The Open Form: Essays For Our Time

When Camille discovers her husband Derek has been sleeping with his married ex, she doesn't cry, she doesn't scream. She plans. But the man she recruits as her weapon of revenge turns out to be something she never expected: the one person who sees her exactly as she is. A dark romance about betrayal, revenge, and the love nobody planned for.

If Rhoda was thinking she would have a 'happily-ever-after' story, she had better think again because fate has another plan in store for her. After being abandoned abroad for eight years, her parents call her back into the country just to use her to save their dying business by marrying her off to a billionaire equals a jerk. Jeffrey suggested an open marriage since the two of them were in love with someone else. What will be their fate when the ones they were in love with break up with them after signing the open marriage contract? Will they try to make things work between them or just keep the marriage open? Will she be able to watch her husband with other women without doing anything? Or will she try to win him over to herself since divorce isn't an option? Will things become more complicated after realizing that her father's business might not be liquidating after all and she has an identical twin who has been committing atrocities and making people believe it's her?

Our marriage is falling apart and there's need to spice it up. An open marriage for 2 weeks can help, right? But let's not forget the rules, after all not everything is open in an open marriage.

I'm eight months pregnant when I suddenly faint on the train. My husband panics and cries for help as he kneels beside me. An interning doctor hurries to me. She doesn't bother checking my condition before saying, "The patient needs to undergo a C-section! We have to get the baby out now, or it might die of suffocation!" Then, she slices me open with a fruit knife—she doesn't take any precautionary measures before doing so. She takes my child out. I'm in so much pain that I don't even have the strength to scream. My blood flows everywhere. Yet, a photo of her holding my baby while standing in a pool of blood goes viral. People call her the prettiest doctor alive. My husband and his family are eternally grateful to her. They don't go after her for causing my death; they even make her my child's godmother! Meanwhile, I'm given a simple cremation. No one cares about me. After my death, all my assets go to my husband and his family. Only then do I hear my husband and the doctor talking to each other, sounding smug. "This plan killed two birds with one stone. We got rid of that woman and made ourselves out to be heroes!" That's when I learn the interning doctor is my husband's junior from high school. They got together when he accompanied me to my prenatal checkups! She failed her internship, so my husband came up with this idea—he wanted to use my death to boost her reputation and help her! Even my child eventually died under their "care". When I open my eyes again, I'm taken back to the day we get on the train.

I discover Quilton Fuller's affair before our wedding, so I lie to him about having aborted our child. He hates me for that and gets engaged to a woman who looks just like me. On his wedding day, he video-calls me, wanting to show me his bride. However, he's greeted by the sight of me bloody and battered after being tormented by abductors. I beg him to at least save the baby in my womb, but he says to the abductors, "You'd better kill her and her child."

In a cycle of broken plans, Elena asks Marcus, "Why another delay for her?" He insists, "Sophia's just a friend in trouble—you're my priority." Whispers of the past test their bond, while a quiet ally says, "I've cared for you longer than you know." As accusations fly—"You're imagining things!"—Elena questions her path. A final decision sparks chaos, rewriting fates.