Scumbag Romance Short Stories & Cheating Novels

After discovering Lydia's existence, I didn't argue with Alex. I simply handed him a divorce agreement. He sat there with his head lowered. After a long moment of hesitation, he tore it in half. "Please give me ten days. In ten days, I'll send Lydia somewhere far away. She'll never appear in our lives again." Without waiting for my answer, he got up and left the house. During those ten days, he took Lydia whitewater rafting, climbed snowy mountains with her, went bungee jumping and skydiving, and shared every thrilling adventure imaginable. He also watched the sunrise with her by the ocean, prayed together in a church, and did all the romantic things that lovers do. On the night of the ninth day, after I had packed all my luggage, I accidentally received a video call from myself ten years in the past. She looked full of life and asked excitedly, "Are you really me from ten years in the future? Then Alex and I must be married by now, right? Do we have kids?" Heartbroken, I walked onto the balcony and pointed my phone's camera toward Alex and Lydia, who were tightly embracing each other below, unable to let go. "This is your answer." She stared at the screen with wide eyes, unable to believe what she was seeing. "That's impossible..." My voice was weary, as though every last bit of strength had been drained from me. "Charlotte... Please. Don't marry him."

I had been in love with Anton Stark for fifteen years, and it was always sweet until another woman appeared. He began to act distant and used every trick to force me into a divorce. I clung to him desperately, even though I was battered and bruised, hoping he would change his mind. But eventually, I woke up. Some relationships should come to an end.

At her engagement party, my best friend, Hannah Sawyer, caught her fiancé cheating. Ryan Carter didn't apologize. Instead, right there in front of everyone, he sneered, "Who else would ever want you besides me?" Hannah was crying so hard she could barely stand. Without thinking, I grabbed my boyfriend Yates Grant's hand and placed it in hers. "Who says nobody wants you? "Starting now, he's your boyfriend." Yates froze for a second. Then he went along with it, taking off his jacket and draping it around Hannah's shoulders before leading her out by the hand in full view of everyone. That night, the three of us sat together drinking and laughing about the whole thing. It was only supposed to be an act, just this once. But Ryan kept harassing Hannah afterward. So Yates continued playing her fake boyfriend. He picked her up from work, walked her home, and helped convince her parents that she'd moved on. I never once doubted either of them. Not until I came across a post online. [I borrowed my best friend's boyfriend to make my cheating ex jealous. Now I don't want to give him back. What do I do?] The poster said her best friend had personally offered up her boyfriend. Their first time holding hands had been fake. Their first hug had been fake. But the first night he spent at her place had been real. People in the comments tore into her for betraying the friend who had helped her. She replied: [He said that since he slept with me that night, he'd take responsibility for me.] I stared at the photo of the three of us sitting in our living room, my hands and feet turning ice-cold. I'd only lent her my boyfriend for one night so she could save face. They'd turned that one night into the rest of their lives.

In my third year as an online relationship-advice streamer, I finally saved up enough in viewer tips to cover my boyfriend's share of our wedding funds. I went live one last time, planning to announce that I was quitting streaming for good, when a young woman sent over a hundred thousand dollars' worth of gifts to request a live call with me. "My husband is just too perfect. There are always women trying to take my place. What do I do?" The chat burst out laughing at how dramatic she sounded. I was the only one quietly celebrating. With that kind of money, Gary Litt would never have to stress over our wedding funds, a car, or a house again. She ignored the skeptics in the chat and kept pouring out her troubles. "Yesterday, I found out some woman's been sending him money. And get this — it was 362.56 dollars! Down to the penny! "That's not even enough to cover one of my meals. You don't think some broke woman has her hooks in my husband, do you?" I froze. Just last night, I'd cashed out my tips and transferred money to Gary for our wedding fund. It was that exact amount. Just then, another voice cut in on her end. "Babe, are you imagining things again? Which one of your girlfriends are you badmouthing me to this time?" His teasing complaint was laced with affection. But I felt a chill creep through me, inch by inch. The "perfect" husband she was talking about and my boyfriend — who couldn't even scrape together anything for our wedding fund — were the same man.

