Cheating Romance Short Stories & Novels

On my way home from work, I realized a man I didn't know was following me. I called my husband, Cassian Bellamy, for help, hoping he could come pick me up. Instead, he sent me a few cold voice messages. "Can you stop acting like you're being followed all the time? We live in a society governed by laws. Where's this creep you're talking about?" "Also, if someone really is following you, what do you think he's going to do? You're a married woman. I'm busy right now, so take a cab home yourself." I hid in the corner of a 24-hour convenience store, trembling from head to toe. It wasn't until a torrential downpour began that the creepy figure finally left. I ran home in the dark, soaked to the skin and covered in mud. The moment I got home, a post from Cassian's childhood friend, Celine Marlowe, popped up on my phone. "This is why having a childhood friend matters. I couldn't get a ride home in the rain, so he drove across half the city just to pick me up from work." The photo showed Cassian's familiar Land Rover, with a warm cup of coffee in the passenger seat. Celine's pinned location was a full 18 miles from our home. And Cassian's car would have passed right by the street where I'd called him for help. In that moment, all the strength seemed to leave my body. Maybe I didn't need this miserable marriage after all.

When I was four months pregnant, my fiance, who was a doctor, left me hanging when we were supposed to get married. This was not the first time; this was the sixteenth time. The first time, his nurse fainted at the sight of blood during an operation, and I waited for him for an entire day at the city hall. The second time, his nurse called, and he left me behind on a viaduct to buy daily necessities for her. Whenever we were about to get married, his nurse would call him for all sorts of problems. The final time was when he told me he was sick. Despite the rain, I rushed to the hospital, only to find that it was his nurse who was sick. He stayed by her side to care for her while he lied to me without batting an eye. At that moment, I began to hate him. I aborted our baby and left. But he chased after me and even traveled out of the country just to apologize.

The proposal Aurora had dreamed of? A total sham. Just a stunt by her boyfriend, Marco, to make his first love, Sofia, jealous. The second she said, "I do," Sofia stormed in, tears and all, wailing that she'd changed her mind—that she couldn't let him marry someone else. And just like that, they were in each other's arms, celebrating their grand reunion. Meanwhile, Aurora stood there, the punchline to a cruel joke.

Erin Greer values a good joke more than boundaries. She always says that we have to keep things fun if we want our relationship to last. So she and her childhood friend, Mark Levine, have a standing arrangement. They will orchestrate a surprise every year on our wedding anniversary—with all their friends playing along—just to see if I'll fall for it. Three years ago, she told Mark in front of me that she regretted marrying me. When I turned to leave, she laughed and pulled me back, saying I was too easily teased. Two years ago, she had Mark put divorce papers beside my pillow. After I signed them with a trembling hand, she laughed and said it was just a prank. Last year, she and Mark held a fake wedding and forced me to stand beside them as the best man. When I got upset, she shrugged it off, saying I was being too serious again. And this year, their surprise is even more outrageous. A guilty-looking Mark stands before me, holding a prenatal test report. "Richard, I'm sorry. Erin is pregnant with my child." Not only does Erin not explain herself, but she also stands obediently beside Mark. They exchange a look, as if waiting for me to break down in despair. I look at their faces as they struggle to hold back their laughter, and suddenly, I feel exhausted. This time, I don't get angry or make a scene. Instead, I take off my wedding ring. "I'm not playing along with this year's surprise."

I have a poor sense of direction. I can go to the same place ten times and still not know how to get there. So, Aimee Thornton spends an entire week putting all the streets around school into a hand-drawn map for me. There are no directions on the map, only places named "The Convenience Store With the Yellow Dog at the Door" and "The Old Man Who Sells Terrible Tacos". She ruffles my hair and muses, "How is this one going to survive without me?" But everything changes when our friend, Dean Sullivan, comes home from abroad. During our trip, Aimee tells me to get out of the car and check if we've skidded. My feet have just touched the ground when the car speeds off. She texts me the next second. "There's a rest area about three miles ahead. Dean and I will wait for you there. Dean has a point. You'll never get over your poor sense of direction if I don't give you a push." I end up trekking through the torrential downpour for an hour, desperate and panicking. Aimee suddenly sends me a hand-drawn map with an arrow, and she's added a cute smiley face beside it. "Follow the map, and you'll be there in 20 minutes." Alas, I walk until my calves ache, only for the road to narrow and cut off in a dead end. I call Aimee, but Dean's lighthearted laughter greets me instead. "Hey, man, congratulations on taking the wrong way! "I made a bet with Aimee that you wouldn't notice the arrow she'd drawn on the map was deliberately pointing in the opposite direction. As it turns out, I know you better than she does. "And that means I'm the only one she gets to hang out with for the rest of the trip, since having you tag along will be too much trouble." I hear Aimee's indulgent laugh going off beside him. "A bet's a bet. Whatever you say goes, Dean." The price of codependency is too much for me—so much so that I'll be lost if Aimee decides to up and leave me. I wipe my tears dry. I want to find my way alone this time.

