Chapter 16 Matt
Idrove without thinking, without planning, just following the roads I'd known my whole life until I found myself turning onto Maple Street.
My parents' house sat three blocks from the center of town, same white ranch they'd lived in since before I was born.
The porch light was on. That was Mom's thing, leaving it burning for whoever might need to find their way home.
I used to think it was for me, back when I was a teenager stumbling in past curfew.
Now I knew it was just habit. A light burning for ghosts and memories and sons who'd stopped needing it years ago.
I pulled over a house down from theirs and killed the engine. I sat there in the dark, looking at the warm glow of the kitchen window.
I could see them through the glass. Mom at the sink, washing dishes, her gray hair pulled back the way she always wore it.
Dad stood beside her with a dishtowel, drying as she handed them over.
I could see their mouths moving, see the way Mom laughed at something Dad said and nudged him with her elbow.
Fifty years of marriage and they still stood close enough to touch while they did the dishes.
My chest tightened.
I wanted to go inside, to walk through that door and sit at their kitchen table and tell them everything. Have Mom make tea and Dad sit there quiet and steady while I fell apart and tried to figure out how to put myself back together.
But I couldn't.
Because they'd ask what happened, and I'd have to tell them. And then they'd know what kind of man their son had become.
The man who cheated on his wife and threw away eight years for nothing. The man who showed up on his in-laws' porch and got a shotgun pointed at him because that's what he deserved.
They'd find out eventually.
Small towns didn't keep secrets—someone would tell someone who'd tell someone else, and within a week the whole of Millbrook would know that Matt Hale had fucked around and lost everything.
My mother would hear it at the grocery store or the post office.
My father would get it from one of his buddies at the VFW.
And they'd have to carry that, have to smile and nod and pretend it didn't break their hearts that their son had turned out to be exactly the kind of man they'd taught him not to be.
But not tonight.
Tonight, they could stand in their kitchen and do the dishes and laugh at whatever small joke had passed between them. Tonight, they could still be proud of me, or at least not ashamed.
I watched Dad set down the dishtowel and pull Mom close, kissing the top of her head.
She leaned into him the way people do when they've been together so long that touching is as natural as breathing.
Easy and effortless, the type of love that doesn't require grand gestures or second chances because it never needed them in the first place.
That's what I'd had with Elena. Or what I thought I'd had, anyway. What I could have kept if I hadn't been so goddamn stupid.
My throat closed up. I put the car in drive and pulled away before they could look out the window and see me sitting there in the dark like some kind of ghost haunting his own life.
Soon enough, the highway stretched out empty ahead of me. I didn't bother with the radio.
My phone buzzed a few times on the passenger seat. I glanced at it once, noticed Angela's name on the screen, and turned it facedown. I’d been avoiding her calls for days. Tonight wasn’t going to be the exception.
It was past midnight when I pulled into the driveway.
The house was dark, and for a moment I just sat there in the car, engine ticking as it cooled, staring at the front door.
The yellow tulips in the vase on the kitchen table would still be there, as would the sheets I'd washed three times.
Everything still in its place, like the whole house had frozen in time.
But time was still moving, whether I wanted it to or not, and when the divorce papers came—and they would come—I'd lose this too. The house, the life, all of it.
I got out, locked the car, and started up the walk.
That's when I saw her.
Angela was sitting on the front steps, knees pulled up to her chest, head resting against the railing. Her hair was a mess, makeup smudged, and even from here I could tell she'd been drinking. A purse sat beside her, contents half-spilled onto the concrete.
She looked up when she heard me coming and tried to smile. It came out wrong, lopsided and sad.
"Hey," she said. Her voice was thick, slurred just slightly. "Thought you'd never get home."
I stopped at the bottom of the steps and looked at her. The smudged makeup, the messy hair, the way she was sitting there like she didn't know where else to go.
"Angela." My first instinct was concern, automatic and immediate. "What happened? Are you okay? Did Bryan—"
"Bryan?" She laughed, but the sound was bitter. "No. Bryan's not like that. He didn't kick me out or hurt me or whatever you're thinking." She wiped at her face with the back of her hand. "He's just done. We're done. Says he wants a divorce. He was very clear about that."
