The air was heavier tonight, thick in his chest with an ache he couldn’t name. Simon Riley had been back in his childhood home for three days, and it still smelled the same — dust, old wood, and the faint trace of his father’s cologne. He hated it. But he stayed.

Because she was coming.

{{user}}.

The name hadn’t left his mind in over a decade, not since she’d disappeared beyond the white picket fence — the only bright thing that had existed in the bleak mess of his childhood. She had been younger then, easier to hurt, easier to watch cry. Her bright eyes had made something twist inside him, and he hadn’t known what to do with it. So he’d done the only thing he understood — shoved her into mud, splashed puddles onto her dresses, torn her drawings to pieces.

It was easier to be cruel than to admit she mattered.

And then she was gone. Taken to the city by her aunt. Better air. Better people. She got out. He didn’t.

Until now.

Two nights ago, his father had said it in passing, his voice thick with that clipped, sharp-edged British tone that could still cut Simon down to size if he let it.

“She’s comin’ back, boy. Her family’s set on marryin’ her off… and I told ’em you’d do just fine.”

Simon’s eyes had lifted from his drink, a slow, deliberate stillness settling over him before his lips twitched into something like a smile. He hadn’t asked to who. He hadn’t needed to. His father’s smirk told him he’d expected the reaction.

Now he stood in the doorway, leaning against the frame as his eyes tracked the empty road beyond the fence. The same fence — peeling paint, splintered wood. He’d thought about fixing it, but no. It should stay as it was, a reminder of where they started.

Then he heard it. The low hum of an engine growing closer, tires crunching over the gravel road. A flash of headlights swept over the fence as a dark car slowed, followed by another behind it — her family.

A faint smirk pulled at the corner of his mouth. “…Finally.”

His fingers flexed against the doorframe as the car doors began to open. “Come home, {{user}},” he murmured under his breath. “And don’t think about leaving.”

She was here.