HHWM | Chapter 21: A Home That Was Never Safe

When Mayette opened the front door, she was met by a silence that felt like a physical blow. The absence of Greg’s voice and the laughter that usually filled the living room left the house feeling hollow, like a ribcage stripped of its heart. Only Gio was there, sitting on the floor with his toys while the nanny watched over him.

“Mommy!” the boy chirped, running to wrap his arms around her neck. Mayette hugged him back, but the warmth didn’t reach her chest. A thick, suffocating fog had settled over her spirit, numbing the very love that usually sustained her.

“Where’s Daddy?” Gio asked, his innocence a jagged contrast to the storm that had just leveled their lives.

Mayette closed her eyes, swallowing the bile of grief rising in her throat. Instead of answering, she signaled the nanny to take Gio to his room to rest. Only when the sound of her son’s footsteps faded did she allow herself a ragged breath. She retreated into the master bedroom as if fleeing from a ghost.

Inside, she was greeted by the wreckage of her own life. The walls were lined with family portraits—smiles frozen in time that she no longer recognized. Her wedding photo, their first portrait with Gio—moments she once wore like medals of honor now felt like shards of glass pressed against her heart.

She sat on the edge of the bed, fighting the urge to shatter. For Gio’s sake, she couldn’t afford to break. No matter how much she loathed Greg, she refused to let his ruined reputation stain their son’s future. She would carry the pain alone to keep the image of a “good father” alive for the boy. But protecting the image didn’t mean there was any room left for forgiveness.

Slowly, she stood and approached the wall. She reached for the first frame, feeling its weight—the physical gravity of a decade of lies—and unhooked it. Then the next, and the next. She stripped the walls bare until the history of their family lay in a heap on the floor. Each frame that fell sounded like the finality of a gavel.

She threw open Greg’s closet. Without hesitation, she began tearing his clothes from the hangers—polos, shoes, watches—items that once held sentimental value now looked like the discarded skin of a predator. As his things piled up on the floor, a memory flickered in her mind—a night years ago when Greg had been vulnerable, clinging to her as they talked in the dark.

“If… if the time comes that I fail you,” he had whispered then, “would you still forgive me? Would you stay? Would you hate me?”

And her answer, given with a devotion she now realized was her greatest weakness: “What are you saying, my love? I won’t give up on you. Whatever goes wrong, we’ll face it together. I’m not going anywhere.”

Mayette collapsed among his scattered clothes, a guttural sob escaping her. The depth of her past love had become the measure of her current hate.

While the night deepened in the house, the hospital remained a sterile, echoing void. In the dim light of the recovery ward, the rhythmic beep of a monitor was the only thing tethering Greg to the world.

Slowly, his fingers twitched.

When Greg’s eyes finally struggled open, the world was a blur of pain and white light. His head throbbed, and every breath felt like a labor of fire. His mind instinctively reached for a single constant.

“Hon…?” he wheezed, searching for the shadow of his wife.

But it wasn’t Mayette who sat by his side. It was Selene.

She stood by the bed, a damp cloth in her hand, watching him with a terrifyingly calm detachment. “She left you,” she said, her voice cutting through the haze of his medication. “Is this the woman you’re still bleeding for?”

Greg tried to sit up, but Selene pressed a hand to his chest, forcing him back onto the mattress. Her touch was cold, yet her fingers trembled with a suppressed violence.

“You would rather die than be with me?” she whispered, her voice dropping to a dangerous register. “Am I not enough of a reason to live?”

Greg heard the fracture in her tone—the desperate girl hidden behind the predator. He closed his eyes and exhaled sharply. “Selene… let’s stop this. I don’t want to ruin your life anymore.”

Selene’s eyes darkened. “You ruined my life years ago. Why won’t you gamble on me now?”

Greg met her gaze, his expression one of hollow exhaustion. “Isn’t it enough that I gambled with my family? That I broke them for you? They’re gone, Selene. What more do you need me to lose?”

Selene dropped the cloth; it hit the floor with a wet thud. She gripped the guardrail of the bed, her knuckles white as she fought the rage rising in her throat. She stared at the man who had the stomach to touch her in the dark but lacked the heart to claim her in the light.

“You didn’t lose your memories,” she said, her voice shaking with the weight of years of resentment, “but you’re still trying to deny me.”

She took a jagged breath, her eyes brimming with a tired, lethal sorrow. “Do you know what hurts the most? You aren’t afraid of losing me. You’re only afraid of facing what you did to them.”

She walked toward the door, pausing for one final, devastating look. “Sometimes, Greg… it isn’t forgetting that erases a person. It’s the way you break them.”

The door clicked shut, leaving Greg in a numbing silence. The pain in his body was nothing compared to the realization that he was now truly alone—trapped between a woman who couldn’t recognize him and a woman who knew him too well.