His Open Marriage Mistake

For the ten years I was married to Donovan, we had always lived entirely separate lives. He played house with his secretary, while I kept a rotating roster of toy boys. I thought we would just keep playing this twisted game forever.

Until one of those boys actually got under my skin. He didn't want my money.

He just wanted to marry me.

My heart actually skipped a beat.

I went straight home and asked Donovan for a divorce.

That night, Donovan lost his mind.

He shattered the Baccarat crystal chandelier in the living room like an absolute lunatic. He clamped his fingers around my wrist, digging in until my bones ground together.

"Don't even think about taking my shares to run off with that boy toy," he spat. "Not without my permission!"

Chapter 1

I was dozing on the couch when the doorbell chimed. I dragged my slippers across the hardwood to open it, only for a whiskey-soaked Donovan to stumble right through.

His little secretary strained under his weight. She shot me a smug, sidelong glance, making sure to seductively toss her hair over her shoulder.

"Daphne, Donovan drank too much tonight, so he asked me to bring him home." She practically underlined the word me, settling right into the role of the lady of the house.

"Do me a favor and get him a black coffee with two aspirins, Daphne. No sugar. He's only used to the way I make it now."

She offered a sickly-sweet, bashful smile. "It's his absolute must-have every morning after a bender."

A dry chuckle hitched in my throat. This fresh-grad's pathetic attempt to mark her territory was so painfully amateur, I didn't even have the energy to play her little game.

I hauled Donovan's dead weight off her shoulder.

"Sure, thanks. Want me to call you an Uber? Donovan really has zero mannersmaking a pretty girl like you drag him all the way here in the dead of night. Guess he didn't care if you made it back safe."

Tinsley's smug expression cracked. She pressed her lips into a thin line.

I shoved the front door shut in her face. I turned and nudged Donovan's leg with my slipper.

"Alright. Cut the act."

Donovan didn't even open his eyes. His voice came out crisp and sober.

"Thanks. She's turning into a stage-five clinger lately. Keeps dropping hints about getting married, so I figured I'd freeze her out for a bit."

I kept my mouth shut. Tinsley was the exception to his rule. Over the years of our open arrangement, his flavor-of-the-month girls came and went.

The record holder had barely lasted three months. He was a born player, physically incapable of lingering in one spot.

I used to think I was the ultimate exception. Three years into our marriage, he was already back to prowling the clubs.

Tinsley, though, had stuck around for two solid years. It was obvious Donovan actually caught feelings.

If it were anyone else pushing for a ring, he would have tossed them to the curb instantly. The fact that he was only "freezing her out" proved he couldn't actually stomach losing her.

The old me would have screamed until my lungs gave out, tearing the house apart in a fit of jealousy. Now, I just stared at the wall.

"Donovan, I want a divorce."

Donovan finally peeled his eyes open. A scoff slipped through his teeth.

"Daphne, are you throwing another tantrum? We established the open marriage rules a long time ago. What the hell is your problem now?"

He rolled onto his side, bending his long legs on the expensive Persian rug. He reached out, tossing a dismissive hand over mine.

"Fine. My bad tonight, okay? I shouldn't have let her drop me off."

"She's just some clueless kid. Don't lower yourself to her level."

I let out a cold laugh and yanked my hand back. I grabbed the thick stack of divorce papers drafted by my elite legal team and slammed them right into his smug, self-righteous face.

"I'm dead serious. I found someone else."

Donovan finally snapped awake.

Chapter 2

He maintained that lazy, dismissive posture, clearly convinced I was just throwing another tantrum. He snatched the divorce papers, flipping through the pages with careless flicks of his wrist.

Then, the arrogant smirk frozen on his face slowly cracked.

I leaned over, pointing at the clauses just in case his ego was blocking his reading comprehension.

"The Beverly Hills villa and the Manhattan penthouse go to me. You can take half of the offshore trust funds and the rest of the overseas real estate. As for the company, I hold a twenty-two percent stake."

