Open Door Marriage

by Kai, Naleighna

  OPEN DOOR MARRIAGE

  Naleighna Kai

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living, dead, or somewhere in between, is entirely coincidental

  Brown Girls Publishing, LLC

  www.browngirlspublishing.com

  Open Door Marriage © 2014 by Naleighna Kai

  ISBN: 978-1-62-517369-0

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means including electronic, mechanical or photocopying or stored in a retrieval system without permission in writing from the publisher except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages to be included in a review.

  First Brown Girls Publishing LLC trade printing January 2014

  Cover designed by: J. L. Woodson www.jlwoodson.com

  Interior design by: Lissa Woodson www.macrompg.com

  Dedication

  My mother, Jean Woodson

  My grandmother, Mildred E. Williams

  My brother, Eric Harold Spears

  My niece, LaKecia Janise Woodson, a rising star who left us much too soon

  To Leslie Esdaile Banks (L.A. Banks), one of the best storytellers the planet had to offer.

  To Anthony “Green Eyes” Johnson, the real life “Dallas” who taught me what unconditional love was all about

  You are missed more than I can say.

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  All praise is due to the Creator first and foremost. A special love and respect to my guardian angels, ancestors, teachers and guides.

  To my spiritual mothers: Sandy Spears and Bettye Mason Odom; to my son, Jeremy ÒJ. L.Ó Woodson, who is the perfect example of determination and dedication. I love you more than words can ever say.

  To the people who continuously inspire me: my publishers and editors: Victoria Christopher Murray and ReShonda Tate Billingsley for this wonderful opportunity; to my friends: Gretta Chamberlain, Debra Mitchell, Laverne ÒMissyÓ Brown, Ehryck F. Gilmore, Keisha Hester, Jerome Montgomery, Jr., Jamyi Joi, Joyce Brown, Martha Kennerson, Gregory Marshall, Janine Ingram, Valarie Prince, Chris Esbrook, Laura Riff, Chris Burrichter, Nikki Woods, and Renee Bernard.

  To my personal editorial team: Janice Pernell and Katie Walsh.

  To the book clubs and avid readers who support my work—I LOVE YOU!!! (there are too many of you to name!)

  Thank you for everything you are to me.

  Wishing you all—peace and love, light and joy.

  —Naleighna Kai

  ÒThere’s no right way to do a wrong thing.Ó

  —Janice Pernell, author

  Chapter 1

  Thanksgiving - Chicago, Illinois

  November 22—7:23 p.m.

  “You slept with my aunt?”

  The words still didn’t register, even though this had to be Tori’s fifth time saying them. She glared at her fiancé, still desperately trying to come to terms with the information her mother had blasted to everyone at the packed Thanksgiving dinner table.

  “Seriously? How is that even humanly possible when you didn’t know the woman four hours ago?” Tori shouted.

  “Tori, l-let me explain,” Dallas stammered.

  Twelve pairs of eyes were now focused on the not-quite-blissful couple standing at the bottom of the stairs just off from the dining room.

  “But not here. Let’s go somewhere and talk. It’s not what you think.”

  “What did you do?” Tori snapped, glaring up at Dallas. “Trip over the sheets, and your penis somehow landed in a woman nearly twice my age?”

  The drumstick in Uncle Bill’s hand paused in midair on its journey to his wide mouth. Cousin Tiny’s fleshy hand flew to her overexposed bosom and came to rest somewhere above her heart. Even Tori’s father’s frozen expression of alarm would have been Three Stooges comical if the situation weren’t so tragic.

  Aunt Yoli was the first to recover. “Did they just say what I think they said?”

  In unison, everyone nodded.

  “Girl, shut the front door and run out the back!”

  A few bursts of nervous laughter sprang up around the table, but they were not nearly enough to chase away the unease that had flooded the room when Tori stepped into the house. She’d gone to drop off Aunt Rose’s drunk self at home. Tori hadn’t even been in the house good when her mother, Bernice, blurted out that she’d caught Alicia and Dallas together. Alone. In bed. In the nude. Tori had picked up from there and summed it up in one sweep. “You slept with my aunt ...”

  “Nothing happened, Tori,” Dallas said, his voice shaky. “I didn’t sleep with her.”

  “So, my mama is lying?” Tori asked.

  Dallas shifted uneasily.

  “Hell naw. I know what I saw,” Bernice snapped. She had moved from the dining room table to the end of the staircase, right next to her daughter, poised as if she was ready to go to battle. “Both of you were in bed butt-ass naked.” She jabbed a finger in her sister-in-law’s direction. Alicia hadn’t moved from her spot at the top of the staircase. Probably, because she knew what was best for her. “She was butt-naked. And he was nut-naked,” Bernice yelled. “Wasn’t an inch of space between them.” She flickered a gaze a Dallas. “Look at him. You can tell he just got dressed!”

  Tori closed her eyes and took deep breaths to calm the emotions that warred within her.

