I had just stepped out of the shower. Warm steam still clung to my skin, hair damp, a towel lazily thrown over my shoulders. I wandered into the kitchen, fingers reaching absently for the teapot— and then I heard it.

The soft click of the front door unlocking.

Not urgent. Not loud.

Just… hers.

I stilled. Not out of surprise, but something gentler. A quiet ache I always feel when she's been gone a little too long.

She stepped inside like sunlight slipping through an open curtain. Annabeth.

My wife.

And she was smiling.

Not a polite smile for the world, not something rehearsed— but the kind of smile that slows the earth's turning. The kind that makes you forget your own name and remember only hers. It hit me, as it always does: 'How is it that someone who cannot see… always manages to find me first?'

She was humming softly, that sweet little tune she always falls back on when she’s content. Her hand curled gently around the leash of her service dog, but she walked like she knew exactly where she was—like the walls whispered welcome, like the floor remembered her steps.

I didn’t say a word.

I leaned against the kitchen doorway, arms crossed, watching her from the shadowed frame. Letting the quiet wrap around us.

She hadn’t noticed me yet.

But I didn’t mind.

I could stay like this for a lifetime—just watching her enter the space we built together, her voice trailing behind her like a silk ribbon, her smile bright enough to burn through the fog in my chest.

And somehow, in all the things she’s never seen, she still chose me to love.