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THE PERMISSION WEEKEND

A First-Time Hotwife Cuckold Romance

The thing nobody tells you about missing your husband is that it is not always romantic.

Sometimes it is romantic. Sometimes you stand in the kitchen pretending not to listen for the car door, wearing the black leggings he likes because you are a grown woman with dignity and also absolutely no dignity at all. Sometimes you light a candle and wipe the counter twice and check your breath like you are seventeen and about to be picked up for homecoming.

But sometimes missing your husband is also petty.

Like being annoyed that he has been gone four days and somehow still managed to leave one sock under the bed.

Not two socks. One.

A single gray athletic sock, curled like a dead mouse beside the storage bin.

I found it twenty minutes before Elliot got home from his work retreat in Nashville, and I stood there holding it between two fingers, thinking, This man wants to be desired by me. This man wants a woman to throw herself into his arms. This man cannot move a sock six inches to the laundry basket.

Marriage is sacred, obviously.

I threw the sock into the hamper and went back to trying to look effortless.

Effortless took me forty minutes.

I put on a soft cream sweater that slipped off one shoulder if I moved the right way. I did my hair in that loose, not-trying style that requires three products and personal delusion. I made pasta because it could sit on the stove without becoming a crime scene. I shaved my legs even though it was February and nobody in Oregon had seen a bare leg since Thanksgiving.

Then, because the universe loves humbling women, I got a text from Sienna.

SIENNA: Do not be boring. Call me when he gets home. I have gossip that may legally qualify as weather.

I smiled before I meant to.

That was Sienna. Everything was either nothing or a federal event. She was my best friend, my emergency contact, and the woman most likely to make a bad decision sound like a wellness retreat.

I typed back:

ME: He’s almost home. Can it wait?

Three dots appeared immediately.

SIENNA: It can wait. I cannot. But fine. Be a wife. Gross.

Then:

SIENNA: Also wear the jeans.

I looked down at my leggings.

Sienna had never respected comfort.

The garage door rumbled open at 7:18.

My whole body reacted before I did. That was the embarrassing part. My chest tightened. My stomach went fizzy. My hands suddenly forgot what hands were supposed to do.

I heard his car door shut. Then the muffled thunk of his suitcase. Then his key in the mudroom door even though the door was unlocked, because Elliot had never trusted an unlocked door in his life.

“Laur?” he called.

“In the kitchen.”

He came in wearing his navy travel jacket, hair flattened on one side from the plane, cheeks cold from outside. He had that tired, slightly stunned airport look, like he had spent the day being processed by machines and business travelers with rolling luggage.

And still, when he saw me, his face changed.

Not dramatically. Elliot was not dramatic. He was a quiet man. He did not enter rooms like he owned them. He entered rooms like he did not want to disturb the room.

But his eyes softened.

That did it to me.

Four days of being normal, capable, perfectly fine, and then his eyes softened and I wanted to crawl directly into his skin like a raccoon looking for winter shelter.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi.”

We stood there for one ridiculous second, smiling at each other like polite neighbors.

Then he dropped his suitcase handle and I crossed the kitchen, and he caught me so hard I laughed into his neck.

He smelled like airplane, wool coat, winter air, and Elliot. There was a very specific smell to someone you love. You could never bottle it. Nobody would buy a candle called Husband After Airport Security, but I would have burned it down to the glass.

His arms went around me. Mine went under his jacket. He was warm beneath all those cold layers.

“I missed you,” he said into my hair.

“I missed you too.”

“No, I really missed you.”

I leaned back enough to look at him. “That sounded suspiciously competitive.”

“I’m just saying I won.”

“You won missing me?”

“Yes.”

“Congratulations. Your prize is pasta and a wife who has been alone with her thoughts for four days.”

He kissed me then, smiling against my mouth.

