Daphne & Casey
She doesn’t look at him right away, just twirls a cherry between two fingers as he slides into the booth beside her.
“Took you long enough,” she mutters.
Casey leans in, brushing his face against her skin. “You’re in heat already. I can smell it.”
A faint smile breaks across Daphne’s lips. “You know me so well.”
He leans back, arm draped along the booth’s edge, his eyes tracing the line of her throat. “After how things ended last time, I figured I’d be drinking alone.”
“I got over it,” she says, shrugging it off. “Although now that you mention it, watching you drink alone might be dangerous for my self-control.”
He tips his head toward her, lowering his voice. “I like the way you look at me when you think no one’s watching.”
“Bad boy,” she whispers.
“Can’t help it… you’re the only thing in my life that doesn’t feel… expected.”
Her lips skim his jaw as she breathes him in. Acqua di Parma still clings to his skin. Same as always. But something’s different. Lately, it feels more like comfort than craving. Not dull, exactly. Just… familiar. Even the sneaking around feels routine. And Daphne knew better than anyone what came next when she got too comfortable.
The crazy part was, for once, she didn’t mind it. She wanted more of him. More of this. The irony? None of it had been planned. Could anyone plan their feelings? Did anyone anticipate this kind of stupid love affair?
Years ago, before they were friends, when Lili and Casey first moved into the complex, they looked like everything Daphne had been raised to admire—well-off by way of the East Coast. Perfect on the outside. They were untouchable. And of course, that made them irresistible.
She’d looped Lili in easily, promoting her designs, pulling her into the nightlife scene. Their friendship felt effortless. When the pandemic hit, trapping everyone at home, they only grew closer. Casey? He was the handsome distraction in the background. Completely off-limits, obviously, because he was Lili’s husband.
Then, Daphne had shown up during the cancer scare two years ago—smoothie drop-offs, check-ins, the convenient concern of someone who could step back whenever she pleased. The real burden, of course, was Lili’s to carry.
When Casey recovered, things should have gone back to normal—endless text banter, random Tuesday brunches. But cracks appeared. Lili withdrew. Then one night, over too many martinis, Lili confessed: Casey had floated the idea of opening their marriage.
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
“My gay friends love their open marriages,” Daphne said, flippantly.
“He thinks he’s poly. Or bored. Or selfish,” Lili went on, embarrassed. “I don’t understand why everything has to be some kind of sexual identity crisis these days.”
Daphne remembered the sharp burst of arousal as Lili tried to untangle it.
“Does that mean three-ways? Or am I supposed to wait at home while he’s out sleeping with someone else? It feels like open warfare.”
But not to Daphne. Or… maybe it did. That night, she touched herself to the image of Casey fucking her in the primary while Lili waited in the hall, ignored.
Not long after that night, Lili pulled away completely. At first, Daphne assumed it was a natural drift… Until Boots and Gareth let the real secret slip: Casey had cheated. Not with Daphne, of course. Not yet. With a marketing intern. Or maybe she was an assistant? Like it made any difference.
Then came that night at Icons. Just the two of them, Daphne and Casey, including the half-drunk confession he made about the threesome fantasy. How Casey had suggested her to Lili. Daphne—as their third. How Lili had recoiled.
That was why Lili pulled away. Because, by no fault of her own, Daphne stopped being a friend. She’d become a boundary. One that Casey wanted to cross.
“She’ll never be cool with an open marriage,” he’d said, almost wistful.
But when Lili left for that wedding in Connecticut, it was already written in the stars, unfortunately. One more drink at Icons. A few heavy, too-long stares—‘intentional cruising,’ as her gay friends called it. Then they went back to his place.
That was six months ago. Since then, secret meetups. Luxury hotels. Dingy motels. Lies. More lies. And the best mother-effin’ sex of my life. So, if it ends—when it ends—she doesn’t know what she’ll be left with.
Casey’s hand slides further up her thigh, pulling her from the thought as he raises the silk of her minidress.
For a second, he hesitates. It’s always like this with Daphne. From day one, she’s just let him have his way. And it terrifies him, because with her, there’s no script to follow. No version of himself he has to perform. She looks at him like he could still become the man she sees when they’re together. Like it’s not already way too late.
“Let’s get a room,” she murmurs, lips brushing the rim of her glass.
But before Casey can answer—
“Oh, shit,” she whispers, looking past him.
Casey follows her gaze. Across the lounge, he sees him. Gareth. Standing by the entrance, laughing with his colleagues. Casey feels it hit his stomach, that low-grade knot that always tightens when the risk tips too far, when the rush of sneaking around clashes with the sober sting of reality.
“We need to bail,” he says.
But Daphne’s already spotted it: a flash of silver as a champagne cart wheels past. She grabs his hand.
“C’mon.”
He drops a hundred on the table and follows as she pulls him alongside the cart, briefly shielded from Gareth’s view. They hustle along the edge of the room, slipping past just as the hostess turns to seat his group. For a second, Casey’s eyes lock on him, like tracking his every move might somehow protect them.
Then Gareth laughs. His head tilts toward Casey.
Shit.
Casey ducks, blocking his face with a hand, just in time for Daphne to yank him behind a velvet curtain, into the adjoining room.
“Close call,” she says, breath quick as he presses her against the wall.
“Too close.”
“Kinda hot, though. Feel that adrenaline?”
Casey studies her and feels, just for a moment, the ache of wanting what he doesn’t have—the ease, the boldness, the way Daphne moves through life without bracing for collapse. She’s twenty-five, still building her world, while his is slowly coming apart. He envies her for it—the lightness, the freedom that comes from having so much less to lose.
“We shouldn’t do this here,” he says as she trails a finger down his chest.
She meets his gaze, daring him. “Then take me somewhere else.”