to how it was. Maybe he'll realize he doesn't need her.

Until I stand outside our mansion and hear laughter pouring out.

"Serena's pregnant! Can you believe it? The family finally has an heir!"

"Finally. The family's saved."

Rhett and I hated each other for ten years.

He hated me because my father drugged his drink and arranged for me to end up in his bed.

He was forced to marry me. Kendall, the stepsister he cherished, couldn’t handle the shock and ran away. She was later kidnapped and murdered outside the city.

I hated him for blaming everything on me. He never touched me, never looked at me, and never spoke a single word to me.

Our marriage became a cold, lonely grave.

Then I was kidnapped.

He stormed into an abandoned warehouse and threw himself between me and the bomb.

Before he died, he said, “Maren, if we get another life, I hope we never meet again.”

When I open my eyes again, I’m back in that hotel room ten years earlier.

Rhett lies on the bed in a Manhattan hotel suite, his shirt hanging open, his skin flushed and his breathing ragged.

This time, I don’t go near him.

I call my father instead.

“Dad, call off the security guards. I don’t want him anymore.”

“Book me a flight out of the country. The sooner, the better.”

Everyone says he loved me more than anything. So I chose to answer that love with death.

Forbes cover stories, tearful speeches at charity galas, shutting down Fifth Avenue every Valentine's Day just to watch fireworks with me. They said he ruled a business empire but would kneel in front of the entire world and call me his reason to live.

I used to believe it.

Until I discovered my perfect husband had built another home with another woman. A warm one, filled with laughter and his child.

So I chose to disappear the night the storm swallowed everything.

They say he spent three days on his knees at the cliff's edge, screaming my name into the black ocean. The man worth billions couldn't even find his wife's body.

When the rescue team recovered that burned-out car, he finally opened the safe I'd left for him. Inside was a positive pregnancy test and a divorce agreement that would never be signed.

By then, nothing mattered anymore.

The Vane family has carried the vampire's curse for generations. Of every pair of twin sisters born into our bloodline, one will not live to see twenty-five.

Everyone assumed it was my sister — the one always coughing up blood.

Nobody knew that for twenty years, every full moon, the one gritting her teeth through the pain, never making a sound, was me.

The Divine took pity on me and gave me three chances. Win the genuine love of my parents, my brother, or my husband — any one of them — and the curse would lift.

Three chances. Three failures.

The only hope I had left was the baby inside me, seven months along. Bring him into this world, and I'd live.

Then my husband kicked open my hospital room door. My own brother pulled on a surgical gown and picked up a knife. My parents signed the forms outside.

They were going to cut me open, take the last thing keeping me alive, and use it to save my "cursed" sister.

After my life slipped away entirely, the truth came out.

So why is it that the people who sent me to my death are the ones who lost their minds?

Every time my husband wants to make me give in, he slaps divorce papers on the table. Every time my parents want me to cave, they threaten to disown me.

What they want is simple: give everything to my twin sister.

I used to fight back. I cried. I demanded to know why it always had to be me.

But when the doctor slides the test results across his desk and tells me in that pitying voice, "Stage four brain cancer. You have a month, maybe less," something in me just... stops caring.

I'm dying anyway. They can do whatever the hell they want.

Father calls me and Chloe into his study, and two documents already sit on the desk. On the left, the Whitfield family succession papers. On the right, the marriage agreement with the Sullivan family.

He lights a cigar, the smoke half hiding his face. "You two need to make a choice today. One of you takes over the Whitfield family. The other marries Derek Sullivan."

In my last life, Chloe took the succession papers.

She sat down in Father's office, put on an expensive suit, called in every department head, and announced she'd make the Whitfield family stronger. But she couldn't even read a warehouse ledger, didn't know which shipping route mattered most, couldn't tell flattery from threats in a family meeting.

Within three years, the south warehouse burned down, the north route slipped out of our hands, and cash kept bleeding out of the books like there was a hole in them.

Father died on a dark street, three bullets in his chest.

Chloe fled with whatever money was left, and I got married off to Derek instead.

After the wedding, he took my passport and locked me in the basement of the Sullivan estate. When I refused to sign the transfer documents, he had them cut off my water for three days straight. In family meetings, one wrong word out of me and he'd slap me in front of everyone. During an ambush, he shoved me right into the line of fire.

Later, Chloe found me. She pointed a gun at my chest, and there wasn't a trace of sisterly feeling left in her eyes. "This is all because you're useless. If you'd helped Derek keep the Sullivan family steady, Whitfield wouldn't have gone under."

I opened my eyes in a pool of blood and woke up back on this day.

Everyone knows Adrian loves me more than life itself. When that car crashed, he threw himself over me and took the hit. First thing he said when he woke up in the hospital: "Where is she? Is she okay?"

