11. Dom
Chapter eleven
Dom
I t took some planning, but we finally made it happen. It had been weeks. Months? Shit, I don’t know, but too fucking long since Ellie and I had a night to ourselves. An honest to god date night.
Babysitters? Check.
Nice restaurant? Check.
Good food and drinks? Check and check.
We finally took a second to breathe and enjoy each other’s company and a meal that wasn’t interrupted by our son screaming for one of us to scoop his food faster or flinging it onto the floor.
After our fight, I apologized profusely, gave Ellie an intense amount of chocolate-covered pretzels and flowers, and proposed we take a step back and make time for a date together, just the two of us. Turns out, regardless of the fight, we needed this anyway.
It only took about two weeks to get the details worked out, my brother Jake and his husband Chris agreeing to babysit. Agreeing might not be the right word. They all but screamed at us to get out and told us to plan another date night soon .
Ellie and I still talked about Luca, of course; impossible not to—he’s perfect. But we also reminisced on our dating life when we first met and gossiped about our friends because I don’t care what anyone says—when you’re married, you gossip. I somehow managed to not spill the beans about how Aiden plans to propose to Bec quite yet; I need to hang onto that secret for now.
We joked and laughed like things were easy. Like we did this all the time.
I love being a father. Luca is curious, silly, determined, intelligent, and my everything. But Ellie was my everything first and I can’t wait months to get another night like this with her. We can’t maintain a relationship with one good night every few weeks or even months.
After we arrive home and catch up with Chris and Jake for a bit, I watch Ellie wave goodbye from our front door. She locks it and turns toward me, leaning back against the frame.
Fuck. She’s a knockout, and my dick swells at the sight of her popping her hips to the side, sliding her shoes off her feet, all the while keeping her eyes on mine.
“Come here,” I say. She crosses the entryway, stopping only inches from me. I brush her hair back from her shoulder, watching the blonde curls fall away. I palm her neck and lean my forehead against hers.
Relief fills my lungs when I feel the weight of her forehead pressing against mine in return. We stay like that for a minute, leaning on each other, breathing together. It’s been so long since I’ve gotten a taste of Ellie and I almost groan at the thought. This woman means everything to me and all I want is to hear her gasping and moaning my name while I take care of her.
Intimacy is still understandably difficult for Ellie. I always want her to be honest with herself—and with me—about what she needs, what she wants, and what she doesn’t. I would be sick if she ever tried to push herself into doing more than what she’s comfortable with, and right now, she’s not comfortable with much happening between us physically very often.
Sure, we’ve had sex since Luca was born, but it’s rare. That spark from before is buried. We just have to find a way to bring it back when she’s ready .
I’ve talked to my therapist about it, even though I know Ellie would probably be embarrassed knowing that I’ve asked a professional for advice about our sex life. But I’ll be fucking damned if I’m going to unknowingly cause my wife more hurt. I can’t control the way life hurts us, but I can spend every last shred of my energy protecting her from what I can control.
I need Ellie to know that she’s always safe with me. With her body and her heart. But that doesn’t mean I don’t crave her just as badly as I did when we met.
When I married Ellie, I vowed to spend my life making her happy. During this stage of life, that looks different than it used to. Less sex and more support.
Do I get to taste her as often as I wish? No. Do I fill her ridiculously giant water bottle every night before bed to find she only took a few sips before morning? You fuckin’ bet. Because she’s my everything, and when we promised to be each other’s partner, I knew that meant we would evolve and our relationship would have to evolve too.
This is a season, and I’m going to celebrate every milestone I can, even if they look different than they used to. Wouldn’t life be fucking boring if we didn’t find something new to celebrate? New wins to remind us we’re alive? This is going to be a win for us someday.
And I can be very, very patient.
“Well, this was fun, but I got an early morning tomorrow,” I say, lips pressed to her cheek before running my nose along her hair, breathing in her shampoo and perfume. She laughs, reassuring me my joke hit like I wanted it to.
Ellie relaxes into my hold, her cheek pressing lightly against my chest and her palms running across my lower back.
“Funny, I was about to say the same. My boss likes to get the day started at the ass crack of dawn. Sometimes he even calls me in the middle of the night if he shits the bed on a project.”
