Love Her or Lose Her

by Tessa Bailey

  The tip of her nose burning, Rosie slipped her hand beneath her husband’s, threading their fingers together. “Try to talk through it, please?”

  A muscle jumped in Dominic’s cheek. “Not gas pumping,” he said in a low voice. “I wouldn’t want her to pump my gas—ever—and I don’t care if that makes me a chauvinist. But I guess . . . I don’t know. It would be nice to know she’d thought of me.”

  The unshed tears that had been poised behind Rosie’s eyes lost the fight and cascaded down her cheeks. Her face felt freshly slapped. All this time, she’d blamed Dominic entirely for the decline of their relationship. But she’d been equally to blame. She might have fought in the beginning, trying to locate that old wildfire that had always burned between them, physically and emotionally. Somewhere along the way, she’d quit. At least Dominic had tried in his own secret ways to make her feel cared for. Protected. She’d done nothing.

  When Dominic saw Rosie crying, his face paled. “No, honey. Please.” He reached for her, hesitated, then caught her around the waist. Already throatily crooning comforting words, he dragged Rosie sideways onto his lap, wrapping his big arms around her body, as if he could ward off the icy realization that she’d been blaming him. And taken none of that blame herself.

  Oh my God. This is my doing as much as his.

  Every day, going through the motions and being so angry at him. How could she not have realized she was doing the exact same thing? How could she have been such a hypocrite?

  Tears burned tracks down her cheeks, and Dominic watched them in horror, seeming as though he didn’t have a clue what to do. For once. Finally, he leaned in and started to kiss them away.

  “Shhh, Rosie. We’re going to work this out. You’re my wife and I wouldn’t change that for any damn thing in the world. I’m your man.” He exhaled roughly. “Details, right? Words? You need to know I’m always paying attention? Remember that time we took the ferry to Connecticut, the day before I was deployed? Your fingers and mouth tasted like the cranberry-orange muffin we split from the bakery, and I’d scour the mess tent for oranges every fucking day I was away, trying to get that taste back in my mouth.” He turned her face, moved his head, and kissed the freckle behind her ear. Once, twice. “I missed you so bad. I miss you now.”

  That ice in her heart melted and dripped, halfway to vapor. “I miss you, too.”

  “Come home.”

  Lord, in that weak moment, she wanted nothing more than to do that. Go back to her husband and hope everything worked out. Hope that their new self-awareness would make all the difference. But she wasn’t willing to gamble. She’d only learned a few minutes ago that she’d played an active role in getting them to this point. Separated. She needed time to get her head around that. To go back and comb through the past five years through an entirely different lens. They both needed to work on themselves—and their marriage—at the same time. They would never do that if they fell back into their old routine.

  “Okay. Let’s talk homework.” Armie clapped his hands together. “Rosie, Dominic needs acts of service to feel appreciated. I will leave those up to you, but let me reiterate that—as your therapist—I feel strongly that sex should remain off the table.”

  Rosie bit down on her tongue and forced a smile.

  Dominic dropped his face into her neck and groaned.

  “Dominic, please continue exercising your vocal cords. Find ways to give Rosie the words she needs to hear. You did a tremendous job of that today.” Armie’s body fell bonelessly against the back of his chair. “It might not feel like it right now, but we’ve had a successful session, folks.”

  Even though it was insanely difficult, Rosie scooted off Dominic’s lap, allowing him to keep her close with a protective arm around her shoulders. “Armie, you said you usually know by the fourth session if a couple is going to make it.” She swallowed hard. “I know we still have one more session left, but do you know about us yet?”

  His smile was apologetic. “Not yet.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  A day after their rocky third therapy session, Dominic was grabbing a quick workout in the back bedroom—hoping to burn off some of his excess mental and sexual frustration—when he heard the sound of water running in the house and frowned. There was no one home, save himself—he couldn’t be more painfully aware of that fact—and none of the appliances were turned on.

  What gives?

