“I’m a soldier. There’s no room for compassion on the battlefield. I’m trained to be decisive and to make split second decisions. I have to be dispassionate. People die if I’m not.” A shadow crossed his face. I wondered if he was thinking about Nick. He called out his buddy’s name in his sleep sometimes, but he never mentioned the exact circumstances surrounding his death. Did he blame himself?
“But this is our home, Dominic. There are no enemy combatants here. A home needs love and understanding. I need those things. When we were first married, you used to lavish me with your love.”
“Things are different now.” His eyes changed, like a switch being thrown. Gone was the gentle spirit of the man I had fallen in love with all those years ago. Even his posture was confrontational. Instinctively, I started to back away, but then I remembered the story Ramon had shared about the first time Dominic had seen me. How brave he thought my husband was to risk his heart again after his mother’s passing. Had he been hurt too many times? Were the risks not worth the reward anymore? Was he so fearful of loss that he had detached himself from me as a defensive measure? I pulled in a tight breath and asked the question I feared the most. “Do you still love me?”
“Karen.” He shook his head and a little light broke through his mask softening his features. “Why would you even ask me that?”
“Because I don’t know the answer.” I wrapped my arms around myself. “The woman I was when you married me isn’t someone you seem to want anymore. I’ve tried to change, tried to be whoever you need, but it doesn’t seem to matter. You treat me like I’m something you own, like I’m a piece of equipment to be maintained and manipulated so it operates in a way that best suits your purposes.”
“What about you?” His tone turned accusing. “You travel all the time. Roxy’s favorite PR girl. And those changes you’ve made? Those were for you not me. You’re married to your job. Even when I’m free for all that romantic love and compassion you claim you need, you’re never here. Yet somehow you always drop everything to accommodate Ramon into your schedule.”
“Don’t bring Ramon into this.”
“He’s already in it.” He made a scoffing noise. “You brought him right in the middle between us where he’s always wanted to be.” The accusation in his eyes staggered me. The veins in his neck visibly pulsed with his indignation. “I realize now that it was a mistake to ask him to look after you, a mistake that continued far longer than I should have allowed.”
“What are you saying?”
“That I’m rectifying that mistake tonight. That I’ll move you to the base.” He gave me an imperious look. “You can make new friends there. Ones who can show you how to be a better soldier’s wife.”
My eyes burned with the sting of frustrated tears. What did he think I had been trying to be all these years? Did he not understand me at all? “I have friends. You can’t dictate to me what I do or who I rely on to keep me sane when you’re away.” I pulled in a breath trying to be less confrontational and more logical so that he would listen. The fluorescent lime stripe on my black skateboard caught my eye. “New friends wouldn’t know me the way Simone and Ramon do. They wouldn’t have the insight to suggest that I pick up a hobby like the skateboarding that I enjoy so much.”
“Skateboarding is dangerous. It’ll have to stop. I don’t know why Ramon recommended you take it up or why Simone encouraged you to go right back to it again after that fall.”
“Because they understand me. They know I need something to occupy my time that requires all my concentration. Something that is physically taxing. Something that has an element of danger, but one that I can control, because I can’t control anything else in my life.” The room grew ominously silent. The truth in that statement hung like a sword over our heads. I swallowed heavily. “Dominic…” I reached for him, seeing the glistening wet across the surface of his eyes. “That was harsh. I’m sorry. I…”
“I’ve often wondered.” His voice was rough. He glanced down at my hand on his arm before he glanced back up. His gaze held a vulnerability he rarely shared with me anymore. “But you are always so stoic. You never say anything about the deployments being hard on you while I’m away. I brag. I tell all the guys how strong you are, how supportive, how much you understand.”
“I do understand. I am proud of you, of all that you’ve accomplished and how honorably you serve.” I peered up at him pleading with my eyes for him to empathize. “But I can’t live like this anymore. I need you around. I need you here by my side.” The or else was implied, though I didn’t specifically say it. Nor did I bring up Ramon’s name again, though it was on the tip of my tongue to confess, to get everything out in the open, to admit how lonely I was and how seriously attached I had become to his friend. But I think maybe he already knew. Or at least suspected. Why else had he come home without giving me any advance notice?
“I see that you need someone around to keep you from throwing yourself at a guy like Ramon.”
The blood drained from my face. Dominic’s eyes narrowed, moving slowly across my features, analyzing me but not in a way that felt good.
“I don’t know how far things have progressed, but I know how my wife looks when she’s been kissed. And I have never in my life seen two people who looked so guilty.”
“It was just a kiss, a single kiss,” I whispered.
He gave my explanation a curt nod, but I saw the flash of relief in his eyes. “Given the fact that Ramon couldn’t get out of here fast enough, I’m assuming you initiated it.” His hands curled into tightly balled fists. “I’m a bit surprised he didn’t try to take things further. But then I guess as you once said that you really aren’t his type after all.”