“Talk about the toughest job in the world. I hope your boss pays you overtime.”
“Truthfully, I volunteer. No pay, but the benefits are exactly what I dreamed of. He’s the best. I wouldn’t change it for anything. ”
My world stops and quiets. I’m enraptured entirely by the gorgeous smile lighting up my wife’s face. She’s radiant. Pride and love and joy flowing from her with love for our small family.
Her playfulness tells me that we’ll wrap up this night in the usual way. We’ll get ready for bed, side by side. I’ll fill the giant water bottle while she sets up the monitor the way she likes—at full volume, and the screen on so she can keep a close eye on Luca.
I’m caught off guard when I pull back and meet Ellie’s stare to find her looking at me like she used to. Her eyes glazed with hunger, dipping to my lips.
It’s the briefest moment, but it’s something more. I know Ellie, and I know that look.
I swallow, running my palms up her back from her hips to her shoulders before pulling her in close, my lips grazing hers before placing a light kiss to her soft lips. She pulls away for a moment, her eyes closed, before she presses her lips to mine again, more forcefully. She slips her tongue in my mouth and I’m fucking gone.
I reach into her coat to push it from her shoulders, letting it fall to the floor before backing her against the door and trailing kisses down her neck. Her nails trace lines up the back of my skull before she grips my hair, keeping my attention on her neck, where I lightly nip at her skin.
“More,” she whispers, and my body responds instantly. I lean in, pressing my cock against her. I grip her knee and hitch her leg around my hip. I grab her ass before palming her thigh, wishing I could rip the clothes off her body and have her here.
I groan into her neck at the feel of her warm heat.
“Upstairs,” she demands.
She ducks under my arms and races for the stairs. I swat her ass as she passes me, before following the sound of her flirty giggle as she climbs the stairs.
I can’t look away, entranced by the sight of her delicious curves swaying with every step, but when I catch up with her in our bedroom, I immediately sense the shift. It’s subtle, but her eyes find mine, wide and unsure. Like what she did and said a moment ago and the implication of where this is leading and what she’s asking for are hitting her all at once.
Fuck. She doesn’t want this.
She opens her mouth, her hands fiddling and wringing in front of her stomach like she can expel the nervousness and anxiety out of her body through her fingertips.
“Ellie, it’s okay…nothing has to happen, sweetheart,” I say softly, keeping my distance so she knows I mean it.
“But you went to all this trouble setting up a fun date and—”
“Ellie, look at me.” I wait, only continuing when her glossy eyes meet mine right before a tear falls down her cheek. “Let me stop you right there. You’re breaking my heart with this,” I say, pulling her into my arms and wiping at her tears softly with my thumb.
“ Nothing about us is transactional,” I reassure her. “Our marriage is a bond, not an exchange. I don’t spend time with you so you’ll give me this.”
“But don’t you miss it?”
Of course, I fucking miss it.
Ellie’s gorgeous. She always has been. Sure, sex is part of it, but it’s more than that. More than anything, I miss her . I miss us .
Day in and day out, I find myself looking at Ellie and wanting to touch her, wanting to hold her in my arms. Our chemistry hasn’t changed, but there’s distance between us now that’s more than physical.
I miss the emotional intimacy. For almost a year, things have been tense, strained by exhaustion and a thousand competing priorities, and if I’m honest, we’re both still working through what happened when Luca was born. That shit doesn’t happen without changing a person, and it’s no surprise the experience impacted every facet of our lives.
“Ellie, I need you to hear me,” I say softly, but keeping my hold on her firm as I palm the back of her head, before dropping a kiss there too. “I need you to stop thinking about what you think I want. If you want to know, you ask me, okay? The most important thing to me is that you’re okay. That we’re okay. We can’t give anything to each other when we’re struggling on our own. What I miss is you talking to me like you did tonight. What I miss is giving each other our time. It’s not our fault; this past year has been a lot. It’s been incredible , but so fucking hard too. Do I want to have sex with you? Always. Twenty-four seven, three hundred sixty-five, babe. But what I need is for you to take care of yourself so that we can take care of each other.”
My heart breaks again as she sniffles against my chest, my shirt damp where she presses her cheek against me, and her hands wrap tightly around my back.