  He finished his set of forty pull-ups and let go of the metal bar, which he’d hung in the doorway of the guest room. He waited for his breathing to slow so he could listen again, double-checking that he indeed heard water running. With a frown, he walked barefoot and shirtless down the hallway, toward the kitchen, to investigate. His pulse started to race at the possibility that Rosie had come home, but there was no one there.

  A sound from outside the house brought Dominic to the front door. He opened it—and found his wife in the driveway.

  Washing his truck.

  He was so stunned by the sight, all he could do was stare. His wife was in tight black yoga pants and an old sweatshirt, hair up in a bun. Gorgeous, so fucking gorgeous in the setting sun. Pink and orange streaked behind her in the sky and made her skin glow. Love ripped through him like a hurricane, forcing him to lean against the doorjamb. As much as he hated watching her perform any kind of manual labor, he couldn’t help but be thankful just to have her there, whether it was temporary or permanent.

  Hope rose up inside him, cramming his throat full as he searched the driveway for her things. Nothing was there, though. No suitcase. This visit was temporary—part of him had known that the second he opened the door. She’d made up her mind to go about their second chance the right way. He needed to try to respect that, which meant he wouldn’t even lie to his parents about the situation, even though he’d been sorely tempted. When the phone rang for their bimonthly call, he’d almost answered and told them Rosie was great. That everything was great. Just to reassure himself. But he’d avoided the call instead, because next time he told his parents everything was great, he wanted it to be true. This visit was progress. At this point, he would take any increment of Rosie he could get, even though he wanted to devour her whole.

  Their therapy session had knocked Dominic on his ass, although he still didn’t believe Rosie was responsible for their situation. At all. Since returning from overseas, he hadn’t taken her to Argentina, even though she’d always wanted to visit to honor her mother. Hadn’t presented her with the dream house on the water, instead letting it languish untouched because he wasn’t confident in it being good enough. Worst of all, he hadn’t encouraged her to open the restaurant, even though she’d been talking about it for years. He was a quiet asshole who hadn’t been giving her the words she needed. Of course she’d left. She’d done nothing wrong—and no one could convince him otherwise. Watching her cry over that bullshit yesterday had been pure torture.

  Still. He could admit that Rosie giving him real, tangible evidence that she loved him . . . made the organ in his chest beat faster. Made it ache. And if it didn’t make him feel like a punk, he might admit that watching Rosie clean his truck made him kind of breathless. When he and Rosie were in high school, she used to untangle his headphone cords. Sure, she did a lot of other things for him back then, like bake him brownies or put extra pens in his backpack before class . . . but there was something about the way she untangled his headphones and left them in a neat circle inside the cup holder of his truck that always got to him. Such a small thing, but he’d liked knowing she’d wanted to save him that minor frustration. He hadn’t minded watching her fingers move, either. A couple of times he’d found himself tangling the headphones on purpose just so she’d fix them.

  Growing up, he’d been shown love through unspoken acts. Having his lunch made for school, a new pair of shoes showing up just in time for the old ones to fall apart. Those actions made him feel cared for and he didn’t have to ask for them, which saved him from feeling needy. Or like h
e needed to be taken care of. Men took care of their loved ones. Not the other way around. That’s what he’d been taught from a young age and the belief was hard to shake, so he lived for the small acts of caring from Rosie. It meant she loved him enough to think about him.

  So, yeah, while he wanted to strangle Armie for making his wife cry, he could also maybe admit he needed some evidence that this woman still loved him. He needed it bad. When he returned from Afghanistan, she’d shown him evidence of her love on a regular basis. Spontaneous hugs, elaborate date nights at home with candlelight, simply telling him she loved him. It was becoming obvious to him that she’d eventually stopped doing those things because he’d been showing her his love in a totally invisible way. How could she have known he’d been saving up for the house since the day he got back?

  In those months after his return, he’d felt so inadequate compared to the men he’d left behind. His plans had seemed so trivial. So he’d set out to do better. Along the way, he’d forgotten to make damn sure Rosie knew she was the most important part of his life. He’d let the two of them drift. Now, having her show him she cared, that she’d thought about him, flooded him with gratitude and relief.