"You have the right of first refusal to buy me out, strictly at market value. The rest is just pocket change. We walk away with what's ours. If this doesn't work for you, I'll have my legal team draft an addendum."

Donovan slowly straightened his spine. That lazy, lounging demeanor evaporated instantly.

The crushing, dominant aura of a CEO snapped right back into place, suffocating the air in the room.

"Daphne." He tilted his head, a dangerous glint flashing behind his gold-rimmed glasses.

His irises were naturally light, and under the harsh living room lights, his stare held the cold, sterile indifference of a machine. "Are you serious?"

I was dead serious.

It wasn't the first time I had thrown the word 'divorce' in his face. But years ago, it was a desperate, pathetic tactic to drag him back to my bed.

I had screamed, shattered plates, and threatened to swallow pillspulling every toxic trick in the book.

This time, I just wanted out.

"What the hell do you want this time, Daphne?" Donovan slammed the papers back onto the glass coffee table, the sharp crack echoing in the room.

"Tinsley is never going to threaten your position as my wife. Why the hell can't you just let it go?!"

He actually thought this was still about Tinsley.

To be fair, when I first found out about her, I tore this house apart. On my worst night, I sat in a pile of shattered porcelain, my hair a tangled mess like a feral animal, pressing a jagged shard to my wrist just to force him to cut ties with her.

It didn't work. He kept her anyway.

I shook my head. God, I used to be such a pathetic, desperate doormat for him.

Just thinking about it made my fingers twitch with the urge to travel back in time and slap some sense into my past self.

"This isn't about her." I met Donovan's icy stare, letting a genuinely helpless, almost sheepish smile touch my lips.

"It's the kid I'm seeing on the side. He's relentless about putting a ring on my finger. My hands are tied."

It was incredibly rare to see Donovan's face go blank. A second later, a dark, ugly storm clouded his features.

"Daphne, I already told you, Tinsley doesn't affect your status." He ground his jaw. "There's no need to take your petty jealousy this far."

He still didn't buy it. A dry, humorless chuckle scraped my throat.

"Tell you what, you can take a bigger cut of the assets. How about I throw in the Australian villa too?" I tapped my manicured nail against the glass table.

"My boy is getting impatient, so just consider it compensation for your bruised ego."

Donovan stared at me, his eyes locked on mine as if scanning for a bluff. He narrowed his eyes, his expression shifting into something dangerously calculated.

"Is it that little boy who dropped you off the other night?"

I nodded.

Cole had walked me to the front door a few weeks ago, and Donovan had caught us. Cole had even flashed a brilliant, cocky smile and called him 'bro' right to his face.

Donovan's jaw had practically locked up then, but he hadn't said a damn word.

Chapter 3

After all, the open marriage was his brilliant idea to begin with. He had spent years eagerly putting it into practice, so he had zero right to play the hypocrite now.

The corners of my lips twitched upward at the thought of Cole.

Earlier today at the beach, he had pulled out a ring. The diamond was barely a carat. Next to the vault of high jewelry sitting on my vanity, it was practically microscopic.

I genuinely thought it was a cubic zirconia joke at first.

But he dropped straight down on one knee in the sand, his eyes dead serious.

"I know the rock is small, but please don't hate it. I bought it with money from my shifts. I wanted to save up for a bigger one, but I just couldn't wait anymore."

"Daphne, divorce him."

Normal guys proposed with a "Will you marry me?" Not him. He skipped right to the chase with "Divorce your husband."

A laugh bubbled in my throat.

I opened my mouth to brush him off, but Cole grabbed my hands, his grip tight and unyielding. The damp, sharp ocean breeze whipped his dark hair across his forehead.

His eyes held this raw, blazing light, reflecting nothing but me. A young man's love burned like a wildfire, reckless and ready to scorch the earth.

At that moment, that heat bled right into my veins.

A voice echoed in the hollow space of my chest. My own voice.

I was twenty-nine. I had wasted nine years tangled up with Donovan. How many more nine-year stretches did I have left?

Was I really going to rot in this gilded cage for the next four decades?

The wind roared in my ears. The waves slammed against the jagged rocks, spraying icy foam over our sneakers.

