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. Lookedthroughme.
"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.
