Fifteen Years of Lies My Partner's Secret Marriage

When I found out Luna Joyce was keeping a man on the side, I was calmer than I expected.

I tracked down the man's address and headed straight for his place, ready to have it out with him.

But when I actually stood in his living room, I froze.

This apartment cost one-point-six million. Luna paid in full, cash. Title's in my name. The man's expression was perfectly composed, as if he'd been expecting this. He disappeared into the bedroom and came back with a marriage certificate, setting it down in front of me. "Last month, Luna and I got legally married."

"So." He looked at me, his eyes dripping with contempt. "Legally speaking, you're the dirty little secret."

The marriage certificate burned my eyes.

Fifteen years. I'd been with Luna for fifteen years.

Fifteen years, and I never got a marriage certificate. What I got instead was the word homewrecker.

"Sebastian Harding." The man pressed one pale, slender finger against Luna's name on the certificate, his tone dripping with disdain. "You have no right to be here. And you sure as hell don't have the standing to posture in front of me. Are we clear?"

He held the marriage certificate like a trophy, standing there looking every inch the pampered rich boy.

I recognized the watch on his wrist. Last month, Luna and I had gone to an auction together. She'd bid on it and won, told me it was my gift for our fifteenth anniversary.

Then, the day before the anniversary, Luna came to me in a panic, told me the watch had gone missing.

Her eyes were brimming with guilt, so much guilt they turned red, and she said, "Baby, I'll get you something even better. I promise."

She ran her thumb across the calluses on my hands, and the tears spilled over, full of heartache.

"You've had it so rough all these years, sticking with me through everything. Once the company's IPO goes through, let's get married, okay?"

"Baby." Luna wrapped her arms around me. "I want to marry you. I want us to have a real home."

And I believed her.

I thought we were finally going to take that step.

I told myself that all those years following Luna, building something from nothing, it had been worth it. That I could hand in a life I was satisfied with and just coast from there.

Now.

I stared at the tiny diamonds on the watch face, glittering, each one a needle finding its way into my heart. The pain nearly buckled my knees, but I kept my composure.

"So what?"

I plucked the marriage certificate from his hand. The groom's name read: Jayden James. I looked up at the man's flawless face, caught the flash of shock in his expression, and smiled.

"Are you trying to tell me that after fifteen years with Luna, it's my turn to step aside so you can live the good life?"

"Jayden." I ran my thumb across his photo on the certificate and smiled. "What makes you think I'd hand over everything I've poured my blood and sweat into?"

I watched the panic hit him. Jayden lunged for the certificate, but I sidestepped. His momentum carried him into the cabinet, and he let out a yelp.

"Sebastian Harding!"

"Are you insane?!"

The mask was off. Jayden screamed at me, face twisted.

"What, you're going to wreck what Luna and I have? You want to be the shameless other man? Is that it?!"

"Have you no shame?!"

Before Jayden could charge at me again, I'd already pulled out my phone, calmly snapped a photo of the marriage certificate, and sent it to Luna with a message.

"Luna."

"Heard you got married."

"How come I wasn't invited to the wedding toast?"

"Baby!"

The call had already connected.

Luna's voice echoed through the living room.

"I can explain!"

"This is all a misunderstanding!"

"Baby!"

There was movement on Luna's end, followed by the sound of a car door shutting. "I'm coming to you right now."

"Don't rush."

"Whatever it is, wait until I get there."

Luna was still talking.

Jayden had already lost it, screaming into the phone like a man unhinged.

"Luna! Whose husband are you? Who the hell are you protecting?!"

Jayden's meltdown echoed through the living room. I took another long look around the apartment. The place was decorated with care. Pale blue curtains, cream-colored sofa, an entire wall of display shelves filled with collectible figurines. Even the fridge had a little lucky charm and festive stickers on it.

The pink cartoon slippers by the shoe rack were clearly a matching set with the ones on Jayden's feet.

Even the white walls were covered with photos of Jayden. Tucked between them, here and there, were shots of Luna taken from behind.

It was obvious.

Whoever had decorated this apartment had poured their heart into it.

The apartment itself. Paid in full. Under Jayden's name.

Jayden's watch. Tens of thousands of dollars.

That was supposed to be my anniversary gift. And then there was the silk pajamas Jayden was wearing, and Jayden's pale, smooth hands, and the tea set sitting on the coffee table, and the brand of tea beside it. None of it was cheap.

