Chapter 9
Sixteen months ago
Arlington
Ash Riley
As soon as I pulled into the parking lot, I turned to Nate, because this had to fucking stop.
“Can we make up before the game starts?” I asked. “Fighting about errands and dinner is so goddamn stupid. What’re we even doing?”
Furthermore, when had this started?
Actually, I knew very well. Something had changed last year, around the same time we’d had another fight about kink dynamics.
Although…it hadn’t been a fight, had it?
It was more like he had given up. And ever since, we’d begun bickering over little shit that made no sense.
Nathan had become more…annoyed and standoffish, and I fucking hated it.
Because it drew out my anger and all my chest-tightening fears.
I became defensive. I picked fights. I knew that. And I couldn’t fucking help it.
Nate sighed and put on a beanie. “You’re right. It’s stupid. We’re fine.” He leaned over and kissed my cheek, then jumped out of the truck and zipped up his parka.
I swallowed.
We weren’t fine.
Grabbing my ball cap from the dash, I put it on and climbed out too. At least we didn’t have to pretend a whole lot. Dylan was at a friend’s house, and Mikey and Lily were spending the day with Nate’s folks.
After Hallie’s game, we were supposed to head over to Target and pick up enough Halloween candy to feed a village. Or a random neighborhood in Arlington, Virginia. But my desire to think about all the holidays coming up was officially at zero for the first time in my life.
Nate started walking toward the soccer field, but I couldn’t yet.
“Nathan, hold up,” I said.
He looked over his shoulder as I stuck my hands down the pockets of my jeans.
“Please don’t say we’re fine when we’re not.”
He barely showed a reaction, though he did walk over to me.
That blank expression could fuck off. It didn’t belong on his face.
“It’s been a shitty week,” I said.
It’d been a shitty year…and a half…but it was once again my fault that things had escalated. Last weekend, when I’d canceled an event at Mclean, Nathan hadn’t said a word. He’d just left the room, and I hadn’t had the balls to pick a fight about it once we weren’t surrounded by our kids.
A flicker of something familiar flashed by in Nate’s eyes, and he took another step toward me. That flicker was better than the emptiness. The flicker of taking the bait, the flicker of deciding to speak his mind.
“I have one question for you,” he said. “I want you to swear on our marriage and tell me the truth.”
I swallowed again, and the knot of unease doubled in size in my stomach. “Shoot.”
He stared at me. “We go through life and change our views, opinions, hobbies—and kinks. So if you tell me now that you no longer identify as a Daddy Dom, I’ll let it go and never bring it up again.
We’ll find our way back to each other.” He cleared his throat as I felt dread creeping up my spine.
“But if it’s still your core kink—and you’re sacrificing it for the sake of our marriage, because you’re scared… Then I don’t know what to do.”
I’d never wanted to lie so badly in my life, but he’d see right through me. He always had.
The emptiness had returned to his eyes. “I think I have my answer.”
Shit, shit, shit.
When he started turning around again, I almost panicked.
“Have you thought about leaving me?” I blurted out. And with that question, I was exposed. That motherfucker held my heart in his hands, and he could choose to squeeze the life force out of me.
He knitted his brows together. “Not in those terms, but I can’t solve this on my own.”
“You’re the only one who sees a problem,” I replied. “It’s a sacrifice I’ll happily make for the rest of my life.”
He shook his head grimly. “Then you’re right. It is my problem. Because I can’t let you do that. And if the tables were turned, I know you wouldn’t either.”
I clenched my jaw, and it felt like my heart fucking cracked right then and there.
Maybe I’d been in denial, but shit couldn’t be clearer to me now. We actually risked falling apart. We had watched friends go through divorces and breakups over the years, thinking that would never be us.
Devastation built up pressure within me, and it unleashed a pinch of the anger I tried to hold back.
“So, that’s it,” I bit out. “You don’t think we’ll make it as a couple unless I go out and fuck Littles left and right.”
Come on. Be angry with me. Yell at me.
Except, he didn’t. He let out an inaudible chuckle through his nose. “Yeah. That’s what I’m asking you to do. Sure sounds like me. Great job, Ash.” He turned a little and nodded toward the field. “I’m gonna go watch our daughter’s game. Are you coming or not?”
I averted my gaze and blinked back emotions.
Are you coming or not?
It felt like I was going.
