Betrayed by Childhood Friend
I was coaxed into a hotel by Zamir, my childhood friend. Just when things were about to reach their peak, he stopped. “No, we’re like family.”
A bitter feeling welled up inside me, but naively, I thought he was doing it for my own good. It wasn’t until the next day that I overheard him reassuring another girl:
“See, last night she was right there in front of me, and I held back.”
“I really have no interest in her. Doesn’t that prove my loyalty to you?”
---
We were just a step away from everything finally coming together when Zamir abruptly stopped, climbing off me to sit on the edge of the bed, catching his breath. I looked at him in confusion, wanting to ask, but feeling too shy to find the words. His voice was hoarse as he softly said, “Kya, no, we’re like family.”
I thought I’d misheard him and stared at him in disbelief. “Listen, we can’t cross this line.” His tone was gentle, yet it made clear his rejection and the boundary not to be crossed. I felt humiliated, my face burning with embarrassment, wishing I could disappear. But I also felt incredibly hurt—after all, he was the one who’d initiated this.
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Chapter 4
Stepping out of the hotel, my mind was in turmoil. Zamir and I had been together for years. After high school, fate took us on different paths; I stayed in Austin while he went to New York City. Still, he returned to visit me every month.
When we started job hunting, I heard he turned down an offer from a major corporation just to join the local branch of Cambridge Industries after I signed with them. I thought our efforts were reciprocal, that I was the only girl in his life.
I used to jokingly ask him what kind of girl he liked. He’d laugh and point to a picture online, saying, "Someone like this—fair, petite, a bit quirky." I always assumed he was just humoring me—until Keilani appeared. That's when I realized I had lost.
It seemed that when he truly loved someone, he'd quickly introduce her to his friends, openly claiming her as his girlfriend. His reluctance to make our relationship official was a clear sign of his lack of interest. My heart ached with a dull pain, like a knife slowly cutting through it.
I wandered aimlessly through the streets all day, terrified of running into someone I knew, dreading the whispers and gossip. When I finally returned to the apartment, it was already eleven at night.
Turning on my phone, I saw that Rodrigo had booted me from the group chat. He briefly explained why and then warned me: [Don't contact Zamir for a while. It took him a long time to win over the girl of his dreams—don’t ruin it for him.]
Once again, I felt an indescribable powerlessness and rage. Everyone used to admire him, and I respected him for his fairness and leadership. Now, I wanted to ask, why?! My chest was tight with frustration, words bottled up inside me that I wished to scream at them.
I picked up my phone, typed and deleted long messages repeatedly. In the end, I erased them all. Forget it.
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8.0
"Just ninety days, Viv. Then I have to marry her."
"And what am I supposed to do when the clock runs out?"
He's the meticulous, sterile CEO destined for a cold corporate marriage. She's the fiery, turpentine-scented artist who lives for chaos. Josh Sterling has been Vivian Rossi's safe harbor and secret heartbreak since they were ten.
But with his wedding just three months away, decades of tension finally explode. Terrified of losing their friendship but helpless against the attraction, they make a devastating bargain: 90 days. Friends with benefits. No feelings. No future
It was supposed to be a temporary goodbye to the 'what-ifs.' But as the days bleed into weeks, their arrangement becomes a seductive torture. Viv is forced to watch the man she loves prepare to marry another, and Josh must confront a terrifying truth, the only person who has ever truly seen him is the one he's set to abandon.
90 days with the man i can't have is a searing, high-emotion contemporary romance. When time runs out, duty and desire will clash, demanding the ultimate sacrifice.
9.4
I spent a decade as Ashton Maxwell' s shadow, building his empire and warming his bed, only for him to announce his engagement to a senator's daughter right in front of me.
When assassins struck that night, he didn't just choose her; he used my body as a human shield against a grenade and then shot me himself to prove his loyalty to her family.
I survived, reinvented myself as Grecia Munoz, and returned to burn his world to the ground, eventually forcing him to hand over his entire empire in a desperate plea for forgiveness.
