Chocolate frosting spreads beneath my spatula in thick, glossy swirls, catching the yellow glow of the kitchen light. The smell should feel comforting. Sweet and familiar, but tonight it's just heavy.
Summer's favorite cake. Double-layer, rich enough to stop your heart. I should be smiling, maybe humming the song we danced to at our wedding, but all I can hear is the sound of the clock ticking behind me, dragging out the seconds of a night that's supposed to be happy.
Ten years married. But Summer is nowhere to be seen.
It's been a hard two years. The kind that rearrange you from the inside out. I'm sober now, almost twenty-four months clean, but it doesn't feel like winning. It just feels like surviving.
I still get the shakes sometimes, mostly in the mornings when the light hits the sink just right and the memories crawl out of the drain.
Even when I was using, Summer wasn't cruel. She was never the yelling type. Never slammed doors, never raised her hand. She'd just stand there with those big blue eyes full of patience I didn't deserve and ask, "How bad is it tonight, Scott?"
She was perfect. Not in some romanticized way, she was just good. Gentle. Steady. She cooked dinner even when I didn't eat. She kissed my forehead even when I smelled like sweat and cheap pills.
When I finally got clean, I thought we'd start over. And for a while, we did. Breakfasts together, long walks after meetings, movie nights that ended with her asleep on my shoulder. I remember thinking, Maybe this is it. Maybe we made it out.
Then Taevion knocked on my door.
I still remember the sound, three heavy knocks that made the dishes in the cupboard rattle. My stomach dropped before I even saw his face. I hadn't heard from him in a long time, but that kind of debt doesn't dissolve. It waits. He came with two guys I didn't know, both built like ex-linebackers, both smiling like they already owned me.
I told him I didn't have the money. That I'd pay him soon. That I was working again, trying to fix things. He just laughed, this deep, ugly sound that filled the kitchen. "Then we'll take something else," he said. I thought he meant my car, maybe the TV. But when one of the goons grabbed a bat and said they'd start with my legs, Summer stepped in.
I didn't even see her move. One second she was behind me, the next she was between us, her hands shaking but her voice steady. "Wait," she said. "Don't hurt him. I'll—" Her throat caught on the words, but she forced them out. "I'll do whatever you want."
They all went quiet. Even Taevion looked thrown off for a second before that sick grin crept back. He nodded, slowly. "Now that's a good wife."
I tried to stop her. I swear I did. I begged, I screamed, but they dragged her out the door before I could stand. She looked back once, just once, and I saw it, the fear, the love, the promise that she was doing this for me.
That was the last time I saw her whole.
For the next six months, she came home sometimes. Never for long. Sometimes she'd shower, sometimes she'd just stand at the sink, staring at nothing while the water ran.
I'd ask where she'd been, and she'd tell me not to. "Don't make me say it, Scott," she whispered once, voice breaking. But I already knew. The bruises said enough. The smell of strange cologne. The way her hands shook when she touched me, like I was something fragile she didn't know how to hold anymore.
At first, I thought she was being forced. I told myself she was just surviving. That she was doing what she had to until Taevion got bored or found someone else. But then the visits changed. She started coming home dressed up, makeup smudged, lips swollen, eyes shining in a way I hadn't seen before. She'd talk faster, laugh too easily, like she was chasing a high I couldn't give her.
Over time, she stopped hiding it. The bruises turned to jewelry. The trembling turned to excitement. And somewhere in that blur of nights and mornings, I realized she wasn't just enduring them anymore, she was addicted. Addicted to the chaos, the attention, the way they made her feel wanted in all the ways I never could.
She adored it. The parties. The filth. The way Taevion called her his favorite. And yet, every now and then, when the world went quiet and she'd catch me looking at her, there'd be this flicker, small, trembling, but real. A trace of the woman who used to curl up beside me and whisper that I was her home.
Then one night, she didn't come back.
At first, I called hospitals, friends, anyone. Then I stopped. Because deep down, I knew. She hadn't been taken anymore, she was staying by choice.
That was over a year ago.
I still keep her name on my phone, but I stopped texting months back. The messages always read the same. I'm sorry. Please come home. I miss you. Please.
I used to stare at the "delivered" checkmark like it was a prayer, waiting for it to turn into something more. It never did.
Now it's just me, a half-empty apartment, and a chocolate cake meant for two.
I smooth the frosting one last time and step back. It's not perfect, too thick in the middle, uneven on the edges, but it's something. I light the candles, ten small flames flickering across the surface. For each year we were together and even one we weren't, a little light trying to push back the dark.
I should've signed the divorce papers months ago. I picked them up on the way home from an NA meeting one night. Brought them home, set them on the table. They've been sitting there ever since, accusing me in silence. Every night, I told myself, Tomorrow. But tomorrow kept turning into next week, and next week turned into today.
Tonight feels like the end of pretending.
I grab the lighter, holding the flame a little too long on one wick before moving to the next. When all ten glow, the cake almost looks beautiful. Almost. I pull out a chair and sit down at the table, my hands resting on the papers beside the plate.
The tears come suddenly, hot and shameful against my cheeks. My shoulders shake as I stare at the cake, and all I can think is how pathetic I am.
