Married To My First Love’s Ghost

I have been married twice in my life.

The first time was a shotgun wedding to my childhood sweetheart, Victoria Belmont, the undisputed princess of Manhattans old-money elite. I was young, arrogant, and demanded absolute perfection. So, when I discovered she was entertaining a quiet, lingering fascination with her new executive assistant, I filed for divorce. I refused to share my wifes heart with anyone.

The second time, I married for loveor at least, I thought I did. I married Harper Monroe, San Franciscos newly minted tech billionaire, a woman who claimed she fell in love with me at first sight.

Every year since my second marriage, my ex-wife Victoria has sent me a birthday present. I have never once signed for them, nor have I ever written her back. I was hell-bent on proving to the worldand to herthat I could build a beautiful, thriving life without her.

And I believed I had. Until the third year of my marriage, when I accompanied Harper to her college reunion.

A former classmate, heavy with gin and nostalgia, threw an arm around Harpers shoulders and gave her a sloppy thumbs-up.

"If we're talking about blind, obsessive devotion, Harper, you take the crown," he slurred. "When Oliver decided you were too broke for his ambitions, took all your startup cash, and ran off to Paris man, you swore you were going to tear him apart." He let out a booming laugh. "And look how that turned out! You ended up marrying him anyway."

1.

I slowly turned my head to look at Harper.

She offered a forced, tight smile. "Hes drunk, Spencer. Are you really going to listen to a drunk?"

The classmate caught the shift in the air and immediately took offense. "Who's drunk? Im telling the truth! I remember the night he left. You sat on my couch and cried until the sun came up"

Harper stood up so fast her chair scraped violently against the hardwood. "Shut your mouth!" she snapped, her voice like cracking a whip.

The room went dead silent. The alcohol seemed to evaporate from the classmate's veins. His eyes darted from Harper to me, lingering on my face for a long, uncomfortable moment.

In his strange, pitying stare, the last three years of my life suddenly clicked into horrifying focus.

No wonder a fiercely independent, rising Silicon Valley titan had supposedly fallen in love at first sight with a divorced man she met at a gala.

No wonder she absolutely forbade me from styling my hair with gel, preferring it softly parted.

No wonder she bought me endless variations of crisp, white button-down shirts.

No wonder she had infinite, bottomless patience for all my flaws and temper tantrums.

I wasn't her great love. I was a ghost. I was the placeholder for a college romance that had cut her to the bone.

I picked up my phone and stood up to leave.

A hand locked around my wrist. It wasn't tight enough to hurt, but the touch made my skin crawl. It felt sickening.

I ripped my arm out of her grasp and, acting on pure, blinding instinct, slapped her across the face.

A collective gasp sucked the air out of the private dining room.

Harper slowly turned her head back to face me. She wiped a drop of blood from the corner of her mouth, and then, terrifyingly, she smiled.

I had been married to her for three years. I knew that smile. It was the calm before the absolute devastation.

When I first moved to the West Coast to be with Harper, Victoria had followed me. My ex-wife showed up at our gates in Pacific Heights every single day, trying every tactic in the book to win me back. Harper had watched from the window, turned to me, and asked with a light laugh, "Thinking of going back to the old money, Spencer?"

Before I could even formulate a response, Harper had walked out the front door, rolled up her sleeves, and gotten into a physical altercation with Victoria on the sidewalk. That very night, Harper launched a scorched-earth corporate war against Belmont Enterprises, bleeding millions just to force Victorias hand and drive her back to New York.

Harper Monroe was a woman who destroyed whatever stood in her way.

But right now, what right did she have to be angry? I was the one who had been played. I was the one cast as the understudy in my own marriage.

I turned toward the door, only to freeze.

Walking into the private room, wearing a crisp white button-down shirt and an easy, dazzling smile, was a man. It only took one glance for the breath to leave my lungs.

He was her first love.

