Love Her or Lose Her (Hot & Hammered #2)(33)

God, she was so beautiful when she was happy. And he’d made her that way by playing Chubby Bunny. Not by handing her his paycheck. Not by working overtime. Just by being himself. Or, rather, the self he’d been when they’d fallen in love. The guy who’d had nothing to offer.

He was still contemplating the meaning of that when Armie interrupted his thoughts.

“Let’s talk about Dominic’s homework.” Armie nodded in his direction, fingers steepled. “Did you write her the letter, Dominic?”

“Yeah.” He rolled his eyes when he realized the marshmallows were still in his mouth and they all had to sit there while he chewed and swallowed, Rosie doing the same with lingering humor in her gorgeous eyes. “She seemed to like the letter.”

“I loved it.”

Dominic kept his features schooled, but those three words made him feel winded, like he’d just finished a race.

Armie split a smile between them. “What did he write about?”

“Homecoming. Our senior year homecoming dance, but . . . it was more than that. There were all these details and I . . .” Rosie paused, her fingers twisting in the hem of her black-and-white wool skirt, one of his favorites, because it seemed to keep her warm. “I could see the proof in his words how he felt about me. Like I was . . . I don’t know. Coveted, maybe? I remember I used to feel that way about myself, too.”

“Used to?” Dominic turned to study her, those words winging around his head like fired bullets. “You don’t think I covet you, Rosie?”

“Lately I do,” she whispered. “All these nice things I keep finding out you do behind my back.” She wet her lips. “Last time we were here, I found out you express your appreciation for me through deeds and now that I know about them . . . yeah, I’m starting to feel coveted again. But it was the words, more than anything. I really liked reading them.”

“I’ll write you more if you come home.”

Rosie blew out a breath. “We keep ending up here,” she said to Armie. “Can you please tell him I can’t come home yet?”

“He’s sitting right there,” Armie said patiently. “You tell him.”

“I have.”

Armie studied them. “Let’s come back to this. I want to explore what you said, Rosie, about the deeds Dominic does behind your back. What did you mean?”

“Well, he snuck my coat into the house where I’m staying. The night he left the letter on my car windshield, I found out he’s been paying the security guard at my job on the sly to protect me.”

“Interesting.” Armie tapped his fingers against his lips. “Dominic, you’re here to accept responsibility for your role in this relationship. That takes a lot of courage. Why not accept responsibility for the good as well as the bad?”

A pit started to open in Dominic’s stomach. “I’m getting tired of being asked this question.”

“You don’t seem tired of it. I hope you don’t mind me saying, you seem agitated.”

“Because it’s nothing. It’s nothing to bring a coat or pay a guard,” Dominic said, a lot louder than he’d intended. “I could always do better. Someone else would do better.”

“Ah.”

“‘Ah’? What’s that?”

Dominic realized Rosie was staring at him with a frown marring her forehead and closed his mouth, replaying what he’d said and searching for a way to play it off. But he couldn’t find anything to say amid the crackle of static in his head. Like two live wires had struck by accident. “Can we move on?” he said, uncomfortable with the ripple his admission of insecurity had created in the room. Why the hell had he said anything? Rosie needed a strong man. Mentally and physically. Not one who worried. “I want to know what’s been going on with my wife.”

Armie crossed his legs. “In what way?”

“In every way. She used to sleep next to me. I could tell the kind of day she had by which pajamas she put on. Silk for good days, big T-shirts for bad. On her days off, she played the radio and danced to the salsa station while making breakfast. That’s gone. When I walked into the bathroom in the morning, it used to smell like coconut, and now it’s gone. I just want to know how she’s been spending her days and nights. Is that not reasonable to anyone else? She’s my wife.”

A beat of silence passed wherein he could hear his pulse scraping in his ears.

“Rosie, do you think you can appreciate that this separation has been hard on Dominic?”

“Yes,” she whispered, sounding awed. “I can.”

Dominic couldn’t look at her after sounding like such a train wreck. “Just tell me what you’ve been up to, Rosie.”

He heard her swallow. “I mostly just work and go back to Bethany’s. We had a Just Us League meeting on Saturday night, and I, um . . . I made an appointment to go look at a commercial space. The old diner on Cove.”

That brought Dominic’s head around. She was moving at the speed of light, and his feet were encased in drying concrete while he watched her shoot off into the atmosphere. His focus had been on keeping her happy and content for so long—but he’d done the opposite. Now she was reaching for her goals on her own. Was it selfish of him to want a hand in her getting there? Or would he only hold her back again? He wouldn’t be able to bear the latter. “A commercial space for the restaurant?”