Page 11 of Right Next Door (Stone Family #3)

Nicole

D izzy with fear, confusion, and straight-up panic, I plant myself on the floor after closing and locking the door to my house, back against it, legs splayed out in front of me as if I sprinted home.

I may as well have for the embarrassing display of awkward limbs as I ran away from Ian and Stone Ink. I don’t even remember how I got home.

Only pure hysteria.

Which is funny because if this were 1885, I would have been prescribed an orgasm and bed rest. But it’s an orgasm that sent me into a tailspin.

Never in my entire life have I ever experienced pleasure and all-consuming urgency like I had tonight. With a man whom I did not promise to love for the rest of my life.

And I am completely overwhelmed.

I let my head drop back, staring up at the ceiling in the dark entryway until I hear footsteps upstairs and Bryce’s voice calling down. “Nicole?”

“Yeah.”

His head pops around the banister. “What are you doing?”

“Just…resting.”

“You’ve been working too many hours,” he says congenially, and what?

What am I supposed to say to that?

How am I supposed to act like all of this is perfectly normal?

That our marriage has never been better and this is simply another night of me coming home late when I was shot to the moon on a rocket ship named Ian Stone?

None of this is normal for me. I don’t know how to act or feel other than a nauseating mix of exhilaration and betrayal. I didn’t know someone could be trapped and free all at once. Like a bird let out of its cage, only to be stopped by a window.

“Are you coming to bed?” Bryce asks, and there is nothing I want to do less than lie next to my husband right now.

But I force myself to stand and use my hand along the wall to steady myself as I begin to slowly climb the stairs like a drunk sailor. By the time I make it to my bedroom, Bryce is in bed, watching something on his iPad, having no idea what I did tonight, and guilt makes my skin crawl.

Yes, I agreed to this open relationship, but I’ve never cheated on anyone. Although, I suppose, I’m not cheating. I’m allowed to do whatever I want. We’re a living embodiment of that Friends episode. We’re essentially on a break, and anything we do this summer can’t be held against us.

Intellectually, I understand romantic relationships come in all shapes and sizes, and I know monogamy and marriage are not one-size-fits-all.

Yet, I’ve only ever known couples in a monogamous relationship between two people.

At least, that I know of. Who knows what my friends and family do behind closed doors?

I watch my husband for a moment, wondering what he’s done behind closed doors, what he plans to do. If he thinks about his actions like I’m thinking about mine and what it means for us as a couple, for himself as a single person.

What I did with Ian, kissing him, learning the feel of his lips, begging him to make me come, riding his thick fingers like some wanton creature… What does that make me?

Images that I should probably forget but never could assault my memory, and I flinch reflexively. That’s what makes Bryce glance up, and he offers me a bland smile. He has no idea.

About what happened in a darkly lit hall of Stone Ink.

I smile back at him. Like a puppet. Doing all the things I’m supposed to. I start to get ready for bed, and he reminds me that we need more toothpaste. Because I’m the one in charge of grocery shopping.

I nod, although toothpaste is the last thing I care about.

In the bathroom, I strip down, taking stock of my body, searching for evidence, a mark in the size and shape of Ian’s hand on me somewhere.

There isn’t, but I almost wish there were.

Proof that I saw a different world. Ian Stone promised to show me not only the stars, but the whole goddamn galaxy. And he did.

I touched the moon, skipped among the stars, and floated in the darkest depths, guided to the light by Ian himself. And what scared me the most was how I immediately wanted it again. Wanted more.

But then I crashed back into earth, brought low by gravity and the reality currently sniffling and coughing ten feet away from me now.

I roll my eyes at Bryce’s incessant throat clearing.

It’s his allergies, and I’m not sure if he’s extra annoying now because of my too-few-short hours with Ian or because he probably never took his Allegra.

With a sigh, I change into my pajamas and toss my dress and underwear into the laundry basket, briefly wondering if I should bring it down to the washer now.

Get rid of the evidence. I don’t and instead remove my jewelry, taking time to admire my new tattoo.

I flush hot at the reminder of Ian’s hands all over me, a heavy pulse still beating between my legs, still needy for more.

After shaking out my hands, I focus on washing my face, lotioning my skin, and brushing my teeth. One task at a time, one foot after the other, I can pretend like nothing has changed, and yet when I open the bathroom door, I have to confront the truth.

“You feel okay?” Bryce asks. “You were making weird sounds in there.”

I cross the room to the air filter and remove the top to fill it with water. “Fine. A bit of a headache.”

He doesn’t say anything until I turn around, and I’m halfway back to the bathroom to deposit the little jug I keep there to make sure Bryce gets his stupid purified air. “What’s that? On your arm.”

I lift it, playing dumb. “Oh, this? A tattoo.”

He sets down his iPad and shifts to get a better view, but I don’t move. I make him come to me. He lifts my arm, twisting it this way and that. “You’ve never mentioned wanting a tattoo before.”