Everyone says I married the best man in the city.

What they don't know is this man has married me ten times. And divorced me ten times. All for the woman he's never gotten over.

The first time, I got on my knees and begged him not to leave. He just looked at me with those cold eyes and said, "Don't embarrass yourself."

The fourth time, we were fighting in the car. Then we crashed, and I lost our baby.

By the seventh time, I stopped crying. Just signed the papers, packed my things, waited for him to come back like he always did.

My tears, my compromises, all those times I bent until I nearly broke. What did I get? Him coming back like clockwork, just to do it all over again.

This time, when he slides that tenth divorce agreement across the desk, I finally get it. Some people's hearts never had room for you in the first place.

So this time, I'm throwing him out. Him and this whole Mrs. Hayes charade. Straight into the trash where they belong.

It's supposed to be our last class trip before graduation. The bus loses control on a mountain road and goes over the edge.

I think we're all going to die.

When I open my eyes again, I'm sitting in a classroom that looks like it's been rotting for decades.

A system alert blares through my skull:

【Welcome to Ravenwood High. Unnameable creatures roam the campus. Survive 7 days. Uncover the truth behind the campus Boss's death. Every player who dies adds $800,000 to the prize pool. Make it out, and the money is yours.】

Everyone loses it. Screaming, crying, total chaos. The first thing Brett does is shove me toward the door to check the hallway. Because of course he does. I'm the class punching bag. The girl nobody would miss.

Everyone assumes I'll be the first to die.

What nobody sees is the smile pulling at the corner of my mouth as I stand at that door, staring at whatever is writhing in the shadows of the hallway.

Ryan loves me deeply—at least that's what everyone says. Seven years together, we look like the perfect couple to outsiders. But only I know he's betrayed me three times.

The first time was three years ago. His brother died saving him, leaving behind his widow Sophia—Ryan's unforgettable first love. He married her behind my back. When I found out, I completely fell apart. I have dignity. I refuse to be the other woman. I wanted to leave, but he begged on his knees. "This is just to take care of my sister-in-law. Once I find the truth about my brother's death, I'll divorce her. Then we can get married."

I believed him. I forgot that a man never lets go of a lost love he's gotten back.

The second time was at last year's company anniversary. In front of everyone, he introduced Sophia as his wife. I watched them on stage, a knife through my heart. That night he explained, "It's just for show. Once everything's over, we can be together."

I believed him again.

The third time was two weeks ago. Surveillance footage showed Ryan with Sophia entering a hotel room. I rushed to confront him, but heard her voice outside his office. "Ryan, I'm pregnant. It's your baby."

Through the crack in the door, I see him hesitate. In that instant I understand.

He's going to keep her.

He spots me and rushes out in a panic. "It was an accident! Let me explain! After she has the baby, I'll give her money and make her leave. She won't be in our lives anymore!"

In that moment, I finally wake up. There will be no future for us.

A bored demon out for a good time came after me and my worst enemy, and locked us in a room with no door.

The rules are simple. We each have to confess three secrets the other one has no idea about, for his amusement, and only then do we get out.

Weston raises an eyebrow, that lazy, punchable smirk on his face.

"After ten years of being at each other's throats, what could you possibly still be hiding from me?"

He doesn't know I never actually hated him.

He doesn't know that three months ago, at that masquerade, the woman he slept with was me.

And he definitely doesn't know the baby I'm carrying is his.

My serpent mate has locked me in the castle, nine months pregnant. A dozen serpent guards watch me day and night. I can't even leave the room.

A month ago, his brother died in a hunting accident. He became the serpent clan leader. Then he brought back his brother's widow, the woman he grew up with. His first love.

He said he needed to take care of his brother's widow. He told me we'd all live together in the castle, nice and peaceful.

I said no.

I'm his mate. I'm a beastman. My pride won't let me accept that. And they grew up together, childhood sweethearts. How could I not think about it?

She came to him in tears, heavily pregnant. She said I poisoned her medicine, that I wanted to kill her and the baby.

He believed her.

He decided I was just some rogue beastman with no background, jealous and vicious, only after his title and money. So he locked me in this freezing castle while he camped outside her delivery room.

When labor hit, I screamed for a healer. I swore I never hurt her. I just couldn't live with her under the same roof. I only ever loved him.

He just laughed. "You're good at acting. I don't believe a word out of you. Once she delivers safely, I'll deal with you. Don't think you can trick me into coming back."

But when a trembling guard reported "Your mate and the child... they didn't make it," he lost it completely.

On my birthday, my husband hands me a snow-white hamster with a smile and says keeping it in the house will bring us good luck.

My seven-year-old son names it Snow.

But the second I see its red eyes, my blood runs cold.

