HHWM | Chapter 7: Traces of a Forgotten Touch

Greg was at his desk when the call came in. Luis’s voice was a jagged ruin, the sound of a man who had forgotten how to breathe.

“Greg… Selene… there was a crash…”

The world didn’t stop, but Greg did. He didn’t wait for the specifics. He grabbed his keys and called Mayette, his movements fueled by a cold, numbing adrenaline. Within minutes, they were sprinting through the sterile, fluorescent-lit hallways of the emergency room.

Mayette immediately folded Selene’s mother into a fierce embrace, absorbing her desperate sobs. Greg stood by Luis, whose face was a mask of gray exhaustion, and offered a firm, grounding grip on his shoulder. Despite the storm in his own chest, Greg forced himself into a posture of calm. He was a family friend. The Ninong. He had no right to show the visceral terror clawing at his throat to do so would invite the very suspicion that could destroy them all.

The guilt deepened when he realized why he hadn’t answered her. He had left his “secret” phone in his car—the one meant only for her. He was the last person she had tried to reach before the world turned upside down.

He looked at Mayette. He loved her—truly, deeply. She was a woman: grounded, mature, and constant. But Selene… she was unfinished, unrefined, and dangerous in her youth. The realization made his stomach turn. Was it love he felt for her? Or an obsession so hollow it had mistaken itself for attachment? All he knew was that the thought of a world without Selene was a darkness he couldn’t face.

Two days passed in a coma. Two days of Greg haunting the hospital—a ghost in a tailored suit. He visited her late at night, watching her from the threshold of the door, waiting for a sign of life—a twitch of a finger, a deeper breath, anything.

Then, one night, her eyes opened.

They were alone. Her parents had stepped out to speak with the specialists, leaving Greg in the heavy silence of the room.

“Ninong…”

The voice was hers, but the temperature had changed. There was a clinical distance in her eyes—no playfulness, no hidden fire, no electric tension. Just a quiet, hollow confusion.

“How are you feeling?” Greg asked, his voice low, a desperate tremor hidden in his chest.

“I’m… okay,” she whispered, staring at the ceiling. “Mom said there was an accident. But I can’t remember. The last thing I know… it was the day before the christening.”

Greg swallowed hard. The silence that followed was deafening.

He searched her face, looking for the trap. Was she testing him?Was this another game—a final piece of manipulation meant to see him crawl? He couldn’t trust her—not after seeing how easily she could dismantle a man’s life. But as he looked into those clear, vacant eyes, he saw no shadow of their secret. No trace of the storage room, the apartment, or the icing-stained skin.

She had forgotten. The crash had wiped the slate clean.

Greg’s fingers trembled against the armrest of his chair. He wanted to reach out, to touch her hair, to see if he could trigger a spark of recognition, but he forced his hands to stay still. This wasn’t the Selene who had commanded him. And he… he was no longer the man she had ruined.

He stood up, the weight in his chest finally lifting like a stone cast into the sea. “Rest, Selene. I’ll be back.”

As he stepped out of the hospital, the morning sun felt like a benediction. It was as if heaven had granted him an unearned pardon. The evidence was gone. The memory was dead. He could go back to Mayette now. He could be the father he was meant to be, closing this dark chapter and burying the secret in the wreckage of the car.

He convinced himself that this was a second chance for Selene, too. She could start over, untainted by him. Greg walked away, the promise to return dissolving in the light of his own relief.

But inside the room, Selene remained.

She stared at the wall, a strange, suffocating sensation tightening her chest. Why had he looked at her like that? As if he were holding a secret she was too blind to see?

She pressed a hand to her heart, unable to explain the hollow ache within her. Something was missing. A feeling she couldn’t name; a memory she couldn’t grasp.

In the years that followed, the mystery became her shadow.

When her parents moved her away—claiming she needed a “fresh start” and a “better environment”—Selene didn’t argue. She sat by the airplane window, watching the clouds, feeling like a stranger in her own skin. They said they were doing this for her, but all she felt was the sting of being discarded.

Yet, in the quietest hours of the night, the ghosts returned. Sharp, visceral fragments of a life she didn’t recognize: the sensation of a large, calloused hand circling her waist; the heat of a mouth that left a trail of fire across her skin; eyes that whispered of things she couldn’t escape.

She didn’t know if they were dreams or echoes. She could feel the ghost of a rough palm sliding up her thigh, a touch so real it left her breathless and weak. As the plane soared higher, Selene bit her lip, her vision blurring.

She didn’t know what she had left behind, only that a part of her soul was missing. A memory she couldn’t remember, and a touch she could never truly forget.