Chapter 1

MAYA 

The air in the garden felt heavy, like the sky was about to drop a thousand tons of rain, but the clouds just hung there, gray and stubborn. My legs felt weak. 

I leaned heavily on my metal walker, the cold aluminum digging into my palms. Every step was a reminder of how much I had broken not just my body in the accident, but my entire life.

I watched the taxi pull away from the curb. Inside was Sarah. I had spent the last ten minutes pouring my soul out to her, trying to explain the unexplainable. 

I wanted her to know I was dying inside from the guilt of what I had done with her husband. But as the car vanished around the corner, I knew my words were just noise. You can’t fix a shattered vase by whispering "sorry" to the pieces on the floor.

"Maya!"

The voice hit me like a physical blow. I didn't have to turn around to know it was Liam. My husband. The man who used to look at me like I was the only light in a dark room. Now, his voice sounded like jagged glass.

I turned slowly, the tennis balls on the feet of my walker scraping against the pavement. Liam was standing there in his white chef’s coat, the sleeves pushed up to his elbows. He looked exhausted. He looked like a man who hadn't slept in three years, even though it had only been a few months since the truth came out.

"Where’s Sarah?" he demanded, his eyes darting toward the empty street.

"She’s gone, Liam," I whispered. My throat felt like it was filled with sand.

"What did you say to her?" He stepped closer, entering my personal space. Usually, his closeness made me feel safe. Now, it made me want to shrink into the earth. "Did you bother her again? Did you say sorry to her just to make yourself feel better?"

"I apologized," I said. It was the only thing I had left to offer.

Liam let out a dry, bitter laugh that ended in a cough. He ran a hand through his hair, looking up at the gray sky as if asking for strength. "You apologized. Wow. Everything is fixed now, right? The sun is out, the birds are singing, and Sarah has her husband back dead. All because Maya said she was sorry."

"I know it doesn't fix it," I said, my voice trembling. "I know that, Liam."

"Do you?" He stepped even closer, his face inches from mine. "Do you really know that? Because if you did, you would stop. When will you ever realize that no matter what you do no matter how much you cry or how many letters you write you will never make up for what you did?"

I looked down at my feet. I hated the walker. I hated the way it symbolized my helplessness. "I know that," I repeated. It was a broken record.

"You say you know it, but why do you keep doing it?" Liam’s voice rose, cracking with an anger he usually kept buried under his professional chef persona. "You saw Sarah, right? Did you see her face? She loves Mark so much. They had a plan. They had a life. And you, Maya... you took that away from her. You reached into her house and pulled the foundation out from under her. No matter how many times you say sorry to her even a million times it won't fix the situation. You can't un-ring a bell."

"I'm sorry," I sobbed. The tears were starting now, hot and fast.

"Stop saying sorry, dammit!" Liam shouted. The sound echoed off the stone walls of the driveway. A neighbor’s curtain flickered, but I didn't care. "I am so sick of that word. It’s a cheap word. It costs you nothing to say, and it gives us nothing back."

He took a deep breath, trying to steady his shaking hands. He looked at me, and for a second, I saw a flash of the man I married. But it disappeared, replaced by a cold, hard stare.

"Look, Maya, I know you’re sorry. We all know you’re sorry. You’ve cried enough tears to fill an ocean. But do you want to know what makes it so hard for me to even look at you? What makes it impossible to forgive you?"

I didn't want to know. I wanted to cover my ears and run, but I couldn't run. I was trapped in this broken body, trapped in this conversation.

"It’s not just that you had an affair," Liam said, his voice dropping to a low, deadly whisper. "People make mistakes. People get lost. But you had an affair with a married man. You chose someone who belonged to someone else. You chose to be the person who breaks a home."

He stepped back, shaking his head. "I remember when we first met. You told me how much you loved your parents. You told me that family was the most important thing in the world to you. That’s why I fell in love with you more every day. I thought I had found her. The beautiful woman, the perfect woman who would protect her family at any cost."

I reached out a hand, wanting to touch his arm, to remind him of the nights we spent planning our own future. "Liam, please..."

"No," he said, flinching away from my touch. "After what you did, you didn't just destroy our family. You didn't just break my heart and toss it in the trash. You destroyed Sarah’s family, too. You saw a happy home and you decided your own momentary happiness was more important than their entire lives. That’s when I realized something, Maya. Something that kills me every time I wake up."

He paused, and the silence was louder than his shouting.

"You’re not the woman I fell in love with," he said quietly.

The words felt like a knife in my chest. "It’s still me, Liam," I choked out. "I’m still the same girl. I just... I made a horrible mistake. I got lost. But I’m still here. I’m still Maya."

"No," Liam said, and his eyes were full of pity now, which was worse than the anger. "I fell in love with a lie. I fell in love with a version of you that didn't exist. I thought you were kind. I thought you were loyal. I thought you had a soul that couldn't bear to hurt anyone. But that was just a mask you wore."

He turned his back on me, looking toward our house the house that used to be a home but was now just a building where two strangers lived.

"Now, whenever I look at you," he continued, "I don't see the woman I madly fell in love with. I don't see the woman I wanted to grow old with. I just see a woman who lies. I see a woman who looks at the people she loves and decides they aren't enough. I see a stranger."

"Liam, don't say that," I pleaded. My vision was blurred by the salt in my eyes. "I love you. I've always loved you."

"Do you even know what that word means?" he asked, not turning around. "Because if this is how you treat the people you love, I’d hate to see how you treat your enemies."

He began to walk away, his boots clicking firmly on the pavement. Every step he took was a mile of distance between our souls.

"Liam!" I called out, my voice cracking. "Please, don't leave it like this!"

He didn't stop. He didn't look back. He just kept walking until he disappeared inside, the heavy front door clicking shut with a finality that felt like a coffin closing.

I stood there alone in the driveway. The wind picked up, chilling the sweat on my forehead. I gripped the handles of my walker so hard my knuckles turned white. I wanted to scream, to howl at the sky until my lungs gave out. I wanted to go back in time. I wanted to delete the texts, ignore the calls, and stay in the light.

But the past is a locked room, and I had thrown away the key.

I began the long, painful shuffle back toward the door. Each movement of the walker was a struggle. Left side, right side, slide. I was a ghost in my own life, haunting the hallways of a marriage that had already died.

Inside the house, it was quiet. The smell of the dinner Liam had been prepping lingered in the air garlic and herbs. He was a great chef because he understood balance. He knew how to fix a dish that was too salty or too bitter. But he couldn't fix us. There was no ingredient in the world that could mask the taste of betrayal.

I reached the bottom of the stairs and looked up. I knew he was up there, probably in the spare bedroom he had moved into weeks ago. I wanted to go to him. I wanted to crawl onto the floor at his feet and beg until my knees bled. But I knew it wouldn't matter.

He didn't believe in me anymore. And the worst part was, as I looked at my reflection in the hallway mirror a broken woman leaning on a metal frame, eyes red and face puffy I realized I didn't believe in me either.

I had traded my entire world for a few months of feeling "seen" by a man who wasn't mine. And now, the only person who truly saw me was the one man who couldn't stand the sight of me.

I sank down onto the bottom step, letting the walker rattle as it hit the floor. I buried my face in my hands and cried silently, the sound of my own heartbeat drumming in my ears like a drumbeat of "too late, too late, too late."

The house remained silent. No one came to comfort me. No one came to tell me it would be okay. Because in this story, I wasn't the hero. I wasn't even the victim. I was the one who held the match while everything burned to the ground.

I needed to beg Sarah again to give my husband back.