Every single thing.

Reeked of money.

I looked down at my own hands. Turned my palms over. Calluses, thick and rough, built up over years of hard work. And my clothes, head to toe, everything on my body didn't add up to a thousand dollars.

It hit me all at once how absurd it was. So absurd that a laugh actually escaped my throat.

"Luna."

I cut through her voice.

"Since you're already married," I took one last look at the marriage certificate in Jayden's arms, "there's nothing left for us to talk about."

I didn't wait for Luna.

I didn't need to hear her explanation.

All I knew was this:

Fifteen years of everything I'd given had become a joke.

And Luna had made me the biggest fool in it.

I sat in my friend's law office and placed the photo of the marriage certificate on the desk. I laid out everything I'd learned, detail by detail.

Then I asked him one thing.

"In a situation like this."

"What are my odds?" My voice was steady, like I was making small talk. "Luna and I built the company from nothing. Our shares are equal. Assets split fifty-fifty. Everything's transparent. But Jayden is the exception."

I tapped the desk, thinking of the three-hundred-thousand-dollar bracelet and the million-dollar apartment.

"I don't intend to let anyone walk away with a free ride."

"Nobody gets to feast on my flesh and blood and call it a gift. That's not how this works."

I looked my friend dead in the eye.

"I want them to pay."

"But," my friend said, visibly furious on my behalf, though his professional instincts kicked in, "your company is at a critical stage of the IPO right now. If a scandal breaks"

"I don't care."

"Then that's all I need to hear!"

He slapped his chest.

"I'll see this through to the end with you."

Coming out of the bank, I sat in my car, staring at dozens of pages of transaction records. The amounts Luna had transferred to Jayden ranged from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars. Every single entry had the same note attached: Voluntary gift.

My chest felt like it was caving in. A suffocating pressure closed around my throat, and my eyes burned hot.

I thought about how I'd envied other people who took care of their appearance. How I'd done what other guys did, booked a salon appointment, got my hair styled, and came home to parade around in front of Luna, hoping she'd notice. Hoping she'd compliment me for finally putting some effort into how I looked.

Instead.

Luna just met my eager face with cold indifference.

"Honey."

"I know things have been getting a little better for us," she grabbed my hand and shook her head in disapproval, "but the most dangerous thing a person can do is forget where they came from."

"We can't start throwing money around just because things are a little better now, right?"

"What if things get hard again someday? How would you adjust?"

"Honey." Luna wrapped her arms around me. "I still like you best when you keep things simple."

Every ounce of anticipation I'd had shattered into nothing.

Her words hit me like a bucket of ice water dumped over my head. I just stood there, frozen, too stunned to even react, watching as Luna smashed my only bottle of cologne without a shred of hesitation.

"What's the point of something so flashy and useless?"

Right.

Flashy and useless.

What was the point?

And yet Jayden was dressed head to toe in flashy and useless things, looking like he belonged to another world entirely, polished like some trust-fund prince.

The joke was that every dollar spent on making Jayden look that way had come from my blood and sweat over the years.

How was that fair?

The tears came before I could stop them. I wiped them away hard, staring at Luna's name lighting up my phone again and again, and finally hit answer.

"Honey?"

"You finally picked up!"

"Thank God!"

Luna's voice came through frantic.

"I've been looking everywhere for you! Where did you go? Whatever's going on, can we please talk about it face to face?"

"Sebastian, we've been together fifteen years!"

"Not fifteen days! You can't just disappear like this"

"Luna."

I swallowed past the ache in my throat. My voice came out steady.

"Let's meet."

I told her.

"At the old house uptown. Let's meet there."

Silence on the other end.

A few seconds passed.

"Okay."

"Honey, I'm heading there right now." Luna's voice turned bright, almost relieved. "I'll pick up those soup dumplings you love on the way!"

Before I could refuse, she'd already hung up.

I turned and met my friend's worried eyes.

"I'm fine."

I managed a smile.

"Don't worry."

It had been nearly five years since Luna and I moved out of that house. I hadn't been back once.

I stood in front of the door, its paint chipped and faded, and remembered how we'd moved here from that basement apartment and decorated the place together, piece by piece.

Luna had said back then:

"Honey, this is our first real home. That means something!"

"Someday, when we're old, if you want, we'll come back here and retire!"

"Every year, let's come back and stay for a few days, okay?"