After what felt like an eternity, the word slipped from my lips.

"Okay."

The truth was, the second I got back to the city, the adrenaline wore off. Untangling a decade of marriage to Donovan meant a brutal bloodbath of asset division.

It would rip the financial flesh off both our bones. That was exactly why we had kept this toxic open-marriage truce going for so long without ever dropping the D-word.

But visualizing that raw devotion in Cole's eyes shot a jolt of reckless adrenaline straight to my core.

A sick, desperate sense of liberation washed over me.

It was time to pull the plug.

"He's just a kid," I said, a smirk pulling at my lips as I snapped back to the present. "Impulsive. If I don't give him what he wants, he throws a fit. You get how it is, right?"

I leveled my gaze at Donovan. "Isn't that exactly how Tinsley operates?"

Donovan's brows snapped down, casting a dark, heavy shadow over his eyes.

"Daphne, you're actually taking him seriously?"

Admitting out loud that I was playing for keeps with a boy eight years my junior felt like swallowing glass. But I nodded anyway.

"Cole is different from the others."

That line was a direct rip-off of Donovan's own material. Years ago, when I had backed him into a corner screaming about why he was keeping Tinsley around, he had rubbed the back of his neck with this helpless little smile.

Tinsley is different from the others. His 'others', of course, had included his own wife. I never thought I'd get to spit those exact words back in his face.

Donovan froze.

A violent storm brewed in those pale irises. His fingers dug into the leather of the couch, his knuckles turning a stark, bone-white. A sneer twisted his lips.

"You're really regressing, Daphne. What the hell can some wet-behind-the-ears punk offer you?"

He jerked his chin toward my Max Mara coat draped over the armchair. "He could flip burgers for a whole year and still wouldn't be able to afford the lining of that coat."

He wasn't wrong.

Over the years, Donovan might have outsourced his heart, but his black card had always been completely at my disposal.

Chapter 4

I could swipe his black card blind. Whenever the new season's luxury collections dropped, I didn't even have to step foot in a boutique.

The store managers would personally bring models to my living room to try on the pieces for me. No wonder Tinsley was clawing her way up the ladder so desperately.

The life of a rich wife was a gilded, intoxicating dream.

I brushed my thumb over the unassuming diamond on my ring finger. It was a generic mall brand, average clarity, basic setting.

The kind of cheap trinket that wouldn't even qualify for a spot in my jewelry vault. But I loved it more than all the others combined.

"It doesn't matter. I don't care about the money."

Donovan's eyes obviously locked onto the ring on my hand.

Back in the day, the engagement ring he bought me was a rare five-million-dollar pink diamond, specifically won at a Sotheby's auction. I had always been too paranoid to wear it out, so I bought us a pair of cheap matching bands instead.

Only, once the honeymoon phase burned out, we became strangers sharing the same bed.

Or rather, he unilaterally got bored.

He stopped wearing his ring because his little side pieces didn't like the reminder. During one of our countless screaming matches years ago, I ripped my band off and hurled it across the room.

I never found it again, and my ring finger had stayed bare ever since.

I repeated the words, letting them hang in the air. "Donovan, let's get a divorce."

He froze.

Then, he lunged.

His knee slammed into the coffee table. The crystal vase tipped over, shattering into sharp shards across the hardwood.

My pulse spiked.

Before I could even blink, his hand locked around my throat!

He leaned over me, absolute savagery blazing in his eyes.

"Daphne, who the hell gave you permission to get serious?!"

I shoved hard against his chest, breaking his grip.

"Are you out of your damn mind?!" I massaged my throbbing neck. "What is wrong with you?!"

Donovan stumbled back a step, planting his feet. He snatched up the crumpled papers.

"I'm out of my mind?! Do you have any idea how much capital we have to split? That Beverly Hills estate alone is worth twenty million dollars!"

"You're ready to throw all that cash away just to cut ties? Is that little boy really that important to you?!"

I let the silence stretch for a second before nodding.

"Yes."

