Love Her or Lose Her (Hot & Hammered #2)(4)

Dominic had gone very still at her statement. Within the boxed doorframe between the kitchen and living room, he seemed to expand, his muscular chest rising and falling as if he were winded. “Excuse me, Rosie?”

“You heard what I said. A man. Was interested. In me.” She cocked a hip, feeling more like her old self than she had in years. “Tonight.”

Charged silence stretched between them.

“If someone touched you,” he said slowly, taking a step into the kitchen and filling it up like a hundred balloons, “that someone will regret it.”

“There was no touching. Only interest,” Rosie said. “And you know what? It felt so good. To have someone look at me and . . . see me. To make an effort.”

A muscle popped in his jaw. “I’ve been sitting here waiting for you to get home.”

“What we do doesn’t require an effort. Not anymore.” He raised an eyebrow at her, as if to say, You sure about that? And her temper spiked. “It’s good. We both know it’s good. But . . .” Her voice threatened to crack, so she stopped to clear her throat. “It’s just empty sex. There’s nothing in it anymore.”

His upper lip curled. “And you think it won’t be empty with some fucking guy you just met? Some guy who showed interest?”

“I’m saying it’ll be the same,” she whispered, before she could stop the truth from emerging. It wouldn’t stay packed in tight anymore. With every admission she made, honesty grew easier. Grew impossible to stay silent about everything that had been hurting her. For years. “The sex won’t be as good. Maybe it never will be as good with anyone else and maybe that’s why I—I thought there was hope? I don’t know, Dominic. But being with a stranger will be the same in the ways that count. I’ll feel like I mean nothing afterward.”

He seemed to stop breathing, his skin turning chalky. “Rosie.”

“What?”

Before she’d even finished the question, she’d whirled back around and started shoving her address book and paperwork into her purse. The back of her neck prickled and she knew Dominic was approaching. Don’t let him touch you or you’ll lose steam. Her sense of self-preservation kicked in and she turned, avoiding him on her way through the living room, down the hallway to the back bedroom. A total mistake, going anywhere near a bed when her body was involuntarily primed for contact. On Tuesday nights, they gave in. Like clockwork. Rosie steeled herself against the weakness of her flesh and ripped a suitcase out of the closet, throwing it open on the bed.

Holy shit. I’m doing this.

“What the hell are you doing?” Her husband stood outlined in the bedroom doorway, his heaving bare chest highlighted by the moonlight filtering in through the window. “You’re not . . . Are you leaving?”

A strangled laugh found its way out of Rosie’s mouth. “Are you really this surprised?”

“Yeah, I am!” he shouted. “Put the goddamn suitcase away.”

“No.”

That was the moment he recognized she meant business. This wasn’t a fight. It was the last fight. Even fights had been few and far between, hadn’t they? There wasn’t enough passion for one. Not unless he was inside her.

Rosie started toward the dresser, prepared to clean out her underwear drawer in one sweep of her arm, but something caught her eye. A newspaper peeking out from beneath the mattress. For the past month, she’d been circling advertisements in the local paper for restaurant space. She knew through Georgie that Dominic had found her secret stash. He’d told his buddies on the construction site, but hadn’t bothered to mention it to her.

“Dominic, do you know how hard it was to circle those advertisements?” She pinched the edge of the newspaper between her fingers and tugged it free of its mattress prison, dangling it in the air for him to see. “Do you know how hard it was to let myself believe, even for a second, that I could be capable of pursuing this dream I’ve had since we were kids? Really, really hard. Because I don’t even believe in myself anymore. I forgot what it was like. To dream. To want something for myself. A-and you saw these. You knew they were there, that I’d started to hope again . . .” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “And you still didn’t say anything?”

Dominic had the grace to look ashamed, color blooming high on his angular cheekbones.

Irked to the breaking point by his lack of response, she let the newspaper flutter to the floor. “I don’t love you anymore.”

Air rushed out of him, carried on an awful, wounded sound.

Sympathy tugged at her insides, but she staunchly ignored it. There was so much more she wanted to say. She wanted to comb through the last handful of years and hurl every nuance of her pain at him. Tell him how hurt she’d been when he’d shut her out, stopped communicating with her. How she’d felt like a failure when she couldn’t reach him even though they shared a bed, a house, a life. But there must have been a part of Rosie that loved what they used to be, because she physically couldn’t make him suffer any more. Just get it over with.

“I’m going to Bethany’s.”

He rounded the bed in her direction. “No.”

Rosie moved away, her back coming up almost immediately against the wall of their small bedroom. “Don’t try to stop me.”