Simon Quinn was a man who clawed his way out of hell. Cold and ruthless, he feared nothing, except Yara Shaw. She was only fourteen when she took odd jobs and slowly raised him. Yara was the only person he believed in. Later, Simon gave Yara a love story the entire city envied. She believed in their love completely, until she lost three babies, one after another. The first time, a mysterious car accident caused her to miscarry from severe bleeding. The second time, a fire broke out in their home in the middle of the night. It left her disfigured and cost her another baby. The third time, a kidnapper stabbed her in the abdomen. When she was rescued, the baby was gone, and she had a divorce decree in her hand. On the night she was discharged from the hospital, she heard her husband say with a bitter laugh, "Cindy is the only one I love. Yara is family to me, nothing more. Why would I let her have my child?" Yara couldn't stop vomiting. In the end, she arranged to have her memories erased one month later.

At the wedding ceremony, just as I was about to formally greet Alexander York's parents as my in-laws, his longtime female best friend, Casey Clarke, sprang up from the groomsmen's table and charged onto the stage. She dropped herself into the chair beside Alexander's father and crooked a finger at me. "Come on, Lucille, honey, my daughter-in-law. Come over here and pay your respects." By local tradition, newlyweds kneel before their in-laws and pay their respects during the wedding ceremony. The guests burst out laughing. Without the slightest hint of shame, Casey pulled up a video from the night before and played it on the big screen. In the video, she straddled Alexander's lap, forcing him to call her "Daddy". After Alexander finally said it, she asked, "What if your bride-to-be refuses to play along?" He lowered his head and lit a cigarette, his smile full of certainty. "She wouldn’t dare. She loves me too much to embarrass me at our wedding." The video ended. Casey reached over and patted me on the head. "Well, Lucille?" I remain still. Alexander walked over to me. "Casey's been by my side for 20 years. If you marry me, the least you can do now is show her some respect." Back then, when she stole my wedding ring, he said a twenty-year friendship like theirs shouldn’t become distant because of me. When she left hickeys all over his neck, he told me a twenty-year friendship like theirs couldn't fall apart just because of me. Now, he was still using the same old excuse at our wedding to pressure me into giving in. Alexander leaned over and kissed my forehead. "Come on. One time on your knees in exchange for a lifetime of my love. That sounds like a pretty good deal to me." I looked at him and realized how straightforward this equation is. So I decided I no longer want the deal.

It's been seven years since our graduation. One day, I drop a message in our five-member group chat. "I got laid off." Not a single reply comes in. It's as if no one in the group has even noticed my message. Ten minutes later, my best friend, Emily Piper, texts the group. "I got promoted! Let's celebrate at our usual spot tonight!" My boyfriend, Julian Dickson, and my two childhood friends, Francis Loomis and Henry Parsons, immediately pop up in the chat. "Congrats, Emmie!" "I'll book the restaurant." "Don't forget to get her favorite strawberry shortcake." I stare at the screen and can't help sending another message. "I just got laid off. Can you guys comfort me a little?" Still, nobody replies. Then, somebody asks, "There are no private rooms available at our usual spot. How about that place by the river?" Julian replies almost immediately, "Sounds good. I'll go get a gift ready." Emily sends a shy emoji. "It's just a small promotion. You guys really don't need to go all out like this." But the three of them are quick to reassure her. "How could we not make a big deal out of something like this?" "You've been working so hard all this time, so of course the five of us have to have a proper celebration!" I stare at that message, my tears blurring the screen. I find myself wondering just when I stopped being part of the group of five. Over the years, whenever Emily works late, they take turns bringing her food. When Emily gets her heart broken, they rush over that same night to drink with her. When Emily's birthday comes around, the three of them remember it better than their own. But when I get promoted, all they say is, "We'll treat you to a meal some other time." Before I leave the group chat, my ex-roommate from college, Rose Wilson, sends me a message. "My new company is looking for a project lead. Would you be interested in joining us?" I glance at the celebratory messages still flooding the group chat before replying, "I'd love to." It's time for the people who've been part of my life for over ten years to make their exit.

