What if she slapped me the second she saw my face, her palm cracking across my cheek with all the years of rage she’d been forced to swallow?
What if she spat at my feet, eyes ice-cold, and called the guards to drag me away like the contaminant I was?
What if she didn’t yell at all?
What if she simply looked at me with nothing in her eyes—no anger, no pain, no love—just emptiness?
That thought hurt more than any blow ever could.
My fingers curled slowly into a fist.
Whatever waited on the other side of that door, I would face it.
I owed her that much.
I raised my hand again—
—and knocked.
Once.
Then again.
The sound cracked through the hallway, final and irrevocable.
I waited.
Seconds stretched, viscous and cruel.
My pulse roared in my ears. I was acutely aware of every detail—the hum of distant waves outside, the unfamiliar tremor in my hands.
Then—
The door opened.
Penelope stood before me.
The sight of her hit like a blow straight to the chest.
She wasn’t dressed to impress—no makeup, no jewelry beyond her wedding band—but she didn’t need any of it.
There was a quiet radiance about her, something earned rather than worn.
Sunlight from the balcony behind her caught in her dark hair, softening its edges, outlining her like a memory I’d never quite escaped.
Her eyes—those damn eyes—were deeper than I remembered, darker, holding too much pain to ever fully reflect the light again.
And it was the small things that undid me.
The faint dusting of freckles across her nose I’d once traced with my thumb without thinking.
The delicate slope of her collarbone visible above a simple linen blouse.
The thin scar on her wrist—one I’d seen a thousand times but never asked about, because I’d never thought to care about things that didn’t serve me.
She looked... whole.
Not untouched. Not healed.