It was not a movie kiss. We bumped noses. He still had his laptop bag over one shoulder. The pasta water chose that exact moment to start hissing on the stove like it had moral objections. But the second kiss was better. Slower. His hand came up to my jaw, thumb brushing just under my ear, and something warm moved through me with surprising force.

There was nothing new about kissing my husband in our kitchen.

That was the dangerous thing, I think.

It was familiar enough to feel safe, but not safe enough to feel dull.

He pulled back first and looked at me.

“What?” I asked.

“You look good.”

I looked down at myself because women are apparently required by law to reject compliments. “I look like I folded laundry and then panicked.”

“You look like you missed me.”

“That is very arrogant.”

“Is it wrong?”

I opened my mouth, then closed it.

He smiled.

I hate when a quiet man smiles like that. It makes you feel like he knows your private files.

“No,” I said.

His smile changed. A little darker, maybe. Or maybe I invented that later because of what happened after.

Dinner lasted about twelve minutes.

Not because the pasta was bad. The pasta was fine. It had lemon and garlic and too much parmesan, which is not a flaw but a philosophy. We sat across from each other at the small table by the window, the one we had bought secondhand when we first moved in and were still pretending we enjoyed “projects.” We talked about his flight, the hotel, the one guy from accounting who had apparently referred to hot chicken as “Nashville’s apology for itself.”

I laughed in the right places. I asked questions. He answered.

But there was a charge in the room.

It sat between us like a third plate.

Every time his knee brushed mine under the table, I lost half a sentence. Every time he watched my mouth while I talked, I forgot what I had planned to say next. I was thirty-four years old, married seven years, and somehow still capable of acting like a woman whose crush had touched her elbow at a bar.

After dinner, I tried to clear the plates.

Elliot took one from my hand and set it back down.

“Leave it.”

“Future Laurel would like a word.”

“Future Laurel can yell at me tomorrow.”

“Future Laurel is very tired of being the only adult in this house.”

He stepped closer. “I’ll do them.”

“No, you’ll soak them, which is what men call doing dishes when they want praise for placing objects in water.”

He laughed and kissed me again.

This time it did not stay cute.

This time his hand slid to my waist. This time I felt the table against the back of my thigh. This time the whole room seemed to narrow around his mouth and his hands and the low sound he made when I pulled him closer by his shirt.

For a while there was no talking.

There was the kitchen light above us. The smell of garlic. His suitcase abandoned by the door. His hands under the loose edge of my sweater, warm against my back. My breath doing stupid little things I would have denied in court.

He kissed my neck, and I made a noise that was not elegant.

He paused.

I felt him smile.

“Don’t,” I said.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You smiled.”

“I’m not allowed to smile?”

“Not like you discovered evidence.”

His mouth brushed my ear. “I did discover evidence.”

I should say something here that makes me sound poised.

I was not poised.

I was married and touched-starved and wearing the wrong underwear for this level of inspection.

Somehow we made it upstairs. I do not remember making a decision. One second we were in the kitchen, and the next we were in the hallway, laughing because he nearly tripped over his own suitcase, which felt deeply symbolic and also completely on brand.

In the bedroom, things slowed.

Not stopped. Slowed.

That was Elliot too. He could be hungry, but he was never careless. He touched me like he was checking whether I was really there. Like the four days had been longer for him than he wanted to admit.

I loved that about him.

I also wanted him to hurry up and stop being poetic with my collarbone, but love contains multitudes.

The lamp on my side of the bed was on, giving everything that amber evening softness that makes a normal room look almost flattering. His jacket was on the floor. My sweater was somewhere near the dresser. My hair had given up all pretense of intention.

He was above me, his forearm braced by my shoulder, looking down at me with that focused expression he got sometimes. Not serious exactly. More like he was listening to something.

“What?” I asked again.

He touched my cheek.

“Nothing.”

“That is the face of a man with a thought.”

“I have thoughts.”

“Rare, but yes.”