  “See, I told you Alicia wasn’t worth a damn,” Bernice, crowed with savage satisfaction. “And looks like Mr. NBA ain’t much better. You thought he was all that and a side order of fries.”

  Dallas Avery was the NBA’s most valuable player, and a man most women would give their right and left ovary to call their own. But Most Eligible Bachelor or not, he had set Tori’s bitch meter into overdrive. Even with his chiseled, handsome face, towering muscular frame and million dollar bank accounts, he was now worth next to nothing in her eyes. Too bad her aching heart didn’t get that memo.

  Tori didn’t know if she was more enraged or hurt that her mother had been all too willing to drive this stake through her own daughter’s heart in order to publicly disgrace Alicia.

  “Tori, we need to talk about this,” Dallas repeated before adding, “in private.”

  Bernice wore a satisfied smirk as she glared openly up at Alicia, who just kept staring stoically at them from the second floor landing. “The angel of the family has fallen,” Bernice said.

  “Hey, Bernice,” Bill taunted with a hearty chuckle. “Bet you won�
��t say that when Alicia comes downstairs. You know she’s gonna put a hurting on you.”

  “You mean put another hurting on her,” Aunt Yoli added, doubling over with laughter.

  Tori wanted to scream. Her life was unraveling in front of her and her family was cracking jokes.

  Instinctively, Bernice inched away from the staircase and back toward the dining room table. Her hands went up to the small scar on her neck, probably remembering that a year ago on this very same holiday, Alicia had ended a vicious blow-for-blow fight with a knife at Bernice’s throat. Almost gave the woman a “Sicilian Smile”—an ear-to-ear slice across the throat.

  Dallas reached for Tori’s hand. “It’s not what it seems.”

  She snatched away, parted her lips to give him what was left of her mind, but Cousin Tiny chimed in first. “Alicia had every right to take Bernice to the floor last year for that foul mess she said! I would’ve pulled out my own can of whoop ass behind that one.”

  Tiny’s husband, Thomas nodded his watermelon-sized head.

  The rest of the family finally sprang to life, also chiming in at once to defend Alicia, the one woman everyone could count on in a time of need, to lend an ear when it was called for and to dry a tear when no one else bothered to care. That she would do something as low as sleep with her niece’s soon-to-be husband was unthinkable. So the family sidestepped that issue for as long as they could, finding it more comfortable to speak on the reason no one had expected Alicia home for Thanksgiving—especially since none of them had heard from her for an entire year.

  Dallas maneuvered so he was in front of Tori. “Nothing. Happened.”

  “If Bernice had said that bull to me,” Bill responded, still trying to tackle the last of the drumstick, “an ass whipping would’ve been the least of her problems.” He beckoned toward the last slice of sweet potato pie at the other end of the table. “That has my name written all over it.”

  “Bernice is lying,” Martha said. “Alicia’s still got looks and all, but that young stud wouldn’t pick her over Tori.” She shot an appreciative glance toward Dallas, then leaned to her right and whispered loudly in Yoli’s direction, “But, girl, he is finer than frog’s hair.”

  Yoli gave him a lusty once-over. “I’d give him some my damn self. He’s the type of man who can make a woman put a for sale sign on one thigh and an open for business sign on the other. Yes, Lawd!”

  Tori tried her best to tune out her family. She didn’t have the stamina to deal with them right now. “How could you do this? You’re my fiancé.”

  “You’re Tori’s fiancée?” Alicia finally spoke out. She eased down the stairs, looking first to Tori then to Dallas. Her panic-stricken expression gave Tori pause. Could her aunt really have not known?

  Alicia turned back to her niece. “Oh, my, God, Tori. I had no idea. I’m so, so sorry.” She didn’t give Tori time to reply as she brushed past Dallas, slipped into the nearest pair of shoes—her brother’s—and ran out of the front door, oblivious to the fact that she barely had on enough clothing to protect her from the chill in the room, let alone the sub-zero temps of a Chicago winter.

  The whole crowd gasped in disbelief as Dallas grabbed his leather coat from the foyer closet. “She can’t go out there with nothing on,” he said as he stepped into his Timberlands. “I’ll be right back.”

  Tori was ready to spit fire. “Are you kidding me?” she screamed as he quickly laced up his shoes, then darted toward the door. “You’re going after my aunt? My aunt!” she yelled, following him. “My heart is bleeding all over the carpet and you’re going after her!”

  The front door slammed and Tori stood frozen, unable to believe what happened in the last ten minutes. Bernice’s voice snapped Tori out of her trance. “Girl, I taught you better than that,” Bernice yelled, gesturing to the door. “You’d better go get your man!”

  Tori snatched up a coat and scarf and braced herself against the frigid gust of wind that slapped her as she left the house. She trekked across the snow and barely reached Dallas before he pulled off. Banging on the glass, she demanded, “Where the hell are you going?”

  Dallas lowered the window. “She’s out there unprotected. None of this is her fault.”