“Don’t you miss who I used to be? Wasn’t she easier to be around? Wasn’t she easier to love?”
“The woman I met when I was twenty-two? She was fucking phenomenal. The woman I married? My fucking soul mate. But the woman you are today? There is no end to my love for her. There aren’t words to explain this knowing in my heart that we were meant to spend every minute of our lives side by side. Fighting our demons, sharing our successes, and making each other laugh. It’s not just easy to love you, it’s impossible not to.”
“I’m tired of feeling like this. I want to feel like me again,” she whispers, her voice cracking.
“You will, Ellie. I promise. Give it time. Give yourself time. I’m not going anywhere.”
***
“Morning,” Ellie mumbles, rubbing her eyes as she makes her way into the kitchen.
I meet her at the kitchen island, dropping a kiss on her lips before putting a cup of coffee in front of her. She leans back on the bar stool, wrapping her hands around the warm mug, her eyes watching me as she takes her first sip. She melts a little, relaxing into her seat, and licks her lips before smiling at me.
“Morning, gorgeous,” I say. She pulls the baby monitor in front of her, huffing out a breath as she stares in disbelief.
“Okay, but what the actual fuck? Chris and Jake babysit and Luca sleeps in for the first time in his entire life? ”
“Did you hear Jake say it only took them ten minutes to get him to sleep?”
“Are you fucking kidding? Call them. They have to move in,” she says, face serious for only a second before she breaks into a smile, giggling at her own joke. There’s my girl.
“As his brother, I reserve every right to tell you, you don’t want to live with Jake.”
“I will trade you for him in five seconds if it means Luca sleeps like this every night,” she deadpans.
“You’d miss me too much.” I wink at her. “Besides, you guys don’t like the same shows. Do you really want to spend the rest of your life fighting for the remote in exchange for just a couple of hours of decent sleep?”
“First of all, that wasn’t decent sleep. That was life-changing, soul-reviving, dark-eye-circle-healing sleep. And hun, I love you, but we only have, maybe, two shows we both like to watch, so if that’s what we’re basing this off of, fine. Then Chris can move in and you can have Jake. Chris and I share every show.”
“I hope you two will be very happy together.” I cross my ankles and lean against the counter.
“Eh, I think I’ll take my chances on bad sleep and hang onto you a little longer. You make the best coffee.” Ellie smiles at me as a comfortable silence stretches between us, both sipping on warm drinks in an unhurried morning. Hot coffee, quiet house, and the woman of my dreams sharing it with me.
Unable to wait any longer, I dive in, hoping she’ll hear me out.
“Hey, I’ve been thinking,” I say. From approximately one to three in the morning , I don’t add. Figures the first good night of sleep we get from Luca in who knows how long, and I was stuck awake, tossing and turning, trying to figure out how I wanted to approach this conversation with Ellie. “I want you to know that I love you. I love you so much, Ellie. But last night—”
“I’m sorry,” she rushes out, placing her hand on mine. Her grip tightens, her fingers digging into my palm. Her eyes close and she shakes her head slightly as she says, “I’ve just been feeling insecure and touched out lately. I had a great time last night. I’m sorry I ruined it at the end. ”
My chest aches. Her words are another reminder that we still have so far to go. We have a lot of work to do to repair what we’ve neglected for months while we focused on other things. We can’t afford to push us aside anymore or I’m afraid there won’t be an us for much longer. How long can a relationship last on the path we’re taking? We need to be our priority now.
“I’m going to need you to take that back,” I say.
“What do you mean?”
“When exactly do you think you ruined our night? On our date, while we talked and laughed in what was probably the longest uninterrupted conversation we’ve had in months? When you kissed me and lit my insides on fire with your perfect body pressed to mine? When you fell asleep in my arms and hummed my name in your sleep?”
“I don’t talk in my sleep,” she says softly, her eyes glistening with amusement, even though her posture screams that she’s feeling uncertain and vulnerable.
“Yes, sweetie, you do—always have—but that’s not my point.” I circle the counter and turn her seat until I’m standing in front of her. I lean down, dropping my hands to each armrest at her side, and bend so we’re eye to eye.
