Her mom’s car pulls into the driveway.

Go time.

She calls Cross. “You ready?” He asks, though he knows she’s not.

“I have to be.”

Her mom turns off the car and is getting out. Bell keeps the call going and puts her phone in her back pocket with the bottom sticking up.

“Hi, my Sweetie Bell,” her mom greets her, kissing the top of her head.

With her anxiety rising, she doesn’t want to lose...

I remember as a kid Dad always joked around with me. He’d ruffle my hair and laugh that deep, kind laugh that made me want to laugh along with him.

“You’re gonna be a heartbreaker,” he’d tell me as we wrestled on the couch. Mostly it was over the remote but sometimes it was just plain out of nowhere.

I never understood what he meant, or why that was the time when he thought to tell me. But I d...

“When I was young, people always told me I would be a heartbreaker. I don’t think this is what they meant.”

“Yeah, probably not,” Lillie answered, looking down at the mess the two had made. Fourteen bodies lay at the pair’s feet, some in possession of more of their body parts than others. “It’s certainly a more exciting take on it, though.”

“Yeah. Exciting . . .”

“Oh, come on!” She knelt, digging...

The cashier’s hand tensed as he grabbed on to the brown paper bag a little too long. He wasn’t letting go.

I clenched my jaw and tried to ease my groceries out from his grasp, eyes flitting back at the line of people slowly building behind me.

My stomach growled, an indication of how long it had been since I’d eaten. Too long.

I inadvertently glanced at the cashier’s face to see that all-too k...

When I was young, people always told me I would be a heartbreaker.

It's a common thing, really, to say to a royal. That they'll break many hearts. That they're dashing, swoon-worthy, charming. That they'll surely have a perfect Ever After. So it was never something I registered as any importance.

My teen years, my young adult years, found me wooing and flirting, yes. They found me known for my fo...

PROLOGUE (1942)

The rain poured on the streets. The kid's faint laugh, a laugh turned into a dry laugh. Along with the beat of the rain. That would flow around the kid's shoe into the streets. The kid started coughing, however, it wasn’t a cough. It felt like someone was pulling him.

The hands…

Slime…

Dripping down his shirt, but that’s what he thought. It isn’t real, right? But, but, why? Why i...

When I was young, people always told me I would be a heartbreaker. I don’t think this is what they meant. I stare in the mirror and pick apart my dull features. Dark circles ringed my too small eyes, the effects of a hundred poor nights sleep. My forehead, too large and starting to wrinkle from worry at only the age of 27. I tried Botox once, but it made me feel fake. It doesn’t matter how hard I ...

“When I was young, people always told me I would be a heartbreaker. I don’t think this is what they meant.” Ella pauses on the stage as the crowd chuckles lightly. “But isn’t it our fear of heartbreak that holds us back? Stops us from living life as who we were meant to be, and stopping us from finding who we were meant to find. I founded this company on the basis that heartbreak can be a beginnin...

When I was young, people would always tell me I would be a heartbreaker. I don’t think this is what they meant…

“You did not…” my brother’s voice trails off. He looks at the scenery with absolute horror. I would, too, if only I wasn’t in the middle of it. Me, standing in the treasured room with trophies, broken bits and shards on the ground around me of what used to be a glass heart sculptu...

I glanced at the pieces pining for attention

Broken and still they always managed

Managed to work and beat and thrum

This poor maidens heart that was once a whole one

My quaint collection of ignorant young women

Who walked into a bar with poor intentions

And all it took was a spark from a match or flint

I was always told I’d be a heartbreaker, but I don’t think this was what they meant...