Because in my last life, I got the exact same gift on this exact same day.

Back then I treated it like something precious. I fed it the best food, bought it the biggest cage, cleaned out the shavings every single day.

And every night it burrowed into my blankets, bit through the skin at my wrist and my throat, and drank my blood a little at a time until there was almost none left.

I begged my husband to get rid of it. All he said was that I was paranoid, that I was faking being sick to get attention.

My son planted himself in front of the cage and screamed that Snow was better behaved than me.

Then, on our wedding anniversary, I collapsed in the bathroom and never woke up.

My spirit drifted near the ceiling, and only then did I finally see it.

That hamster climbed down off my body and turned into a woman in a white dress, and threw herself into my husband's arms.

His eyes went red and he said now that she'd drained me dry, she could finally take her real shape again.

My son ran to her and sweetly called her "Hamster Mommy."

It turned out the thing was my husband's old love, the one who'd died young. He'd used black magic to hide her inside a pet's body.

And I was nothing but a container. A blood supply.

Now my eyes are open again, and the cut on my finger is still warm.

This time, I won't let a single one of them get away.

To save enough for a summer trip with my boyfriend, Tripp, and his friends, I worked late every night after school as a food runner at the upscale French restaurant in town.

Tripp told me his family didn't have much money. He wore old thrift-store T-shirts and always ordered the cheapest lunch in the cafeteria.

I felt bad for him. During the year we were together, I quietly paid for most of our dates.

Until one night, when I carried a bottle of wine to a private dining room and heard voices coming from inside.

"Tripp, how long are you going to keep pretending you're broke?" It was Chase, Tripp's best friend.

Then I heard Bitsy's sugary-sweet voice. She and Tripp had grown up together. "Thanks for the limited-edition bag, Tripp. Eighty grand, and it's absolutely gorgeous. I love it!"

I froze. An eighty-thousand-dollar bag? He wouldn't even spend twelve dollars on a burger.

Then Tripp spoke in a lazy drawl. "Girls like Nora are low-maintenance. She's easy to fool. Buy her an iced latte, and she'll act like it means the world to her. She barely costs me anything."

He had never really cared about me.

Three years ago, on a night when it wouldn't stop raining, I carried Victor Caster out of a pile of bodies.

He'd taken two bullets. He grabbed my ankle and said: when I get back, I'll give you the world.

But when he came back, it was my sister Sabrina on his arm.

After that she was the woman who ran the Caster house, and I was the crazy one they locked away upstate.

Three years later, at the engagement party, Sabrina opened up her own wrist and screamed that I did it.

I tried to explain.

But the man I'd given half my life to save wouldn't even look at me. He just flicked his hand.

"Her hands don't know their place. Take them. And I don't want that face in front of me."

He never once looked up.

So why is it that the next time he sees me, the moment he really looks at my face, he goes down on his knees?

My parents raised me for twenty-four years. Then they found out I wasn't their biological daughter.

Their real daughter came home. She'd only been back two years. That's all it took to erase twenty-four.

When kidnappers grabbed us, I used my body as a shield. They beat me until something inside me ruptured. I was dying from internal bleeding, but no one could tell.

My parents wouldn't even look at me. "This is your fault! None of this would've happened if it weren't for you!"

"Get downstairs and apologize to your sister. If you can't, pack your things and get out."

They threw her a party at a downtown hotel while I died alone in my room.

I thought they'd be relieved. Maybe even glad. I thought they'd just move on like I never existed.

But when they finally learned the truth, they fell apart.

I don't realize how badly I've been wronged until they're strapping me to the gurney.

My name is Camille Brooks. I'm one of the best cardiothoracic surgeons in the city, and I have never lost a patient on my table.

My fiancé, Adrian Vance, is the golden boy of the entire hospital. We're supposed to get married next month.

It's a stormy night when he calls, telling me to get to the hospital right now. There's a patient bleeding out, and only I can save them.

I race through the rain, but I get stuck in traffic halfway there. By the time I push through the OR doors, the patient has no pulse.

The family points at me. They say I botched the procedure and killed him. And Adrian Vance, my own fiancé, takes the stand and shows up with "ironclad evidence" against me.

I have nothing to fight back with. I go to prison. My parents can't handle it. It destroys them both. They take their own lives.

It's only after I die that I learn who really held the scalpel that night: Daisy Whitman, the woman Adrian never got over.

I was just the fall guy.

Then I open my eyes.

I'm back. One hour before everything falls apart, riding through the rain toward the hospital.

This time, I'm going to survive.

And I'm going to watch both of you burn.

It's fall break, and Mom and my sister Della Sinclair are visiting me at St. Julian's Academy.

The South Campus Arctic Biome is a landmark the Sinclair family funded years ago. It's filled with the rare arctic flowers Mom and Della have always loved. Every single time they visit, they have to go in.