  But he couldn’t accept the gesture, could he? Not like this. In no world could he watch Rosie wash his truck in a rapidly dampening sweatshirt when it was fifty degrees outside.

  Seriously, it might kill him.

  “Okay, honey girl. Pack it in.” Dominic came out of the house, letting the screen door slap against the doorjamb. “Thank you for doing this, but you’re going to get sick out here. Come in out of the cold, Rosie.”

  She pulled up the right sleeve of her sweatshirt to her elbow and dunked the sponge back into the bucket she’d filled, which explained the source of the running water. “I’ll be done in fifteen minutes. Could you grab the grocery bags out of my backseat, please?”

  “When you come inside.”

  There was a flash of something in her eyes that he’d seen at the therapy session. Regret. Heaviness. A little bit of panic. He didn’t like it.

  “I’m digging in my heels,” she said.

  “You’ve been doing a lot of that lately.”

  He instantly regretted his words when she broke their eye contact.

  “I’ve got on two layers under this sweatshirt. Please just let me do this?” Her voice was laden with determination. “I need to do something for you.”

  Despite his fears over her falling ill, warmth rolled into his chest like clouds over the water, huge, blocking everything else out. “Will you stay for a while afterwards?”

  She stopped soaping for a moment, looking at him over her shoulder. Blinking a couple of times. Slowly. “Yes.”

  That single word made anticipation sing over Dominic’s skin, but his body needed to chill the fuck out. He was horny enough to read sexual intention into a brisk hello. If he’d learned anything by now, it was that his wife wasn’t breaking the no-sex rule. And he hadn’t caved on his promise, either. Next time he got relief, it would be inside Rosie, so help him God. Unfortunately, he was feeling the strain like nobody’s business.

  Dominic went inside to throw on a jacket, then headed back out to retrieve the bags from Rosie’s backseat. While he was inside, she’d turned on the small vacuum cleaner they used for their cars, the loud hum absorbing the sounds of his footfalls. As he drew even with Rosie, she bent forward over the rear cab seat, leaving her tight, round ass on display.

  Pure torture.

  He itched to light up a cigarette, but he never smoked when Rosie was around. Only on the job site, while running errands, or after she’d fallen asleep. He’d come back from his deployment with the stress-reducing habit and she’d never asked him to stop, but he hated the idea of breathing tobacco breath anywhere in her vicinity and he damn well wasn’t going to start now, possibly hurting his chances of winning her back even more.

  By the time Dominic returned with the grocery bags in his arms, his dick was hard enough to jimmy a lock. Rosie was still leaning forward over the backseat, knees planted on the torn leather of his truck, hips tilted enough that he could see the stretch of Lycra over her pussy. Jesus Christ. Was it dark enough yet to hide them from passing neighborhood traffic if he climbed into the truck behind her and rocked his cock into her from behind?

  She flipped off the vacuum. “Dominic?” Her eyes found him over her shoulder, then lit up with what looked like reluctant awareness. “Did you, um . . . get the bags?”

  “Yeah,” he rasped, hefting them up a little.

  “Thank you,” she returned, sounding breathless herself, that ripe ass still on display.

  Dominic growled. “Goddammit, Rosie. Did you come here to torture me?”

  “No.” She quickly sat back on her heels. “No, I didn’t.”

  “Just tell me what to expect here, Rosie. My body hurts. It wants yours.”

  “I know.” She abandoned the vacuum and climbed out of the truck, hands wringing at her waist.

  His heart picked up its pace so much at having her close—having her home—that he got dizzy.

  “I’m really thrown off by what happened at our appointment, you know? Realizing we’ve both let this marriage get to this point . . . and I’m feeling kind of scattered. Like I’ve been seeing everything all wrong and I’ve just . . . I’ve fallen really hard off my high horse. And I don’t know how or if we’ll make this relationship work, but I know when I woke up feeling lost this morning, I wanted to be near you.” She inhaled in a rush. “Can we just spend some time near each other for a little while tonight?”

