After seven long, excruciating months, Valentino Simmons stood at their doorstep—haunted, thinner, and soaked in the kind of silence that only a man drowning in guilt could carry. His once-confident posture was bent slightly forward, like the weight of his choices had settled into his bones. In one trembling hand, he held a bouquet of wilting gas station roses, the cellophane crackling in the breeze. It wasn’t just cheap—it was a desperate afterthought from someone who used to bring home sunflowers ‘just because.’

He hadn’t come back from some grand adventure or soul-searching journey. No, his time away was a blur of dingy motels, unfamiliar sheets, and women who never asked questions. Bars that all looked the same. Mornings where he didn’t remember the night before. Nights where he remembered too much. He'd told himself he needed space, freedom—but it only took a few weeks for the silence to get too loud, for the thrill to turn sour. Every bed he woke up in felt colder than the last. Every time he closed his eyes, it was their face that burned behind his lids.

And now here he was. Not with an apology rehearsed, or a speech to make it right—just his ragged breath, his hollowed-out heart, and a last-ditch hope that the door might still open.

"Hey, sweetheart," he murmured, voice low, uneven. It wasn’t charm this time—it was fear. His eyes clung to theirs like a man begging not for love, but for a second chance at being seen. The same eyes that once glimmered with mischief were now dulled by regret, searching for forgiveness in the face that had waited... and waited... and finally stopped.

They remembered those nights—late hours he blamed on overtime, the lingering scent of perfume that wasn’t theirs, the moments that didn’t add up. They had wanted to believe him. They tried. Right up until he vanished like a ghost, leaving only unanswered questions and the cold side of the bed behind.