14. Este #4
“Wine. Right!” Dom reaches into the refrigerator to pull out a nice bottle of Riesling and a strawberry Moscato that I eye gratefully. He pops open the corks while Gwen takes wine glasses to the dark-gray stained table in the dining room.
“How can I help?” Mallory asks.
“Just have a seat and kick off the drinkin’,” Dom tells her in his signature drawl that sounds eons sexier than a regular Texan accent for some reason.
I sniff the air and poke Dom. “Time to turn the sandwiches!”
Gwen busies herself setting the table and discussing housing market prices and interest rates with Mallory.
“Perfect,” I tell Dom as he flips the tuna melts. “Mmm, I can’t wait! Gwen is so sweet for cooking for my craving. She seems great.”
We’re only ten feet from Gwen, so she interrupts Mallory to call out, “Yes, I am! And you’re so welcome!”
Dom sets the tuna melts on a serving tray along with utensils, and we all perch on armless, high-backed, cream-colored leather chairs around his massive circular table.
Gwen and Mallory have already hit it off, and Gwen’s telling her all about her youngest daughter’s recent ADHD diagnosis and how difficult it was to convince the school to accommodate her needs.
I’m most of the way through the incredible tuna melt Gwen made when she says, “Her boredom tolerance reminds me a lot of yours, Dom. Hopefully she won’t graduate from med school and then take off for the military because she’s bored!”
My back sits up straighter while Dom and Gwen laugh, and Mallory meets my surprised gaze with a look that says, “holy shit, why didn’t you tell me Dom was in the military?” She knows, as much as I care about veteran-related causes, I avoid dating military types. I’m flummoxed by Gwen’s words.
I squeeze my lips together until I ask with a forced light tone of voice, “Oh, the military, really? You’ve never mentioned that.”
“It was a shitty time in his life,” Gwen answers as Dom gives me a nod and a shrug.
“Not something I usually talk about, but Gwen didn’t spend fifteen years in school being filled with wanderlust and a desire to serve the country.”
“You’re such a Sagittarius,” Gwen retorts, tossing a balled-up napkin at Dom, who ducks.
“What branch?” I finally ask, my heartbeat thudding in my chest as I start feeling dizzy and a little nauseous. It’s getting harder to breathe by the second, as an invisible hand wraps around my throat and starts to squeeze.
“Army, then the Rangers.” Dom pauses, concern flashing in his eyes. “Hey, are you okay?”
I clear my throat. “Yeah, fine. Just a hot flash or something.” I explain away the redness that springs to my face.
Fucking hell. I’d sworn to myself after Cole died that I would never touch another military type and all the baggage that goes with them, and now I find out the man I’m falling for is a former Army Ranger? How the hell had I not known?
And why wouldn’t Dom tell me about his enlisted life?
Did he have PTSD like Cole did?
“What kind of role did you have in the Rangers?” Mallory asks on my behalf, as she’s playing footsie with me under the table.
“Combat medic. I’d just completed my schooling and was on track to become a doctor when I took a quick EMT course over the summer and put those skills to use on the battlefield.
Not a part of my life I like to discuss, but I didn’t mean to keep it from you, Este, and I didn’t do it on purpose,” Dom tells me, reaching out for my hand.
I let him squeeze it, but remove it just as quickly.
Tears burn my eyes, and I excuse myself and run upstairs to the hall bathroom, where I finally release them. I feel like the universe has placed a bag over my head and is slowly depleting my oxygen as I sit down on the toilet, lean forward, and hang my head between my knees.
No wonder Dom cares so much about veterans. He is one. And one of the lucky ones who came home when Cole didn’t.
Okay, Celeste. Get your goddamn self together.
Breathe. In, out. In, out.
My breath comes in shuddering gasps, so I try to inhale for four seconds, hold for four, and then exhale for four.
Maybe I’m not healed. I feel like an open wound.
Tears flood down my face.
Why do I feel so betrayed? I wish Dom had told me about such an influential and substantial part of his life when we were first getting to know each other.
I assumed Dom was just a psychiatrist when, in fact, he’d seen war. So, he may have PTSD or the same quirks Cole developed from deployment. Has Dom been pretending when he’s around me?
God. The PTSD was the worst. It kept me on edge every second of the day when Cole was home.
Beyond the night terrors and sleeplessness, Cole would react strongly to innocent comments, making me feel like I couldn’t tell him important things—or hardly anything at all.
My whole day revolved around not upsetting him.
I probably still have proverbial eggshells embedded in my feet from walking all over them for so many years.
Memories flash back: the time I gently asked him to put the toilet seat down, and he screamed, “Just fucking deal with it, princess!” That had been a bad day.
Cole had then taken all the toilet seats off throughout the house, snapped at me that it was better than a hole in the ground, and told me I was a spoiled bitch.
He’d apologized the next day with candy, flowers, and even offered to let us get the puppy I’d been begging him for.
All I’d asked for was basic courtesy from him, and he’d treated me like it’d been the end of the world.
I’m not sure I ever truly forgave him for that bit of assholery.
I suffered from “complicated grief,” according to my therapist.
My life had once been all about tiptoeing around Cole.
He expected me to differentiate between his shitty moods and his good moments, to know precisely how to approach him.
I had to watch my words carefully because he could be so literal, and I barely got in a mild complaint without him taking it as a terrible affront to him.
When Cole began receiving help from a therapist in the last year of his life, things started to change.
He tried to take more responsibility for his moods and actions, and eventually, we reconnected.
He’d resembled the young man I fell in love with again—and the anti-depressants helped a lot.
Laughter returned to our marriage like a precious gift; he reminded me more of the high school class clown he’d been back in the day. Even the sex heated up.
And then he’d gotten a call for a quick mission and died—a hero, according to some unknown, uniformed, well-decorated Army man on my front steps who never told me the whole story.
Stories .
Dom would have his own stories, and I’ve already listened to so many, I’ve hit my lifetime quota. Despite that, I’ll bet Cole withheld the worst of it. Maybe that was a kindness he’d done me, shutting down rather than confiding in me.
What happens when Dom’s dark side comes out? Because it has to, right? Nobody goes to war and returns unchanged. Right?
I can’t go through this again. Won’t.
A knock comes at the door, and I lift my head.