19. Dom
Waking up in the middle of the night with Emma’s mouth wrapped around my dick is my new favorite memory.
Unfortunately, waking up from a dream of Emma’s mouth on my body to a ringing phone isn’t quite the same.
“Ortiz,” I answer without checking to see who it is.
“You’re going to murder me.”
I sit upright in bed so fast that Emma tumbles off my chest and onto her pillow with a quiet grunt of annoyance. I watch her, waiting to see if she’ll wake up, but she rolls back over and starts snoring quietly.
“Sir,” I greet my commanding officer. “Why am I going to murder you?”
“You need to report by oh eight hundred today. Flight leaves at oh nine hundred.”
I sigh. There’s nothing else for me to do. I can’t say no. I can’t do anything other than report as ordered.
“Yes, sir. But I’m not going to shave first.”
“Ortiz, I don’t give a fuck what you do with your face, as long as you shove it behind a rifle and stay on target. I’ll see you at oh eight hundred.”
I hang up and scrub both of my hands over my face.
“Fuck,” I mutter to the silent room.
I’m supposed to have three more days. Three days to tell Emma the truth, and how I feel, and convince her to wait for me. Instead, I’m out of time and have nothing to offer her. Checking the clock, I have three hours.
Three hours to pack my shit and break the news, not only to Emma but to my entire family and my boss.
Rather than wake her up, I start packing.
First, I go into the office and print out all the photos of Emma and me that I’ve managed to take over the last week. Admittedly, there are only a few of them. So while they’re printing, I walk back into my bedroom and take two more, brushing the hair out of her face like a stalker so that I get the best possible picture to put in my uniform pocket.
Still sleeping, she presses her face into my palm and my heart melts completely. I’m head over heels for her, and there’s nothing I can do to make her see it. Soon, all she’ll see is the lie, and I’d give anything to make a different choice.
To go back in time and tell her that first night, when she’s sitting on my lap in front of the fire. To give her the whole truth so that she can make a choice.
So she knows what she’s getting into with me.
Instead… I’m fucking it all up again.
Running out of time isn’t an option, so I pull all of my uniforms out of the closet and shove them into my gear bag.
Anything I miss, I’m sure I’ll be issued overseas. And since I’m going completely against protocol by not shaving my face, I go ahead and plan on putting my uniform on that way, too. My uniform is almost like a second skin. My boots are the last to go on, and I’ve never regretted my decision to stay in. Not until this moment.
Once everything is packed, in the bed of my truck, and I have the photos folded in my pocket the way I need them, I pull one of my dog tags off the chain that always hangs around my neck. Pocketing it, I walk back into my bedroom and sit on the edge of the bed.
“Emma.” I shake her gently. Too gently, apparently, because she doesn’t wake up. “Emma.” I shake harder, and she opens one eye and glares at me.
“What do you want?” Her eye widens, which should be impossible since it is the only one open, and then she is shoving me back and staring at me with both eyes wide-open. “Why the fuck are you wearing your BDUs?” She scoots so that she is sitting against my headboard, and I can see the panic in her eyes. “Is this a nightmare?”
“Emma.” I say her name calmly, soothingly, like she is about to lose her shit. “Emma, you know I’m in the Reserves.”
She shakes her head. “Yeah, that’s one weekend a month and two weeks a year, Dominic. You literally just got back from training. Why. Are. You. Wearing. Them?” Her voice trembles, and I have no choice but to pull the Band-Aid off completely.
“I’m deploying, Em?—”
“No.” Her eyes turn cold. “No. You can’t be deploying, because that’s not something you find out at the last minute. Which means that you’ve known that you’re deploying this entire time. And that means that you lied to me. So, no. No, you’re not deploying, Dom.” But I can see the rationalizations hitting her and then vanishing just as quickly.
Tears fill the hazel eyes that I love more than life itself, silently pleading for me to tell her that this is all a bad dream. That I’m not going anywhere. But I can’t do that.
And I can see the moment that the truth settles in her face.
In the harsh lines around her eyes.
The same lines that usually show me she’s smiling.
Only now, now I know that I’ll never see that smile for me again.
“Emma. I wanted to tell you. I tried. I did. I warned you.” She flinches away, even though I’m not anywhere near her. My words are a weapon, and I don’t want to hurt her any more than I already am.
“You did,” she whispers. “You told me you couldn’t have me. That you wanted me… but that I wasn’t yours. And you were right. Because you don’t lie to someone if they’re yours. I’m not yours.”
“Don’t say that, Emma.” My heart cracks. “Mi amor. Por favor. No digas eso. No es verdad. Te amo.” My breath catches in my throat. “It’s not true. Please. Don’t.”
“You don’t love me, Dom.” Emma’s small voice hits worse than any bullet can. “I don’t even know you.” She slides out of my bed, wearing my shirt, and holds her hand out for me to stop when I try to go to her. “Don’t. If you touch me, I’m going to break, and I can’t break. Not in front of you. You don’t deserve that from me.”
She stares at me in the uniform that killed her brother, and I watch the love for me vanish from her eyes. “When do you leave?” She doesn’t wait for an answer before she starts grabbing clothes out of her drawer and slipping into them. “Obviously today, but when?”
I watch her, needing to see her. Needing to absorb every single moment in her presence. “This morning.”
She pauses, taking a deep breath, and I watch her back shift and her shoulders slump. I don’t need to see her face to know that she’s barely holding on. Any moment, she’ll shatter into a hundred thousand pieces, and there will be no putting her back together again.
Because of me.
I did this.
And I owe it to her to watch and suffer right alongside her.