He laughed quietly, then dipped his head and kissed me. Slower this time. Too slow for it to be only a kiss. His mouth moved from mine to my jaw, then lower, and I closed my eyes because there are moments when looking feels like too much information.

His voice came against my skin.

“Can I ask you something?”

I almost made a joke. I was ready. Something about tax documents or whether he had remembered to cancel the hotel Wi-Fi charge.

But his tone stopped me.

It was casual on purpose.

I knew him too well.

“Okay,” I said.

He lifted his head. His eyes met mine, and there was something in them I could not immediately name.

Nervousness, maybe.

That was what made my stomach tighten.

Elliot did not get nervous with me. Not anymore. We had seen each other through food poisoning, credit card debt, family funerals, one terrifying mammogram scare, and the time I cried because the grocery store stopped carrying the yogurt I liked and apparently that was the load-bearing yogurt of my mental health.

But now he looked nervous.

“Do you ever think about other men?” he asked.

The room went still.

It was such a small sentence. Almost polite.

Do you ever think about other men?

Like he had asked if we were out of coffee filters.

I stared at him.

“What?”

He did not look away. “Other men. Do you ever think about them?”

My first reaction was not guilt.

That came later.

My first reaction was irritation, because my body had been having a lovely evening and now my brain had arrived with a clipboard.

“What kind of question is that?”

“A real one.”

I pushed myself up a little on my elbows. The sheet slipped, and I grabbed it because suddenly I felt absurdly exposed. Which, considering the situation, was not exactly a plot twist.

“Why are you asking me that?”

“I don’t know.”

“Yes, you do.”

He exhaled through his nose. He looked toward the window, then back at me.

“I think I do.”

My pulse had started doing something dramatic.

“Elliot.”

“I’m not accusing you of anything.”

“Well, good, because I was planning to continue not being accused in my own bedroom.”

That made him smile, but only for a second.

“I mean it,” he said. “I’m not asking if you’ve done anything.”

“I haven’t.”

“I know.”

“You say that very confidently for a man asking insane questions after pasta.”

“I know you haven’t.”

There was warmth in it. Trust. Which somehow made the question worse.

I looked down at the sheet twisted in my fingers.

Had I thought about other men?

Of course I had.

Not in a grand tragic way. Not like I was secretly walking around with a list of candidates. I was not emotionally texting a personal trainer named Brock. I did not even know a Brock, which felt like a personal achievement.

But had I noticed men? Yes.

Had I imagined things for half a second and then folded the thought away like a receipt I did not want anyone to find? Also yes.

There was the man at the farmer’s market last summer with the tattooed forearms who had helped me reach the peaches. There was the dad at the school fundraiser, not even my school, I do not have children, who had laughed at something I said while Sienna and I were buying raffle tickets for reasons still unclear to me. There was the bartender in Bend who had called me “darlin’” in a voice that probably came with a warning label.

Small thoughts. Human thoughts.

A flash. A heat. A little private weather.

Nothing that meant I loved my husband less.

Maybe that was why I had never said it out loud.

Because marriage makes you afraid that honesty will sound like betrayal, even when it is only honesty.

“No,” I said.

It came out too quickly.

Elliot’s face changed almost imperceptibly.

He knew.

Of course he knew.

I hated that too. Not really. But a little.

“No?” he asked.

“No.”

He nodded once.

Then he leaned down and kissed my shoulder, very gently, like he was giving me time to take it back.

My throat tightened.

“Why?” I asked.

“Why what?”

“Why do you want to know?”

He stayed quiet.

His thumb moved slowly over my hip, back and forth, back and forth. Not trying to start anything. Not stopping anything either.

“When we were in Nashville,” he said, “one of the guys told a story.”

“What guys?”

“From the retreat.”

“The hot chicken philosophers?”

He smiled faintly. “Them.”

“What kind of story?”

He hesitated.

And that was when I felt it. A small, sharp spark low in my stomach.

