Intimacy

by Mattie Bowman

  Intimacy

  An Inhibitions Novel

  Mattie Bowman

  Contents

  Intimacy

  Also by Mattie Bowman

  1. Tara

  2. Quinn

  3. Tara

  4. Quinn

  5. Tara

  6. Quinn

  7. Tara

  8. Quinn

  9. Tara

  10. Quinn

  11. Tara

  12. Quinn

  13. Tara

  14. Quinn

  15. Tara

  16. Quinn

  17. Tara

  18. Three Months Later

  The End

  Prologue

  Find Me Here!

  About the Author

  An Inhibitions Novel

  Also by Mattie Bowman

  Inhibitions

  Copyright © 2017 by Mattie Bowman All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you’d like to share it with. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.

  Cover by: Madhat Books

  ISBN# eBook: 978-1-946356-81-9

  ISBN# Print: 978-1-946356-82-6

  For anyone who has needed to rediscover themselves

  1

  Tara

  “We dropped her off at college three months ago, and you haven’t changed a thing,” Quinn said, materializing in the doorway of what used to be our daughter’s bedroom. His sudden appearance made me jump from where I’d been sitting on her bed, hugging her favorite pillow to my chest—the one with Poe’s Raven scripted across it. I squeezed it before sitting it back in the center of her bed, giving myself a few seconds to put a mask of calm on my face. By the time I turned to Quinn, I was smiling.

  “I simply haven’t gotten around to it yet.”

  He looked at me with those too-knowing blue-gray eyes, smirking as he stepped fully into the room. “This could be a gym, a home office, hell, even a tricked out guest room for when she comes home for holidays. You’ve begged me for years to add more rooms to the house,” he said, tapping the top of Blaire’s white dresser across the room. “Here is one just waiting.”

  The weight on the center of my chest doubled and, as I had for the past three months now, I rubbed at the spot like I could ease the strain.

  Quinn eyed my hand and slowly walked to me, sinking onto the bed so hard I shifted toward him. My thigh brushed his, and a flare of want rippled in my core. I licked my lips, lightly tracing the blond stubble on his jaw with my fingertips. I inched toward him, my lips a breath away from his.

  He kissed me quickly before taking my hand in his and planting a kiss there as well. “I have to go back to the warehouse,” he said, and the fiery air went right out of me. “That’s why I came to find you. I know it was supposed to be date night, but our main planer shorted and the new foreman doesn’t know how to handle the backlog it’s creating.”

  “Of course,” I said, ever the dutiful wife, though I felt so far from that my bones ached. “I’ll cancel our reservations.”

  Again. The thought went unspoken, but I couldn’t stop it. I had made reservations at a new place deep in the heart of Houston—somewhere we’d never been. Somewhere where I’d be forced to order something other than the chicken and him other than the New York Strip. Somewhere different. New. Possibly exciting. If we could stand it.

  I knew I could, but I wasn’t sure if he wanted it.

  Wanted me anymore.

  He rose from the bed and kissed my forehead. “I’ll bring you home a chocolate croissant from the bakery near the shop?”

  I nodded and gave him the best smile I could manage, letting it fall completely as he walked out the door. Grabbing the pillow again, I held it and fell back on the bed. The ceiling was still covered in glow in the dark stars from Blaire’s middle school years. I focused on them as I listened to Quinn’s heavy boots walk through the house before our large front door shut loudly on his way out.

  A thick silence filled our home, one that I had never noticed was so incredibly draining until Blaire had moved out. I clenched my eyes shut, my heart aching from missing her, and yet, there was so much more to the pain than her being away at college.

  I was beyond thrilled she’d been accepted to Harvard and was overjoyed she’d survived the adjustment period of being out on her own much more than we had…or I had. Quinn hadn’t acted like he felt her absence more than a few “strange not having such a schedule, now, isn’t it?” or “I can’t believe it’s been a week since I hugged my baby girl.” And, when I really dug down, I knew his aloofness was one of the reasons for my anxiety.

  Because, the thing was, I knew Quinn. Knew him to his core. But he was all I knew. Just as I was for him.

  We had Blaire when we were sixteen. We married at eighteen. He dropped out of school and went straight to work at a milling company in order to support the baby and me. I made it through high school—thanks to our mothers helping with Blaire those first two years—and then had dedicated every single day since to raising her.

  Playdates, schools, volunteering at her events, extracurricular activities, study programs, special tutoring…anything she showed interest in or excelled at. We made sure we did whatever it took to give her the chances we threw away with one foolish evening. Not that I’d ever thought of her as a mistake. She was my world—our world—and there wasn’t a thing I would change about the way my life turned out. My heart was full, and I couldn’t be more proud of our daughter…

  But the second we moved her into the terribly small dorm on campus, my brain started whispering things to me. Fears, mostly. And nearly all of them were about Quinn. About what we meant to each other now that we weren’t solely focused on Blaire.

