Boys Like Him
She loved him until she lost herself.
Now, behind locked doors and shattered glass, she must learn to breathe again.
When she first met Lloyd, he was magnetic and intoxicating. The kind of man who turned every head when he entered a room, who spoke in promises sweet enough to taste. With him, she felt chosen, cherished, and safe.
But safety was an illusion, and love became a weapon.
And slowly, piece by piece, he dismantled her until nothing of the woman she once was remained.
Now institutionalized after a breakdown, she begins to piece together the brutal truth of what really happened in the shadows of their love story. Memories sting like open wounds: the manipulation disguised as tenderness, the apologies that blurred into threats, the desperate hope that tomorrow he'd be the man she fell for again.
Yet beneath the grief and the shame, a quiet rebellion stirs, a vow to reclaim her voice, her freedom, and her life. Because this is not just a story of how she fell apart. It is a story of how she rises.
Haunting, raw, and achingly intimate, Boys like him peels back the glittering mask of a toxic love affair to reveal the kind of darkness that hides in plain sight, and the unbreakable strength it takes to escape it.
Chapters
Share
Chapter 3
Mariah's cackle died mid-breath, and her grin curved into something positively wicked. "Oh! My! God!" Her cackle rang through the apartment as she swung the door open wider. "Ohhh, Nyelle," she sang, drawing out my name as if she'd just won the lottery. "Your neighbors are hot."
I whipped around, my heart leaping to my throat. That sinking feeling slammed into me again, harder this time, because there he was.
The guy from earlier. He was still shirtless, but his earbuds were gone now. Standing in the doorway with a plastic takeout bag dangling from one hand.
And me? Standing in the middle of the living room in nothing but a Lacey bra and my old running shorts, skin still flushed from unpacking in the sweltering heat. My first instinct was to dive behind the nearest stack of boxes, but it was too late, his eyes had already flicked over, pausing long enough to heat my skin from the inside out before sliding away again. Indifferent. Like I was nothing more than a blurry background object.
Which, somehow, made it worse.
I pulled the blanket off the couch so fast it nearly knocked over the lamp, clutching it around me like some desperate toga.
"Well, hello there, neighbor," Mariah teased loudly, leaning on the frame like she was auditioning for a rom-com. "You here to welcome us with pie, or are abs your housewarming gift?"
"Mariah," I hissed through clenched teeth, glaring at her, but it only made her grin widen.
"I think your food's here." He finally spoke.
Sure enough, he held up a plastic bag with the logo of the Thai place down the street printed across it. He extended the bag toward me with an unreadable expression. "The delivery guy left it with me, and the receipt had your apartment number. Thought I'd bring it over."
His voice was deeper than I expected. Controlled too, no fumbling like mine always did when strangers were involved.
I reached out with trembling fingers, yanking the bag from him like it was some kind of lifeline. "Th-thank you," I muttered, clutching it to my chest.
Mariah's grin was wide enough to swallow the moon. "What's your name, neighbor?"
His gaze flicked from her to me, then back again. If he noticed the blanket and the frantic way I wouldn't meet his eyes, he didn't let on.
"Lloyd." And with that, he turned, walking back down the hall without so much as a glance over his shoulder.
Mariah shut the door with exaggerated slowness, then spun toward me like she was winding up for a performance. "Lloyd," she repeated in a dreamy sigh. "Even his name sounds illegal."
I groaned into the blanket. "Can we not?"
"Not? Babe, that man was a walking thirst trap."
"Please stop talking."
She ignored me completely, fanning herself. "I swear, if I die of heatstroke, it won't be the AC. It'll be him. Tall, quiet, and oh so sinful!"
I peeked out from under the blanket, glaring. "You are insufferable."
She grinned. "And you're blushing."
I wasn't... I totally was. My cheeks burned so hot it felt like my skin could light up the whole room. The image of him, the casual confidence, and the way his eyes had lingered a moment too long replayed on a loop I couldn't stop.
I groaned into the blanket, wishing I could smother myself in it.