Not because I knew what he was going to say.

Because I did not.

Elliot was steady. Predictable in the way good men are predictable. He paid bills early. He brought reusable bags to the grocery store. He made coffee before I got downstairs. He had opinions about windshield wiper fluid.

He did not come home from work retreats with stories that made him nervous in bed.

“One of them has an arrangement with his wife,” he said.

I waited.

He watched my face carefully.

“What kind of arrangement?” I asked.

“He lets her see other men sometimes.”

I blinked.

The sentence landed in the room and stayed there.

He lets her see other men sometimes.

My first thought was, That sounds like something Sienna would know about before I did.

My second thought was, His hand is still on my hip.

My third thought was not a sentence.

It was a physical reaction so immediate I had to look away.

Elliot noticed.

I knew he noticed because his hand stilled.

“Like cheating?” I asked.

“No.”

“Then like what?”

“Like permission.”

That word.

Permission.

It did not sound dirty by itself. It sounded like a school form. A parking pass. A little box you checked before an app stole your data.

But in his mouth, in our bed, with his hand on me and his voice careful, it changed shape completely.

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“It means she tells him. Before. After. Sometimes during, I guess.”

“During?”

My voice betrayed me.

Elliot’s eyes flicked over my face.

“Sometimes she texts him.”

I laughed once, but it came out breathless.

“Sorry, she texts him? Like, ‘Having a nice time, wish you were here’?”

The corner of his mouth moved. “Something like that.”

“That is insane.”

“I thought so too.”

“Past tense?”

He looked down.

Oh.

Oh, that was dangerous.

I felt my face heat.

“Elliot.”

“I’m not saying I want that.”

“You literally brought it up while touching me in bed.”

“I know.”

“That is not the behavior of a man discussing urban planning.”

He laughed under his breath, then rubbed a hand over his face. He looked so embarrassed and so turned on and so afraid of both that my chest softened before my brain could object.

“I’ve been thinking about it,” he said.

“For how long?”

“Since Nashville.”

“That was four days ago.”

“I know.”

“You’ve had four days to become weird?”

“I may have shown early symptoms before the trip.”

Despite myself, I laughed.

He smiled, relieved for half a second.

Then the room got quiet again.

I pulled the sheet higher, which was ridiculous. He had seen every part of me. He had seen me with a stomach virus. He had once held my hair while I threw up tequila after Sienna’s birthday and still married me six months later. There was no modesty left between us.

But there are different kinds of naked.

“What exactly have you been thinking?” I asked.

He swallowed.

“That I liked the idea of you being wanted.”

I did not breathe.

He said it softly, almost like a confession.

“By someone else?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“And that doesn’t make you angry?”

“It does.”

My eyes lifted to his.

He did not look away this time.

“It does,” he repeated. “That’s the part I don’t understand.”

A strange tenderness moved through me. Tenderness, and something hotter underneath it.

“You like being angry?”

“No. I like…” He stopped, searching for words. “I like knowing someone else would want you and that you’d still come home to me.”

I should have said something sensible.

I should have asked if he was drunk in Nashville. I should have suggested couples therapy, or sleep, or at minimum a snack.

Instead, I said nothing.

Because something in me had gone very still, listening.

He looked at my mouth.

“And I wondered if you ever thought about it.”

I looked away again.

There it was.

The real question.

Not whether other men existed. Not whether men looked. Not whether I had noticed.

Whether I had imagined myself allowing it.

There is a moment in some marriages, I think, where a door appears where you were sure there was only wall.

You can ignore it.

You can make a joke.

You can say no and turn off the lamp and both pretend the wall is still a wall.

Or you can touch the handle.

I hated how badly I wanted to touch the handle.

“No,” I said again.

He nodded.

I lasted maybe three seconds.

“That was a lie,” I said.

His eyes came back to mine so fast it almost hurt.

The air changed.

I felt it in him. In me. Around us.

