Quick reads you can finish in 10-30 minutes
Found 26 short novels in Regret
"I knocked and the sound bounced off the wood." I hear the scrape of his pen before he answers. "You already looked at it?" I say. He doesn't look up. Bennett Vasseur flips the last page, sets the pen down, and reaches for the paper like it's another file. "I don't need to read it to sign," he says. His voice is flat. "Give it here." I take a step forward, the suitcase zipper open. Clothes spill out on the floor like a careless life. "I'm almost done," I say. "I...
"You don't get to cry now," I said, and I meant it. I was twenty the first time I heard those words for real, said by a boy who smelled like sweat and bad cigarettes and dared the world with his jaw. He held me like I was his whole life. "I will make you the richest and happiest woman," he told me with his mouth on my forehead. His name was Kai Cantrell. In our town he was the kind of boy people scowled at — a scraper, a fighter. He beat men twice his size and got cars to call him "boss."...
I unzipped the dress and held it to my chest. "It still fits you," Estella said from the doorway, voice soft like always. "I made it for me," I said. "I made it for him." "You mean Dax," she answered. "You mean Dax Dodson." "Yes." I let the word out like a small confession. "I made it when I was twenty. I thought he would stand at the altar." Estella came closer and touched the lace. "You look at it like it is a promise." "It was a promise," I said. "To myself." "You should...
I have a habit of sitting in the same seat at the same café. I like the way the light at five in the afternoon falls on the table like a thin promise. I like the way the chair remembers the curve of my back. I like the quiet that lets me hear my own thoughts before I send them out as headlines. That evening I told the waiter, "No tiramisu. Black Americano. Ice." He smiled like he already knew me. "Enjoy your writing, Tova." I set my phone face-down and got to work. I had to finish a...
I found out about Erik's affair by accident. "I left a file here. Will you take it to the office?" I had asked that evening, carrying our twins and a sack of folded laundry. Erik had been at his desk, calm as ever. "Sure. Thanks," he said, and kissed the top of my head. He had left the file on his desk. When I stepped into his office to drop it off, I saw a milk‑carton style cup on his desk, the kind with a tiny round mouth you need a straw to drink from. "It's cute," I said aloud,...
"I accept the sentence." My voice floated across the Hall of Unending Water and hit the carved dais like a small, cold stone. I felt the ropes bite my wrists. I felt the bindings that had been tied to me since dawn. I watched faces tighten, soften, then harden. "Do you?" Emory Moretti said from the sunlight-side seat, his voice like hard light. "Kyla — you want this? You admitted to everything?" "I do," I said. "I did what I did to keep more people alive than would have died if I did...
