The moment I found out my husband, Stanley Edwards, had been sleeping with my younger sister, Nicole Howard, I climbed onto the roof. I had already been battling severe depression for years. And just as I turned around to jump, Stanley came charging toward me like a madman and dropped to his knees. He slammed his forehead against the concrete again and again, his voice cracking as he screamed. "Sharon, I was wrong! Please, I'm begging you. Don't leave me!" My parents rushed to the railing in tears, grabbing onto me for dear life. They promised me anything as long as I came down. That very night, Nicole Howard was supposedly put on a plane and sent out of the country. For the next 3 years, Stanley became the perfect husband in everyone's eyes. He turned down every dinner invitation, party, and social engagement so he could come home on time. He let me go through his phone whenever I wanted. Even when he had to fly to Ashford once a week for work, he insisted that my older brother go with him every time. My parents constantly told me Stanley had learned his lesson. They said from now on, he'd only have eyes for me. And I believed them. I truly thought sunlight had finally broken through those endless dark days. That day, without telling anyone, I went to Ashford to pick up the report from my latest psychiatric evaluation. The results were good, and I wanted to surprise everyone with the news. On a whim, I bought a new prepaid SIM card and texted each of them from the unfamiliar number. Unknown Number: Guess who I am. Say my name and prove I'm the person you love most. Stanley replied first. Stanley: Nicole, quit messing around. You're the only one who comes up with these ridiculous little games. Mom's message came right after. Mom: Nicole, your dad and I are almost there. We brought your favorite treats from Kingsford. Dad's reply hurt even more. Dad: This is all Sharon's fault. If she hadn't been so selfish, you wouldn't have had to hide away for 3 whole years. Then my brother, Wyatt Howard, texted. Wyatt: Nicole! Wait for us outside the restaurant. We're almost there. My phone slipped from my hand and hit the pavement. I stood frozen in the middle of the crowd, a chill spreading through every inch of my body. So the remorse had been fake. Nicole had never gone abroad. From beginning to end, every single thing had been a lie.

My husband, Julian Mercer, and our two children, Owen Mercer and Lily Mercer, had a birthday surprise for me, Claire Bennett. My daughter covered my eyes and promised I'd be touched. I watched eagerly as the trunk slowly opened. It was packed with filthy, battered cardboard. My husband leaned against the car door, watching without a flicker of warmth. Beside him, my son pinched his nose, his face twisted in disgust. "Don't you love collecting this junk? You always look so old and gross. Vanessa's pretty, and she smells nice every day." I froze. I thought back to the hardest years, when we were trying to get the business off the ground. I had scavenged for recyclables and saved cardboard, selling it to put hot meals on the table for them. With tears in his eyes, my husband had said, "Honey, I promise I'll give you a better life someday." My daughter had hugged me and said, "You work so hard, Mommy." I had believed them. I kept going for 10 years. In those 10 years, the company had gone public, and they had joined the wealthy elite, while I still saved our shipping boxes out of habit. He bought luxury cars. I flattened cardboard. He wore custom suits. I wore old clothes. He set up a second home with "sweet-smelling" Vanessa Shaw. And for my 30th birthday, all I deserved was a trunkful of cardboard meant to humiliate me. As I watched my husband and our children burst out laughing, I suddenly wanted no part of this family anymore.

Just before I finished work, my son called me in tears.   "Mom, my stomach hurts! The doctor says I need surgery right now!"   I abandoned the client I was negotiating with and took a cab halfway across the city to the private hospital.   Outside the ward, I heard cheering.   My son was laughing, slapping the bed.   "It only took her 30 minutes! I told you she'd come right away!"   My husband was peeling an apple, his expression indulgent.   "You little rascal. Scaring your mom by pretending you're sick? She's going to lose it again."   I froze outside the door and peered through the gap.   His first love lay in the next bed, watching them with a smile.   "Don't blame Toby. He wouldn't have done it if we hadn't needed to get her here to donate bone marrow to me."   My son flung himself into her arms.   "I'd let them drain every drop of her blood if it would make you better! I only want you to be my mom!"   Once, I would have stormed in and slapped them.   This time, all I felt was disgust.   Last month, my son had said he needed a checkup and tricked me into having three tubes of blood drawn.   Last week, he'd claimed his school was setting up a genetic database and tricked me into being tested for a match.   Every time, they had been plotting to help themselves to another part of my body.   The more I loved my son, the easier it was for them to use me as a blood bank.   I looked down and answered my lawyer's text about giving up custody.   This time, I'd give them what they wanted.