At the reunion, the wives got rowdy and dared each other to take part in a "best husband" challenge. Each woman had to call her husband and ask for 6,000 dollars to buy a bag. Whoever got a yes first would win. As expected, Matthew Whitebrook picked up almost instantly, his voice gentle. "Buy it, baby. You remember the card password, right?" Everyone groaned with envy and said I'd hit the jackpot by landing the better of the twin brothers. I laughed and hung up, then glanced at my sister, who sat curled up in the corner. She clutched her phone but refused to make the call. "I won't bother," she said quietly. "He's on another business trip. He won't pick up anyway." My sister had been dating Matthew's older twin brother for three years, but he was constantly away on business. Almost no one had ever seen him in person. I felt bad for her, so I snatched the phone from her hand and dialed the number myself. It rang twice before someone answered. "Baby, why the sudden call?" The room fell silent. That voice was identical to the one that had told me, "Buy it, baby," just ten seconds earlier. For a moment, I thought I had misheard. But when I turned to my sister, her face had already gone white. She snatched the phone back, her smile strained. "Bad signal. You must have misheard." However, I had heard it clearly. From the other end of the call came the unmistakable sound of the record player in my own living room, the one I had forgotten to turn off before I left the house that afternoon.

Mason Chapman has lost his memories. He has forgotten everything about me. His memories are stuck in the year he was most in love with his ex-wife, Tiffany Auburn. No matter how much the people around him try to talk sense into him, he remains convinced I'm the other woman who has come between him and Tiffany. The doctor says there's a chance he might recover his memories, so I cling to that hope and refuse to let go. Within three years, we divorce and remarry many times. We become the biggest joke in the city's social circles. People even start placing bets on when I'll finally give up and when Mason will regain his memories. Then, news of our eighth divorce makes the trending searches again. Reporters storm into the law firm I work at with cameras on their shoulders. They shove microphones in my face, their questions dripping with provocation. "Ms. Gardner, as a divorce lawyer, what do you have to say about getting divorced eight times yourself?" Someone smashes the firm's sign. My personal award banner is trampled underfoot. Before I can even respond, my boss fires me for ruining the profession's reputation. "Take my advice, Isabel. Have some dignity, and stop chasing after Mr. Chapman." I clench my trembling hands and suddenly feel depleted. They're right. Maybe this time, I should just give up.

My billionaire husband suffered from chronic insomnia for years. Only the sleep balm I made could help him sleep. On the night of our seventh wedding anniversary, his childhood sweetheart poured a basin of scalding water over the old camphor tree in our garden. I wept and tried to save the tree as she apologized, “I didn’t know you used its leaves to make the sleep balm.” My husband gently comforted her and ordered his men to tie me to the tree trunk instead. “What a precious tree. You’ll spend the rest of your days with it!” With my wrist fractured as a result, I filed for divorce immediately. A month later, my husband was unable to sleep late one night. He stood in the garden and stared at the withered camphor tree.

At the party celebrating the multimillion-dollar deal I've landed, my husband, Nick Ferguson, is about to announce my promotion and raise, but Ruby Holm, his secretary, deliberately interrupts him by feeding him her drink. My germaphobic husband doesn't even flinch. Without thinking, he puts the straw she has just used into his mouth. The employees immediately start teasing them, asking when they're getting married. Instead of denying it, Nick promotes Ruby to department manager. A coworker nudges my elbow. "Chloe, you've been with Mr. Ferguson for ten years. You're really not going to say anything?" I let out a cold laugh and toss my equity transfer agreement to Ruby. "Mr. Ferguson, don't be so stingy. A promotion isn't enough. Take these shares too. Consider them my wedding gift to the two of you!"

