HHWM | Chapter 19: The Cost of Sin

“Hon?” It was the third time Mayette had called his name.

Greg had been a ghost since they returned from Luis’s party. She set her bag on the couch and moved toward him, but as she reached out, he flinched. The air between them turned frigid, as if a wall of jagged glass had suddenly surged up from the floorboards.

“I’ll take a shower first,” he muttered, his back already turned as he retreated into the bedroom.

Mayette’s hand hung in the empty air before slowly dropping to her side. She watched the door click shut. They had spent years together; she knew the syntax of his silence, the rhythm of his breathing, the weight of his secrets. She knew he was carrying something heavy, but it was the scent that truly shattered her composure.

It wasn’t his cologne. It was a fragrance she didn’t recognize—expensive, feminine, and terrifyingly familiar. It clung to the air he left behind like a lingering accusation.

She tried to fight it. She trusted him; he had never given her a reason to doubt. She chose to lean on that history rather than succumb to the poison of suspicion.

Inside the shower, Greg slammed a wet palm against the cold tiles. The water cascaded over him, but it couldn’t douse the fire on his skin. He could still taste Selene on his lips. The phantom pressure of her grip had left marks on his soul that no amount of scrubbing could erase. He realized then that there was no escape. He couldn’t bury the past because the past had become his present.

He was tired of the masquerade—tired of being the “perfect” husband and the “pillar” of the community when the foundation had been cracked since the beginning. The betrayal had reached its zenith. He could no longer hide behind the lie of a man he wasn’t meant to be.

“Mayette,” Greg called out after he had dressed.

She turned to him. It was the first time in their long marriage that his voice sounded foreign to her. Panic flared in her chest as she looked at him—the man who was her world now looked fragile, broken, and dangerously close to collapse.

The book Mayette was holding slipped from her fingers, hitting the floor with a dull thud, just as Greg’s knees gave way. He sank to the floor before her.

Mayette’s breath hitched, a phantom hand tightening around her throat. She reached out, then pulled back, her fists clenching as courage and terror waged war in her heart. Greg looked up at her—a jagged, fleeting glance—before dropping his gaze again. The man who always had an answer was now drowning in a sea of unspoken words.

He bit the inside of his cheek, forcing a fractured voice through his throat. “I can’t hide it anymore…”

The words were rough, a mixture of confession and ruin. “I’m going to lose my mind if I keep this inside.”

Mayette stared at her husband, kneeling like a beggar before her. She tried to process the words, to find a logic that wasn’t there. But as he spoke the truth… the room seemed to shrink. The air grew thin. Her expression shifted from confusion to a cold, agonizing realization.

A sharp, echoing slap rang through the hallway.

Then came the wail—a deep, primal sound torn from the very bottom of Mayette’s soul. Greg couldn’t look at her. He couldn’t bear to see the wreckage he had made of her. He wiped his face, trying to contain the tide of his own emotions, knowing he had no right to the luxury of pain. He was the aggressor; she was the casualty.

Mayette pushed him away as if his very presence burned her. She scrambled toward the door.

“Hon!” Greg scrambled after her. He caught her in the hallway, pinning her against him in a desperate embrace. “It shouldn’t be you… you shouldn’t be the one to leave this house. It’s me!”

“Don’t touch me!” she screamed, her entire body convulsing with revulsion. Once, his arms were her sanctuary; now, they were a cage. The truth was a blade buried deep in her chest.

“Mayette, please… listen to me.”

“How… how could you do that?!” She was hysterical now, sobbing, choking on her own disgust. “I don’t even know you!”

The words pierced Greg more than any physical blow. The woman he loved looked at him as if he were a monster—a stranger wearing her husband’s skin.

“M-Mommy…? D-Daddy?”

The world went still.

Gio stood at the end of the hall, clutching his small blanket, his eyes wide and brimming with tears. It was the first time he had ever seen his parents like this—shouting, broken, unrecognizable.

Mayette rushed to her son, shielding him in a fierce, trembling embrace.

“Mommy… why are you crying?” Gio whispered.

She couldn’t speak. She only sobbed into his shoulder.

“Get out…” Mayette whispered, her voice hollow and jagged. “Just leave.”

“Get out!” she screamed again, more desperate this time. She couldn’t look at the face she had built her life upon.

Greg felt his chest being hollowed out as he watched them. He couldn’t breathe. He turned and stumbled out of the house, leaving behind the only world that mattered.

He climbed into his car, his hands shaking so violently he could barely turn the key. He drove without a destination, his grip on the steering wheel so tight his wrists felt ready to snap. Years of careful construction, years of “protecting” his family, had vanished in a single hour of honesty.

His vision blurred with tears, the road ahead dissolving into a smear of lights. He never saw the delivery truck screaming in from the right.

For a heartbeat, the world went silent.

Then came the screech of tires—a high-pitched, metallic scream that tore through the night. The impact was an explosion of sound and force. Greg’s car spun, tires sliding across the asphalt before the driver’s side slammed into a concrete utility pole.

Everything moved in slow motion: the windshield crystallizing and shattering into a thousand diamonds, the violent jerk of the seatbelt against his chest, and one final, agonizing thought before the darkness took him.

Bloodied and drifting into unconsciousness amidst the smell of scorched rubber and the bite of the night air, Greg didn’t feel the shattered glass or the broken metal. All he could hear was the echo of Mayette’s voice, colder than the wind.

I don’t even know you…