  He was the only man I’d ever loved. The only man I’d ever slept with just as I was the only woman he’d slept with. And while we were still loving toward each other, over the years—from diaper changes to middle school soccer to high school debate team matches out of state—we fell into this routine where we put our relationship on the backburner.

  I’m so glad we love each other enough not to feel forced to have sex every night. I’d once said to him when Blaire was a toddler, and I lived in a constant state of exhaustion. Things will change when she goes to school. We’ll have more time for us.

  I’d thought that would be the case, but there was always something to do or somewhere to go. Quinn only moved up and up in the company until eventually he’d started his own furniture business and now ran it so successfully we could afford the insanely expensive college Blaire had chosen. And she had chosen it—not the other way around—because she was smart and had her pick of anywhere in the world to go.

  I selfishly wanted her to go somewhere closer to home but knew in my heart she couldn’t. Our baby girl had turned into more than the intelligent, capable woman we’d promised she would be the day she was born. She had wings that would take her to places I couldn’t imagine.

  So, to my shock, I couldn’t fathom how I could feel so out of place in my own home—the home I’d spent years building with her and Quinn—until he had to go out of town on a business trip he made bi-monthly to check out new lumber. It was the same month we’d dropped her off.
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  He hadn’t asked me to go with him.

  I could’ve gone, as I was now a stay at home mother with no child, but he didn’t even think to ask. And I didn’t either. I’d helped him pack and kissed him before he left like I’d always done. It wasn’t until that night I realized I should’ve climbed in his truck with him. That I should’ve thought to be adventurous, to be spontaneous. Because now I could. Now we could. But did he want to?

  I rolled over on her bed and brought my knees closer to my chest, holding the pillow tighter. In the beginning, everything had happened so fast I didn’t have time to be insecure. Then, as we all fell into a stable, solid routine, there wasn’t a reason for me to even think that Quinn and I weren’t meant to be together. It was too easy with him, and I knew he loved me. We fought, of course, but what married couple didn’t? Still, now that she was gone, and the house was quiet, and there wasn’t a thing for me to do—the house was cleaner than it had ever been and I’d read every romance novel on the top twenty list—I couldn’t help but wonder if he still loved me the way he had when we were kids?

  The day I’d first set eyes on him brought a smile to my lips. Freshman year of high school—we had both somehow missed the bus to school—and he hadn’t noticed I was rushing up behind him to enter the building. He’d thrown the door open so hard his elbow clipped my nose, flinging me and my ultra-cool shoulder bag backward. I would’ve fallen down the concrete steps if he hadn’t possessed reflexes quicker than a cat’s. He grabbed my hand, stopping what would’ve been a most unsightly fall and pulled me to him. His hands were rough and calloused—I think the man was born with a hammer and nail in his hand—and he brushed my brown hair away from my face to inspect my nose.

  Luckily, it wasn’t bleeding or broken, but my voice had been severely damaged by his hauntingly beautiful blue-gray eyes. His touch had softened with each second that went by and yet he took minutes to let me go. When he finally did, my heart was erratic and my breathing ragged. Not from the hit, but from the electricity he naturally radiated—something I thought was created specifically to torture me in the most delicious way.

  We’d started dating that same week, and continued on in that rapid way love hits the first time—like a hurricane.

  Until the condom broke.

  It didn’t change my love for him. It expanded it even though I had been terrified. And when he’d asked me to marry him the minute we were both technically legal, it wasn’t a romantic, sweeping gesture like I’d seen in the movies, but a simple… “We’re eighteen now.” He’d slipped a small, single band of white gold on my left-hand ring finger and that had been that. We’d married in city hall, with Blaire on my hip and our mothers bawling in the back.

  I’d never felt in need of anything—except perhaps more sleep on occasion—but other than that we’d led a full and happy life. One where we accomplished every single dream or aspiration we’d had since the night I stood crying over the bathroom sink, rereading the pregnancy test box over and over until the two pink lines swirled into something I couldn’t comprehend.

  I pushed off my baby girl’s bed, gently laying the pillow back in its spot, and slowly walked around her room. So many memories, so much life, and now the place was suffocating me with silence. With stationary. Who was I now? Quinn’s wife? Did he want me still?

  Honestly, I wanted him. There wasn’t a second I didn’t want him to consume me as he had before we’d devoted our life to our daughter, but I couldn’t be sure of anything in the state of mind I was in right now. I thought, after a few weeks, I’d return to myself and go on with my life—whatever that would look like to me then. But I hadn’t. The weight of anxiousness was still haunting me, the uncertainty of who I was to Quinn now that we were alone together again. We’d married so young. It hadn’t seemed like it at the time, but now looking at it, and seeing Blaire at the same age—I couldn’t imagine her getting married right now.