I didn’t reply, but I followed him toward the bleachers.
Time to be a cheerful dad…
I spent the following month in a dark fog, and it was hard enough to resurface by the end of the day to be a good parent. By bedtime, I was more than happy to forget about reality and sink into dreams and, hell, even nightmares.
When had we started sleeping with our backs to each other?
If Nathan felt stuck, how the fuck did he think I felt?
I didn’t know what to do. I’d tried so fucking hard to unclench and just fucking approach a willing sub already—and I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. I was a goddamn coward.
This mess killed me even more because he was right. I wanted to explore that side of me, the one that’d been locked up for as long as I’d known it was there. I felt a constant pull to see where that road might take me, but fear of the unknown froze me in place.
Sharing my life with Nathan and our children was my dream. I needed that to be enough.
What if I went too far with someone? What if care and attachment morphed into something much bigger? I didn’t know what I was capable of. I’d just always had this feeling that being a Daddy Dom, for me, was heavy and meaningful and…it required a deep connection.
What if I fell in love? Could I love two men at once?
What if Nate fell for him too? Could I live with that?
How would our family change? We didn’t want to include a third.
I’d spoken to both Colt and Lucas, who were hoping to include a third in their relationship, and we weren’t the same.
It went against everything in my heart to even consider letting an outsider join our family as an equal partner.
And unlike Colt and Lucas, we had children.
That wasn’t fucking happening.
I blew out a breath and stared up at the ceiling.
Nate wasn’t asleep. I could tell by his breathing pattern.
Fuck me, I hated the distance between us.
The kids had started noticing too. At least Dylan and Hallie. I caught Dylan watching us sometimes, and Hallie asked us last week why we were fighting so much lately.
If only she knew. We weren’t those parents who shielded the kids from every single argument, but it went without saying we spared them from the yelling and full-blown fights.
My eyes welled up the second I heard Nathan sniffle, and I threw caution to the wind. I rolled over to him and gathered him in my arms.
Thank fuck, he hugged me back for all he was worth.
“I love you so much.” My voice cracked, and I screwed my eyes shut and choked up.
He sniffled again and nodded against my neck. “Me too,” he croaked. “What’re we gonna do?”
I don’t know.
I don’t fucking know.
I inched back to wipe at my cheeks, and I had to sit up. I had to think. We had to come up with a solution, because I couldn’t live without him.
Nate sat up too, and he flicked on the light on his bedside table.
It broke me to see him in tears.
Fuck, it terrified me.
So did the pressure building up. I rubbed at my chest and wanted to escape it with every fiber of my being.
“What would you do if the roles were reversed?” he asked hoarsely. “I’m genuinely asking.”
I sniffled.
Unfortunately, I’d run out of denial, and lies had never worked.
“What you’re doing now,” I admitted.
He nodded once, and another tear rolled down his cheek. “What would your next step be?”
My vision became too blurry. “I…I don’t know, Nate. I don’t know.”
Our lives had been entwined for eighteen years, and I couldn’t see a way out, even for solutions and alternatives.
Everything we did impacted the others in the family.
He worked, I worked, we had activities, we drove the kids around across town, we had chores, we had errands, we had Lily’s doctor’s appointments, we had Mikey’s anxiety…
If I took one step to the side, it would tug at the others too.
If we broke up, more than two hearts would be shattered.
If we pretended, we’d die a slow death. So…
what my next step would be was impossible to answer.
“If you were me, what would you do?” I asked.
He exhaled a humorless laugh, but he had heartbreak written all over him.
“I would fucking try, Ash. That’s what’s so fucking frustrating—you won’t even try to meet someone to see if you get along.
You talk about fears of crossing emotional lines with someone we don’t even know exists.
You paint these worst-case scenarios and—what if none of that happens?
What if you—or we—meet someone and everything falls into place?
Maybe we’ll care for him the perfect amount.
Maybe he’ll want exactly what he’s getting from us.
We have so many friends who’ve explored other types of relationships—”
“So, it’s all on me,” I stated. And yeah, I got angry. Because he locked me in further. I was trapped in a corner, and whichever direction I walked would be wrong. “I’m supposed to risk everything we’ve built so that you can calm the fuck down.”
He smashed his lips together, and all traces of sorrow were replaced by absolutely nothing. It was that emptiness all over again. He was shutting down.
“Forget it,” he muttered and left the bed.