Love Her or Lose Her (Hot & Hammered #2) - Tessa Bailey Page 0,7
time for Travis Ford to approach with a shit-eating grin a mile wide. He had the swagger of a man who didn’t need to work, just wanted a hobby in between commentating gigs at Bombers Stadium and getting heavy with his fiancée, also known as Stephen’s other sister, Georgie.
The pair had accidentally hooked up over the summer after pretending to date in an effort to clean up Travis’s “bad boy of baseball” image. It had worked in a way they’d never expected and the guy couldn’t be flying any higher. Or be more obviously devoted to his girl.
I used to be like that with Rosie.
Right up until the day he’d joined the marines and left for his first tour, anytime he and Rosie were in the same room together . . . he saw nothing else. There was simply nothing and no one but the girl who’d held his heart since middle school.
It was still that way. Nothing had changed in that regard. Never would.
He hadn’t been in the same room as her since Tuesday, and thank God. Thank God she hadn’t seen him drunk and raging and calling her turned-off cell phone in between swigs of Jack Daniel’s. He wouldn’t have been able to stomach her seeing him weak.
The ex–baseball player propped an elbow on the raised back gate of Dominic’s truck and took a long pull from his paper coffee cup. Then he lowered it, hesitating. “Heard your wife left you.”
If he’d had an ounce of energy left in his body, he would have decked the cocky motherfucker. As it was, Dominic was too numb to move. Couldn’t even feel the toolbox in his hand. “You have something to say about it?”
“Wait, wait. Hold up.” Stephen stepped in between them with a look of outrage. “How come Travis knows and I don’t?”
Travis grinned into another sip of coffee. “You don’t really want a reminder this early in the morning that I’m moving in with your sister, do you, Stephen?”
“No.” He held up a staying hand. “Please, God, keep it to yourself.”
“Bought an autumn centerpiece for the dining room table last weekend,” Travis continued undeterred, obviously enjoying himself. “Has little pumpkins and pinecones sticking out of it. Cute as hell.”
“Are you done?” Stephen complained. “This man’s marriage is over.”
The cavern in Dominic’s chest widened, but he hardened his jaw, refusing to let the turmoil inside show on his face. “Look, if you two assholes wouldn’t mind? I’d like to go knock some walls down.”
Travis tipped his coffee cup in Dominic’s direction. “What you should have done is knocked your own walls down and let her in—”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Stephen’s voice was rife with disgust. “You’ve been in a relationship for one minute and think you’re an expert?”
“Yes.”
Dominic turned on the heel of his boot and headed toward the house, leaving his two friends to argue behind him. Today was demo day on their new flip, and he found sinking a sledgehammer into old Sheetrock cathartic most times. This morning, he physically needed the outlet. Already frustration was curling his fingers into fists.
His wife was supposed to be by his side.
He was working, but the money he earned would no longer provide for her. Knowing that was a constant punch in the gut.
I provide. That’s the one thing I’ve never fucked up.
Dominic’s father had been a quiet man, but he’d been driven. After his single mother had passed, he’d left Puerto Rico at age twenty to find a fresh start in New York, where he’d met Dominic’s mother after only a month. With a young family to care for, he’d worked impossibly hard to make ends meet in the beginning. Sick days didn’t exist for the man, and he’d managed to pass on the importance of dependability to his son. Wake up, work, create security for his loved ones. As long as he was doing those things, they would be content. Providing was a no-fail way to communicate love, wasn’t it? So where exactly had Dominic gone wrong?
A few crew members were scattered on the porch when Dominic climbed the stairs and they called greetings to him, but he just kept walking, letting the roar in his ears build and block everything else out. He took a cursory glance at the markings made in thick black Sharpie on the walls, indicating where beams or pipes lay on the other side. And then he picked up the closest sledgehammer and buried it in the old Sheetrock.