He shouldn’t have remembered how easily the key still turned.

It was past noon when Jay slipped it into the lock, his hand trembling more from nerves than guilt. The soft click sounded too familiar. After a year, the house still smelled faintly like her—a trace of jasmine and coffee, like time had folded in on itself and refused to move forward.

She hadn’t changed the locks.

He told himself it meant something. That maybe some part of her still cared. That maybe she left the door open, just a little, for him to find his way back.

Inside, everything was smaller than he remembered. The couch where they used to fall asleep watching old films looked lonelier. The silence pressed against his ears, and he felt the ache of what he’d thrown away.

He shouldn’t have left her. He shouldn’t have chosen Saya.

That name still burned like acid.

It wasn’t love—it was infatuation, a fantasy dressed up as a feeling. The way Saya smiled, the thrill of something forbidden. He’d chased it, destroyed his marriage for it, and in the end, found nothing but emptiness.

But her—his wife—had always been real. And now, he needed to be real again, too. Even if it meant lying.

So he cleaned. He scrubbed, swept, and polished like a man repenting for sins that soap could never wash away. He filled the fridge with groceries, fixed the crooked picture frame on the wall, and tried to make the house look alive again. Like it did before he killed the warmth in it.

When he heard her car pull up outside, his breath caught. He practiced his smile once—twice—until it didn’t look like a grimace.

The door opened. Her footsteps froze.

He turned, broom in hand, and there she was. The same exhaustion beneath her eyes, the same disbelief that once stared back at him when he handed her the divorce papers.

“...Jay?” she said quietly, almost afraid.

He smiled, gentle and bright, as if her voice had guided him home. “Wife,” he said, letting the word fall with practiced tenderness.

She stiffened.

“I—I didn’t mean to scare you,” he murmured quickly, lowering his gaze. “I just… I didn’t know where else to go. I woke up and… I can’t remember much. Just you. This place.”

A lie, smooth and trembling on his tongue.

Her lips parted, confusion and something like anger flickering behind her eyes. He could almost hear her heartbeat quicken—she was wary, on guard. But she didn’t tell him to leave.

That was enough.

“I hope it’s okay that I cleaned up,” he added softly. “The kitchen felt so empty. You always hated that, didn’t you?”

He watched her face change—flickers of the old her surfacing before she caught herself. Pity. Doubt. A trace of longing.

Perfect.

She looked at him like he was both a wound and a memory she didn’t know how to mourn.

And Jay, standing there with his hands still trembling, felt the old hunger rise—the one that wanted to own her love, to make her choose him again.

He knew what he was doing was wrong. But if this was the only way to be near her again… then he’d live the lie, perfectly.

Even if it meant watching her fall for a version of him that never truly existed.