He looked at me and I held out my hand.
"Give me the shotgun. I'll take it from here."
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…"