“There is no part of last night that was in any way ruined . I was with you. If you asked me to change one thing about it, I wouldn’t. It was exactly what we needed. Which brings me back to what I wanted to talk to you about.” I pause, steeling myself for an uncertain reaction to what I’m about to suggest. “I think we need to put sex on the back burner right now.”
I wasn’t sure how best to approach the subject, but in the moment, it seems like I’ve decided to go with being direct. I hope I’m not fucking this up.
“You…don’t want to have sex with me anymore? Are you not attracted to me?” The question is laced with unmistakable hurt.
I straighten, lifting her chin so her eyes stay on mine.
“I meant what I said last night, Ellie. I always want you. Twenty-four seven, three hundred and sixty-five. You’re even more stunning today than you were the day I married you, but I want us to take some time to focus on other things without the pressure of sex lingering in the back of our minds. Every time it comes up, you apologize and talk about what you think I want. But I need to know what you want. I want more than anything to give it to you. It feels like it’d be easier if we could focus on taking care of ourselves and each other in the other ways that matter first. Then we’ll put sex back on the table when we’re ready.”
When you’re ready.
The hurt seems to dissipate as she absorbs what I’m saying. I know it’ll take more than one conversation to reassure her that this is a good thing, but we have to try something different. What we’re doing isn’t working, and this is the best I can come up with. I just hope I’m not making things worse.
“So how will we decide when we’re ready to put sex back on the table?” she asks, tucking her hair behind her ear as she stares into her coffee mug.
“Let’s not set any time limits. Let’s just feel it out.”
“Feel it out?” She chokes, disbelief radiating off her.
Come on, babe. Trust me.
I nod, forcing confidence into my posture. Begging her silently to put her faith in me, to give me a chance to fix this.
She studies me, and she must find what she’s looking for because she agrees. “Okay, I trust you.”
“This will be good, I promise. Now, I have one more serious topic for this morning. Before Luca wakes up, we have got to work on it.”
She rolls her eyes. “The second we sit down to work on it, he’s going to wake up. It’s like when we lie down to fall asleep…it’s the loudest sound in the world, straight to his tiny ears like cymbals crashing in a high school band.”
“Nah, Luca loves his dad too much to not give me an extra twenty minutes for this.”
I pull Ellie from her seat, and she joins me at the dining table. It never gets used for dining. Its purpose is almost exclusively for this .
Several completed puzzles lie on the table, off to the side. The unfinished one is set up in front of where Ellie and I sit. Only the puzzle’s outline is completed. Ellie takes a minute to tuck her feet underneath her, getting comfortable, surveying the pieces while she calculates her first move. I dive in, reaching for the first piece when we hear Luca’s cry ring out over the monitor .
We lock eyes and Ellie giggles.
“I’ll get our boy. You get some puzzle time in.”
I grab her hand before she can get too far and pull her into me for a quick kiss.
“I love you, Ellie.”
“And I love you.”
She leaves to get Luca, and I hear her a few moments later on the monitor, still on the table in front of me. I watch the screen as she pulls him from his crib and listen as she sings and shushes, soothing him almost immediately. She’s a natural, even if she always doubts it.
I knew Ellie would be a phenomenal parent. With her family and friends, she’s always been a steady constant. The nurturer, capable of showing endless love and compassion for the people she cares about. Even still, seeing her become a mom, watching her grow into her own is one of the greatest privileges life has ever given me.
It’s not her fault. I don’t hold onto any resentment for the struggles she’s battling right now. But I wish she could see herself like I do. If she did, she’d see bravery. Bravery to wake up every day and give everything she has to this tiny human, dependent on her for every need, even when I know she’s second-guessing every move she makes. I close my hand in a fist, silently wishing I could explain to her—that I could show her—so she’d understand she doesn’t need to be scared.
She deserves to walk with confidence and be proud of everything she’s survived. I can’t take away the hurt completely, but if I can help, then I’m going to give it my all. The puzzle piece in my hand pokes into my palm as my grip tightens in frustration, reminding me that I never found its place.
I open my palm to see one of the edges crinkled, a little worse for wear, but it will still fit into the bigger picture just fine. I find myself turning the piece over and over in my hand…and it makes me think. If Ellie won’t listen to me when I try to tell her this…maybe I need to show her.