I stood there, not knowing what to say. What was there to say?
"Can I come in?" Angela asked. "I've been sitting out here for like an hour and it's fucking freezing."
The smart thing would've been to call her a cab, make sure she got home safe, and close the door on this whole mess. Leave her out here with her problems and go inside to deal with my own.
But she looked so small and wrecked sitting there. And that same instinct that had gotten me into this disaster in the first place—the one that wanted to help, to fix, to be needed—wouldn't let me walk away.
"Yeah," I said. "Come on."
I unlocked the door and we went inside.
The house was dark and quiet, still smelling faintly of the cleaning products I'd used obsessively for days. Angela kicked off her shoes by the door and followed me into the kitchen, dropping her purse on the counter with a thud.
I grabbed two glasses from the cabinet and the whisky from the shelf above the fridge. It was probably the last thing she needed, but we were well past sensible tonight. I poured two fingers in each, slid one across the counter to her.
She picked it up and drank half of it in one go.
"So," I said. "Bryan."
"Bryan." She stared down at her glass. "He saw the video.
Watched the whole thing, apparently. Then he just..
. sat there. He didn't yell, you know? Didn't break anything.
Just sat there looking at me like I was a stranger.
It hurt, Matt, it really hurt." She swallowed hard. "I kept thinking maybe you’d call, you know? Or… something. But you didn’t. "
Her words made me flinch before I could stop myself. Being needed was the one thing I’d ever been good at, and I hadn’t even managed that. Not with her. Not with anyone.
"Anyway, he asked me to leave," Angela continued.
"Packed a bag for me and said he needed time to think, to figure things out.
That I should find somewhere else to stay.
So I went to a hotel. And then I just...
" She gestured vaguely. "I don't know. I’ve been going crazy sitting in that hotel room.
I needed to talk to someone who understood.
Someone who's going through the same thing. "
I nodded slowly. We were both losing everything. Both watching our marriages implode because we'd been selfish and stupid and thought we could get away with it.
"I went to see Elena today," I said. "She pointed a shotgun at me and gave me two minutes. That was it. Two minutes to explain eight years, and then she closed the door."
"Jesus." Angela drank the rest of her whisky. "I'm sorry."
"Yeah. Me too."
We sat there in the quiet for a moment, both of us staring at our glasses, both of us knowing we'd done this to ourselves but still wanting someone to tell us it would be okay.
Angela poured herself another drink, her hand shaking slightly as she lifted the glass.
"I'm going to lose the clinic," she said.
" Without him, it's done. I'll have to close it, sell off the equipment, probably file for bankruptcy.
" She laughed, but there was no humor in it.
"And the house. God, the house. That's his too, really.
He paid for most of it. I'll be lucky if I walk away with anything. "
I thought about this house. About divorce lawyers and asset division and how fast a life could be dismantled and divided up like it had never existed at all.
"Me too," I said. "The house. Everything."
"So we're both fucked." She drank again. "Completely and totally fucked."
"Yeah."
She was quiet for a long moment. "But at least we have each other, right?"
I looked up at her.
"I mean…" She gestured between us. "At least there's that, right? We're going through the same thing. We understand each other. That has to count for something."
Something cold spread its wings me. "Angela…"
"Maybe..." She trailed off and looked down at her glass. "Maybe this was supposed to happen. Maybe we were supposed to lose everything so we could… I don't know. Figure out what really matters."
"Angela, that’s—"
"We work together," she said, talking faster now. "We understand each other, and we're both alone now. We both lost everything." She stood up, came around the counter. "That has to mean something, right?"
"Angela, I don't think—"
But she was right in front of me now, close enough that I could smell the whisky on her breath, the perfume that was too familiar, the same scent that had been on my clothes after those nights at the clinic.
"We're good together," she said softly. Her hand came up to my chest, fingers splaying against my shirt. "You know we are. We always have been."
I should have stepped back and put distance between us. But I was frozen, my brain stuttering between instinct and revulsion, between the familiar pull of her touch and the growing certainty that this was wrong.
"We could make this work," she continued, her voice dropping lower, more intimate. Her other hand found my arm, sliding up to my shoulder. "Start over, both of us. Together. No more hiding, no more sneaking around. Just... us."
