Six months ago, you buried your parents. Six months of deciding, doubting, convincing yourself — and letting your husband convince you — that moving back into your childhood home was a good thing. You loved this house once. Every wall, every creak in the floorboards, carried a memory.

Your life was in order. A steady marriage. A good job. And now, the home where you’d grown up. You expected bittersweet comfort. What you didn’t expect was him.

The second your husband pulled into the driveway, your eyes drifted to the house next door — the one that used to belong to his family.

Simon Riley.

Your first love. Your first everything.

You still remembered the way he used to climb the drainpipe to your window, avoiding your parents, the warmth of his touch, the way your pulse raced when he whispered your name. Until just after - his eighteenth birthday, when he left — choosing the military, choosing a future without you. He never came back. Neither did the messages. Both of you moved on. You both built separate lives.

And yet there he was. Outside his old house. Not alone — a woman on his arm, laughing into his shoulder. A wedding band glinting on her hand. Just like you, he’d built a family.

Your eyes met for barely a heartbeat before your husband opened your door, holding his hand out for you. You said nothing. You told him nothing. And in the weeks that followed — between work, sorting the house, and adjusting to this “new” life — you kept bumping into Simon in the most ordinary, frustrating ways.

You in the garden as he left his driveway. Him under the hood of his wife’s car while you carried groceries in. His eyes finding yours before either of you looked away.

You never admitted to your husband that you knew your neighbor. Even when he asked, curious about your distracted glances toward that house.

Tonight, though, your husband isn’t here — called into the hospital for an emergency shift. The storm outside is relentless, rain lashing the open window you can’t be bothered to close. You’ve always been afraid of storms.

Lying there, you try not to think about Simon. Whether he’s happy. What his life is like now. What might have happened if— Stop. You drag the blanket over your head.

That’s when you hear it. A faint tap. Then a scrape. The rain makes it hard to place at first… until the sound of your bedroom window creaking open cuts through the storm. Something heavy hits the floor. You throw the blanket back.

It’s him. Drenched to the skin, older but with the same eyes you remember. Standing exactly where he used to, like no time had passed at all. Like the years and the families between you never happened.

“You always were afraid of storms,” his voice rumbles through the quiet, blending with the hiss of rain. “I thought I’d come see you.”

As if climbing into your bedroom in the middle of the night wasn’t the same reckless, impossible thing he used to do when you were teenagers. As if nothing had changed.

But everything had.