Those words sank their poisoned claws in deep. I had never gotten over the hurt of Ramon rejecting me at the OB Hotel. Tonight he had left in such a hurry, it seemed as though he hadn’t been able to get away from me fast enough. There had been no additional heated glances. No more fevered touches. No outward sign whatsoever that anything untoward had happened between me and the Dirt Dogs’ guitarist, except the sting on my lips from his demanding kisses. Had he been relieved by Dominic’s interruption? Had the kiss been merely a temporary lapse in judgment? A curiosity? One he had satisfied. Or one he had found utterly lacking?
My husband and I stared at each other, each reeling from revelations the other had shared, each attempting in our own way to hold onto the pieces of our crumbling marriage. It had come to this moment. The breaking point. One Dominic and I probably would have reached much sooner if Ramon hadn’t been there to help me endure the long-repeated cycles of the deployments. But I had crossed the line with Ramon and Dominic’s admonitions reminded me why I could never attempt to salvage the friendships I had ruined. Now it was only me and the man in front of me. It was up to the two of us to mend the damage or walk away from each other conceding defeat.
“I’ll resign my commission.” My jaw dropped in response to his softly spoken statement. “After fulfilling what remains of my current obligation, I’ll get out. We’ll fix this.”
I let out a breath I didn’t realize I had been holding. My eyes were wide. If I had thought there had been any possibility he would leave his brothers in arms for me, I would have asked him to do it well before things had deteriorated so badly between us. “Are you sure?” I pressed. “I don’t want you to end up resenting me.”
“I love you, Karen. I always have. I can see now that I’ve been selfish in a lot of ways. There are serious problems that we have to work out. I don’t want Ramon coming around anymore.”
That was wise. I had very little willpower or pride where the guitarist was concerned, but thinking about cutting Ramon permanently out of my life made my heart ache in a way that was a more damning indictment of me than our kiss had been.
“Ok.” I nodded.
“Come here.”
I went to him and took his hand. He led me to our bedroom, and he made love to me. It felt like a new beginning
because in so many ways the man in bed with me was almost a stranger. We talked well into the night. We made plans for the future. He agreed to find a job that would keep him at home, and that we should start a family right away, the way I had always wanted us to.
In the morning, he wrapped his arms around me and kissed me tenderly. I sensed the Dominic of the early years of our marriage in that kiss. He asked me to be patient a little bit longer before he turned and walked out the door.
Chapter Thirty
Ramon
“Stay the fuck away from my wife.”
“Well hello to you too, asshole,” I wheezed as I glared up at Dominic. From my hunched over position, I feigned nonchalance, but my jaw throbbed and my ribcage burned from the right cross and body blow that had followed. I swallowed blood. “I wondered when you would show up. I’m surprised you got past security. It must be the uniform. It makes you look positively trustworthy.”
“What would you know about trust?” He glanced around the penthouse, a puzzled crease forming between his brows. I got the impression that the opulence offended him somehow. Or maybe he was just surprised the place wasn’t trashed. “Doesn’t matter, though. Soon enough, I’ll be back for good.”
“Oh, really?” I lifted a brow.
“That’s right. I’m resigning my commission after this tour is finished.
I couldn’t say I was surprised but I had hoped for a different outcome. I had hoped our kiss had meant something. It had been a revelation more meaningful to me than any sex I’d ever had, but she must have seen it some other way.
“So I guess you’ll be taking Karen back to Southern California, then?”
“No.” He gave me an odd look. “I’ll find a decent paying job with one of the Marine subcontractors in DC or Maryland. It might not be rock star living, but I can give her a nice house and all of the finer things life has to offer.”
“Do you really think that’s what she needs?”
“You don’t need to concern yourself with that any more. A long time ago I left you in charge of seeing to her needs. Look what that’s got me. Well, I’m relieving you of that duty now.”
“She tell you she wanted me out of her life?”
He nodded, and I pretended his acknowledgement didn’t crush me. “The competition between you and me has gone on long enough.” He glared at me. “It’s over now. You and her. You and me.”
This confrontation with Dominic had a sense of inevitability about it, but then so had that mind-blowing kiss with Karen. She had tasted like hope, like a dream as boundless as the ocean.
“You know I’ve never been really good at following orders, Patch.” I managed to straighten to my full height which put me at a slight advantage over him.
“Perhaps you need a little more persuasion.” He gave me a look. The Marines had made him hard. There had been some serious muscle behind the blows he had dealt me, but I wasn’t backing down now.
She was too important to me.
We stood nose to nose with the backdrop of Central Park filling the floor to ceiling windows behind us. It was just him and me now, our friendship at a definite end. I had severed whatever had remained of our brotherly bond the moment I had kissed his wife. Now it was just an affronted soldier versus an arrogant rocker. I played that card, looking down my nose at him. I might lose, but I wouldn’t go down without swinging.
“We both know that if you weren’t worried that she’ll change her mind the minute she has a chance to think it through you wouldn’t be here. And you should be worried after the way she responded to me. The decision isn’t yours to make. The choice belongs to the lady.”