Oliver noticed me immediately. He paused, his gaze sweeping over my face, my hair, my clothes. A flicker of profound, cruel understanding sparked in his eyes.

A wave of humiliation crashed over me. I bit down on my lower lip so hard I tasted copper, my fingernails digging sharp crescent moons into my palms.

Oliver glided right past me, approaching Harper with an effortless familiarity.

"New boyfriend?" he asked, his voice melodic. "He looks so much like me. Don't tell me you're still hung up on me, Harper."

Harper's expression turned to ice. "This is my husband. Show some respect."

Oliver immediately dropped his gaze. His shoulders slumped, and when he spoke again, his voice trembled with a practiced fragility. "I... I didn't know you were married. You don't have to be so mean to me."

Without thinking, Harper's posture entirely softened. She leaned toward him, her voice suddenly frantic and desperate. "Hey, don't cry. I'm sorry, I didn't mean"

She didn't get to finish. Oliver covered his mouth, a quiet, mocking giggle escaping his lips. "God, three or four years and you're still so easy to trick."

Harpers jaw clenched tight. "Oliver."

She was annoyed, but he was laughing. And everyone else in the room just watched them, completely accustomed to their chaotic, gravitational pull.

I couldn't breathe. I couldn't be in that room for a second longer. I turned and practically ran out the door.

As I fled down the hallway, I heard Oliver's teasing voice drift out of the open door.

"Aren't you going to chase him?"

My footsteps faltered. I stopped, a pathetic sliver of hope making me wait for her answer.

Then came my wife's voice, airy and dismissive:

"He doesn't have a temper like yours. He's much easier to coax."

2.

I don't remember the drive back to Pacific Heights.

The moment I unlocked the front door, the massive wedding portrait hanging in the foyer seemed to scream at me.

When Harper first told me she loved me at first sight, I hadn't believed her. How could I? I had been betrayed by a woman Id known for over twenty years; the idea of trusting a stranger felt impossible.

But my divorce from Victoria had been ugly. My parents, furious at the scandal and the loss of the Belmont alliance, cut me off entirely. Because I had no concrete proof of Victoria actually sleeping with her assistantonly emotional infidelitythe tabloids ripped me to shreds. They called me a spoiled, dramatic, hypersensitive brat. My peers in the New York elite circles practically bought popcorn to watch my downfall. Everyone said I would never find a woman as powerful or as perfect as Victoria Belmont.

I refused to accept that. I wanted to prove them wrong.

And I hit the jackpot with Harper. She was a rising star, a self-made prodigy. Her public, undeniable devotion to me was the ultimate vindication. It shut the mouths of everyone who had laughed at me.

But tonight, the illusion shattered. Her "love at first sight" was nothing more than a desperate grasping at the ghost of the boy who had broken her.

My stomach churned. The acid rose in my throat. I stumbled into the downstairs bathroom and threw up until there was nothing left but dry heaves and tears.

When I finally rinsed my mouth and stepped out, I walked down the hall to Harper's private studya room I almost never entered.

There, wedged between thick volumes of macroeconomic theory, was a battered, leather-bound notebook. It looked wildly out of place.

My hands shook as I pulled it off the shelf and opened it.

A Polaroid slipped from the pages and fluttered to the floor. It was Harper in her graduation gown, looking up at a young man with a look of pure, unadulterated worship.

The woman I knew was a stone-cold killer in the boardroom. But in the pages of this diary, she was just an ordinary, heartbroken girl.

He said I was a dead end. He said he was leaving for Europe.

I begged him not to. But he left anyway. He took every dime I had saved and walked out.

That cruel, beautiful boy. When he comes back, I swear I'm going to ruin him. I'll make him wish he was dead.

The ink on that page was blurred by old, dried water marks. Teardrops. The paper was stiff and wrinkled.

I turned the pages, fast-forwarding through years of silent obsession.

I met a man today. He looks just like him.

Its my wedding day. I texted him.