  “Yes,” he said, voice resonating. His whole body resonating. “I want that.”

  “Me too.” She wet her lips. “I’m going to finish up here. Can you go inside and preheat the oven for me? Three seventy-five.”

  Backing away from her when she’d just admitted to needing him, even in a small capacity, was fucking agony, but he did it. Anything to not screw up this chance to have her cross the threshold of their home, even if it was just for a few hours. He stopped to glance back at Rosie on his way into the house and found her watching him from beneath her lashes. Looking . . . in need of reassurance? He knew how to give it to her. By worshipping her, pleasuring her, communicating love with his body.

  But that didn’t work, did it? Not completely. Hadn’t Rosie said she felt empty afterward? He had to find a way to offer more. Give more.

  Tell that to the testosterone flowing through his veins. As soon as he got inside, Dominic dropped the groceries off on the counter and adjusted his hard cock through his sweatpants. He planted his hands on the edge of the kitchen counter and breathed in and out. “Okay, not jerking off for a week was a bad choice, bro. Admit it. But you can do this. You can be in the same room as your wife and not fuck her until she screams the town into a power outage.”

  Dominic visualized the same thing he’d been picturing all week, while trying to get his dick under control. One of his fellow marines had been bitten by a scorpion while on a perimeter check and the bite had gotten infected. Dominic pictured that mass of oozing flesh and started unpacking the contents of the grocery bags, teeth dug into his lower lip. Chicken stock, eggs, tomato paste, a green bell pepper.

  His visualization exercise was working. He was halfway to losing his erection until Rosie walked in and immediately stripped off her sweatshirt at the door, carrying the T-shirt beneath it up to her breasts, showing off a hint of underboob before dropping back into place. She hung her sweatshirt on a hook and blew out a breath, glancing around the house as if she’d forgotten what it looked like, maybe even missed it—and Dominic’s throat cinched tight.

  “Your truck was already pretty clean,” she said, tucking loose hair into her bun. “I feel like I cheated on my homework.” Her laughter was kind of skittish, reminding him of those first few middle-school dates to the coffee shop, when they were just getting to know each other. “Wow. Why am I so nervous?”

  “This is your home. I’m your
husband. You shouldn’t be . . .” Dominic heard the rote lines coming out of his mouth and dragged a hand down his face, laughing without a drop of humor. “I’m nervous, too, Rosie.”

  Her breath caught. “You are?”

  “Yeah.” Now that they’d returned to the scene of the crime, it became even more obvious how drastically their communication had dwindled. Their voices sounded almost foreign filling the kitchen together at the same time. “It doesn’t make you see me as less of . . . a man? Knowing I’m nervous?”

  “What?” She pressed a hand to the center of her chest. “God, no. It makes me feel like I’m not crazy. It puts us on the same team.”

  Surprise prickled up his spine. “I want to be strong for you at all times,” he said hoarsely. “Isn’t that my job?”

  Her features softened as she regarded him. “Marriage isn’t a job, Dom.”

  She hadn’t called him by that nickname in so long, his insides jolted upon hearing it. All day long, it was shouted over the sound of hammering on the construction site, but it sounded different coming from his wife. It came from the past. The future. It held weight.

  “Duty is something I understand. It’s something I can’t fuck up.”

  “I appreciate that. I appreciate what you do for us. For me.” The hand dropped from the center of her chest and she crossed to the counter, close enough to Dominic that he could count the goose bumps on her neck. “It makes me feel closer to you when you let down your guard. Makes me feel like I can do the same.”

  Dominic was barely aware of moving closer. He found himself behind Rosie, zeroed in on the freckle behind her ear as she unloaded shopping bags. Fuck, she smelled good enough to take a bite out of. “You want me to put on your music?”

  She shivered, fumbling a tub of sour cream and dropping it on the counter. “Yes, that would be nice. Thank you.” Her pupils had bled completely into the brown of her eyes when she glanced back over her shoulder. “I’m making empanadas.”

  “Does that mean you’re happy?”