She only laughed, kicking her legs up on the coffee table. " The man could open jars for me any day. Hell, forget jars, he could crack me open."
"Mariah!" My voice cracked with mortification, clinging to every syllable.
"What? I'm just appreciating fine art." She let out a dreamy sigh. "If I weren't already drowning in finals and didn't have an amazing boyfriend, I'd make it my part-time job to climb that man like a tree."
I peeked out from the folds of the blanket just enough to glare at her.
"You're ridiculous," I muttered, though my voice was muffled against the fabric.
She smirked, unbothered. "You're welcome. Someone has to say what you're too busy pretending not to think."
My cheeks burned hotter, and I squeezed my eyes shut.
She stretched out on the couch like a queen, sipping from her soda and watching me with a mischievous smirk. "Let me be real for a sec..." Her tone shifted into a serious one, enough to make me open my eyes. "Guys like him? They don't commit. That cold, unbothered energy? He screams heartbreak waiting to happen."
My stomach sank. She wasn't wrong. There had been something about him, his detachment, and the way he barely acknowledged us... I didn't know why, but that stung more than it should have.
She wagged her finger at me. "If you ever, ever, find yourself tangled up with him, promise me you'll be careful. I like you too much to scrape you off the floor."
"I'm not..." I started too quickly, and immediately regretted how defensive it sounded. "I'm not planning to get tangled with anyone."
She grinned. "Sure. Keep telling yourself that."
The greasy white bags passed between us, and the smell of fried rice and dumplings filled the apartment.
Mariah tore into hers immediately, cross-legged on the floor between a pile of unopened boxes, chopsticks clicking as she hummed her approval. "Mmm, nothing says 'new apartment' like MSG and poor life choices."
I smiled, nibbling slower, trying to keep the sauce from dripping on my only clean blanket. "You'd eat takeout for every meal if you could."
"And die happy," she shot back, waving her chopsticks.
Her ridiculousness made me laugh, the kind that slipped out before my brain could catch it. For a few minutes, it felt like the heat, mess, and even the awkwardness of earlier blurred behind the simple act of eating together.
Once the cartons were empty and stacked like trophies, Mariah clapped her hands. "Alright, back to labor."
"Slave driver," I muttered, pushing myself up.
"Slave driver who brought soda and helped haul your ass up two flights of stairs. You're welcome."
The heat made everything sluggish, and sweat clung to my skin no matter how many times I wiped at it. Still, we pushed through, unpacking box after box, rearranging furniture, trying to wrestle some semblance of order out of the chaos.
With her tossing out commentary the entire time. It was background noise I didn't know I needed. Piece by piece, the apartment began to look less like a stranger's storage unit and more like mine.
By the time night fell, a much-needed breeze snuck through the curtains, carrying with it the sound of distant traffic and the faint hum of a summer night. For the first time since morning, I exhaled.
Mariah plopped down, hair damp from sweating, eyeliner smudged but still somehow making her look effortlessly put together. "Alright, my good deed is done for the day. I'll see you Monday at school, okay? Tomorrow I'm booked solid at work."
"Thanks, Mar. For everything."
She gave me a blatant look. "Don't thank me yet. Just remember what I said about Mr. Tall, hot, and Unbothered."
We walked down the creaky stairs together, the evening air finally forgiving after the day's heat. The breeze carried a faint smell of fried food from somewhere down the block, and I thought, okay, maybe this place isn't so bad after all.
Mariah jingled her car keys, unlocking the battered little sedan she treated like royalty, and gave me a side hug.
"Goodnight, babe. Text me if you start losing your mind in all that quiet."
"Goodnight," I murmured, pulling back with a small smile.
She leaned in again, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper, her breath tickling my ear. "Don't turn around, but Lloyd is looking at you from the balcony."
Every nerve in my body froze.
She winked, slid into her car, and drove off, leaving me standing on the sidewalk with my heart battering itself against my ribs. I didn't have to look to feel that prickle of eyes somewhere above me.
I should've walked inside, closed the door, and pretended it didn't matter.
But curiosity betrayed me. I flicked my gaze up, and he was leaning on the balcony railing, with an unreadable expression, half-shadowed by the dim porch light.
