Practice Makes Perfect Kindle Novels & Stories

The New Year's Day had barely started when my usually unromantic husband, Everett Grant, surprised me by booking a tour for me. The moment I settled into the bus, however, a line of text suddenly drifted across my vision. [Poor Tina! Her jerk husband booked a one-dollar tour for her, and then turns around and drops ten grand taking his mistress overseas.] I froze, convinced my eyes were playing tricks on me, and kept chatting with the woman beside me as if nothing had happened. Then the messages showed up again. [Seriously? Tina's still smiling like an idiot. She has no idea this tour is really a trafficking ring. Once they get her to the island, she's done for!] [Oh, no! The bus leaves in three minutes. Is Tina actually gonna die like this? That's such a miserable way to go!] The bus had been quiet until the tour guide suddenly spoke up. "We'll be departing shortly. It's about an hour's ride. After that, we'll transfer to a boat to reach the island."

My sister abruptly returns to the country on the day of my wedding. My parents, brother, and fiancé abandon me to pick her up at the airport. She shares a photo of them on her social media, bragging about how she's so loved. Meanwhile, all the calls I make are rejected. My fiancé is the only one who answers, but all he tells me is not to kick up a fuss. We can always have our wedding some other day. They turn me into a laughingstock on the day I've looked forward to all my life. Everyone points at me and laughs in my face. I calmly deal with everything before writing a new number in my journal—99. This is their 99th time disappointing me; I won't wish for them to love me anymore. I fill in a request to study abroad and pack my luggage. They think I've learned to be obedient, but I'm actually about to leave forever.

After my mom, Margaret Hale, dies of a heart attack, she starts appearing in my sister Claire Dawson's dreams. In a dream, Mom tells Claire to climb Mount Mistwood before sunrise and burn the entrance ticket for her, or the other ghosts will bully her. Claire doesn't tell me anything. She packs a bag in the middle of the night and forces herself to the summit. While she's gasping her way up that mountain, I'm asleep at home when I suddenly go into cardiac arrest. I wake up in the emergency room with doctors shouting over me. I barely survive before Mom appears in Claire's dreams again. This time, she says skydiving is her last wish. If Claire doesn't do it for her, she won't rest in peace. Claire signs up right away, ignoring everything I say. But then, her parachute refuses to open, and she plummets toward the ground. Luckily, she gets snagged in a tree and walks away without a scratch. Meanwhile, I miss a step going downstairs, tumble to the bottom, end up covered in bruises, and break five ribs. While I'm recovering in the hospital, Mom shows up in Claire's dreams again. Now, she wants Claire to go to the South Pole for her, saying she can finally move on and be reincarnated once Claire completes the trip. Claire doesn't hesitate and books a tour on the spot. While she's taking pictures with penguins, I freeze to death back home during a 104-degree heatwave. Only after I die does it finally hit me that Mom's missions for Claire always end with me on death's doorstep. What I don't understand is how Mom keeps shifting the danger meant for Claire onto me instead. The next time I open my eyes, I'm back on the morning after Mom first appeared in Claire's dream.

After I resign from my job as a forensic pathologist and return to my rural hometown to enjoy a laidback, leisurely life, I feel totally at peace. In contrast, my boyfriend's childhood sweetheart, Jessica Lester, starts panicking for real. She keeps begging me to stay. "Dr. Gardner, even though you're not that talented, I still hope you can stand beside me and speak up for those who have died unjustly!" I roll my eyes coolly and leave without looking back. In my previous life, Jessica is an intern put under my care. But every time we conduct an autopsy, she watches from the side but somehow manages to describe the victim's experiences before death ahead of me. She even uses wording that is identical to what I am thinking. I cannot make sense of it. In later autopsies, I give everything and go all out to prove myself, but even when she is not present, she can still iterate my findings at length. From then on, everyone idolizes her. Meanwhile, I become a laughingstock even if I am the most authoritative forensic expert in the state. Later on, the enraged family members of victims come to my doorstep every day. They lambast me and say that I am unworthy of being a forensic pathologist. They eventually set my house on fire, and I die miserably in the flames. When I open my eyes again, I return to the day I take Jessica to her first autopsy.

My roommate, Quinn York, is a nice person who knows how to pay one's act of benevolence back. At the orientation party, a classmate gives Quinn a cheap lipstick. She insists on repaying that classmate by giving her my expensive custom-ordered dress. When the supervisor of the girls' dorm gives Quinn a bottle of water, Quinn tells me to treat the entire class to a meal at a five-star hotel. When the campus bully, Kendrick Olsen, helps Quinn out of a sticky situation, she has the audacity to deliver me to his bed just to thank him. Because of that, I'm infected with STDs. That's when Quinn posts the report on the Internet purposefully. Since then, everyone views me as a loose woman who has zero love for herself. Not wanting to suffer from such humiliation, I decide to take my own life by jumping off a building. When I open my eyes again, I've returned to the orientation party. Since Quinn likes repaying others that much, she should be the one doing the actual repaying!