I bristle at his tone, at the implication that I’m somehow not the kind of person who would have a tattoo. I don’t even know what that kind of person is, but maybe I’m just overemotional now. Easily triggered. Irritated at anything and everything he does and says.

“I guess there’s a lot you don’t know about me,” I say with as much attitude as I can muster then snatch my arm away from him to put the jug back in the bathroom and shut off the light.

Bryce doesn’t move from his position by the side of the bed, blocking my half of the mattress. “Like what?” His laugh is pure condescension. “I think I know you pretty well.”

“Do you?” I slant my head, my nearly never present temper overtaking me. “Because I thought I knew everything about you and never expected you would want an open marriage. Yet here we are.”

He runs one hand through his hair. “Is that what it is? You’re mad at me, so you went out and got a tattoo?”

“I got the tattoo for me .” I huff. “As much as this—” I gesture to the space between us “—is because of you, I can do things for myself every once in a while.”

He flops his hands down to his sides. “So you are. You’re pissed.”

I let the truth come screaming out of me. “Yes! Yes, I’m pissed, Bryce. I was completely blindsided by you, and I don’t know what to think about anything anymore.”

“Then why did you agree?”

I turn around in a tight circle.

Why did I agree? Because a man with dark eyes and a growly voice told me I have to stop giving a fuck about what other people think, and even though I’m hurt by Bryce and this experiment of an open marriage, I think…

I think maybe I deserve more than what I’ve settled for.

If I’m honest, our marriage stopped feeling like a marriage a while ago.

We’re more like roommates than lovers. We almost never go out anymore, and when we do, it’s usually for some event for his work.

And we don’t have much to say to each other.

We’ve argued more in the last year than in the first decade we were married, and I think, deep down, he’s mad at me because we never had children.

We had agreed not to have any, enjoying our freedom and the ability to do what we liked, but we stopped traveling together years ago, and he stopped holding my hand around the time his brother had a baby—years after I had my tubes tied.

If I were brave enough, I’d confront him about that. Ask him if this is some revenge plan or a way to get back at me. Or a plain old midlife crisis. I don’t know.

But either way, I fear it would lead to something I’m not necessarily ready to face. That I want this chance to fly. See, explore, and, yes, experiment.

I face my husband once again and tell him the one thing I am absolutely sure of. “There is more to me than being the mousy bookstore girl who smiles and nods to keep everybody happy. I am a woman with her own goals and desires.”

“I know,” he says, a little too understanding. Like my confession lends allowance to whatever it is his desires are. “I want you to be happy.”

I nod and swipe my hand over my hair. “It’s…fucking weird.”

He sputters out a laugh. “Did you just say ‘fuck’?”

I shrug. “I curse now too.”

He chuckles and nods as if happy he’s finally corrupted me after all these years. “Nice.”

But that has nothing to do with him, and everything to do with Ian.

The man I ran out on. Who I’m not sure I can ever face again after that embarrassing display of cowardice.

“Let’s go to bed,” Bryce says, and I don’t fight him on it, turning off the lights before slipping under the covers, keeping myself as far away from him as possible.

I roll to my side, at the very edge of the mattress, but my mind is in no mood to sleep, so I scroll through my phone.

First, to my social media. I don’t post often, once or twice a year, but I find the photos from our wedding, our smiling faces, and the big ugly necklace I wore because my mom wanted me to use hers as my “something borrowed.” But it’s gaudy and straight out of the 1970s.

I find a photo of Aunt Sue and me standing in front of Chapter and Verse on the day I officially took over as owner.

Aunt Sue is my rock, and it took me a long time before I felt confident enough to run it on my own, especially when the independent bookstore business is a rocky one.

It’s impossible to compete with the monopolies, but the local community comes through to help me eke it out every year.

Though, a few years ago, we were hit with a bad storm, and a burst pipe not only took out half the ceiling, but almost our entire inventory.

Bryce and I took out a loan to help keep the store afloat, and I’m still working on paying it back, slow and steady.

I tap out of my own profile and find Stone Ink’s.

The page is full of colorful photos of their work and the occasional picture of the artists.

One in particular is of Ian, glaring at the camera, caught in the middle of drawing something in a notebook.

Ian is an amazing artist, known for his photorealistic tattoos.

There are dozens and dozens of posts showing off his art: the portraits of animals, including a gorilla, snake, and cat.

There’s one of a guy’s chest that appears as if his skin is ripping open to reveal the Superman logo.

Another man has a tattoo of Zach Galifianakis and the baby from The Hangover .

It could be a still shot from the movie.

It’s no wonder there is a multiple-months-long waiting list for an appointment at Stone Ink, and yet Ian put me in his chair without a blink and gave me my tattoo as a gift.

I lightly skate my fingertips over the wrap still covering the ink before curling them into a fist at Bryce’s snore. Then I grab my pillow and head downstairs to sleep on the couch.