The air between us thickened until I could barely breathe.
I bolted.
More like a frantic penguin shuffle back up the steps, nearly tripping over my own feet, fumbling with the door until it finally gave way.
Once inside, I slammed it shut and pressed my back against the wood, chest heaving.
You may also like
9.1
I stood alone at the marble altar, the silence of the temple pressing against my eardrums.
It was my Mating Ceremony, but the groom was missing.
My phone buzzed with a notification: a livestream of my mate, Alpha Cain, skipping our union to welcome my sister, Eris, home.
In the video, he held her like she was fragile glass, captioning it: "True power recognizes true power."
When I returned to the Pack House, humiliated, I wasn't met with an apology.
I was met with a slap from my mother.
Eris, feigning a powerful "Alpha Aura," claimed my mere scent was poisoning her.
To "save" her, my family locked me in my room.
But the true betrayal came when I overheard their hushed whispers through the door.
"Use Vera," my mother said, her voice chillingly practical.
"She recovers fast. We can drain her blood weekly for Eris. She can stay as a servant to raise Cain and Eris's pups."
My blood ran cold.
They didn't just neglect me; they planned to harvest me like livestock.
They thought I was the weak Omega they exiled to the North years ago to peel potatoes.
They had no idea that in the North, I wasn't a servant.
I was Commander V, a warrior forged in ice and blood.
I reached under my bed and pulled out my black tactical duffel.
"Screw the meatloaf," I whispered.
I wasn't just leaving. I was going to war.
9.2
Jacqueline Blackburn, a desperate Ivy League tutor, walked into the sleazy Veridian VIP club just to save her job.
But her billionaire client, the ruthless Christian Montgomery, mistook her for a cheap escort, blowing cigar smoke in her face and treating her like trash.
When she furiously turned to leave, a drunk former client attacked her in the hallway, tearing her white dress open and pinning her by the throat.
She fought back, stabbing the man's hand with a pen, only for Christian to emerge from the shadows and brutally crush the attacker's bleeding hand under his heel.
Instead of letting her go, Christian draped his heavy suit jacket over her exposed skin, trapped her in his dark suite, and forced her to sign a suffocating contract.
"You have exactly ninety days, or I will personally ensure you cease to exist in my city."
She thought she could just keep her head down, teach his nephew, and survive.
But she didn't understand why this terrifying underground tyrant was suddenly so fixated on her.
Why did he use his immense power to isolate her, publicly claim her at a billionaire gala, and track her every move?
When she received a chilling midnight text demanding she pack her bags and move into his sprawling estate by 8:00 AM, the terrifying reality set in.
She hadn't escaped the wolf. She had just walked directly into his cage.
7.3
Clara came home from a fourteen-hour board meeting to the sound of a piercing scream in the playroom.
When she rushed in, she found her husband, Chadwick, kneeling on the floor in a panic.
But he wasn't looking at their five-year-old son, Leo, who had a massive bleeding welt on his forehead.
Instead, Chadwick was trembling as he held the nanny's daughter, Autumn, who barely had a microscopic scratch.
"She needs ice. And antibacterial ointment," Chadwick snapped, carrying the nanny's daughter away and leaving his bleeding son behind.
From that moment, the nightmare only escalated.
Chadwick ordered Clara to cook a three-hour meal for the nanny's kid, threw away Leo's favorite toys because Autumn sneezed, and even secretly took the nanny and her daughter on Leo's promised Disney trip.
The final humiliation came at the Met Gala.
Right before their sponsor speech, Chadwick received a frantic call from the nanny claiming Autumn was having a panic attack.
He abandoned Clara in front of hundreds of flashing cameras, sprinting out of the ballroom.
Clara stood completely alone, the humiliation eating through her veins like acid.
She couldn't understand how a father could call the nanny's kid his "little princess" while watching his own son cry.
Why was he treating his own flesh and blood like garbage just to play savior to another woman's child?
Suddenly, the blinding camera flashes were blocked by a massive shadow.
