It didn’t feel like a mistake in the moment.
Last night was… What the fuck was that?Whowas that? Not the man I expected to find when I arrived here, that’s for sure.
“Show Daddy where it hurts, angel.”
“That’s a good girl.”
“Show Daddy your pretty pussy, angel.”
He puts every man I’ve ever read about to shame. How the hell am I supposed to go back to how things were?
Space or not, I can’t spend the next few weeks hiding in my room. Especially since I left my Kindle and my water bottle downstairs. I need to de-stress a little, and the giant bathtub in the primary bathroom has been calling my name since I got here.
I’m not surprised to find bath salts in the bathroom cabinet—Nico probably needs to soak his muscles regularly after hauling around wood—but the bubble bath takes meby surprise. I squeeze some into the tub, breathing in the eucalyptus and lavender as I fill the tub, and I feel more relaxed already.
Usually, I read in the bath, but I’m not sure reading a book that makes me picture Nico doing filthy things to me is in the spirit of trying not to think about him. Being left alone with my thoughts also won’t stop that. A movie it is.
I carry my laptop through and try to set it up on the ledge at the end of the bath, but it’s too big to be stable. My iPad would be perfect, but I didn’t bring it. Nico has an iPad, but that would involve talking to him.
Talking to him for less than a minute versus sitting in silence in the tub and thinking about him for an hour… I’ll take the minute.
Nico is sitting on the couch when I walk downstairs, but the second he sees me, he jumps up. “I’m taking the dogs out.” Where’s the man who fell to his knees at the sight of me? I’m going to get a complex if he keeps this up.
“Before you run away, I have a favor to ask,” I say, and he pauses by the door.
“Yeah?” He sounds wary, and I do feel a little guilty, even though he’s a forty-seven-year-old man who could’ve walked away at any point last night and didn’t.
“Can I borrow your iPad? I want to watch a movie in the bath, and my laptop is too big.”
“Oh. Yeah, of course.” Nico walks back to the couch and grabs it from the side table before handing it to me, taking great care not to let his hand touch mine as he does. “Password’s ‘mice.’”
“Thanks. Mice? Like your tattoo?” I ask, mygaze drawn to his arm where I know the mouse is inked beneath his sleeve.
He nods. “Shay has the same one.” I remember him mentioning his dad calling him and his sisters his three little mice when they were kids.
“To honor Georgie?” I ask, and he blinks, like he’s surprised to hear her name out loud. I’ve noticed he stumbles over it when he speaks. He probably doesn’t hear it often. Hell, before I showed up here, he probably wasn’t used to hearing anyone else say anything often. I almost apologize, but I stop myself. Just because things are hard to say or hear doesn’t mean we should stop saying them.
“Yeah. We got them just after her… her funeral.” He stumbles over that, too. I might not have known him long, but I can tell he hasn’t come close to processing or coming to terms with losing his sister. And who could blame him? I can’t imagine a world in which Sloane doesn’t exist anymore. But how do you come back from losing a twin or a triplet?
“It’s beautiful. And I’m glad you and Shay have that together.”
For the first time since I woke up this morning, it feels like he’s really looking at me. I want to use this to ask if we can talk about last night, but I know he’ll only run faster if I do. It’s like he sees me considering it, because he takes a step back.
“Got to take the dogs out,” he mumbles, and he’s out the door, the boys following behind him, before I can open my mouth.
I sigh and trudge upstairs with his iPad. He has a genericdevice wallpaper, and when I type in the code, he only has a few apps. The standard photos, calendar, weather, emails, plus a couple of streaming services, music, and the Kindle app. I resist the urge to open it to see what kinds of things he reads on here. When I first got here, he was reading a mystery book that he clearly wasn’t enjoying, and when I asked, he said he and Shay were reading it together. But since then, he’s been reading on here, and he hasn’t volunteered any information about what books. Granted, I haven’t asked, because if I ask him, he’ll reciprocate, and telling him about the kind of books I read would just make him uncomfortable.
Sure, I could just answer my default: “Romance.” But, in my experience, people either roll their eyes when I tell them I read romance because it’s “not real literature,” or say something along the lines of “I could never read that kind of filth.” And, in my experience, I don’t handle either reaction well. I’m awfully defensive over the things I love, and books are no exception. I’ve learned to keep it to myself.
Since the accident, I’ve found a lot of comfort in watching the movies I loved as a kid. I can switch my brain off and not think too much, since I’ve seen them before, and I know the good guys always win.
I sink into the soothing bubbles, hit play on the screen, and watch princesses twirl around in ballgowns in shades of pink and purple. Life was easier when what I wanted was to be whisked away into a fairytale by a prince and showered with diamonds. Now, I want my dad’s best friend to throw me down and use me however he—oh, for the love of god. I’m not supposed to be thinking about that.
I rub my face, pressing my palms into my eyes to try and squeeze some sense into my skull.
Have I ever been this fixated on a man? Definitely not. I wish I could blame it on my dry spell, or just on the building tension, thanks to being stuck together. But it wasn’t—it was just that good.Nicowas that good.
For the first time since the accident, I was entirely focused on something other than my racing thoughts. I trusted him enough to switch off and focus on one thing: him. The closest I’ve gotten to doing that in months is… falling asleep beside him on the couch.