There's about half a month to our wedding when Daniel Bradshaw and I get into a horrible fight. The reason? He wants to have a child with his mentor's daughter. "We're only going to do IVF—it's not like we're doing anything else! My mentor is gravely ill now, and his only wish is to see Phoebe have someone she can rely on!" Daniel sounds indifferent, but my blood runs cold. "It's half a month to our wedding, yet you're going to have a child with another woman. Don't you find that ridiculous?" I watch as he storms off and slams the door shut behind him. Then, I update my social media. "I'm getting married in half a month, but I need a new groom. Is anyone up for it?"

After eight years of loving him in vain, my boyfriend, Gilbert Hughes, finally proposed. The wedding is set for a week from now. However, just as I'm happily preparing for it, I accidentally overhear a conversation between him and his friends. "I have to give it to Gilbert. The moment he proposes, his first love, Cheryl, gets restless." "But now that Cheryl's back, what are you going to do with your girlfriend?" Gilbert pauses for a moment, then replies casually, "It's fine. I'm not actually going to register my marriage with Jennifer. At worst, I'll just hold a wedding and play along." At the party the next day, he wraps his arm around me dotingly and socializes with our guests. Yet, the moment Cheryl Manning runs out in tears, he instantly lets go of me and chases after her in a panic. I follow quietly and watch them embrace tightly in the dark, kissing each other deeply. With my heart completely shattered, I turn away and dial a number. "Want to get married? I need a groom."

After I exposed Scott Brophy's emotional affair online, I was ordered to post an apology video every day for fifteen days straight. [I should not have made your explicit chat logs with Ms. Kelsey Rowe public, and I should not have forgotten to blur them out.] [I should not have secretly recorded your flirty voice messages with Kelsey when I knew about them, and I should not have spread those recordings everywhere.] To show my "sincerity," I even included photos of the two of them along with their real names. ... Scott was furious and humiliated. Every time I posted a video, we'd end up in a huge fight. Then my thirteenth video went up. This time, I tagged his assistant, Kelsey, and offered her a "formal" apology. He stormed off in anger, yet to my surprise, he didn't lash out at me. I naively believed he was finally ready to admit his mistake and come back to our family for good. The next day, I cooked his favorite dishes and brought them to his office. The moment I pushed the door open, I was hit by the sound of intimate gasps and panting. Scott had his little assistant pinned down as she tried to get away, a nasty grin on his face. "Since we're already under suspicion, we might as well go all the way. Otherwise, the two of us are getting a raw deal." Seeing my eyes turn red, he sneered, "Who's to blame for this? You drove me to it." I stood there, frozen. It wasn't just Scott who was dirty now. Our seven-year marriage had been tainted too.

I am reborn on the day my wife, Courtney Clarke, embezzles company funds to pay off her childhood best friend, Travis Foster's, gambling debts. This time, I, Nathan Turner, don't sell my patents to help her plug her financial hole. Instead, I swiftly file for divorce with the court and cut ties with her. This is all because in my previous life, I had loved her with everything I had for 50 years. I was at her beck and call. She claimed she longed for a platonic marriage, and so I endured a sexless marriage for decades. All this lasted until the day of the shipwreck, when I gave her the last life vest. Yet, after she was saved, she never told the rescue team that I was still trapped inside the cabin. In my final moments, through a crack in the cabin door, I watched her throw herself into Travis' arms. "Trav, I love you. I only love you. From now on, no one will stand in the way of our love." In that moment, I abandoned all will to live, letting the sea swallow me whole. So this time, after being reborn, I choose to step aside and let her pursue her love.

I stutter, so I've been mocked relentlessly since I was a child. Little by little, I become too afraid to speak at all. Until I meet Hugo Sheridan, who learns sign language and lip-reading just for me. He always patiently runs his hand over my hair and says, "You don't have to speak if you don't want to. As long as I understand you, that's enough." This goes on until his childhood sweetheart, Lorelei Judge, returns from abroad. One weekend, while we're camping in the wilderness, Hugo pulls over halfway there and asks me to go into a convenience store to buy a few bottles of water. The moment I walk into the store, he drives away. He messages me, "Follow the main road for about two miles, and you'll reach the campsite. Lorelei and I will wait for you there. Lorelei is right. If no one pushes you, you'll never stop having a stutter and depend on others. If you run into trouble, shout for help. Learn how to speak up for yourself." I walk alone along the dark mountain road. After a while, several drunk men start following me. Trembling, I call Hugo. I'm so terrified that my throat tightens, and all I can manage are broken whimpers. However, all I hear is Lorelei's cheerful laughter. "Congratulations on being dumped! Hugo and I made a bet about whether you'd be able to clearly shout 'Help!' when you got scared. I bet you couldn't. Looks like I won again. "For the rest of the camping trip, Hugo is all mine. After all, being with someone who can't even speak properly is simply too boring." Hugo's voice comes from beside her. "A bet's a bet. You win. We'll do whatever you want." So this is what it feels like when someone takes away their special treatment. It's enough to destroy a person. I stop trying to call Hugo for help and dial the police instead. This time, I'm going to speak for myself.