  “So now you’re speaking up for her, too?” Tori screeched, pummeling him through the opening. “What kind of bullshit is that?”

  Dallas flinched at her vicious tone and reached out to keep her hands from doing any more damage. “I’m going to say two things,” he replied in that businesslike tone that had landed him several million-dollar endorsement deals. “I’m sorry that your mother lied to you, but nothing happened.” His gaze swept the area, probably searching for the woman who was the center of the chaos. “And I’d be less of a man than you already think I am if I let that woman walk around in this weather without a coat.”

  Tori gave his words a moment’s consideration. Causing a scene wouldn’t stop him from doing what he felt he had to do, so she made a dash for the passenger side. “I’m coming with you.”

  They caught up with Alicia at the end of Harper Avenue, where she made a left and was now struggling up a shoveled path a block away from the main thoroughfare. She was shaking uncontrollably from the cold and from the sobs that wracked her body.

  “Get in, Alicia,” Dallas commanded, trailing the distraught woman as she stumbled along the icy sidewalk in shoes that were three sizes too big.

  Alicia covered her mouth as though to keep in the words that threatened to spill out. She continued forward, wavering while trying to balance in the oversized loafers on snow that came up to her calves on unshoveled parts of the sidewalk.

  “Don’t make me get out of the car,” Dallas said through his teeth.

  Alicia ignored the threat, forcing the car to continue following her until she made it to a glass bus shelter on Stony Island Avenue. She swept the snow away from the steel bench, crawled on it, then tucked her legs up under her as though preparing to spend the night.

  Dallas was out of the car and by her side in the time it took to blink. He whipped off his leather coat, placed it about Alicia’s shoulders, then held out his hand to her. It took a moment for her to take it, but finally she stood. Together, they took two steps, then, she crumbled down onto the snow.

  “Ouch!” she shrieked. “My ankle.”

  It took Dallas only a moment to lift her into his arms, then navigate carefully over the slick pavement. He placed her gently, almost lovingly, in the back seat of his rented Benz. Using the sleeve of his shirt, he wiped her tears away.

  Tori felt like she was having an out-of-body experience. The way Dallas looked at Alicia. The way he held her. It tore at Tori’s gut. “Dallas, what is going on?’ Tori asked once he was back in the driver’s seat. “How the hell have you connected with her in such a way that you feel obligated to ease her pain and not mine?” The anger was still there, but Tori tried to push it aside, because right now, she needed clarity.

  Dallas carefully pulled onto the street and aimed the car back in the direction of the place they’d just left. “We’ll talk about this when we get back to the house.”

  “No!” Alicia cried out, gripping the edge of the driver’s seat and causing Dallas to punch the brakes. “I can’t go back there. Not right now.”

  Dallas locked gazes with her in the rear view mirror. “Where do you want me to take you?”

  “I don’t know. Anywhere but there,” she whispered, slumping back down in the seat. “Anywhere but home.” Alicia’s shoulders shook with an effort to hold herself together, and Dallas’ expression softened.

  The whole scenario made Tori’s heart constrict as though someone had put a vise grip on the very thing that kept her alive.

  She had only been gone for three hours. What the hell had happened between Dallas and her aunt?

  Chapter 2

  8:31 p.m.

  Tori and the twenty-eight-year old NBA star had been secretly dating for a year after having been friends for twice as long.
It surprised everyone when they became publicly engaged three weeks before Thanksgiving and were on track for a wedding when basketball season ended in April.

  Bernice had broken Tori down from her “I only want to be friends” stance by constantly preaching that a woman can’t be ‘just friends’ with a man who was at the top of the food chain.

  Over and over, Tori had listened to her mother bitterly complain about how she’d married a man who didn’t have the brains to keep his life in order, not to mention the unhealthy relationship Bernice claimed her husband James had with his sister, Alicia. It was like those two had some kind of superhero twin bond – and they weren’t even twins. Now, James and Bernice were older than homemade sin, and they had embarrassingly landed back in Alicia’s home.

  “That Dallas of yours has a never ending supply of money. That’s the kind of man we want—I mean, you want.” Bernice was constantly in Tori’s ear, reminding her how Dallas had come to their rescue, bailing out her dad after “his worthless hide had lost every damn thing at the casino. That man never met a poker or roulette table he didn’t sit down and have a conversation with,” Bernice had told her daughter.

  Bernice had devised a master plan and she eventually convinced Tori to transition that “friend” into an actual “date” and primed him for the ultimate “husband.” Among other things, it called for Tori to withhold sex from Dallas. “Don’t trade your virginity for a short-term high of good feelings and wet ass,” Bernice had said, while waggling a finger at Tori. “Go in for the kill—a permanent relationship. And don’t get all touchy-feely with him. Let him crave you. A vagina is standard equipment on every woman. You’ll want him to know that yours belongs only to him—for the right price. Marriage.”

  She’d closed her sermon with, “And defer to him in everything. Let him be in control! Then when you get that ring on your finger, when you finally add his last name to yours, that’s when you have control.”