That's when Kiley Croft, the girl Fletcher Waverly grew up with, pulls what she calls "a little prank." While no one's paying attention, she locks the door from the outside panel and pushes the temperature controls to maximum.

The people inside are trapped. They burn to death.

Kiley runs to Fletcher in tears, and instead of calling 911, he pulls her close and tells her:

"Hey. It's okay. It was an accident. This isn't on you."

He doesn't call me until the fire trucks show up.

"Blythe, the biome caught fire. Your mom and your sister are trapped inside."

I spin around.

Della is right next to me, sniffling and complaining about her cold. Mom is passing her tissues.

They're both completely fine.

Then who the hell is in there?

I promised Ethan Caldwell, the boy I grew up with, I'd give up the top schools to attend some mediocre college with him.

On the final day of application submission, I brought homemade soup to his studio.

Outside the door, I heard him bragging to his friends: "Claire Bennett's like a damn puppy. I tell her to come to NYU with me, and boom, she changes her whole application to NYU. Lily's grades are shit. If Claire doesn't go for that full scholarship, Lily's got it in the bag. And Claire's so whipped, even when she finds out, she'll just suck it up like always."

The thermos in my hands feels cold now.

As a regular student, I never expected to fit into the world of trust fund kids. But this real estate heiress reached out to me, said she'd show me how the other half lives, even promised to introduce me to New England's most powerful heir.

I thought she'd be my friend. Thought she actually cared. I even fell for him.

Until she framed me for stealing confidential school files. Until he said, "Just a scholarship kid. No one's gonna miss her." That's when I understood. I was never more than their toy.

They tore up my textbooks, stuffed dead rats in my locker, spent six months tormenting me online and off. My mother couldn't take the vicious comments. Her heart gave out. And me? After I completely broke down, they drove me to the coastal cliffs.

Ice-cold water flooded my nose and mouth. Suffocation dragged me down into despair. I hate myself for being weak. Hate them for their arrogance. Hate this rotten system that treats people like me as disposable.

But when I opened my eyes again, I was back. Back to the night she pushed me toward him.

This time, I won't be fooled.

Connor Mitchell and I are the golden couple of our industry. Everyone sees him as the devoted husband, always bringing me soup when I work late into the night.

On our fifth wedding anniversary, he gave me an expensive diamond necklace and posted something sweet on Instagram. The comments were all variations of the same thing: jealousy.

I used to believe it too.

Until I cut my trip to Europe short and got into that SUV. The passenger seat was set at the wrong angle, too far forward for my height. A contact lens case fell out of the sun visor, and neither of us wears contacts.

When I had my cousin pull the dashcam footage and saw him with his arm around some petite girl getting into the car, the truth hit me. My attentive husband, the one who called me every night I was away, had been using my connections and resources to play successful mentor to a twenty-two-year-old intern.

The irony is, he thinks he's gotten away with it. He has no idea I can see right through every move he makes.

Once rot sets into a perfect marriage, no amount of perfume can hide the stench.

The night before the SAT, I brought homemade pastries from our bakery to share with the whole class.

The next day, over thirty students collapsed at the testing center. The exam was voided.

I became the target of everyone's rage. My family fell apart. I ended up in a detention cell.

The internet tore me apart. My classmate Lainey Prescott went on camera sobbing, saying all she wanted was for me to own up to what I did.

While I was in detention, I found out my mom had a mental breakdown and jumped off the overpass outside of town.

That same night, I went into the river too. The water was freezing.

When I open my eyes, Lainey is right there. She's holding that same sheet of paper with everyone's signatures, smiling like nothing's wrong, eyes just as calculating as I remember.

I'm back.

And this time, I'm not making anything for anyone.

That admissions season, Lily — a poor student who couldn't even clear the state university cutoff — insisted on dragging my two childhood friends off to the worst community college in the state, just so she wouldn't have to go alone.

Ethan held an offer from Yale. Ryan had been accepted to Stanford. Yet the two of them, as if under a spell, were ready to throw away those schools just to follow her.

I wore myself out trying to talk them down. All I got back was: You look down on Lily. You're just jealous.

Behind their backs, I contacted counselors, admissions offices, and their parents, and clawed their spots back one by one just before the deadline.

Lily went to that community college alone. Six months later, she jumped from the roof of her dorm.

Ethan and Ryan handled her funeral, then came back and tied me to the roof of a thirty-six-story building.

"If you hadn't stopped us from going with Lily, she never would have been bullied there."

"You're so capable, aren't you? Then go down and keep her company."

They pushed me over the edge without a flicker of hesitation.

When I opened my eyes, I was back at the start of college application season.

This time, I won't save them.