Neighbors

In this apocalyptic world of extreme heat, I fight for water in the underground black market, and I risk my life to hoard supplies.
My internet-famous roommate enjoyed my efforts while hiding in the air-conditioned room, panting softly in front of three fill lights: "We need to slow down and reconcile with nature."
Later, she stole my supplies and sold them to drug lords, causing me to be roasted...

In my family, there was always room for Eden. There was never room for me.

At dinner, every dish was my sister's favorite: truffle risotto, seared scallops, chocolate soufflé. When she won a prize, my parents toasted her until the glasses rang. When I mentioned my own business, my mother laughed and called it a hobby.

I stopped waiting to be chosen. I learned to stand in the corner and let Eden ...

"Do you know who runs this wealthy neighborhood? Get the hell out of here, now!"

The HOA committee chairwoman shrieked, pointing her finger right at my nose. Her twelve-year-old chubby son was gleefully smashing my custom furniture worth over a hundred thousand dollars with a baseball bat, his face lit up with excitement.

I looked at the wreckage scattered across the floor, sighed, then reached...

Every night, dragging noises come from the floor above.
The neighbor claims he just can’t sleep, yet he stares at my window and grins in the dead of night.
Later, he dies.
But at two in the morning, I still get a text message from him.
Someone else warns me: Don’t go to the sixth floor.
The police say this building doesn’t even have a sixth floor.
Yet I’ve seen people go up there with my own eyes....

A falling planter knocked me out after a fight with my lifelong rival. When I woke up, I remembered everything. But I decided to play dumb and fake amnesia—figured it was the perfect excuse to fleece him for some cash.
“Who are you?” I asked.
Nathan Cole looked shocked for a second, then lied through his teeth“Your boyfriend. We've been together for eight years.”
Wait, what?!
He glanced at my mout...

As I sat in the police station with Yvonne Harper, my boyfriend’s childhood sweetheart, waiting for bail arrangements to be made, the decision loomed.
One of us could go home tonight.
My mate, Alpha Jackson, chose to take her.
"Nicole, just wait for me one more night. I’ll come back for you tomorrow," he said.
He was worried about her fragile health, but he didn’t care about my fear of the...

My mother rips my long-hidden Orion star chart to pieces and hurls the scraps straight into my face like garbage.
For seventeen years, I’ve been the praised straight-A good girl, my shirt collars always buttoned all the way up. I’ve lived solely for one goal: an acceptance letter from Yale, my ticket out of this suffocating cage.
But the second she locks my bedroom door from the outside, it hits m...

My husband's body moved over Celeste's, driving into her with brutal force.
She wrapped her legs around his waist, moaning like she did for her three million followers—except this performance was just for him.
I was her assistant. Her best friend, supposedly. Which is how I knew her passcode.
Now I was wedged in the back of her bedroom closet, phone aimed through the gap in the slats, ready to cat...

For eighteen years, my mother counted every pill I swallowed.
She kissed my forehead every night. She told me I was born broken. She said no one would ever love me the way she did, and I believed her.
Then, on my eighteenth birthday, a voice inside my head screamed: Don’t swallow that.
Her name is Vera. She’s my wolf. And she says there’s nothing wrong with my legs.
Now the woman who sang me to sl...

Rule number 1 for the music school landlord? Don’t date the back-room tenant.Duke's a grumpy recluse struggling to care for his fragile sister, but when he meets Careena he's instantly drawn to her.She’s bright smiles, warm laughter, and completely off-limits.A stickler for the rules, he struggles to keep his distance… until a trauma from his sister’s past resurfaces and puts both Careena and his ...

This was the most miserable Christmas I had ever experienced.
On Christmas Eve night, my husband brought his mistress home and demanded that I, his pregnant wife, leave with nothing.
On this day, I lost my husband and also lost the child in my womb...

At eighteen, I gave my virginity to Hunter in his bed.

I swallowed all the pain and hesitation, naively believing that three years of a pathetic crush had finally earned my way into his heart.

Until the next morning, when I heard his teammates' unabashed mockery:

"Damn, you finally bagged the nerd? How was it?"

Hunter scoffed, his tone dripping with utter contempt.

"Just messin...

"Pay us five million dollars, or I'll tell the world your son is a rapist."

That was the blackmail demand my new neighbor threw in my face. When I refused to pay, she took me to court.

Now, we are in a packed, live-streamed courtroom. Her daughter is crying on the witness stand in a neck brace, swearing my "heavily-muscled" son brutally attacked her in the backyard. Her sleazy lawyer is waving ...

That "poor pregnant woman" downstairs is currently waddling around Linden Court with her forty-week baby bump, sobbing to the neighbors. She claims the noise of me screwing men in the middle of the night is so loud it's killing her unborn baby.
In my past life, no one in this building believed me. In the end, she used a pair of rusty pruning shears to pin me, dead, to my own living room floor.
Reb...

All I wanted was a quiet place to live. I drained my savings and paid eighty thousand extra for the one unit on the row with a private backyard.
On my very first day, I found my neighbor's son beating my new hydrangeas with a stick while his mother stood there filming him and laughing.
Bianca says the yard belongs to everybody. Her husband is vice president of the HOA board, so around here, whatev...

I came home early from a business trip and overheard the woman Joseph always called his “poor stepmother” clinging to him in his office, begging for a kiss. Her swollen belly carried his child.
“When do I get to stop pretending to be your stepmother?” Susan whined.
Joseph’s cold laugh stripped away the last of my dignity. “Soon. Once I drain Emma’s company dry, she’ll be useless.”
I used to think ...

I came home early from a business trip and overheard the woman Joseph always called his “poor stepmother” clinging to him in his office, begging for a kiss. Her swollen belly carried his child.
“When do I get to stop pretending to be your stepmother?” Susan whined.
Joseph’s cold laugh stripped away the last of my dignity. “Soon. Once I drain Emma’s company dry, she’ll be useless.”
I used to think ...

On our sixth anniversary, instead of a gift, my husband Liam video-called me while holding his first love, Sophia.
On screen, that woman proudly waved a positive pregnancy test while Liam sneered at me: "Sophia got pregnant on the first try. Proves your body's the problem, not mine!"
Clutching my own newly confirmed pregnancy report, my heart turned to ice. I decided to file for divorce.
But at th...

I was dying in an emergency room when my husband chose his ex-girlfriend over me.

"Stop being dramatic, Olivia," Matthew said over the sound of champagne and laughter. "Rebecca's gallery opening is tonight."

Dramatic? I was hemorrhaging from a miscarriage, signing my own surgical consent because my husband of seven years couldn't be bothered to save my life.

While I flatlined twice on the opera...

"Knock on this door over the noise one more time, and you're dead!"
Calling the cops was useless, and I was too broke to move.
Driven practically insane, I recklessly tore open the black box from the dark web—the seller promised that if I just followed the instructions, it would "eliminate the noise at the source."
Less than half an hour later, the deafening rager upstairs completely stopped.
Thr...