51.7K
Six Months, One Clause — Vasile Ungaro
You signed for six months and a door you were told you could use. Now the captain you married on paper is walking across the training ground with your suitcase and no greeting at all.
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71.6K
Two Hundred Dollars — Lennon Yarwood
Your number is worth two hundred dollars to four drunk hockey players, and the alternate captain has just walked over to tell you the whole joke himself.
26.6K
The Man Your Father Answers To — Cezar Mazzanti
One night, no names, and a man who was gone before you woke. Four weeks later he is sitting in your father's office, and your father is calling him sir.
97K
Terms Agreed on Tuesday — Clemente Ottaviani
You married him nine days after the contract was drafted, and this morning his ex-wife is at the table with the ledgers. He has one question for you, and it is not about breakfast.
58.6K
Tea Before Answers — Isidor Toscano
You found a gunshot and dragged it home. Now the man you stitched is awake on your couch, asking who is paying you, and he says he does not hurt people who help him.
12.8K
The Door Stays Open — Yago Enrile
A dare put your mouth on a stranger in the private lounge, and the stranger turns out to be the man the whole casino answers to. He does not want to keep you. He wants an hour.
22.4K
The Wrong Table — Orlando Parente
Your blind date was a man in a black suit, alone at a table, very handsome. It was the right description and the wrong man, and he knew within four minutes and stayed anyway.
86.8K
The Door Isn’t Locked — Dara
Your best friend's older sister has heard everything about the men you pick, and she has opinions, a cigarette, and absolutely no intention of being gentle about any of it.
61.9K
Hate Me Louder — Bastiaan Pemberly
He has spent a term making your life small and he cannot explain why he cannot stop. The scarf you left on the bench is in his room, and he knows exactly how that looks.
18.1K
Two of Mine Outside — Aiko Fujimoto
You stopped the bleeding in an alley and went home. Two days later the woman you saved is sitting on your couch with two of her people outside your door, offering you protection you did not ask for.
91.3K
The Bet He Won't Make — Florian Asquith
He has bet four hundred pounds on things that would get him thrown out and never once on a person. The book he keeps for his three friends has one rule in his own handwriting — never about anyone who hasn't agreed — and you are the reason he has started leaving the cover shut. You have a scholarship, a shift roster at the Lantern, and no name that opens doors at Naseby. He has a black car, a black shirt, and a ledger. He would rather lose an argument with his friends than explain a night he spent to them, which is the first thing about him that is not a joke.
56.3K
A Kingdom He Would Not Use — Bertrand Callard
He is the Alpha King, thirty years old, and the first thing he has ever had to ask for is you. The bond chose; he did not, and he will not put a claim on you that you have not said out loud yourself. You are the eldest daughter of a small northern pack, in a dress you hate, in a hall full of wolves who all stood up when he came in. You did not stand up. He noticed, and then his wolf caught your scent, and the whole evening turned into something neither of you planned.
92.9K
His Voice Is Going — Jo Han-gyeol
His voice has been going since the second setup, and you are the new coordinator nobody sent to help him. He is the oldest of five in ORYX, the group the label has staked its year on, and he has not been on form since the first frame. The studio is on a break, the coffee has gone cold, and the whole crew is very carefully not walking over. You have one day to prove you can run this room and one idol who will not say what is wrong. He asks you for the one thing nobody in this building gives him: a plain answer about the take.
60.7K
She Only Comes for the Money — Rinko Togashi
The woman who holds your debt knocks three times and has never once asked you for anything but the money. Rinko comes on the same night every week, fixes your crooked number plate, looks at the empty fridge, and opens a ledger full of extensions in your name. She is not here to be paid in anything but cash, and she says so on the doorstep before she comes in. What she has never said is that for three months the interest has been coming out of her own pocket.
53.6K
The Surprise She Cannot Lie About — Ximena Aguirre
Your wife is a terrible liar, she has been lying to you for eleven days, and tonight she has run out of room to hide it. She has been careful with her phone, jumpy at ordinary questions, caught twice tonight in the same stammer. What she is hiding is not what it looks like: a table for eight at ten, a cake with your name on it in her sister's fridge, eleven days of trying to give you one evening where nobody needs anything from you. Let her get away with it, or take the phone and make her tell you.
96.1K
Three Hours Late — Carey Baskerville
Three hours, cold food, three photographs, and a man who will not say a word on the phone. He is your husband, and the only thing he can offer tonight is a room with a witness in it.
26.8K
The Empty Room He Built — Fyfe Arrowsmith
Twenty-five years of friendship, one house, and a fourth bedroom with nothing in it. He asks you the question with the pizza going cold between you, and then he stops talking and waits.
84.5K
The Clause She Signed — Loris Falconieri
He signs what you write, and the clause that ends this marriage is in your handwriting. Loris Falconieri runs a family and a firm the way other men run a war, and he has kept every term you drafted, down to the rooms that are yours alone. Tonight his consigliere is across the table, the firm's files are moving into his wing, and the family has begun asking about an heir. At that table he gives the same answer every time: not until she says so.
63.2K
The Worst Thing for You — Merritt Cadogan
He was cruel to you for a year, stopped in March without being asked, and now he keeps his hands on the table where you can see them. You are the student who never misses a deadline. He is the one who lost a year on purpose and works nights at a print shop. The library is closing, the rain is not, and he has just laid a ringed hand on your notebook — the old gesture, done slowly enough to be refused. He does not want to own you. He wants to be allowed to stay, and tonight he says it out loud.
53.1K
Your Enemy, Room 25 — Roman Cardell
Your enemy since you were six has key 25 as well, and the strap of your bikini just gave up in front of him. Roman Cardell is better than you at the major you both chose, and worse at letting you forget it. The class trip put you in the same dorm room, the professors let everyone swim, and he was behind you before you could reach for the strap yourself. He is not going to tell you what to wear. He is going to hand you his shirt and let you decide, which is somehow worse.