“I haven’t done anything,” I said quickly.

“I know.”

“I wouldn’t.”

“I know.”

“I mean, not without…” I stopped.

Not without what?

Not without asking?

Not without permission?

Not without my husband looking at me the way he was looking at me now, like my honesty had become its own kind of touch?

Elliot waited.

I hated him a little for being patient.

“Yes,” I said finally.

His hand tightened slightly on my hip.

My heart kicked.

“Yes, what?”

“Yes, I’ve thought about other men.”

His eyes closed for half a second.

That reaction did something to me.

Not because it was smooth. It was not. It was raw and involuntary, and I had never felt more powerful in my life.

“Who?” he asked.

I laughed, nervous. “Oh, absolutely not.”

“You can’t say yes and then turn into the Pentagon.”

“I can, actually. I contain multitudes and classified information.”

“Laurel.”

The way he said my name made my stomach dip.

Not commanding. Not angry.

Hungry.

I looked down at his hand on me. His wedding ring caught the lamplight.

That almost undid me.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“You do.”

“They’re not real things. They’re little thoughts.”

“Tell me one.”

“No.”

“Tell me one little thought.”

I covered my face with one hand.

He laughed softly, but he did not move away.

“Fine,” I said into my palm. “The guy at the farmer’s market.”

“What guy?”

“Oh my God.”

“What guy?”

“The peach guy.”

“The peach guy?”

“He was not selling peaches. He helped me reach them.”

“The peach guy helped you reach peaches.”

“I regret giving you language.”

“What did you think about him?”

“I thought he had nice forearms.”

Elliot was silent.

I lowered my hand and looked at him.

His expression had shifted again.

It was the smallest thing. His jaw tight. His eyes darker. His hand still on my hip like he was making himself keep it there.

“Forearms,” he said.

“Don’t make it sound clinical.”

“What else?”

“That is all.”

“Laurel.”

“I imagined him touching my waist.”

Elliot inhaled slowly.

There was my guilt.

It came up hard and fast. The reality of saying it. The ridiculous peach man, who probably had a girlfriend and seasonal allergies and no idea he had just been dragged into my marriage.

“I’m sorry,” I said immediately.

Elliot shook his head. “Don’t be.”

“That sounds like something people say right before they are very much being.”

“I’m not.”

“You got quiet.”

“I got jealous.”

My whole body warmed.

He saw it.

Of course he saw it.

His thumb started moving again.

“And?” I asked.

His voice lowered. “And I liked hearing it.”

I pressed my lips together.

Neither of us spoke for a moment.

Outside, a car passed on the wet street. The house creaked in that ordinary way houses do at night. Somewhere downstairs my phone buzzed again, probably Sienna committing crimes against patience.

But upstairs, the world had shrunk to the bed, the lamplight, my husband’s hand, and the strange new truth sitting between us.

“What did the man in Nashville call it?” I asked.

Elliot watched me carefully. “A hotwife thing.”

The word was blunt enough to make me laugh.

“A what?”

“A hotwife.”

“I hate that I know what that means.”

“You do?”

“I have the internet, Elliot. I’m married, not Amish.”

He smiled, then his face went serious.

“He said some couples call it wife-sharing. Some call it cuckold. Some don’t like that word.”

“Do you?”

“Like it?”

“Yes.”

He took a long breath.

“I don’t know.”

“Liar.”

That surprised him.

It surprised me too.

He looked at me.

I felt bold for exactly one second, then immediately wanted to hide under the duvet and start a new life as a decorative pillow.

“You like it a little,” I said.

His eyes stayed on mine.

“Yes.”

The word was almost silent.

But I heard it everywhere.

I had known Elliot for nine years. Married seven. I knew the way he took his coffee, the exact face he made when pretending to enjoy my mother’s green bean casserole, the way he folded towels wrong despite repeated training. I knew the man.

And yet here he was, telling me a secret I had never seen.

