I poured a whisky and didn’t drink it. Just stared at it long enough for the sun to hit the glass and drag up a memory I wasn’t ready for: Elena sitting in that same light on slow mornings, hair catching fire in it.
I set the glass down and walked to the bedroom. Better to move than stand there drowning in ghosts.
My dress uniform hung on the back of the door, still covered in the thin plastic from the dry cleaner. Elena had picked it up last week because I was supposed to wear it at a departmental ceremony next Thursday. Some retirements, a couple commendations. She’d hung it there so I wouldn’t forget. That was Elena. Made sure the buttons were polished, the insignia straight, the seams sharp.
She knew what it represented, and she believed in the man who wore it.
Standing there now, looking at that perfect uniform waiting for a man I no longer recognized, made my stomach twist. I stood in the doorway and looked at it.
Service. Honor. Duty.
All those words they drill into you at the academy until you start believing them. I did, anyway. I didn’t join for the badge or the gun or the hero bullshit some guys practically get off on. I wanted to be the one who showed up when things went bad. The one who steadied the room, who made things safer instead of worse. Someone decent and useful. That was the man I thought I was supposed to be.
I looked at that uniform, pressed and perfect, waiting for me to put it on and become the man it represented… and a cold twist of dread went through me.
I wasn't any of those things.
I was a man who’d fucked his wife’s boss. Who’d walked into that clinic with condoms in his pocket because he already knew what he was going to do. I’d gone home afterward, crawled into bed with Elena, held her like I hadn’t just broken something sacred, told her I loved her while my skin still smelled like someone else.
Who'd sent heart emojis about ovulation tests while he was planning his next fuck.
The uniform hung there, and I couldn't stand to look at it. I reached out, closed the bedroom door, and let it disappear. Out of sight.
It was still there, though. Waiting, judging.
I went back to the kitchen and thought about Angela.
About Bryan.
About the ticking clock Elena had set.
When was the deadline? Tonight? I couldn't remember exactly what Elena had said to Angela. I'd only heard Angela's version, hysterical and fragmented, begging for more time. But there was no mistaking it… There was a deadline and, knowing Elena, it was a real one. A line in the sand. Tell Bryan the truth, or Elena would do it for her.
Angela had been falling apart last night. Drunk, desperate, trying to kiss me on that couch like sex could fix what we'd broken. She wasn't going to tell Bryan. I knew that. She'd find another excuse, another reason to delay, another way to avoid the hard thing.
That was Angela. She didn't do hard things. She drank and deflected and hoped problems would dissolve on their own. She'd probably spent today on that couch with another bottle, waiting for a miracle that wasn't coming.
Which meant Elena was going to send the footage.
She'd said she would, and Elena didn't bluff. I knew it in my bones, the same way I knew the sun would rise tomorrow and the world would keep spinning and nothing I did would undo what I'd done.
She was going to send it, and Bryan was going to see it, and then?—
What?
What would Bryan do? He wasn't a violent guy. We weren’t best friends, but we were close enough for football nights and borrowed tools. The kind of easy, steady familiarity you build without noticing. He was a good, decent man. A person I should never have hurt.
I had no idea what he'd do. And that scared me more than if I'd known for sure.
What a fucking shitstorm.
I sat on the couch and waited. For what, I didn't know. Maybe a call or a text, some sign that the bomb had finally dropped.
The light shifted as afternoon slid toward evening. I must’ve opened and closed the same cabinet three times without knowing why, moved a glass from one side of the counter to the other, straightened a stack of mail I wasn’t reading. Just small, stupid motions to keep from thinking.
Then the doorbell rang.
My heart lurched.