On our wedding anniversary, I did not say a word to my husband. I simply booked a plane ticket and left town on a business trip with my supervisor. He grabbed my arm, anger blazing in his eyes. "It's our anniversary, and you're spending it with someone else? Have you lost your mind?" I frowned, impatient, and shook him off. Without another glance, I got into the car heading for the airport. In my previous life, everything had started with his so-called first love. After multiple abortions, her uterine lining had become too thin for her to ever carry a child. So, she stole one. When the child's parents tried to take their baby back, she hit the gas, knocking them to the ground and killing them. However, when the truth came out, the police arrested me. I protested my innocence. I appealed. I even demanded a public trial. In response, they produced dashcam footage that clearly showed me abducting the child and running down the parents. To make matters worse, my fingerprints were found inside the car. I was completely shattered. Convicted on the spot, I was sentenced to death. My parents, unable to bear the shock, both fell ill and passed away soon after. After my death, my husband remarried in grand fashion, with his beloved 'first love' by his side. Together, they even adopted the very stolen child, becoming a couple everyone praised as perfect. Only then did I understand. It had all been their scheme. When I opened my eyes again, I found myself back on the day it all began.

Even knowing that wailing at an Eravalen aristocratic funeral was considered disrespectful to the deceased, I let my husband's adopted sister make a scene anyway. In my previous life, my husband, Robert Baker, had a distant relative among the Eravalen aristocracy who passed away. A lawyer informed him that he stood to inherit the estate and invited him to attend the funeral. His adopted sister, Mia Carter, insisted on tagging along to see how the privileged few in another country lived. She wanted to rub shoulders with nobles and make herself look important, even planning to wail dramatically in front of everyone. I rushed to stop her. "Loud mourning is taboo among the Eravalen nobility. Forget inheriting anything. We'll all be thrown out!" Yet she burst into tears, accusing me of looking down on her and thinking she was not good enough to mingle with aristocrats. She stormed out and was killed by street thugs in a random attack. I thought Robert would fall apart, but he stayed silent through the entire funeral and collected his inheritance without a hitch. Six months later, on our wedding anniversary, he took me to the snowy mountains for a photoshoot. The moment we reached the peak, he shoved me into a sleeping bag and tied it shut. "If you hadn't blown everything out of proportion, Mia never would've run off and gotten herself shot." He buried me alive in the snow. I froze to death, and he used that aristocratic fortune to become the CEO of a publicly traded company. When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day Mia insisted on wailing at the funeral.

I went out in the morning and saw an abandoned baby by the roadside. I was about to pick the baby up and take him home when I heard the baby’s inner thoughts. The baby thought, ‘Dad’s plan is genius. He dumped me right where Scarlett would find me on purpose. That way, she’ll take me in and adopt me. Then, I’ll legally become part of the Lumley family without any issues. ‘Back then, Scarlett used her rich family background to ruin my parents’ relationship on purpose. Now she’s stuck raising me, Dad’s illegitimate child. Now she’s getting exactly what’s coming to her. ‘Once I become part of the Lumley family, I’m going to help Dad destroy this wench as fast as I can. Then, I’ll bring Mom over so the three of us can finally be together as a family.’ The baby on the ground was still grinning at me. However, I had already heard every single one of his thoughts. I smirked and made a phone call. Since he was an illegitimate child, he should go where he belonged.

The housekeeper’s daughter, Selena Greene, deliberately chose to get married on the same day, at the same hotel as me. When our cars passed each other on the way to our weddings, she rolled down her window and asked to switch my bridal bouquet with hers. My bouquet, however, wasn’t just any bouquet. It was hand-carved from priceless jadeite by my grandfather himself—a one-of-a-kind heirloom and his blessing for my wedding day. “Trish,” she pleaded softly, “please. I’ve sacrificed so much for this wedding. I just want it to be perfect. I’ll give it back to you as soon as we get out of the cars.” My heart softened. Against my better judgment, I handed her my bouquet and took her cheap, plastic flowers instead. However, when we stepped out of our cars, she refused to return it. Worse still, during her ceremony, she tossed my jade bouquet onto the floor, shattering it into countless pieces. That bouquet had been my grandfather’s way of being present at my wedding. It was all I had left of him. Yet, in front of everyone, Selena put on an innocent act and accused me, “Who takes back a bouquet after a switch? A glass bouquet like this is all over online shopping platforms for ten bucks. I’ll just pay you back. Trish, you’ve made my life hard enough on normal days. Do you have to humiliate me on the most important day of my life, too?” Furious, I confronted her, but she ducked behind my fiancé and my brother, wiping at her eyes like the victim. My fiancé immediately went to comfort her, leaving me standing alone at the ceremony, humiliated and ridiculed by everyone. My brother, too, called me cruel and heartless. He cut me off financially and threw me out of the family home. Selena’s husband, having quickly risen to success with the help of powerful backers, unleashed his relentless revenge on the now penniless and alone me. In the dead of winter, hired thugs found me and brutalized me to death. And Selena? She became their princess, adored by all three of them. I sank into darkness, full of rage and regret. However, when I opened my eyes again, I was transported back to the day of the wedding.

I had an apartment at Westbridge Residences that had been empty since I got married. That day, the management called me. "Ms. Irwing, can you ask your tenant to be more careful when hanging laundry? Water dripped from their clothes and soaked a blanket downstairs." Then, they sent me a photo. Wet sexy lingerie hung on the balcony, with a pair of familiar men's underwear next to it. My heart sank, and I called my husband immediately. "Did you rent out the apartment at Westbridge Residences?" My husband went quiet for two seconds, then laughed. "Whoops! I was going to surprise you, but I guess you found out. I'll give you the rent when I get home." I pretended to be happy about it and praised him for helping bring in more money for the family. After hanging up, I turned around and went straight to the Westbridge Residences.