Love Her or Lose Her (Hot & Hammered #2) - Tessa Bailey Page 0,2

the man left, still trapped in that out-of-body feeling. Whose life was this, indeed? In a few minutes, she would clock out from a job she hated and go home to a too-quiet house. A horribly, painfully quiet house where she would orbit around Dominic as if they might catch fire if they made eye contact. Where had everything gone wrong?

She didn’t know. But twenty-seven was too young to settle for unhappiness. Discontent.

Any age was too young for that.

Yet that was exactly what she’d done. Professionally and personally.

“I think I’m done,” she whispered, the words swallowed up by elevator music, the sounds of cash drawers being removed from registers and gates being pulled down at the entrances to Haskel’s. Likewise, gates were coming down around a heart that was broken every time she passed through the living room and didn’t receive so much as a hello, how are you.

I love you.

When was the last time she’d heard those words out of her husband’s mouth?

She couldn’t even remember.

She couldn’t even remember.

Maybe Dominic was the reason she couldn’t make the leap to step three of her aspirations. His lack of faith and encouragement—his utter lack of acknowledgment—was holding her back. She’d become content to waste away in this perfume purgatory. If she had more courage, she would tell Martha where to stick a bottle of Le Squirt Bon Bon. That bravery was missing, though. It had been for way too long.

What happened to us? We used to love so hard. We used to be a team.

With a chest full of crushed glass, Rosie leaned over the counter and checked the clock again. Ten. She’d made it another day. Her marriage wouldn’t.

Chapter Two

Marriage to Dominic was complicated.

To say the absolute least.

Rosie pulled her car into the garage and shut off the engine, keeping her hands on the steering wheel as she breathed in and out. In and out. His truck was parked at the curb outside their house, so Rosie knew he was inside, probably nursing a beer in front of the evening news.

Tonight was not only the night she would tell her husband it was over.

It was their scheduled night to fuck like the world was ending.

She reached over and plucked her purse off the passenger seat, holding it in her lap as she considered the door just a few feet in front of the car’s hood. It led into their kitchen. She would walk into the house like she did every single night, kick off her heels, and figure out dinner. Her own dinner. Dominic would have already eaten alone. Separate meals. Just another part of their marriage that should have signaled the end long before now.

With her heart pounding in her ears, Rosie left the car and climbed the stairs to the kitchen door. She paused with her hand on the doorknob, anticipation heating her skin despite her common sense. Sense had no place in what happened between Rosie and Dominic once a week, when the sexual tension between them reached a fever pitch and they gave in. Gave in hard.

Their marriage might be cold, but the bedroom was not.

Ever since Dominic had taken her virginity on the night of her seventeenth birthday, sex between them had grown more and more explosive. That hadn’t changed when he returned from overseas, but something important was missing. Something she needed for it to feel right and not just about slaking an urge. Affection. That had gone the way of her husband’s warmth, caring, and support, leaving nothing but a brutally gorgeous man who knew her body’s every single filthy secret.

Giving her lower lip a warning bite, Rosie opened the door and stepped over the threshold into the house, the familiar sounds of the news reaching her ears. There was already an empty beer bottle sitting by the toaster. An accusation. You’re late. I’m waiting. Ironic that a man who showed so little awareness of her as a woman would keep such close tabs on her schedule. Enough to know she usually walked into the house at 10:15 and it was now 10:22.

Rosie toed off her high heels and loosed a silent groan of relief at the ceiling.

Before she could stop herself, she slipped her feet into her running sneakers, nylons and all, her heart starting to slam loudly in her ears. This is it. I’m doing it. I can’t take the lack of love anymore when it used to be so abundant. There was so much slack in their rope now and