Not a betrayal.

A secret.

There is a difference.

A betrayal takes something from you.

A secret, when given carefully, can feel like being trusted with a lit match.

“Why didn’t you tell me before?” I asked.

“Because I thought you’d think I was broken.”

That took the heat out of me for one second.

Not all of it. But enough.

I touched his face.

“Oh, El.”

He looked embarrassed then, truly embarrassed, and tried to turn his head like he could get away from my kindness. Men will confess a fantasy involving their wife and another man, but tenderness? Terrifying. Lock the doors.

“You’re not broken,” I said.

“You don’t know that.”

“I know enough.”

“You’re not weirded out?”

“I am extremely weirded out.”

He winced.

“But not in the way you think,” I said.

He looked at me.

“I’m weirded out because part of me is scared,” I admitted. “And part of me is curious. And part of me is already trying to act morally superior while being very interested, which is honestly rude of me.”

That made him laugh. A real laugh this time.

I smiled, but my pulse was still racing.

“What are you curious about?” he asked.

I regretted my honesty instantly.

“That is not how curiosity works. You don’t interrogate it under a lamp.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not.”

“I’m a little sorry.”

“You are academically sorry.”

He leaned down and kissed my cheek. Then my jaw. Then the corner of my mouth.

“Tell me,” he murmured.

I closed my eyes.

The truth was there, waiting.

Not clean. Not simple.

I was curious about being wanted in front of my husband.

That was the worst of it. The hottest of it.

Not leaving him. Not sneaking. Not lying. I had no secret fantasy of hotel rooms with fake names and deleted texts. The thought of real cheating made my stomach hurt.

But being allowed?

Being watched, even from far away?

Telling him what another man said. Feeling his jealousy. Feeling him want me more because someone else wanted me too.

That was the thought that scared me.

Because it did not feel like running away from my marriage.

It felt like lighting something inside it.

“I’m curious what it would feel like,” I said.

His mouth paused near mine.

“What would feel like?”

“To be looked at that way and know you knew.”

His breathing changed.

I could feel it.

I kept my eyes closed because I was braver in darkness, even lamp darkness.

“To flirt,” I said. “Maybe. To know I could come home and tell you. To not have to pretend I never notice anyone.”

His forehead rested against mine.

“And more?” he asked.

The question was barely there.

More.

Such a small word for such a big cliff.

I opened my eyes.

“I don’t know.”

It was the most honest answer I had.

He nodded.

“I don’t need you to know tonight.”

That made me love him so much I almost cried.

Which would have ruined the mood, probably, though in marriage you learn that crying and desire are not always as far apart as magazines suggest.

He kissed me again, and this time the kiss felt different.

Not because of technique. Technique is overrated and often discussed by people who own too many throw pillows.

It felt different because something had been said.

A little door in the wall had opened, and now air was coming through.

His hand moved over me with more certainty. Mine slid into his hair. There was hunger in it now, but also questions. Too many questions. Questions turning into heat. Heat turning into courage.

At some point, he whispered, “Next weekend.”

I went still.

“What?”

“Your trip with Sienna.”

I opened my eyes.

I had almost forgotten.

Almost.

Sienna and I were leaving the following Friday for three nights on the coast. Not a wild trip. Not originally. It was supposed to be a late-winter reset in Seabrook, which meant wine, seafood, a spa we could not afford but had booked anyway, and Sienna saying “we should get up for sunrise” before sleeping until ten.

“What about it?” I asked.

Elliot’s eyes searched mine.

“If someone notices you,” he said slowly, “I want you to tell me.”

My stomach dropped in a clean, terrifying line.

“That’s all?”

“For now.”

“For now,” I repeated.

He nodded.

I should have made a joke.

I had several available.

For now? Sir, this is a marriage, not a software update.

But I could not quite get the words out.

Because I pictured it.