She leaned in closer, her body pressing against mine, and I could feel the heat of her, the want radiating off her like something tangible.
Her lips were inches from mine, her eyes half-closed, and for a split second my body responded the way it always had with her.
Automatic, thoughtless, the muscle memory of all those times before.
And then I thought of Elena's face, the way she'd looked at me with nothing. The shotgun in her hands. The door closing.
All I felt was disgust.
Not at her, no… at myself.
I stepped back and put space between us. Her hands fell away from my chest, confusion flashing across her face.
"Matt—"
"No," I said. "This isn't… we can't do this."
"Why not?" She reached for me again. "We're both free now. We don't have to hide anymore. We can—"
"Angela, stop." I caught her wrists gently, held them between us. "This isn't fate. This isn't some grand plan. This was a mistake. A huge fucking mistake that ruined both our lives."
"But we have each other—"
"No, we don't." I let go of her hands. "We have nothing. This…" I gestured between us. "This was never real. It was just... an escape. A stupid, selfish escape from problems we should have been fixing instead of running from."
Her face crumpled. "So what, you're just going to throw me out? After everything?"
"I'm not throwing you out. But I'm not doing this either. Whatever you think this is, whatever you want it to be… it's not happening."
She stared at me for a long moment. Then her expression shifted, hardened. "Is this about Elena? You think she's going to take you back?"
"No," I said quietly. "I know she's not."
"Then what the fuck does it matter?"
"Because it matters to me." I ran a hand through my hair. "Because I can't keep being this person. The guy who fucks up and then fucks up worse trying to fix it. I need to… I don't know. I need to stop, just fucking stop."
Angela laughed. "Oh, so now you're having a crisis of conscience? Now you want to be the good guy again?"
"I'm not trying to be the good guy. I'm just trying not to be the worst one."
"Please." She grabbed her glass, drained what was left.
"You want to know what your problem is, Matt? You were always too goddamn noble for your own good. Elena must’ve been thrilled with your whole gentle-husband act.
Bet she barely had to move. Probably just lay there and let you do your noble little routine. But me? I actually made you—
"Get out."
The words came out cold.
She blinked, confused. "What?"
"Get the fuck out of my house." I stepped toward her, and she backed up instinctively. "You don't get to talk about her. You don't get to stand in this house and say her name like that."
"Oh, so that's where you draw the line?" Angela's voice rose. "You'll fuck me but I can't mention how boring she was in—"
"Out. Now."
Something in my voice must have gotten through because she stopped. Then she grabbed her purse from the counter, hands trembling.
"You're such an asshole," she said.
"Yeah," I said. "I am. And so are you. We're both assholes, Angela. We fucked up. We destroyed our marriages. We hurt people who didn't deserve it." I opened the front door. "But I'm done with this. With you. With all of it."
"You think this makes you better?" She stopped in the doorway. "Walking away now doesn't change what you did."
"I know." I looked at her. "But it's a start."
She stared at me for another moment, then walked out into the night.
I locked the door behind her, then stood there with my forehead pressed against the wood, listening to her car start up and pull away down the street.
Silence again, too much of it.
I walked back to the kitchen. The bottle of whisky sat on the counter where we'd left it, the two glasses beside it like evidence.
I picked up the bottle and poured myself another shot.
How easy it would be to just keep going, to drink until I couldn't think anymore, until the weight of everything I'd done felt a little lighter?
I set it down without drinking. Then, without really thinking of what I was doing, walked to the bedroom. My dress uniform hung on the back of the door where it had been for days, the fabric still crisp from the dry cleaner. The brass buttons caught the dim light from the hallway and gleamed.
I reached out and touched the fabric.
I remembered my father helping me with the buttons the first time I wore it. Graduation from the academy. His hands had been steadier than mine, and when he'd stepped back to look at me, there'd been something in his face I'd never seen before. Hope, maybe pride.
My hand stayed there a long time.
The uniform felt steadier than I did. I thought about all the men I’d been—the one who wore it proudly, the one who ruined everything, and the one standing here now.
I didn’t know which version of me was real.
Maybe none of them were.