If I Let You Go

No. It stayed, nagging at me until I had no choice but to get up and talk to Dominic.

And by ‘talk’, I mean ‘yell.’

I padded down the hall to his room, where I found him stepping out of his jeans. I had to fight hard not to focus on his bare chest, and I wished more than anything that I’d just gone to bed.

At least the bite marks have healed.

“I know that look, Madison, and I’m not in the mood for a fight.”

His jaw was set, telling me I should back off. Unfortunately, being a gobby cow meant I couldn’t.

“You really are an arse sometimes,” I said.

He picked up his jeans and slung them over a chair that was already covered in unwashed clothes.

“I can’t believe you couldn’t say no to work this one time,” I went on. “It’s her birthday, for Christ’s sake!”

“Don’t. I feel bad enough already.”

“So you should. You promised her you’d be here.”

“I know what I promised, okay? But I can’t just make this work stuff go away!”

“So come back early. Go tomorrow, and be back here on Thursday so you don’t let her down again.”

He turned on me, angrier than I’d ever seen him. “It’s so easy for you, isn’t it? You’re always here, doing everything right, while I come in and out of her life and fuck things up! It’s not easy to balance everything!”

“It’s not easy for me either! She misses you, and while you’re gone I have to work damn hard to be everything she needs until you get back!”

“If it’s such a hard job, why did you stay for so long?”

“Because I love her! I love both of you and seeing her so upset, and you so stressed is killing me. Why can’t you slow down?”

“I can’t afford to slow down! If I slow down, things don’t get done, and I’ll lose my job!”

“If you don’t slow down, you’ll lose your daughter! Can’t you see that? She is slipping further and further away from you every day. She loves you so much, but there’s only so many times you can apologise before she stops believing you.”

“I pay you to help me, Madison. Not lecture me.”

There he goes again, pulling out the ‘boss’ card. I wouldn’t mind half as much if he actually was an insensitive prick, but he’s not. If he really thought of me as just an employee, he wouldn’t have included me in everything he did with his family while we were away. But the moment I started making valid points about how his work affected Tilly, he shut me out. Put me back in my “proper” place as the hired help. Just because I understood why he did it, didn’t make it any less hurtful.

I started to leave the room, and Dominic said, “Maddi.”

The way he said my name made a tiny piece of my heart crumble away. I’d given up correcting him for calling me Maddi because –

when he said it – it felt okay.

“Do you love me?” he asked.

“I do,” I told him. “But … I don’t know what that means anymore.”

I waited, because I knew he hadn’t finished. Sure enough, after a few minutes, he rested his hands lightly on my shoulders. “Can you please look at me?”

Slowly, I turned to face him and his hands dropped to his sides. I wondered if my face looked as exhausted and miserable as Dominic’s. If the sparkle had gone from my eyes too. If he was wondering what I was thinking, the same way I was trying to see what was happening in his mind. We always read each other well. Always. Even in the recent times of chaos, we’d managed to somehow see beyond the fights and understand the things neither of us wanted to say out loud. But that moment, standing in front of him, I didn’t know what he was thinking.

And it terrified me.

A minute of deafening silence passed, and when I couldn’t stand it any longer, I said, “Why did you tell Dave that we slept together?”