After failing the task of winning Spencer Greene’s affection, I was bound to the Perfect Partner System and became his perfect wife. When rumors spread about him and Zoey Xander, I stepped up to clear his name. When Zoey accused me, he let it slide, and I took the blame and apologized. Even when he got Zoey pregnant, I stayed quiet. I calmly handed him the divorce papers and gave Zoey the title of Mrs. Greene. But he was not pleased. He pinned me down on the bed with eyes full of anger. “Zara, I only wanted you to behave! I never wanted you to push me away. “Are you blaming me now?” I froze and stared at him in shock. “Isn’t this what you wanted?”

Every year on my birthday, Yale Jensen would find some excuse to disappear into his study and write a letter in secret. The first time I caught him, he refused to let me read it. He only smiled and said, "After we're married." So I assumed the letters were for me, some grand romantic gesture he was saving for our future together. And every birthday, as another letter joined the rest, I kept waiting for the day he'd finally hand them over. That day came sooner than I expected. The night before we were supposed to get married at City Hall, Yale came home drunk from a business dinner. Barely coherent, he murmured, "The letters... have you read them yet...?" I took that as permission. It wasn't until I opened the first envelope that I realized I'd been waiting all those years for letters that had never been meant for me. [Yana, does it really not bother you at all that Tessa and I are together?] The second was worse. [Yana, I made Tessa a birthday dinner today. Thinking about you being overseas and missing out on all of this made me feel awful.] Then the third. [Yana, what am I supposed to do when I keep thinking about you every time I kiss Tessa?] ... I was Tessa Sinclair. Yana Cater was my best friend. The most recent letter had been written two months ago. Unlike the others, it contained only a single line, heavy with regret. [I'm sorry. I'm going to marry Tessa.] The paper crumpled in my fist. Then Yale's phone rang, and I picked it up. "Yale Jensen! You said you used a condom! How the hell am I pregnant?" Yana's hysterical voice came through the phone. I looked down at the letter still clenched in my hand. "He's asleep," I said. "You can call back tomorrow. Unless there's something you'd like me to pass along?"

I've been with Sebastian Radford for five years, and I assume there are no secrets between us. Then, the night before our engagement party, Sebastian says, "Cece, check the group chat." I open the four-person group text, confused. "Nobody sent anything." Sebastian goes, "Oh. I misread it." When he heads into the bathroom, the tablet on the coffee table lights up with two new messages. My friend, Noelle Frasier, texts, "You scared me to death. You almost gave away our trip plans." My childhood friend, Wade Kirby, writes, "I really don't want Cece to tag along. I can't even cut loose with her around." Sebastian replies, "I'll be more careful next time." I glance at the group name. "No Cecilia Ward Today!" I scroll up. There are over 2,000 messages, documenting an entire life I know nothing about. Just last week, on the night of my promotion dinner, they're all texting about that barbecue joint on the west side. I ask Sebastian why everyone seems so unenthusiastic, and he tells me, "Everyone's got their own stuff going on." It turns out "their own stuff" is figuring out how to do everything without me. I don't make a scene. I quietly set the tablet down, pick up my phone, and call to cancel the engagement banquet. Then I walk into the bedroom and start packing.

A handprint on the glass window in the bathroom leads to me discovering my husband's betrayal. I want to find that woman and make her and my husband pay.

After wrapping up a book signing out of town, I received a message from a friend on the way home. "This personal trainer is something else. He can do all kinds of things with an exercise ball." He also sent me a Live Photo. In the Live Photo, a woman was lying on an exercise ball, pinned down by a man. Her hair was covering her face. In the Live Photo that was a second long, I heard a familiar moan. I called my fiancée. "Where are you?" Her voice was a bit hoarse, "I'm training with an exercise ball at the neighborhood gym, babe. I have a big surprise waiting for you when you get home." I snorted and said, real slow, "How about I give you a big surprise right now? Open the door!"

