The Affair Revenge My Bestfriend's Husband Offered Me

My fifth wedding anniversary was the day I learned my husband had never stopped loving her. I’d always known I was his second choice. I just never thought that he would betrayed me with her, my bestfriend, his first love, in our bed. Not after we’d built a life together, brick by brick from the bottom.

The rhythmic, familiar creak of our bedframe—a sound I knew in my bones—but mixed with it, a soft moan. A woman’s moan. Then, a low groan I recognized—Zane’s—but one that held a note of desperate, worshipful pleasure he’d never had with me.

That was the sound he used to make in Jovi’s car in the high school parking lot. A sound I’d only ever heard from outside, through a closed window.

“Jovi.”

I stood frozen, a cold bottle of 2019 vintage champagne sweating in my hand. Our year. The year we’d finally gotten married, two years after she’d broken his heart by announcing her engagement to Vance Blackwood. I’d been the one to pick up the pieces. The safe harbor. The steady love. The best friend who’d loved him since we were fourteen. I thought it had been enough. I thought time had made me first. I thought he finally saw only me.

The bedroom door was ajar. I didn’t push it. I bore witness to the truth I’d been running from since the playground.

My husband, Zane’s bare back, the freckle on his left shoulder blade moved in a rhythm that belonged to her. Jovi’s legs were wrapped around him, her red-polished toes—curling into the sheets we had chosen together. They were the toes of a girl who had always belonged everywhere, especially in the center of Zane’s world. She’d painted them that exact red the day she broke up with him over Skype, her screen pixelated with her own tears. I’d held him as he shattered. Now she was here, repainting the masterpiece she’d thrown away. Her blonde hair fanned across my pillow.

Her eyes, shut in ecstasy, flew open. And met mine.

“Sh*t—Nerissa!” she shrieked, a choked sound. She clutched at the sheet. “Oh my god, it’s not—it just—”

Zane twisted. His face. Sweaty, flushed, then blank with pure panic.  It was the same lost look he’d had when Jovi told him she was marrying Vance seven years ago. The look that had finally made me confess my own love for him.

My heart was a hammer against my ribs, so hard it hurt. I wanted to scream. I wanted to cry, to ask why? Why here? Why today? Why her, always her? But my throat locked.  I was mute, severed from my own voice by the shock.

I wanted to lurch forward. To slap that look off his face, to claw at her perfect, tragic shock. To make them see the misery they’d just made, to smear it on them. To break something.

But I froze.

Then, I gathered all the strength I had left and turned around.

I walked away. My legs were numb. I passed his shirt in the hall. Her stupid silk pants. A lacy pink thing draped over the frame of our honeymoon photo. 

In the kitchen, the other champagne bottle sat on the counter. The one he’d opened that morning, before her text chimed. 

“She’s in trouble,” he’d said, already grabbing his jacket. He’d kissed my forehead, a dry, absent peck. “She’s our best friend. You understand.”

I did understand. I understood that “trouble” was Jovi’s code for the lonely ache of her marriage to Vance. He was a fortress—solid, respectful, but cold. Jovi, who had always basked in the sun of Zane’s open love, was freezing inside that fortress. She called Zane for a spark of warmth.

And he, who had married me for comfort and steady friendship, still craved her heat.

I picked up the bottle, walked to the sink, and poured our anniversary down the drain. The golden liquid swirled and vanished, it looked like cheap piss. I dropped the bottle in the sink. It clanged, but didn’t break.

My keys were on the hook. I took them. I closed the front door softly. The click was the loudest sound I’d ever heard.

 I just drove, the streetlights blurring. A cold, sharp part of my mind, the part that solved complex problems for a living, clicked on.

Vance Blackwood had asked me, just hours ago, if I knew where his wife was. His grey eyes had been flat, just seeking information.

I pulled over. My hands shook, but my voice was steady when I called my company’s main line. I got his secretary, Marcy.

“Marcy, it’s Nerissa Sullivan from R&D. I have the final numbers for the Harington project for Mr. Blackwood’s board call. It’s a secure file. I need his direct line to send it.”

“The protocol is to send it to the shared drive, Ms. Sullivan,” she said, hesitant.

“The protocol will cause a delay he specifically said he couldn’t afford. Do you want to own that delay?” I kept my tone polite, firm. The tone of someone who knew the system.

A pause. A soft click. She gave me the number.

I stared at it on my screen. The nuclear option.

My finger hovered over the "call" button. But talking, hearing his voice—that felt too big, too real. I couldn’t do it.

So I typed a text instead.

“Mr. Blackwood. Your wife is at my home with my husband. I thought you should know. - Sullivan.”

My thumb hovered over send. This would burn everything down. Their marriages, their reputations. One tap, and I wouldn’t be the only one sitting in the ashes.

But then I saw Zane at sixteen, sharing his lunch with the quiet, awkward girl everyone ignored. I saw Jovi at eighteen, squeezing my hand and telling me I could borrow any of her clothes, her friendship a gift I never felt I deserved.

They were betrayers. They were also pieces of my only history.

I deleted the message. I threw my phone onto the passenger seat, furious with myself. I had the perfect revenge in my hands, and I couldn’t do it. I was still, after everything, the girl who loved them too much.

That’s when I needed the gin.

I ended up at a dive bar, drinking gin alone, trying to drown the nightmare. But the twisted pain, the heavy stone on my chest, kept pulling me back to the cruel present. My mind reeled through flashbacks:

Him at sixteen, blushing as Jovi laughed.

Us at seventeen, in his junker car, stuck in a muddy ditch in the rain. He was swearing, pounding the steering wheel. Then he stopped. Looked at me, soaked and shivering, and just… laughed. A snotty, helpless, real laugh.

“We’re the worst,” he’d wheezed.