My mom's lumbar condition flared up so bad she could barely get out of bed without screaming in pain. I waited two whole weeks to get a hospital slot, then brought her all the way to New York for treatment. There were no regular beds available, so she had to lie on a temporary extra bed in the hallway, with barely enough space to even roll over. I grabbed my fiancé Ian Armstrong, the hospital's chief physician, by the arm. "Doesn't the hospital keep emergency family beds on reserve? Can you squeeze my mom into a proper room? The draft in this hallway is brutal."  He furrowed his brows, his face icy as he shut me down immediately. "I hate people pulling strings to cut corners more than anything. There are dozens of patients way worse off than your mom waiting for beds. Why should she get special treatment?"  My mom, Mathilda Martin, was lying on that hard cot, cold sweat beading all over her forehead from the pain, but she forced a wobbly smile to smooth things over for him. "Zoey, I'm not cold at all. The hallway's nice and breezy. Don't make things hard for Ian.” I felt a sharp sting in my nose. I rounded the corner to go get hot water, and ran straight into him pushing a wheelchair, escorting Vivian Cox's mother into the largest private single room on the ward. I froze outside the door, and I heard him speaking to her in a soft, coaxing tone. "Hey, don't panic. Your mom just twisted her ankle going down the stairs, no bone damage at all. Let her stay here as long as she needs, okay? I'll come by personally to change her dressing every single day." All the while, I could still hear my mom's quiet, pained whimpers drifting from the drafty hallway behind me. My fingers clamped around the plastic water jug so hard my knuckles turned white. For three whole years, he'd hidden behind holier-than-thou principles to turn down every small favor I'd ever asked of him, but the second Vivian's family needed something, he handed them every last bit of his special consideration without a second thought. Right then, this whole relationship suddenly felt like nothing but filthy garbage I couldn't stand to touch for one more second.

On the day of my surgery, my husband, Clinton Barlow, got a call from his first love.   I grabbed the cuff of his shirt. "Can you wait for me to come out?"   He leaned down and kissed me. "Be good, don't be scared. Once you wake up, you'll see me, and then you can do whatever you want with me, okay?"   After the surgery, I was shaking all over from the pain.   The nurse called him 17 times, but no one answered.   It was 3 a.m. when he finally showed up.   He was holding a container of my favorite ravioli and sat down on the edge of my bed to coax me.   "Babe, are you still mad? Punish me by letting me be at your beck and call for the rest of my life to make it up to you, okay?"   I asked, "How's Aileen Beltran?"   His smile dimmed a little.   "She's been a mess since her divorce, and you know it."   "So that gives you the right to leave me alone?"   He sighed and pinched my cheek lightly.   "You're my wife. No one's ever going to come before you, okay?"   The next day, Aileen came to visit me at the hospital.   She held out a man's scarf to Clinton.   "You left this on my bed last night. Try not to be so careless next time, yeah?"   Clinton laughed and tapped her forehead. "You did that on purpose, didn't you?"   I asked, "Why was your scarf on her bed?"   The smile faded from his face.   "She had a nightmare, so I sat with her all night. Cassandra Buckley, are you really forcing me to say something cruel? She's the one who really can't get by without me. You're not."   I didn't say another word. If he thought I didn't need him, I would give him what he wanted.

After 7 years of helping Ethan Foster build his company, we finally decided to make it official. The morning we showed up for our wedding portraits, he stopped me and Joy Quinn at the studio door and handed us each a card. "Before we make it official, let's play one last game. Whoever draws the bride card takes the wedding portraits with me today." I turned my card over. It was a bridesmaid card. Joy, blushing, held up her bride card. "Guess the universe wants me in these photos with you." Ethan was grinning. He shoved the bouquet into my arms. "You lost the draw. Joy is leaving the country soon. Just be the bridesmaid today. After she leaves, I'll make it up to you." I watched Ethan lead Joy through pose after pose, gazing into her eyes for the photographer. He even took the veil I had spent three months sewing and put it on Joy without a second thought. And there I was, the bridesmaid, standing off to the side and handing over the bouquet again and again whenever the photographer told me to. My phone lit up with the final invoice from the photography studio. In the client notes field was Ethan's handwriting: Two cards. Mark the bridesmaid card. Bride card for Joy. Do not mix them up. I lowered my phone and caught my bedraggled reflection in the mirror. I calmly took off my engagement ring. Then I dropped the bouquet into the trash. 'Make it up to me? No. Seven years end today.'

My best friend Tinsley Rook, is a content creator with millions of followers across every major platform, and she has always openly said she will never get married. Then she suddenly announced she was in a relationship, and the man she named was Jase Veycroft, my boyfriend of seven years.  "Talia, I told her to say it that way. It was the only way to get real attention," he said. "You're making such a big deal out of nothing. Is this really necessary?" When he saw my eyes turning red, his tone softened and he tried to comfort me. "Be reasonable. Once all this dies down, everything will go back to how it was before," he said. But that same night, the video where they confirmed their relationship went viral. Someone dug up old photos of me and my boyfriend together, and people started calling me the other woman in the comments. I replied to those comments to tell them the truth, that I wasn't the one who came between them. But Tinsley deleted every one of my replies. She even pinned a post to the top of her page, clearly stating that she and my boyfriend had been a couple all along. "Talia, Tinsley is just about to hit ten million followers. Can't you just bear with this a little longer?" he said. When I stayed quiet, his voice turned sharp and serious. "She had already signed a contract with a media company. If she loses this account, she'll have to pay millions in damages! Can't you just understand for once?" That was the moment I felt my heart turn completely cold. I gave a quiet, sad smile. I opened my work email and sent in my resignation. Fine then. I, Talia Vossick, will step back and disappear from their lives. They can have each other. Good luck to them both.