On the eve of the wedding, my fiancé's adopted sister was drugged at a bar and called for help. Her body was burning with fever. I grabbed my fiancé as he was about to rush out. "Take her to the hospital. Doctors have proper antidotes." Julian Zane slapped me for suggesting that. There was a savagery in his eyes I had never seen before. "Nora, do you have any conscience at all? Elena is suffering a fate worse than death, and you're still nitpicking?" He yanked off his tie and spoke in a hoarse tone. "She's the sister I've cherished since childhood. I will save her even if I have to sacrifice myself to do it." I watched him undo his shirt buttons with his trembling fingers. Elena, flushed and feverish, fell into his arms. The private room door slammed shut in front of me. The sounds of passion inside struck me like blow after blow, shattering five years of blind devotion into dust.

My husband, Brandon Robinson, threw me a rehearsal funeral for the sake of his first love, Aylin Blessen. He said Aylin had witnessed her family burn to death and had been terrified of death ever since. The cure was to pick someone close to her, put that person through a full funeral process, and then have them reappear on the seventh day. Only then would she be healed. So, Brandon revoked my keycard access to our house, announced my death to everyone we knew, and sent me to a death simulation facility. I was not allowed to contact anyone for seven days. Aylin sobbed as she personally picked out my burial clothes. "Leanna, you only have to be dead for seven days. But this funeral could save my life." Brandon put my phone in a drawer. "You'll be alive and well through the whole process. What's the harm in doing this for Aylin's sake?" On the day of the rehearsal, Aylin shoved me into the facility's old cold storage unit. Then, she went back to the funeral hall and told Brandon I had run away. His expression darkened as he burned my portrait. "Since Leanna won't play along, then for these seven days, she's dead to me." My soul sat in the corner of the funeral hall and watched them hold each other as they "mourned." Brandon did not know it yet, but this rehearsal funeral was no longer just a rehearsal.

For the ninety-ninth time, Thomas Wells brought a strange woman home. Following his instructions, I was washing Chloe Brooks's feet. Without warning, she kicked the basin violently, sending hot water splashing onto my face. "Thomas, Ms. Harris just pinched my foot! My feet are for ballet—I'm in so much pain. What am I supposed to do for tomorrow's competition?" Thomas flew into a rage. To punish me, he had someone bring a brazier, and I was forced to press my foot into the burning coals. The smell of burning flesh filled the entire living room in an instant. Thomas paid no attention as I collapsed to the floor, curling up and breaking out in a cold sweat. He turned away, carrying Chloe off to the bedroom. Shortly afterward, I called Thomas's sister, Tracy. "Tracy, I'm sorry. I don't intend to be with Thomas anymore." After that, I left and vanished from his life. Later, I heard that Mr. Wells of the Wells family had gone mad.

Everyone knew Amber Sherry was hopelessly in love with me. She would even risk her life for me. I got into a severe car accident to save her. My health never fully recovered. Because I had a rare blood type, she was terrified that something else might happen to me. She found someone with the same blood type and kept him on standby. He would donate blood to me whenever I needed it. I was also hopelessly in love with her. After she gave birth to Aria, I did not care what people thought. We gave her Amber’s last name—Aria Sherry. I did not want her to go through another pregnancy, so I got a vasectomy. Every socialite in our circle was jealous of what we had. On the day of Aria’s baby dedication, I went back on a whim to the house I had bought when Amber and I got married. However, the security guard stopped me at the gate. “This villa is Ms. Sherry’s private property. No outsiders are allowed.” I smiled and said, “I am her husband.” To my surprise, the guard gave me a look of disdain and said, “Mr. Jones is Ms. Sherry’s husband. Who might you be? You should’ve checked before trying to impersonate your way in.” I stood frozen. Cyrus Jones was my living blood donor.

After an argument with my wife, Joan Newman, I momentarily stepped out of the car to pick up a package. When I returned, our son, Jimmy Newman, was gone. From that moment, I searched for him like a madman. Each waking hour was consumed by guilt. My mother-in-law blamed me. My mother cried herself to sleep. Joan jabbed a finger at my head and screamed, “Why are you still alive? If you don’t find our son, I’m divorcing you!” From that day forward, for four long years, I gave up my career and my life. I traveled across the country almost a hundred times searching for my son, only to be met with disappointment every single time. My body became covered in scars from self-harm. I fell into severe depression. By the hundredth trip, I could no longer summon the will to face another defeat. I swallowed an entire bottle of sleeping pills. As death closed in, I heard Joan talking to her childhood friend, Randy Kilk. “Joan, you’ve tormented him long enough. When are you going to tell Steven that the boy was never missing? I can’t wait to see the look on his face.” Joan laughed and casually said, “There’s no hurry. He forced me to abort our child, so now, he is suffering the consequences. When he finally understands his sins, I may consider telling him.” So, the inhuman torment I had endured for four years had been nothing more than her punishment. As a final tear rolled down my cheek, my soul left my body. Joan, you got exactly what you wanted.