The coast. The hotel bar. Sienna laughing too loud beside me. Me wearing the green dress I had almost returned because it was a little too fitted, a little too confident, a little too someone might look twice.

Then someone looking twice.

Then my phone in my hand.

Then Elliot at home, reading what I wrote.

I felt heat move through me so suddenly I had to turn my face away.

He touched my chin and brought me back.

“You don’t have to do anything,” he said.

“I know.”

“I mean it.”

“I know.”

“If it feels bad, we stop talking about it.”

“Okay.”

“If it feels good…”

He stopped.

I waited.

The room seemed to hold its breath with me.

“If it feels good,” he said, “you tell me the truth.”

I stared at him.

Not permission to do anything.

Not really.

Not yet.

Permission to tell the truth.

That should not have felt as erotic as it did.

But it did.

Maybe because truth is the first undressing.

Maybe because I had spent years assuming desire had to be edited before it could enter a marriage. Trimmed, softened, made polite. Like you could love someone completely only if you arrived without shadows.

Elliot was looking at one of my shadows now.

And instead of backing away, he was touching it.

Downstairs, my phone buzzed again.

Then again.

Then again.

“Sienna,” I muttered.

Elliot laughed softly. “Persistent.”

“She has the patience of a raccoon in a locked pantry.”

“Are you going to answer?”

“No.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“What?” I said. “I’m busy having my marriage professionally destabilized.”

He laughed into my neck.

And because we were still us, because the world had not ended, because my husband had said something impossible and I had not run from it, I laughed too.

Later, much later, after the lamp was off and the dishes were still absolutely not done, we lay tangled under the covers while rain tapped against the bedroom window.

Elliot was half asleep. I could tell by the weight of his breathing.

I was wide awake.

My body felt warm and heavy, but my mind would not stop moving.

Hotwife.

Cuckold.

Permission.

Wife-sharing.

They sounded like words from another couple’s life. People with better lighting and worse judgment. People who said things like “the lifestyle” without making a face. People who owned robes that matched.

Not us.

We were ordinary. Painfully ordinary, sometimes.

We bought chicken breasts in family packs. We argued about thermostat settings. I had a dentist appointment Monday. Elliot used spreadsheets for vacation planning. Our most scandalous recent event was that I had eaten shredded cheese straight from the bag at midnight and denied it despite being the only other human in the house.

And yet.

His hand rested on my stomach beneath the blanket.

His wedding ring pressed lightly against my skin.

I thought about the peach guy’s forearms.

Then I thought about Elliot asking, Who?

Then I thought about the green dress hanging in my closet for next weekend, still with the tag on because I had not committed to being that woman.

My phone lit up on the nightstand.

Sienna again.

I carefully reached for it without waking Elliot.

There were four messages.

SIENNA: Are you alive?

SIENNA: If he came home hot, just say that.

SIENNA: Actually don’t say that. I’m lonely and eating crackers for dinner.

SIENNA: Also I need to tell you something before the coast. It’s about Elliot. Not bad. Weird. Possibly hot. Don’t make that face.

I stared at the screen.

My heart picked up again.

Beside me, Elliot shifted in his sleep and pulled me closer.

I typed with one thumb.

ME: What do you mean it’s about Elliot?

The dots appeared.

Disappeared.

Appeared again.

Then Sienna’s reply came through.

SIENNA: Call me tomorrow. And Laurel?

I waited.

SIENNA: If your husband asked you anything strange tonight, don’t panic. He wasn’t joking.

I stopped breathing for a second.

The rain kept tapping the window.

Elliot slept against my shoulder, warm and familiar and suddenly not entirely familiar at all.

I looked across the dark room toward the closet.

Toward the green dress.

And for the first time, I wondered if I had bought it for the trip.

Or if I had bought it for the confession afterward.

[embed]My Husband Shared Me with His Bodyguard During a Storm Three days trapped in a glass beach house with two obsessed men and absolutely no limits.medium.com