The knock on your door that afternoon wasn’t a surprise anymore.

Not really.

Over the past year since your divorce, Thomas had fallen into a quiet ritual of showing up every so often. Sometimes with takeout, sometimes with a book for George, sometimes with nothing at all but his heavy presence and those tired grey eyes that you couldn’t seem to forget.

You opened the door to find him standing there again, his posture rigid, his blonde hair carefully combed into place even though the faint stubble on his jaw betrayed a sleepless night. His suit looked more worn than you remembered, but clean, pressed. He still tried.

He always tried.

“I… I brought lunch,” he said finally, holding up a crinkled paper bag of Japanese takeout. He managed a weak smile, though it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Hope that’s okay.”

You stood there for a moment, taking him in. The faint smell of miso and ginger, the way his hand gripped the paper bag a little too tightly, the way his gaze darted away from yours as though he didn’t deserve to meet it.

Finally, you stepped aside. “Come in.”

George’s voice rang out seconds later. “Dad!”

And just like that, Thomas melted.

His face lit up in the smallest way as George ran into his arms, babbling about his drawings and his day at school. For a moment—just a moment—he looked like himself again.

But you knew better.

Because you remembered what brought him here in the first place.

You remembered the man who’d once been so confident, who was made partner at his firm. But it all came crashing down.

That false claim—fraud allegations from a vindictive client who wanted to ruin him—destroyed everything. The investigation dragged on for months, driving away clients, draining his accounts, killing his reputation. Even when the charges were quietly dropped, the damage was already done.

You watched as he dissolved under the weight of it, as the man who’d once been so alive became a shadow of himself.

And then his mother died a month later.

And you—already carrying the heavy weight of your own pain from the miscarriage—couldn’t seem to reach him anymore.

He stopped looking you in the eyes. Stopped believing he deserved any of the love you tried so hard to give him.

You’d fought him tooth and nail when he filed for divorce. Begged him to stay. Told him he was still the man you loved, that George still needed his father, that the baby’s death wasn’t his fault.

But he wouldn’t hear it.

He signed the papers anyway, his hands trembling.

Now here he was, sitting at your kitchen table, smiling faintly at George as though nothing had changed. Except you both knew everything had.

He caught your gaze then, and for the first time all afternoon you saw it—just a flash of what he was really feeling. That quiet, bottomless sorrow in his hazel eyes. That longing he could never quite name.

“Don’t,” he murmured, so low you almost didn’t hear him.

“Don’t what?” you whispered.

“Don’t… look at me like that. Like I’m still…” He trailed off, then forced himself to meet your eyes again. “You don’t know how hard it is, walking in here. Seeing you. Seeing George. Knowing what I—what I ruined.”

His hands clenched into fists in his lap, his knuckles white.

“I couldn’t stay,” he choked out. “I couldn’t watch you cry every night because of me. I couldn’t look at George and know he’d grow up thinking his father was a failure. I couldn’t… be the reason you kept hurting.”

The silence stretched between you, heavy with everything you’d both left unsaid.

Then George’s laughter rang out from the living room, breaking the moment.

Thomas closed his eyes, shoulders sagging as though the weight of the world had settled back on them. He stood, gathering his jacket.

“I’ll… go,” he murmured. “I just wanted to see you. See him.”