EXHALE

Modern

Twenty minutes before the "Wedding of the Century" at The Plaza, I stood outside the Presidential Suite in a fifty-thousand-dollar Vera Wang gown. I was the girl from a West Virginia trailer park about to marry Hugh Maxwell, the golden heir to a billion-dollar defense empire. I pushed the door open only to find Hugh pinned against the bed with my own stepsister, Floy. She was wearing my bridal diamond necklace, and the sounds of their laughter scraped against my eardrums like sandpaper. I didn't scream; I listened as Hugh grunted that once the wedding was over and the trust fund unlocked, he'd dump "that hillbilly trash" on a bus back to the mountains. They weren't just cheating; they were planning to steal my family's land deeds and leave me with nothing. When I set off the sprinklers and exposed their naked bodies to the paparazzi, the Maxwell family didn't apologize. They called me a "greedy peasant" and threatened to ruin my life unless I signed a new deal to save their crashing stock. I realized then that I was never a bride to them. I was a transaction, a rounding error in a ledger to be used and discarded. They thought my poverty made me weak and my silence made me a victim. "If we don't have a marriage certificate by midnight, the bank freezes thirty percent of our liquidity," their lawyer warned. So, I gave them exactly what they wanted. I used a loophole in their hundred-year-old family covenant and married the only other direct heir available. I didn't marry Hugh. I walked into the ICU and married his uncle, Fleet Maxwell-the legendary war hero who had been in a vegetative state for months. Now, I am the matriarch of the Maxwell dynasty. I've suspended Hugh's executive powers, exiled my mother-in-law to the Swiss Alps, and taken control of the family vault. They think I'm just a gold-digger waiting for a "corpse" to die so I can collect a fifty-million-dollar widow's payout. But last night, as I lay beside my comatose husband, the man they called a vegetable gripped my hand back.

LGBT+

Ethan Miller was the hottest guy in Greenville High School. Girls loved him, guys wanted to be him. He just had one problem, Corey Price. Corey Price was the complete opposite of Ethan. Ethan did not like his lingering looks and admiring glances. It made him furious. Corey was the bane of his existence. Ethan's solution was to beat and torment Corey and make his school days unbearable. Corey's wounds never healed. His fondness of Ethan turned into hatred and he vowed to never forgive him. But, he spent years working on himself and has emerged a stronger, better person, ready to take on new challenges. Finally confident, he's about to take on a new job. Until he discovered who his new boss was. It was none other than the monster himself. Ethan Miller

Romance

Klea Dexter is a 24 years old lady, who was made to get married to her childhood friend; Aiden Barrett who she hasn't met in years. About eight months into her marriage, she discovered that her husband was a misogynist and had forced her to stop working. She was tired of the marriage and wanted a