And I’d laughed too, because for a second, I wasn’t the safe choice. I was just there. In the stupid mess with him.

That boy drowned in that ditch. The man just left me there to get the car out.

Him at twenty-six, shattered when her engagement announcement arrived. Him at twenty-eight, looking at me with grateful affection and saying, “You’re my rock, Ner. Let’s build a life.”

And today, I realized the life we’d built for five years had shattered in a day by the truth I’d tried so hard to deny.

My phone buzzed on the sticky wood. A flood of light.

Jovi: Neri please. It was a MISTAKE. A moment of weakness! We can talk!

Zane: Baby please. Where are you? I’m freaking out. Let me explain.

Explain. The word was so small and stupid it made a soundless sob hitch in my chest. Explain what? The last twenty years? I flipped the phone over. The wood of the bar was cool against my forehead. The noise of the bar faded to a buzz.

I didn’t see Vance Blackwood come in. I just felt the stool beside me groan under a new weight. A shadow in a suit that cost more than my car. I glanced sideways. His profile was sharp, his knuckles white around a glass of amber liquor. Jovi’s husband. My new boss who had transfered to my departement just this morning. We didn’t look at each other. We just sat, two ruins propped up at a bar.

Then the hands were on me. Beer breath, cheap cologne.

“Hey, lonely girl. Come have fun with us.”

 I tried to shake him off.

“Go. Away.”

“Feisty. I like it.” Another hand grabbed my waist, pulling me off the stool. “Come on, one drink…”

Dull panic, slowed by gin, began to pulse in my veins. I pushed, a weak, useless gesture.

“Stop.”

“She said no.”

The voice was quiet. Flat. Deadly.

Vance was there. He hadn’t shouted. He’d just moved. His hand was around the guy’s wrist, twisting just enough. The guy yelped. Vance’s face was calm, but a tiny muscle in his jaw jumped like a live wire.

“She’s with me.”

They saw the suit, the posture, the promise of violence in his stillness. They vanished.

 Vance turned. His grey eyes scanned me—took in the smudged mascara, the shaking hands, the whole pathetic package. No pity. Just assessment.

“Can you stand?”

I tried. The room swam. I shook my head, humiliation burning through the gin.

He didn’t ask again. He settled my bill with a black card.

He didn’t sigh. He just slid an arm around me, hauled me up. My knees buckled. He half-carried, half-dragged me out into the cold air, which slapped me like an insult. He was warm. I slumped completely against his side.

He didn’t ask for my address. He took me to a hotel. The lobby was all quiet beige and hushed voices. He got a key. The room was huge and smelled of nothing.

He dumped me on the bed. As he straightened up to leave, it all broke. The cold, silent dam inside me shattered. It wasn’t desire. It was a tsunami of loneliness, a need to not be alone in this new, horrible universe. I grabbed the front of his suit jacket, crumpling the perfect fabric, and pulled him down.

“Don’t go,” I choked, my face buried against his neck. He smelled like cold air and expensive wool.

“Why does everyone pick her? Why am I never enough?”

His body went rigid. He tried to peel my hands off.

“Let go. You’re drunk.”

“Why my bed?” I wailed, the words tearing out of me, ragged and ugly. “Wasn’t taking him enough? You had to take my bed too?”

Blind and desperate, I found his mouth.

The kiss was a disaster. It tasted of salt tears and gin. It was clumsy, full of despair. I was trying to erase something, to feel something besides this pain. A vicious thought flickered: Let Jovi’s perfect husband see what her leftovers feel like.

He froze. For a second, he was stone. I nibbled his lip, sucking the air from his mouth, trying desperately to connect. Then, with a low sound that was more anger than anything else, he kissed me back.

It wasn’t romantic. It was a collision. A shared, furious wreck. His mouth was hard, demanding, possesive and for a few seconds, it blotted out every thought. It was just noise and heat and a mutual scream without sound.

Before the heat could demand more, he shoved himself back, breathing hard. His eyes in the dim light were shattered glass. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, a quick, brutal motion.

He stood, straightening his suit with a brisk, final motion. The CEO reassembled before my eyes.

“Sleep,” he commanded, his voice rough. Then he left. The door clicked shut, a final sound.

The next morning, I woke with a mouth full of cotton and a headache drilling behind my eyes. The ceiling was unfamiliar. I was still dressed. A weak sob of relief caught in my dry throat.

The shower was running.

The bathroom door opened. Vance stepped out, a cloud of steam following him. He was in a white robe, his hair dark and wet. He looked at me like I was a problem he’d left on his desk overnight.

“Mr. Blackwood,” I rasped.

“You reek of a bar floor,” he said flatly, not looking at me as he poured coffee. “Shower. You have a 9:30 meeting. Darcy had told me that you have the final numbers for the Harington project ”

The sheer, brutal normalcy of it stunned me silent.

We left the room. The hallway carpet was too thick. Our silence was a heavy, sick thing between us. We were just a disgraced CEO and his wrecked employee, heading for the elevators.

We turned the corner.

And there they were.

Zane and Jovi. By the ice machine. He had his arm around her. She was leaning into him. They looked tired, worried… together. A unit.

They looked up.

Zane’s eyes went wide. They traveled from my wrinkled clothes to Vance’s damp hair, to the small space between us. His face crumpled, not in anger, but in a dawning, sick comprehension.

Jovi’s hand flew to her mouth. Her eyes, wide and accusing, darted from me to Vance and back. She saw a story in our rumpled silence, and her shock was instantly painted over with a layer of pure, hypocritical outrage.

No one spoke. The air was charged with shame and unasked questions.

Vance didn’t look at me. He stared only at his wife. His voice was low, clean, and carried a lifetime of ice.

“Jovienne.”

Just her name. It hung there, a verdict.

He took a single step forward. “There you are.”