It wasn't about being blinded by love. The truth was, my half of the split would keep me drowning in luxury for three lifetimes.

No matter how many zeros were in my bank account, I could still only sleep in one bed at a time. Why stay chained to a dead marriage for money I could never spend?

I had made peace with it.

Even if Cole didn't exist, I was done torturing myself with Donovan.

Donovan's grip tightened. The thick stack of legal paper crumpled in his fist.

He was a man who never let his mask slip. In the past, no matter how much I screamed or broke things, he would just watch me with dead, calculating eyes.

Never a ripple of emotion. But now, he looked completely unhinged.

A dark storm rolled across his face, and I could literally see the jagged red veins popping in the whites of his eyes.

Just when my muscles tensed, expecting a hit, Donovan sucked in a sharp breath.

He pushed his gold-rimmed glasses up the bridge of his nose. His jaw ticked. The cold, rational CEO snapped right back into place.

Only his stare remained pitch-black, an unreadable abyss.

"Daphne." He ripped the papers down the middle, tearing them into shreds. He tossed the confetti into the air. "Keep dreaming."

Donovan slammed the front door shut behind him.

He was probably heading straight to Tinsley's bed. I slumped back into the couch cushions, draping my forearm over my eyes to block out the harsh light.

My phone buzzed on the glass table.

[A text from Cole. Did you drop the D-word? Did he give you a hard time?]

I didn't reply. I didn't even know where to start.

A bone-deep exhaustion suddenly pinned me to the cushions.

Chapter 5

How did it ever get to this point?

In the beginning, Donovan and I had that deep, burning kind of young love. Back then, he had just gone bankrupt.

We rented a windowless basement in Brooklyn together, and every night, we could only afford to split a single discounted cold sandwich.

He would swallow hard, shoving it into my hands. "You eat it."

I'd refuse, pushing it back. Eventually, we'd compromise, each taking bites from opposite ends until we met in the middle.

He'd always force the last bite into my mouth.

When we got married, he was just as thrilled as Cole. Back then, he was even more broke than Cole.

The diamond on my ring was so microscopic you needed a magnifying glass to find it, like a cheap gag gift out of a cartoon.

He wrapped his arms tightly around me. His young, burning body heat bled through our clothes, leaving me drenched in a thin layer of sweat.

He pressed his lips to my temple. "Daphne, I'm going to treat you like a queen for the rest of my life."

Of course I believed him.

We were so desperately in love back then, so certain that growing old together was just an undeniable fact of life. Only later did I learn that a human heart is the most volatile thing in the world.

In that specific moment, Donovan genuinely wanted to treat me right forever. But later, he genuinely wanted to treat other women right, too.

Three years into our marriage, he walked through the front door reeking of the lingering scent of Chanel No. 5.

My throat instantly seized up. A sickening knot twisted in my gut as I backed him into a corner, demanding to know what the hell was going on.

He pulled me into his chest, swearing on his life that it just rubbed off on him at some sketchy karaoke bar with a client. He swore he would never betray me.

I swallowed the lie.

Then came the second time. The third.

His patience slowly evaporated. He stopped trying to coax me.

Instead, he shoved me away with a heavy, irritated sigh. "Men have to entertain clients. It's just business. Can you stop being such a hysterical psycho for one second?!"

Then, he got his hands on Tinsley.

She was a girl whose eyes held a faint, passing resemblance to mine, only she was years younger. Fresh out of college, oozing vibrant, youthful energy. He bent company rules just to hire her.

Donovan started spending night after night away from home. I knew exactly what it meant.

He was sick of me. Why would he ever crawl back into my cold bed when he had a fresh, young body waiting for him?

Sitting alone in the dark, night after night, the hollow ache in my chest slowly burned down until it felt like I was choking on a mouthful of ash.

So when he finally laid it out on the table, it barely even registered as a shock.

"Daphne, I think we should try an open marriage. You can go out and find whatever you want, and I won't interfere. You don't interfere with me, either."

"Naturally, I won't let anyone outside threaten your status as my wife. Deal?"