My avoidant fiance refused to talk to me about anything. Every time we fought, he would put on his earphones and turn the volume all the way up. This time, we were arguing over laundry detergent again. He impatiently slammed the earphones on me. "Are you seriously going to do this again, Jessica? You fight because of bad photos. You start a fight because I didn't take out the trash in time, and you start fights because I forgot our anniversaries. And now I can't even choose which detergent I use?" I stared at the red mark on my thigh and the broken earphones on the ground. I saved up most of my salary for that. It was a present, but now he was using it to vent. Yet he had kept the laundry detergent his childhood friend gave him for six whole years. Every time an important date was coming up, he would use a bit of it to wash all his clothes. The sickly sweet scent of that detergent filled the room. I looked up and held back my tears. "Let's break up, Zack."

The stray cat I adopted had recently started looking at my boyfriend, Logan Bennett, and his female best friend, Chloe Dawson, like they were complete idiots. Then one day, Chloe climbed into the passenger seat of Logan’s car again and shot me a provocative smile. A fierce little voice suddenly rang out in my head: “Human, that woman is calling you an idiot in her head! She’s also planning to get your man drunk tonight! Hurry up and slap her! If you do, I’ll make sure you find money on the street when you leave!” I froze and stared down at Mochi in my arms. So my cat could not only talk, but also read minds and predict the future? Fine. From today on, Mochi and I would make these two shameless cheaters pay—and make sure everyone knew exactly who they were!

A typhoon warning had been issued. I drove out to pick up my mother, who lived by the coast. My car broke down halfway there. I called my boyfriend fifty-eight times, and every single one was declined. The rain kept getting heavier. No rescue services were available, and the water was rising. My hands were shaking so badly that all I could do was get Mom to a nearby bus shelter. That was when I scrolled past a Facebook post from my boyfriend's assistant, Megan. "Derek is such a sweetheart. Spent two hours searching, and the little stray finally has a home." In the photo, Derek was at Megan's place, giving a stray cat a bath. I looked at my mother, soaked to the bone, and a wave of hurt washed over me. By the time evening fell, my boyfriend finally called back, but the wind was so strong that the signal kept cutting in and out. I was about to ask him to come get us when his voice crackled through the receiver, broken up by static. "Don't let your mom... the seafood... mess up the car." Before I could say a word, he hung up. The rescue team arrived. As we climbed in, Mom was still shivering, fretting over the seafood that had spoiled during the delay. I picked up the bag and tossed it into the trash. If it's spoiled, there's no point keeping it. Same goes for people.

Just before my wedding, I did the unthinkable—I switched places with Raine Miller, my fiancé's childhood sweetheart. It had been an accident, but I uncovered the painful truth—Bruno Russell, the man I loved, had already built a happy home with Raine. I never knew before, but now I do. For five long years in our relationship, Bruno had never so much as touched me. I once thought it was because he was worried about my weak heart, but I couldn't be more mistaken. He simply wanted to keep himself pure for Raine, to belong only to her. Our marriage wasn't for love. Bruno wanted me so he could control my father's company. Fine! If he craved my wealth so much, I would give it all to him. I sold every last one of my shares, and then vanished without a word. Leaving him, forever.

After Lyra Beaumont, a financially disadvantaged student I sponsored, was sexually harassed at work, she came close to taking her own life. I paid to open a pottery shop for her so she could run her own business. When Forrest Croft found out, he spoke with open disdain. "There's no smoke without fire. Why do you insist on bringing someone like her into our lives? Don't blame anyone else if you end up getting hurt." I stared at him in disbelief. "Forrest, how can you say something so cruel?" After that argument, I left the country in a huff and spent two months abroad. There were 58 ceramic mugs in the display cabinet in our living room. During a video call, Forrest proudly announced what he had been up to. "Honey, I've been stopping by her shop every day to support her business. You must be happy now, right?" Seeing the tenderness in his eyes, I suddenly felt a little guilty for being so stubborn. I changed my ticket to the earliest available flight and rushed home, hoping to surprise him. But the moment I opened the front door, I heard wet, squelching sounds coming from our bedroom. "Forrest, you take a mug every time we're done. My hands are getting sore." "That's barely anything. I'm going to fill that cabinet." I stared at the 58 mugs in the cabinet, and suddenly the whole thing seemed absurd. Two months. Sixty days. Fifty-eight times. He had not just been supporting her business. He had been sleeping with her in my bed too.