Erasmo Chase, the heir to New York's largest financial dynasty, stepped out of the darkness and shielded her.
"A man like that is unworthy of your grief, Ms. Best," he whispered, pressing a silk handkerchief into her trembling hand.
Looking at the sharp profile of the powerful man beside her, Clara's shock hardened into a lethal, cold fury.
She was going to dump her family's shares, crash the board, and make Chadwick lose absolutely everything.
7.5
Kaitlyn Barton POV:
After three years building my family's hotel empire abroad, I came home to New York, expecting a warm embrace from my childhood fiancé, Edwin.
Instead, he greeted me with a warning. He told me to be gentle with his new girlfriend, Kacy, painting me as a villain before I even knew her name.
At my own welcome-home party, he let her stage a dramatic fall and then publicly blamed me for it, his eyes burning with a hatred I'd never seen.
He cradled her in his arms as if she were a fragile doll I had broken.
"Happy now, Kaitlyn?" he snarled, shattering twenty years of our shared history in front of everyone we knew.
In his eyes, I was no longer his love, but a monster he needed to protect his new flame from.
As he stormed out, my phone buzzed. It was a text from Everett Rowe, the man who had quietly loved me for five years.
"If you are truly ready, I will marry you. Right now. Just say the word."
My fingers moved on their own.
"Yes," I typed. "I'll marry you."
The moment I stepped back onto New York soil, a city I had once shared completely with Edwin, he greeted me not with a hug, but with a warning about his new girlfriend, painting me as the villain before I even knew her name. Three years abroad, cultivating my family's hotel empire, had prepared me for many business battles, but nothing for the cold, calculated betrayal that awaited me at home. He had replaced me, and then twisted our shared history, turning me into the aggressor he now needed protection from. This was not the reunion I had envisioned, nor the Edwin I remembered. My heart, which had swelled with anticipation, now froze into a solid block of ice.
7.2
SYNOPSIS:
"I spent ten years scrubbing your floors, Greene. Tonight, you'll scrub mine."
Elara Vance has always been the pride the Republic until she ran away from home, fell in love with Greene Jones, a man who treated her like dirt and discarded her like she was never the girl the entire Republic feared because of her strong dominating pheromones.
Now she's back after twelve years to serve revenge to Greene Jones like a hot dish in a way that he will pay for every act meted out on her for twelve years. But things wasn't going to go as planned as she meets Silas, the handsome bulky head of her father's security but a recessive omega of her past that she has totally forgotten but now wears a new stance as her bodyguard, recognized by the entire republic as an Alpha, and her perfect chosen mate, Calvin; ruining the comeback and revenge she planned out for herself and now she has to think about saving and claiming her mate, Silas while navigating and protecting the seat meant for her.
The real question becomes; will Calvin ever allow her take all it took him twelve years to build?
THEME: The true definition of power. Is it found in the biological dominance of an Alpha, or in the resilience of an Omega who survived in the lion's den?
7.2
Allie Patterson poured fifteen years into her husband Grayson’s tech startup, living in a cramped San Jose apartment. Every penny, every late night coding session, was for their shared future, built on his constant claims the company struggled, always on the verge of its big break.
Then, a grant deed arrived: a stunning $4.2 million Atherton villa, paid in full, listing Grayson and an unknown Kacey Schmidt as joint tenants.
Her coffee mug shattered as Allie’s world imploded. Driving to the mansion, she found Kacey in silk pajamas, flaunting a massive pink diamond and, beneath it, Grayson’s grandmother’s heirloom ring – the one he’d tearfully claimed to have lost years ago.
Kacey purred, "He's in the shower. We were so tired last night."
The words were a serrated knife, twisting, confirming years of lies.
Humiliation and rage burned out, leaving a terrifying, absolute silence. All her sacrifice and trust were a cruel, elaborate joke, orchestrated by the man she loved.
Allie calmly took photos, then gave herself one minute in her beat-up car to mourn. When it passed, her tears stopped, replaced by cold, calculated murder in her eyes. She typed a text to Grayson:
"Come home early tonight. I have a surprise for you."