I stand there for what feels like an eternity but only lasts a few seconds before Emma pulls herself together in front of my eyes.
One by one, I see those tiny fragments of herself that had begun to crack return. I see her shoulders move, her fingers clench into a fist, and I see her change.
I see the way she shoves every single feeling aside and I hate myself for being the cause.
She turns with an expressionless mask covering her face and waves her hand over my uniform. “Okay,” she says. “Let’s go. I’m assuming you need to be taken to your parents’ house so that you can say goodbye.” She sniffs. “They can take you to the airport from there, right? I’ll get your truck to the department.”
I nod, unable to say anything. I did not expect her to offer the ride, honestly. I didn’t expect her to do anything but walk away.
“Let’s go.” Emma leads the way down the stairs and out the front door without looking at me.
I would have given anything in that moment for her to scream. To yell. Anything that shows that she cares. The silence that fills the space between us is too much, and I want it gone.
Knowing she is about to slap my hand away, I reach across the center console while I drive as slowly as I can manage across Birch Harbor. I want to touch her.
To remind myself that she’s my reason for coming home.
When Emma doesn’t pull out of my grip, I let myself think that there is a possibility that she’ll wait for me.
That she loves me back.
That the lie won’t exist between us.
I’m so caught up in the moment that I don’t notice her tears or the way she doesn’t hold my hand back. She’s just letting me take my own comfort.
She’s wrapping herself in a protective layer, and I almost miss it.
Like an idiot.
I don’t see the truth.
Not until I’m pulling up outside my mother’s house at the ass-crack of dawn.
“I’m sorry, Emma.” I croak on the words and almost choke on the lack of saliva in my mouth.
Everything in my life feels like it hinges on her answer. On her ability to accept my apology and move forward.
“I know you are,” is all she says. Then she wipes her cheeks and opens the door.
“Please,” I call to her back as I follow her into the yard. “Please don’t leave me.”
Emma spins around, and the tears flow unchecked now. “I’m not the one leaving, Dom.” She lowers her voice when she realizes that she’s yelling on my parents’ front lawn. “You’re the one who lied. You’re the one leaving. I’m here, aren’t I?” She spins on her foot and almost falls on the dew-wet grass.
I catch her before she can hit the ground, relishing the way her body fits against mine, like she’s made for me. “I got you.”
At my words, she freezes in my arms and waits silently for me to let her go.
“Dominic?” Mama stands on the porch, watching me with a wary look. “Why are you in uniform? There are still three days until you’re supposed to leave. Did something change?”
Emma gasps quietly and turns to face me with even more hurt in her eyes. I didn’t think it was possible. “Did everyone know but me?” Her lip trembles, and I hate myself in that moment.
But those words weren’t just for me.
“?Que dijo?” Mama’s voice rings out clearly. “Did Emma not know that you were leaving?”
When Emma shakes her head, my mother clasps her hand to her chest. “Dios mio.”She rushes down the steps and ignores me completely in favor of taking Emma into her arms, pulling her away from me. “My precious mija. I’m so sorry he didn’t tell you.” For me, there is only two very angry sets of eyes pointed in my direction.
Emma hiccups, her sob catching in her throat. “Do you need me here? Or can you take him to the airport? He said you’d take him.”
“Si, Emma.” Mama rubs her back gently, like she is soothing a scared little girl. “I can do it. I’m so sorry.”
“Good.” Emma sniffs and hugs my mother back before letting go and walking toward my truck. “Grab your bag, Dom. I’ll take your truck to work when I go in today, like I said.”
“Emma.” Her name is nothing more than a whispered prayer on my lips.
I have nothing left to say.
Nothing left to give her.
She already has my heart, my soul, everything I can possibly give her. And she doesn’t even know it. If I try to say the words, she’ll think I’m lying again. She’ll assume the worst, and she wouldn’t even be wrong for making the assumption.
I don’t bother trying.
I can see I’ve already lost her.
There’s no going back.
I get my bag, slinging it over my shoulder as she walks behind me and waits to make sure I have everything. Convinced she’ll leave without saying anything else, I stare at the back of her head.
“I know I fucked up, Emma,” I tell her, wanting to punch myself in the dick when I see her flinch. “But I will make it right. When I get home, you’ll see. I’ll do whatever it takes to fix this. I meant every single word. Every single minute with you was the best in my entire life.”
She reaches for the door handle, pausing before she opens it, and I can see and feel the tension radiating off her in waves. When she turns around, it’s like I’m looking at a complete stranger.
“There’s nothing to fix, Dominic.” I watch the muscles in her throat convulse as she swallows and takes a deep breath. “You said it right when you told Chief Townsend after the first kiss. It was nothing. Good luck on your deployment. I hope you don’t die. Don’t call me when you get home.”
Emma climbs into my truck and turns over the engine and pulls away without looking back.
I know because I’m staring the entire time, hoping at first to see the brake lights. Then praying irrationally that she turns around or that I see her eyes in the rearview mirror. Anything. Anything at all that might tell me that she’s going to wait for me.
There’s nothing there.
No sign that Emma looked back whatsoever, and I don’t blame her.
It doesn’t matter how far I fly or what desert the Marine Corps drops me into. It doesn’t matter how many miles I travel from home. I will never be able to get the memory of Emma’s heart breaking in front of me out of my mind.
I don’t deserve to forget.
When I close my eyes, I see her tears.
When I should hear the roaring of the carrier’s engines as we take off, I hear Emma’s sobs. I can feel her pulling away and out of my reach.
With every passing mile, the reality of my situation is beat into me.
I lost the only woman I’ll ever love, and there’s no one to blame but myself.