Chapter 14 Matt
The porch light was on.
I let the car idle for a beat, then shut it off and stayed there anyway, too rung-out to move.
The house looked the same as it always had with its white clapboard and green shutters, the old oak tree in the front yard that Elena used to climb as a kid.
I’d been here a hundred times for holidays and Sunday dinners, back in the years before her mom passed.
I'd sat on that porch and drank beer with her dad and talked about nothing. Football, weather, the price of feed.
That felt like a different life now.
I got out of the car, the gravel crunching under my feet. There was no sound from the house, no movement behind the windows. Just the porch light burning and Elena's car parked by the barn and the feeling that I was walking toward something I couldn't take back.
I still didn't know what I was going to say. I'd had three hours to figure it out and I still didn't know. Every speech I'd rehearsed sounded hollow, every apology too small for what I'd done.
But I was here, and I had to try.
I stepped onto the porch and raised my hand to knock, but the door opened before I could.
Elena.
And in her hands, her father's shotgun.
She held it like she'd been born with it in her hands. Barrel down, finger off the trigger, but ready. The porch light caught her face, and I looked for something there. Maybe anger or pain. Something.
There was nothing.
She looked at me the way you look at a solicitor. Something to be dealt with and forgotten. I noticed her eyes flicking over the bruises, the lip, the mess I'd made of myself… but she didn’t ask. She didn’t need to.
"Elena," I said, my voice cracking. "I—"
"No."
I stood there with my mouth open, every rehearsed apology dying in my throat.
This wasn't the woman I'd married. This was someone new, someone forged in whatever fire I'd put her through.
And she was done with me.
"Please," I said. "Just give me five minutes. That's all I'm asking. Five minutes."
She looked at me for a long moment, then shifted the shotgun in her arms.
"You drove three hours," she said. "I'll give you two minutes."
"Elena—"
"After that, this stops pointing at the floor." Her voice was calm. "Go."
Two minutes to save eight years.
I shifted my weight and kicked my lips. My mouth was dry, my heart hammering so hard I could feel it in my throat. Any scrap of language I had left just tore loose and vanished. Just static and panic and Elena's blank face staring back at me.
"I'm sorry," I said. "I know that doesn't mean anything. I know sorry doesn't fix what I did. But I am. I'm so fucking sorry, Elena."
Nothing, not even a flicker.
"I was selfish," I continued. "Stupid. I threw away the best thing in my life for… for nothing. It meant nothing. She meant nothing. I don't know why I did it. I don't know what I was thinking. I just…"
I stopped, took a breath, then started again.
"I'm not asking you to forgive me. I know I don't deserve that.
But I love you. I've always loved you. You're everything to me.
And I know I can be better. I know I can be the man you thought you married.
I'll do whatever it takes. Counseling, therapy, whatever you need.
Just… please, Elena. Give me a chance. One chance to make this right. "
I stood there, chest heaving, everything I had laid out on that porch between us.
Elena looked at me. Looked through me.
"You done?" she asked.
"Elena—"
"Are you done?"
I swallowed. Nodded.
She went silent, then turned on her heel, heading for the door like she couldn’t stand to face me another second.
"Do you hate me?" The words came out before I could stop them. "Is that what this is? You hate me?"
Because hatred I could work with. Hatred meant she still felt something, that there was still a door, even if it was locked or barricaded. Hatred meant I existed to her.
Elena turned and tilted her head, considered the question like I'd asked her about the weather.
"No," she said. "I don't hate you, Matt."
Something bloomed in my chest. Stupid, desperate hope.
"I don't feel anything," she said. "When I look at you right now, I don't feel love or hate or anger. I don't feel sad. I don't feel hurt." She paused. "I just feel tired."
The hope died.
"You want forgiveness?" she asked. "I can't give you that. I don't have it in me. You used it all up."
I opened my mouth but she kept going.
"Closure? Forget about it. You don't get to blow up someone's life and then get closure. That's not how it works." She shifted the shotgun slightly. "A second chance?"
She looked at me, her eyes hard.
"I gave you eight years of chances, Matt. Every single day I woke up next to you was a chance. Every time I kissed you goodbye or made you coffee or planned our future… that was a chance. And you rolled the dice and decided to fuck someone else."
The words hit like buckshot.
"So no," she said. "You don't get another one."
She looked at me for one more moment, and something in her face settled. Without hurrying, she shifted the shotgun in her hands, easing her grip so it balanced comfortably along her forearm. She held the way someone holds a tool they’re done using.
She didn’t say goodbye or wish me well. Didn’t offer a single thing for me to cling to.
She just turned and walked back inside, the screen door whining the way it always had. For a moment I just stood there because my body hadn’t caught up to what had happened. Then the cold hit me, sharp enough to make everything snap into focus.
There was nothing to chase. Nothing to fix.
Not anymore.
I stepped off the porch, down into the gravel, the crunch under my feet louder than it had any right to be. I didn’t look back at the house.
I already knew that door wasn’t opening for me again.