Category: Daily Dose of Romance
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The Second Language of Touch
Daily Dose of Romance – Short Stories for FREE She was thirty-four and he was twenty-six and she kept waiting for it to feel wrong. She’d been waiting for two months, through the first hesitant coffee and the second less hesitant dinner and the moment in the gallery when he’d stopped in front of a…
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In Deep Water
Daily Dose of Romance – Short Stories for FREE She was swimming at dawn when he first saw her, which meant she saw him watching from the dock, which meant they started with honesty. “Rude,” she called, still treading water. “Impressive,” he called back. “There are jellyfish.” “I know. They’ve been polite.” She came out…
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Every Version of Winter
Daily Dose of Romance – Short Stories for FREE Thomas kept his late wife’s books on the shelf in the same order she’d left them, which meant they were organised by colour rather than any logical system, and for two years he’d thought this was a memorial and then one day a woman named Vivienne…
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Touch and Go
It had been eighteen months since someone had touched her — properly, deliberately, with the full intention of making her feel human. Hana was aware of this in the way you were aware of a low-grade fever: not debilitating, just always there. The divorce had done it. Not the grief exactly, but the withdrawal of…
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The Gardener
He left mint on her doorstep on a Tuesday, and she spent the whole morning convinced it was a mistake, intended for next door. On Wednesday he left thyme. On Thursday it was rosemary and a small card that said ‘From the allotment. Roof garden on the right. — Seb.‘ She lived alone in the…
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Undone by Degrees
The thing about Layla and Julian was that everyone had seen it coming for a year and a half except the two of them. The whole team had a group chat about it. There had been a spreadsheet. And now they were alone in the office at nine PM on a Friday — everyone else…
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Almost Brave
Her daughter fell asleep on the train home from the school trip and Fia sat beside her in the window seat watching the city blur past and thought: this is the best thing. This specifically. This warm weight against my shoulder, this smell of sunscreen and someone else’s snacks, this small life that chose me…
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The Bookshop on Crane Street
She was looking for the same out-of-print book he was looking for, and they found this out standing in the fiction section of the small second-hand bookshop on Crane Street, each holding half of what turned out to be the same copy — a split spine, a missing jacket, loved to pieces by whoever had…
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After the Wedding
The maid of honour and the best man ended up on the same hotel balcony at midnight because they’d both needed air from the same wedding. This was, Madeleine reflected, statistically inevitable — spending an entire day helping two people love each other publicly tended to clarify things. Specifically, it had clarified that she had…
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The Bet She Almost Lost
The terms were simple: Iris would pretend to be Callum’s girlfriend for his family’s annual Christmas gathering — four days in a farmhouse in the Cotswolds — and in exchange, he would write her recommendation letter for the fellowship she wanted so badly she’d been losing sleep over it. It was a transaction. A clean,…
Sonia M. Rompoti, MSc, Bsc 