If he comes back to America today, Ill marry him instead.

He didn't come. I guess I have to stop waiting.

My vision blurred. Hot tears spilled over my eyelashes.

While I had been excitedly picking out floral arrangements and writing my vows, terrified but hopeful for a second chance at love, my bride was staring at her phone, praying another man would crash the wedding and steal her away.

I heard the heavy click of the front door unlocking.

I didn't move. I just stood there, the diary open in my hands.

Footsteps rushed down the hall. Harper appeared in the doorway. When she saw what I was holding, the temperature in the room plummeted. Her voice was ice.

"Who gave you permission to touch my things? Give it to me."

On the day she proposed, Harper had transferred half of her company shares into my name, just to make me feel secure. During our marriage, she gave me unfettered access to her life. No passcodes on her phones, tracking apps shared between us so I always knew she was safe.

But now, because I was holding a relic of Oliver, she looked at me like I was a thief.

I let out a broken, hollow laugh. "If your heart is already occupied by someone else, why do you care if I look?"

She didn't answer. She just lunged forward and grabbed the notebook.

I gripped it tightly, refusing to let go.

Harper didn't hesitate. She grabbed my hand and began bending my fingers backward, one by one.

Crack.

The sound of my own bone fracturing echoed in the quiet room.

All the color drained from my face as a blinding pain shot up my arm. I gasped, releasing the book, and threw it hard against her chest.

"If you're still so violently in love with him, why the hell did you marry me?!" I screamed.

She rubbed her temples, looking thoroughly exasperated, as if I were a toddler throwing a tantrum. "That is all in the past. Stop being so dramatic and unreasonable."

"Then look me in the eye," I challenged, my voice shaking. "Look me in the eye and tell me you married me because you love me."

I didn't flinch. I stared right into her soul.

Harpers eyes flickered away for a fraction of a second.

And then, she let out a cold, defensive scoff.

"You want the truth, Spencer? Fine. I'll give you the truth." She stepped closer, her voice cruel and precise. "When I first pursued you, yes, it was because you looked like him. But haven't I treated you well enough these past three years? Haven't I given you everything?"

Yes. She had.

She treated me so perfectly that I was completely fooled into believing it was love.

But what was the reality?

Victoria was always looking for the next shiny new thing.

Harper was violently stuck in the past.

She loved Oliver. She had only ever loved Oliver.

I looked at the careful, almost reverent way she was smoothing down the wrinkled cover of the diary, and I felt nothing but absolute disgust.

"I want a divorce, Harper."

3.

Harpers hands stopped moving. She let out a long, heavy sigh.

"Spencer, can you stop throwing a fit for five minutes?" she said, her tone dripping with condescension. "You are the husband of the Monroe empire. Everyone in this city bows to you. If you throw a tantrum and demand a divorce now, you'll just be a laughingstock again."

The words felt like a punch to the gut. They were so hauntingly familiar.

When I asked Victoria for a divorce, she had said almost the exact same thing. It was just a harmless crush on the assistant. We didn't actually sleep together. Stop making a scene, Spencer.

But I refused to be married to a woman who harbored someone else in her heart. I had the strength to walk away from Victoria, and I had the strength to walk away from Harper.

"Tomorrow morning. Nine a.m. My lawyer's office," I said, my voice dead and flat.

I turned and tried to walk past her.

Harper reached out and gripped my shoulder hard. "Don't be so childish. Who is going to marry a man who's been divorced twice? You're damaged goods."

I stared at her, suddenly realizing I didn't know the woman standing in front of me at all.

When I had sat on our sofa, crying as I told her what Victoria had put me through, she had held me tightly, kissing my hair, whispering that she wished she had found me sooner to protect me from the pain.

Perhaps the absolute devastation in my eyes was too loud, because Harpers grip loosened, and her tone softened.

"Look, I'm sorry. I just"

Her phone buzzed, cutting her off.

I glanced down. There was no caller ID saved.