He promised to disappear so I could find peace with a kind doctor named Garrick.
But Ashton' s definition of love was a sickness.
To "protect" me from what he called a weakness, he secretly destroyed Garrick' s career and reputation, driving the only innocent man I ever loved to jump off a bridge.
He thought this would drive me back into his arms, into the safety of the monster he created.
Instead, I drove to the Hamptons, to the pristine dream home he had built for our future.
He knelt before me, begging for understanding, claiming he did it all for us.
I didn't offer forgiveness.
I raised the pistol he had once given me, aimed at the heart I had already broken, and ended the nightmare once and for all.
9.5
The first clue my life was a lie was a moan from the guest room. My husband of seven years wasn't in our bed. He was with my intern.
I discovered my husband, Brendan, was having a four-year affair with Kiya-the talented girl I was mentoring and personally paying tuition for.
The next morning, she sat at our breakfast table in his shirt while he made us pancakes. He lied to my face, promising he'd never love another, just before I learned she was pregnant with his child-a child he'd always refused to have with me.
The two people I trusted most in the world had conspired to destroy me. The pain wasn't something I could live with; it was an annihilation of my entire world.
So I made a call to a neuroscientist about his experimental, irreversible procedure. I didn't want revenge. I wanted to erase every memory of my husband and become his first test subject.
9.1
After a brutal assault cost me my fiancé, my childhood friend swooped in to save me. He married me, cherished me, and I fell in love with the perfect life he built. I thought I had finally found my happy ending.
Then, pregnant with our child, I overheard him confessing to my half-sister. He had orchestrated the entire assault. He married me just to stay close to her.
In the hospital, she staged an attack, claiming I tried to kill her and her unborn baby. My husband shoved me against the wall, roaring at me as he rushed to her side.
"I'll kill you for this!"
As I lay bleeding on the cold floor, losing my own child, not a single person looked back. I was just a necessary casualty in his game.
But I had recorded her gloating confession. I faked my death and fled to my billionaire mother. He would find out the truth, and I would be the ghost that haunted him to his grave.
9.4
The dining room filled with the warm scent of roasted chicken and my father's favorite lavender from the garden. He sat across from me at our mahogany table, his weathered hands gesturing animatedly as he recounted his week at the community center, where he volunteered teaching seniors how to use smartphones. "You should see Mrs. Patterson trying to take a selfie, Bailey," he chuckled, his eyes crinkling with the same warmth that had comforted me through every childhood scraped knee and teenage heartbreak. "She holds the phone so far away, I told her she's photographing the ceiling fan."
Tucker barely looked up from his plate, scrolling through his phone with one hand while mechanically cutting his chicken with the other. The sight made my chest tighten—when had my husband become so disconnected from the man who'd welcomed him into our family with open arms? "Dad, you're a saint for having that much patience," I said, forcing lightness into my voice while shooting Tucker a pointed look he didn't catch. Stormi's laugh tinkled from the kitchen doorway like wind chimes in a storm—pretty but entirely out of place. "Oh, Mr. Hunt, you're so sweet!
7.7
Rita gave up her life of luxury for love, hiding her billionaire roots to marry James, a humble farmer. But her fairy-tale romance soon turned into a nightmare of betrayal, abuse, and heartbreak. Forced to sign divorce papers, she vanished, taking with her a secret that could have changed everything. James thought he had moved on with the governor's daughter, but his dream life crumbled when the truth about Linnet's past emerged. Stricken by regret, he discovers the shocking reality: Rita wasn't the burden he believed her to be, she was the blessing he let slip away. Now, armed with newfound determination and desperation, James is chasing the woman he wronged, only to find Rita reborn as a powerful and untouchable force. As she thrives with the son he never knew, James must confront his failures and fight for the chance to rewrite their story. Can a shattered love be pieced back together, or is James too late to reclaim the life he destroyed?