Back then, my heart had been full. I'd felt like my life was worth something.

Now, just a few years later, everything had changed.

I pushed the door open.

Luna was already on her feet, rising from the couch.

"Honey!"

She held up the soup dumplings like a child showing off a gold star, offering them to me.

"Still warm."

I used to always say I loved those soup dumplings. Loved that Luna would get up before dawn and stand in line to buy them for me.

Later, whenever I brought them up, all I got from Luna was indifference.

"Sebastian."

"Time is money. You think I have the luxury of standing in some endless line to buy you dumplings?"

Now the soup dumplings were right in front of me again, and somehow, they didn't look all that appetizing anymore.

"Luna."

I ignored her eagerness, walked past her, and sat down on the couch. The old frame groaned under my weight. Nothing like Jayden's furniture.

"Do you remember this couch?"

I looked at her.

"You and I went to the flea market together. Took us two days of hunting to find it."

"And because we couldn't afford to pay for delivery," I said, as if recounting the most ordinary thing in the world, "I borrowed a hand cart. You held onto the armrest, walking beside me in hundred-degree heat, and it took us two and a half hours to get it home."

"Back then, you said this couch could never be replaced, no matter how much money we had."

"You said it was proof that we loved each other."

Luna's gaze flickered. She couldn't look at me.

I picked up the remote from the coffee table, turning it over in my hands. A strip of tape wound around its middleLuna had dropped it one night after too much wine, cracked the battery cover clean off. I couldn't bring myself to replace it, so I'd just wrapped it in tape.

My thumb traced the edge of that tape now.

"But the truth is, everything's changed. Hasn't it?"

"No!" Luna rushed toward me. "That's not true!"

Her eyes were already rimming red, the same way they always did whenever she got worked up. Some things never changed.

"What happened with Jayden was an accident!"

"I don't love him!"

"I swear!"

She dropped to her knees in front of me and reached for my hands. I shifted away. I watched the hurt flash across her eyes before she spoke again.

"That night at dinner, I'd had too much to drink. I don't even know how Jayden ended up at the hotel. When I woke up, I was terrified. I'm not lying to you!"

Tears spilled down her cheeks.

"I was afraid that if you found out, you'd leave me. That you'd be furious. I didn't know how to face you, so I just"

"How long."

"What?"

"How long." My voice stayed flat. "You and Jayden. How long has it been going on."

Luna went silent. She held my gaze for a long time, her lips parting and closing, before the words finally scraped out.

"Three and a half years."

I thought about how she used to say she'd come back to stay for a few days every year.

How, eventually, she never had the time.

She'd had the time. She'd just been spending it on someone else.

A dull ache spread through my chest. Then Luna was talking again.

"I wanted to end it. But Jayden kept clinging to me. He told me about his family, how they had nothing, how his parents favored his younger brother. I just... I felt sorry for him..."

Her voice grew smaller and smaller until even she didn't have the conviction to finish the sentence.

"There's something else."

"I'm pregnant."

The words hit like a clap of thunder, deafening and close.

My fists clenched so tight my knuckles ached. Even though I'd already known the full truth before coming here, hearing it from her own mouth sent ice flooding through every vein.

While I'd been looking forward to our wedding with everything I hadLuna had already given someone else the title that should have been mine. I was the outsider. And now I sat listening to her say:

"You're getting older, and IVF is hard on the body..."

Getting older.

Hard on the body.

What a joke.

"So," Luna looked at me, "I want to keep this baby. It's for your sake too."

For my sake.

My nails dug into my palms hard enough to break skin. I didn't feel it. Luna kept going.

"Just forgive me! I'll agree to anything!"

"Anything?"

I swallowed the rage boiling inside me and met her eyes.

"Anything!"

I smiled. I rose from the couch, walked to the front door, and pulled it open. The person standing on the other side stared back at me, and my smile widened.

"So. Did you catch all of that?"

"Tell mewho's the other woman?"

I looked straight at Jayden, then pulled out my phone, angling it toward the video call still connected on the screen.

"Morgan. This footage goes out uncut. Send it to every outlet, word for word."

"I don't care how much it costs. I want maximum coverage."

Then

A hand seized my wrist and wrenched me backward. I stumbled, turned, and met Luna's eyes. They burned with fury.

I smiled.

"Luna."

"When you do something wrong"

"You don't get to walk away clean."

"So tell me. Are you satisfied with how this turned out?"