On my third wedding anniversary with Logan Archer, our housekeeper, Bianca Martinez, calls to tell us that she has to have both her legs amputated after saving Logan's grandmother from being hit by a truck. From that day on, Logan vows to take care of her. When she trembles from the excruciating pain, he shoves his arm into her mouth for her to bite on and stays by her side until she falls asleep. When she pounds her legs and berates herself for being so useless that she can't even go to the bathroom on her own, he rushes home from work, no matter how busy he is, to help her relieve herself. One day, when I tell Logan I'm pregnant, he looks at me wearily. "Get rid of it. Our main priority right now is to take good care of Bianca. We don't have time to raise a child." No matter how desperately I beg him, he still forces me to go to the hospital for an abortion. After lulling Bianca to sleep, he slips into my room and rasps out, "Honey, we owe Bee too much. Once she's all better, I'll definitely give you a child." Little does he know that, in my heart, he already belongs to my past, not my future.

On my first night after marrying into the wealthy Dickson family of Cornton, Jared Dickson makes me sign an agreement. It stipulates that every expense incurred after the marriage requires prior approval. He says, "Given the vast disparity in our family backgrounds, this is the only way to protect you from rumors and gossip out there." I readily agree. But everything changes when I'm pregnant and suffering from severe lower back pain. I send a payment request to Jared for an ergonomic chair I'd found on Amazon, costing just 88 dollars, but he rejects it immediately. "There's no need to waste money on a scam like that. You're only in pain because of your anxiety. You should learn to regulate your emotions instead." I feel a deep sense of powerlessness. Just then, I see that a charge for 780,000 dollars is deducted from the family fund account for Jared's round-the-world trip, and the people coming with him are his secretary, Selena Beech, and her family members. I clench my fists and laugh self-deprecatingly. So, Jared's insistence on "clear financial boundaries" applies only to me after all. I log out of the banking account and immediately book an appointment for an abortion at the hospital.

My boyfriend, Emmett Carr, and I lived less than five miles apart in the same city. However, we never met more than twice a month. Whenever I asked when he was free, he always said he was busy with a recent work project. That continued until I accidentally discovered his travel records. He had purchased flight tickets for 48 out of the 52 weekends of the past year. He was flying to the country where his childhood friend, Cherry Lewis. was studying abroad. He would leave on Saturday morning and return late Sunday night, rain or shine. He flew there like clockwork, even more disciplined than when he was going to the office. The most recent date we went on was yesterday, at a cafe below his office. He had gulped down his coffee quickly and checked his watch three times, claiming that he had to leave for a meeting. I smiled and did not expose him. It was his 49th time leaving to see his junior, but I did not call or text him. All I did was sign the lease agreement to transfer the house to someone else and buy a one-way ticket to another city. Emmett had willingly flown a few thousand miles to be someone else's backup boyfriend. All I wanted now was to leave for another city. I no longer wanted to wait on his promises to take me out 'next week' that never came true.

On the eve of our wedding, Trevin Hoffman's childhood sweetheart, a mercenary who had vanished for five years, was struck by a deadly love spell during a mission. When her teammates dragged her back to him, she was covered in blood, barely clinging to life. Trevin, usually calm and composed, lost control. Ignoring my protests, he locked himself in with her for the entire night. I sat outside that door, sleepless until dawn. The next morning, when I demanded an explanation in hysteria, he shielded her with his body and snapped, his mask completely gone. "I couldn't just watch Wren die. One wild night before marriage, what's so wrong with that?" At that moment, I was disillusioned. My love for him vanished in an instant.