  Was that the only reason we had gotten married? Because of her?

  I traced my fingers on the overcrowded rows of pictures she had in frames on her dresser, assuring myself that wasn’t the reason, but unable to rid myself of the plaguing questions. If it wasn’t the reason, then why hadn’t he acted any different toward me in the last few months? More passionate? More unexpected? If anything he had seemed more withdrawn—though things were incredibly busy this time of year for his business, tons of special orders flying in.

  We hadn’t had sex since she left.

  Either I was too tired, or he was at the warehouse or I was sick, or he was overworked. There had always been something, and maybe it was all those somethings that left me so unsure of where we stood…of who we were if we weren’t Blaire’s parents.

  I forced myself out of her room and into the kitchen where I rummaged in the fridge to prep something for a dinner for one. I settled on a peanut butter sandwich that I ate while aimlessly searching the web as if the answers to all my doubts and insecurities would magically appear in the form of a pop-up—click here to figure out if your husband still loves you!

  Rolling my eyes at my own ridiculousness, I clicked through my favorite gossip columns on GlimmerMagazine.com and read about celebrity couples who were dealing with their own “turmoil.” Please, I’m sure being with someone for six months was so taxing. Quinn and I had been married sixteen years, and now I was wondering if he was thinking of an exit strategy.

  Would it be so farfetched to think he would want to?

  He’d never been with anyone else but me. Pair that with his distance lately and how we fumbled around our conversations at the dinner table…I simply didn’t know. And that bothered the hell out of me because normally I could read him. It came naturally after so many years together, but now I felt like I was second-guessing everything—including my ability to be enough for him now that our daughter had moved out.

  Was I enough? Were we enough? The love still pulsing in my heart wanted us to be. So very badly. But I needed to know where he stood. I could talk to him, or try to, but how would I know what he said was true? How would I know if he was answering from his heart or how he thought he was expected to answer after being married for so many years?

  I let out a frustrated huff and clicked on another article about a celebrity couple who had recently gotten engaged after thinking their relationship was over. For the first portion, browsing was simply a good distraction. Beautiful, talented people fighting to save their “long-term” relationship but never could make it work until they’d stayed at a fantasy couple’s resort in Colorado. Following the link attached to the resort’s name, I was immediately taken to Inhibitions’ website.

  An hour and a half later, I was hooked. I’d read countless articles about the resort—all of them were vaguer than I’d like—but one thing was clear. This resort offered much more than an adult playground. It offered counseling with proven results. The owner of the resort was mentioned in every article but with very little details other than he got inside your head and told you flat out at the end of your stay if you and your partner were meant to last or not. And so far, no one had ever proven his conclusions wrong.

  I was ready to book our stay and buy plane tickets before I read one piece of information on the resort’s website that killed all the hope that had filled my chest like a balloon.

  Required Extensive Personality Tests due upon checking into Inhibitions.

  I sank back in the chair, slowly sipping my iced tea as I stared at the webpage like I wanted to set it on fire. Quinn would never go for this. Not if it meant putting so much of himself on display. He was an intimate, private man. One who didn’t think it was anyone else’s business what he did or didn’t like. Plus, me asking him to do this could send him a red-flag as to how I was feeling…and I wasn’t certain I wanted him to know my current state of mind.

  Realizing I was actively thinking of shutting him out had me jumping out of my chair and into my car. I needed to be honest with him.

  A quick stop at Quinn’
s favorite sub shop and I was determined to talk to him about the resort. Maybe he’d want to go, or at the very least, maybe he’d be up for entertaining the idea of going. The notion sent anticipation fluttering through my chest the closer I got to his warehouse. It had been ages since I’d been spontaneous—hopefully, that by itself would be enough to switch up the mood I’d been in lately.

  I stopped at the light just outside his warehouse, the smile dropping from my face when I saw Quinn in his truck exiting the parking lot. Instead of turning, I followed his truck once the light turned green. Maybe he was going on a supply run? I could talk to him while he grabbed what he needed then.

  Only, where I had expected him to turn off at the nearest hardware store, he kept going. And he didn’t stop until he’d turned into a small strip mall with several different businesses located inside. A cold sweat broke out across my forehead as I decided to park in the lot of a fast food place across the street. Something in my gut churned, screaming this was all wrong.

  But I couldn’t mistake him, not my Quinn as he got out of his truck and walked inside a lawyer’s office. I pulled out my cell phone, praying when I searched the name of the law office it would come up with corporate law being the dominate source of income, but the acid in my belly told me I was wrong.

  So did the internet.

  Divorce lawyers.

  That is what they specialized in. And according to all the reviews, they were damn good at their jobs.