I stared at Donovan. The man standing in front of me didn't hold a single trace of his former self.

That desperate boy who sat on the dirty floor of a Brooklyn basement splitting a cold sandwich with me maybe he was just a delusion I made up all along. Time didn't kill him.

Time just stripped away the facade, exposing the real monster underneath. The version of him I was too blind to see.

After a long, suffocating silence, I squeezed my eyes shut.

"Fine."

Meeting Cole was a total accident.

Back then, to get back at Donovan, I swiped his black card every single night to book out VIP rooms at the most exclusive strip clubs in Vegas. That night, I was wasted.

The manager paraded five rounds of smoking-hot male strippers in front of me, and none of them caught my eye. Frustrated, I shoved the heavy velvet doors open to head to the restroom.

I crashed right into Cole.

He had just finished a basketball game and showed up to party, still wearing his jersey. He ran a hand through his sweat-drenched hair, pushing it back to expose the sharp, aggressive brow ridge of a young man.

The sheer visual impact hit me like a truck.

I reached out, locked my fingers around his arm, and shot a glare at the club manager. "Why the hell are you hiding the top-tier talent in the back? I want him!"

Chapter 6

I was wasted that night. Everything after that was a massive blackout.

All I remember is clinging to Cole, demanding to know his price to walk out of there with me.

When I finally woke up the next afternoon, there was a notification from an unknown contact on my phone. I tapped it open.

[Are you awake?]

I found out later that in my drunken stupor, I had desperately tried to buy Cole for the night. I pulled a thick stack of hundred-dollar bills straight out of my Birkin bag and slammed it hard against his chest.

"Is this enough?!"

He insisted on returning the cash. Left with no choice, I met up with him, swallowing my pride to apologize.

"I'm so sorry. I drank way too much last night. I swear I'm not usually like that"

A flush crept up Cole's neck. He looked like a blushing bride whose personal space had just been deeply violated.

He tried to play it cool, but a stammer slipped out anyway. "I-it's fine"

I was racking my brain, trying to figure out how to make it up to him, when I glanced down. He was wearing a varsity jacket with my alma mater's logo.

He was an undergrad at my old university. After a little digging, I found out he was a senior. Coincidentally, his thesis advisor was an old classmate of mine.

Falling for a guy like Cole was dangerously easy.

He was gorgeous, but not in a pretty-boy way. It was this raw, masculine, youthful kind of handsome.

His features were sharp and striking, radiating an infectious, sunlit energy without a single dark corner. When he smiled, his eyes literally sparkled.

He was exactly the kind of golden retriever college guy who would invite me on a date to a boxing gym, just to show off his sparring skills.

When you rot in the shadows for long enough, you naturally crave someone who lives in the light.

When Cole finally confessed his feelings, I spent the entire night agonizing over it. In the end, I laid all my cards on the table.

"I don't want to ruin your life," I told him. "We should just forget this. I'm sorry."

Cole didn't text back. For three whole days, it was dead silence.

I actually thought he had given up, and a sharp pang of regret hit my chest. I really, really liked him.

Out of nowhere, on the third night, my phone rang. He demanded we meet up.

I must have been out of my damn mind to drag myself out of bed at midnight, just to sit in the passenger seat of his beat-up truck and get lectured.

Cole's face was dead serious. He laced his fingers together, resting them on the steering wheel.

"What you did was wrong. You really hurt my feelings."

I nodded, fighting a smile. "I'm guilty as charged. String me up."

His brows pulled together in a tight frown. "It's not that serious. Besides, you apologized."

"I thought about this a lot. I've decided I can handle it. But you need to divorce that guy, as soon as possible."

He looked exactly like a stubborn, loyal puppy who had seriously pondered a massive problem and proudly presented what he thought was the perfect, airtight solution. A secret laugh bubbled in my chest.

"Alright. Whatever you say."

Truthfully, the whole divorce thing was something I hadn't fully figured out yet. I had dragged my feet for months.

But now, my mind was made up.

I was getting a divorce. Even if it wasn't for anyone else.

It was for myself