“The way she climaxed around my cock twice last night and once this morning says she’s made her choice.”
I would’ve wiped the sneer off his face, except that his words hit their target, dead center, blasting my hopes to oblivion. The shimmering particles raining like ash. I didn’t even manage to pull in another breath before he pressed his advantage.
“I don’t know why you decided to step over that line after all this time, but it was a bullshit move. It just proves what type of man you really are. One without honor. Karen might have let you steal that kiss, but her heart will always be locked away from you. I always had it. You will never be the right man for her. You weren’t back then and you aren’t now. You slipped her mind the minute I returned.”
“You’ve been away too long, Patch,” I allowed. “Go. Finish up your tour. Stay safe because despite what you think of me I don’t wish you any harm. But know this. You might have her heart now, but you don’t own it and you don’t know it the way you think you do.” Not like I did. “More money won’t make Karen happy. Fancy things aren’t what she needs to feel secure.” I had gotten it wrong buying the shop for her. She had passed it to Simone for pennies. Love was the key, love plus nothing else.
I clung to that key to Karen’s heart like a pauper because it was all I had left.
Chapter Thirty-One
Karen
December 2012
I couldn’t remember ever feeling happier. Dominic was coming home for good. He was never going back to the military. He was meeting me here in Ocean Beach, and I had a huge surprise for him.
The best Christmas present ever.
Smiling softly at that thought, I closed my eyes and tipped my face up to the warm Cali sun. I listened to the soothing sounds of my ocean for a moment, the boom of the breakers and their whispers as they unraveled on the shore. When I opened my eyes, I followed the surfers as they zipped in and out under the pier churning up the foam with their boards. For once, I wasn’t even envious that I wasn’t out there with them.
But I had to fill my senses with as much OB as I could get. After the New Year, it would be back to New York until Dominic found a job. But I would cope with the confined spaces. I would do Maryland or DC or wherever we needed to be. I was letting go of the past. I committed to being the type of wife Dominic wanted. I can do it all, I reminded myself again. Anything. Even survive the grave wound to my heart after giving up my friendship with Ramon.
“Mrs. Campo.”
I shifted awkwardly, hand on my protruding belly, swiveling around on the narrow concrete wall to face the unfamiliar man who had called my name.
Two fully decorated Marines in full dress blues stood before me, the medals on their uniforms gleaming garishly in the sunlight that I had found pleasing only a moment before. My eyes grew wide, my heart leapt out of my chest.
“That’s me,” I answered though no one ever called me that, not even my obstetrician.
“The secretary of the Army regrets to inform you…”
“No.” I felt a sharp pain in my midsection and a knife twisting in my heart. The terrible words seemed to echo down some long tunnel. My ears rang and my vision faded as the ground rushed up to meet me.
2015
Present Day
Chapter Thirty-Two
Karen
“Can’t you do anything?” Simone’s plea sounded so far away. “Look at her face. She’s in pain.”
“No,” I cried. “No.” I watched myself from a distance, relieving the devastation in my mind. The terrible pain in my abdomen. The gush of blood that had followed and the trip to the hospital. The panicked look on my father’s face. The agony in my heart. The exponential loss. The crippling guilt. “No,” I chanted the denial as if it had the power to change anything. “No. No. No.”
“Please doctor. There must be something you can give her.”
“A sedative would only prolong her unconsciousness. We need her to wake up in order to assess her properly.”
“Simone?” I called, recognizing her voice.
“Yes, honey, I’m here.” She sounded frightened. I was scared, too. I cracked open my heavy eyelids and peered up at her. She hovered over my bed, her expression tight with concern.
“The baby. Where’s my baby?”
“Oh, honey.” She closed her eyes briefly, and in that short tim
e, I found my bearings. I rushed headlong from the past into the present. I turned my head to the side. A body wracking sob stole my voice for a long moment.
“She’s gone.” My statement pried loose from my lips picking at the edges of the permanent wound. “I remember. You don’t have to say the words.”
Please, don’t say the words, my heart cried.
Simone’s eyes filled. She squeezed my hand. She had been at the hospital the day I lost my baby. The trauma of losing Dominic had caused a placenta abruption. She had stuck by me for the three difficult years as I had tried every way I could think of to come to terms with the grief and the guilt.
“Can I have a minute alone?” I whispered.
“Sure, honey, but…”
“Mrs. Campo,” the doctor with the detached demeanor stepped closer. I hated for anyone to call me that anymore. Nausea churned my stomach round and round like flotsam in the surf.
“It’s Karen. Just Karen Grayson now.”
“Yes, Miss Grayson. Do you remember anything happened? How you ended up here?
“I had my board. I was going to work. Ramon said…” I trailed off. His advice for me to stop running and to get back to being myself again…that was private. “Then the car almost hit me. That girl, the young one with the Lakers cap that hangs out by the pier, she pushed me out of the way. She saved my life. But I hit my head on the pavement, I think.”
Riptide (Rock Stars, Surf and Second Chances Book 2) Page 17