Harper hesitated, her thumb hovering over the screen, before she swiped to answer.

"Arrested for a DUI?" Her voice instantly sharpened. "I am not bailing you out. You didn't give a damn about me when you emptied my bank account and ran off to Paris!"

Every word was laced with rejection, but the underlying panic and fierce attachment betrayed her.

I had literally just asked her for a divorce, but one phone call from Oliver eclipsed my entire existence.

Watching her frantically search for her car keys, I let out a bitter, exhausted chuckle. "In such a rush to go see your old flame? The least you could do is stay and negotiate our assets."

Harper shot me a venomous glare. "Stop being paranoid. He just moved back to the States. He doesn't know anyone here. I'm his ex-girlfriend; it's basic human decency to help him out of a jam."

She grabbed her keys and rushed out into the night.

The heavy oak door slammed shut. The house plunged into an oppressive silence.

I walked upstairs to our bedroom, pulled out a suitcase, and began throwing clothes into it.

A few minutes later, my phone pinged with a friend request on social media. The profile picture was a crude, hand-drawn sketch of a kitten.

Harpers profile picture had always been a hand-drawn puppy.

They had been broken up for years, yet she couldn't even bring herself to change their matching icons.

I accepted the request. Oliver didn't send a message. He didn't need to.

I clicked on his profile and scrolled through his timeline. There, I found a version of my wife I had never met.

I saw Harper letting a man draw all over her face with lipstick while she laughed.

I saw Harper at a carnival, taking ridiculous, silly photobooth pictures, her eyes crinkling with joy.

I saw Harper wearing an apron, cooking a chaotic, messy dinner in a tiny apartment.

All of these posts were from over three years ago. Before me.

Suddenly, my feed refreshed. A new post from Oliver popped up.

Bad boys get everything they want.

The location tag was the most exclusive, discreet boutique hotel in San Francisco.

The photo was a close-up of two hands, their fingers intimately intertwined against rumpled white hotel sheets.

The woman's hand was missing a wedding ring. But there was a pale, distinct tan line around her ring finger.

Harper couldn't even wait the mandatory thirty days to finalize a divorce.

I bit down on my lip until I tasted fresh blood. Acting on pure, blinding adrenaline, I hailed an Uber and gave the driver the address of the hotel.

The concierge refused to give me the room number.

So I walked the halls. I knocked on every single door, apologizing to angry guests one by one.

When I reached the final door at the end of the penthouse suite, I froze. My hand hovered inches from the wood.

What was I going to do if I walked in?

Catch them in the act? Scream like a lunatic? Throw a punch?

And then what? End up on the front page of Page Six tomorrow as the pathetic, hysterical cuckold again?

I stood in that quiet, dimly lit corridor for what felt like hours. I let my hand fall to my side. I didn't knock.

I dragged my hollow, exhausted body back to the empty mansion. I spent the next few hours drafting emails to my divorce attorneys. When my eyes finally gave out, I fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

The next morning, I was violently awakened. But it wasn't the sun. It was the fact that I was trending online.

The headline read: TECH MOGULS HUSBAND CAUGHT SNEAKING INTO HOTEL FOR LATE-NIGHT RENDEZVOUS WITH EX-WIFE.

4.

Before I could even process the words on the screen, Harper dragged me out of bed by the collar of my shirt.

She shoved her phone inches from my face. It was a paparazzi photo of me standing outside the boutique hotel last night, looking pale and deeply distressed.

"Spencer, running off in the middle of the night to beg your ex-wife to fuck you? Have you no shame?" she spat, her voice vibrating with rage.

My head was spinning, my body heavy with sleep and exhaustion. "I haven't even seen Victoria," I shot back defensively. "And speaking of hotels, weren't you at that exact same place last night?"

A flash of raw panic crossed Harpers eyes, instantly swallowed by aggressive, defensive fury.

"Nothing happened between me and Oliver!" she yelled. "But yousneaking around in the middle of the night to see Victoria? Explain yourself!"

A dark, twisted laugh bubbled up in my chest. If she wanted to believe the worst of me to justify her own guilt, fine.

"Sure. Let's say I did go see her," I said, my voice eerily calm.

Watching her pupils dilate in shock sent a sick thrill of vindication through my veins.

"I didn't just see her. I told her I regretted ever leaving her," I lied, the words tasting like ash. "Because no matter how unfaithful Victoria was, at least she never looked at me and saw another man's face."

Harper's breathing turned ragged. Her fingers dug into my shoulders so hard her knuckles turned white.

"You think I don't have regrets?!" she screamed, her composure entirely gone. "Oliver might have left me, but at least he never belonged to another woman! Do you know how many people laugh behind my back because my first marriage is to a man whos already someone else's leftovers?!"

SMACK.

The sound of her hand cracking across my jaw echoed in the bedroom. My palm stung with the phantom memory of the slap I had given her the night before.

Harper's head snapped to the side from the force of her own swing. Her eyes filled with bloodshot, violent rage. She raised her hand again, preparing to strike.

But she froze mid-air.

I tilted my chin up, exposing my face to her. "Do it! Hit me! Lets see what else you can break!"

Harper stared at me, her chest heaving.

Suddenly, she lunged. She grabbed me by the collar and dragged me across the hardwood floor, straight into the master bathroom.

She turned on the faucet, letting the massive standalone tub fill with freezing cold water. Despite my thrashing, she shoved me down, forcing my head and shoulders under the icy surface.

"Harper! Are you insane?!" I sputtered as I breached the surface, gasping for air.

She grabbed a loofah and began scrubbing my skin with a terrifying, manic strength.

"I don't hit men, Spencer. But that doesn't mean I don't have a temper," she hissed, her voice low and dangerous. "This is your only warning. I never want to see you communicating with your ex-wife ever again."

The ice water sank into my bones, but it was nothing compared to the absolute, freezing terror in my heart.

"How can you be such a hypocrite?!" I yelled over the running water. "You spent last night alone in a hotel room with Oliver! You expect me to believe nothing happened?!"

She shoved my head back down into the water. "You don't get to question me!"

Water rushed up my nose. The primal, blinding panic of suffocation hit me. I thrashed blindly, clawing at her arms.

Just as my lungs began to burn, the pressure on the back of my neck vanished.

I shot up, coughing violently, dragging ragged breaths into my burning chest.

Harper stood over the tub, looking down at me like an emperor surveying a prisoner.

"Stay here and think about what you've done," she commanded coldly.

She turned on her heel and walked out.

Panic seized me. I scrambled out of the tub, desperate to follow her, desperate to get out of that room.

But my wet feet slipped on the imported Italian tile.

I went down hard. My skull slammed against the sharp edge of the marble counter with a sickening crunch.

Outside, I heard the heavy click of the deadbolt sliding into place.

Harpers muffled voice bled through the wood. "When you figure out how to act like a husband, I'll let you out."

A blinding, nauseating agony bloomed on the side of my head. Something hot and wet was running down my temple, dripping onto my cheek.

My hands shook violently as I reached up to touch my face.

My fingertips came away coated in thick, dark crimson.

"Harper..." My voice was a weak, pathetic wheeze. "Harper, I hit my head. Please... unlock the door. I'm bleeding."

I dragged myself to the door and slapped my bloody hand against the wood. It left a smeared, red handprint.

I heard footsteps approaching. Hope flared in my chest.

But then, she let out a short, cynical laugh.

"You really will pull any stunt to get out of trouble, won't you, Spencer?" she mocked. "Faking an injury today? Whats next? Faking your own death?"

The pool of red on the white tile grew larger.

Hot tears mixed with the blood running into my eyes.

The world began to tilt. The edges of my vision went dark, and the cold swallowed me whole.