"She chose them," I whisper, the words burning my throat. "She fucking chose them over me."
The truth hits me like a physical blow. Summer, my wife, my everything, had options. And she picked Taevion. His money. His friends. His life.
My fist slams against the table. "I tried everything!"
And I had. When they first took her, I wasn't some passive husband wringing his hands. I scrambled for solutions. I called in favors from people I hadn't spoken to in years, trying to scrape together enough money to buy a gun. But recovering addicts don't exactly have credit lines or savings accounts.
I even tried to steal one, approached a guy I knew from my using days, who bragged about his collection. He just laughed in my face.
"You're lucky I don't call your PO," he'd said, shoving me out of his apartment.
The worst was when I found myself outside that casino, staring at the neon lights, telling myself one night of gambling could give me enough to buy her back. Just one night. What was one night compared to getting Summer home?
I'd stood there for three hours, my hand on the door, before turning away. What good would it do to save her if I just dragged us both back into hell?
Then the pictures started coming. At first, to hurt me, Summer with bruises, Summer crying. But soon they changed. Summer at parties, Summer with glazed eyes and a smile I'd never seen before. Summer with multiple men, her face transformed with a pleasure I'd never given her.
"Stop," I sob, but the memories won't stop. The images burned into my brain flash faster and faster.
Something snaps inside me. Before I even realize what I'm doing, I've grabbed the cake with both hands. The weight of it is satisfying as I hurl it across the kitchen. It hits the wall with a wet splat, chocolate frosting exploding outward like a bomb, candles flying.
"FUCK!" The scream tears from my chest, primal and raw. I don't even sound human. "FUCK YOU!" I don't know who I'm screaming at, Summer for leaving, Taevion for taking her, myself for failing her, God for letting it all happen.
I grab a plate and smash it against the counter. The ceramic shatters, pieces skittering across the floor. I want to break everything, burn it all down, disappear into the flames.
"I hate you," I sob, and I'm not sure who I'm talking to anymore. "I hate you, I hate you, I…"
Then the doorbell rings.
I freeze mid-sob, cake crumbs and frosting scattered across my knuckles. The doorbell's chime hangs in the air like an accusation.
"Who the hell..." I mutter, wiping my face with the back of my hand. Probably Mrs. Kaplan from next door, coming to complain about the noise.
I drag myself to the door, not bothering to clean up. Let them see the mess. Let them see what's left of me.
"Did I order something from Amazon?" I whisper to myself, sniffling as I try to remember. My brain feels waterlogged, heavy with grief and rage. Maybe I drunk-ordered something last week? No, that's not right. I don't drink anymore.
I pull the door open, ready to dismiss whatever waits on the other side.
And the world stops.
Summer stands in the hallway of my second-floor apartment, but she's not the Summer who left. Not even the Summer I've seen in pictures. This woman is a stranger wearing my wife's face. Her blonde hair hangs loose instead of in the neat braid she used to wear. She's in a tight black sleeveless shirt that clings to curves that seem fuller than I remember.
But it's the tattoos that make my breath catch, black spades marching across her chest above breasts that seem impossibly larger than before. On her left arm, the letters "BBC" stand out in stark black ink, with a dark rose blooming beneath it.
Her makeup is running, dark streaks trailing down her cheeks. Her eyes—God, her eyes, they're both familiar and hollow, like someone scooped out the woman I knew and left just enough to recognize.
"Scott, I'm..." Her voice breaks, those blue eyes brimming with fresh tears. "Scott, I'm sorry."
My legs nearly give out. I grip the doorframe to steady myself, mouth opening and closing like a landed fish. A thousand responses war in my head, rage, relief, confusion, joy, but all I can do is stare.
"What are you doing here?" The words come out harsher than I intended, scraping against my raw throat.
Summer collapses before I can say anything else, her body folding in on itself as if someone cut her strings. The sobs come next, not the delicate crying I've seen in movies, but something primal and broken. Her entire body heaves with it.
"Please," she wails, the word stretching into something barely human. "Please take me back, Scott."
"What?" The question comes out small and stunned, like I can't process the sight in front of me.
She crawls forward on her knees, closing the distance between us. I step back instinctively, confusion making my head spin. This isn't the woman who left me for Taevion's world of excess and pleasure. This is someone shattered.
Her hands shoot out, grabbing fistfuls of my shirt. She pulls herself closer, face twisted in anguish.
"Take me back, Scott! Please!" Her voice rises to a scream, each word punctuated with desperate gasps. "I'll be good this time. I swear I'll be good. Please…" Her words dissolve into hiccupping sobs. "I need you. I'm so sorry. I'm so, so sorry."
Her grip tightens, knuckles white against my shirt. I can feel her trembling through the fabric, can smell the faint perfume that's both familiar and strange. The makeup streaking down her face makes her look like something out of a nightmare, but her eyes, God, beneath all the changes, those are still Summer's eyes.
Something shifts inside me, some wall I spent a year building crumbling away. Before I can think about what I'm doing, my arms wrap around her shaking shoulders. I pull her against my chest, feeling her tears soak through my shirt.
"Okay," I whisper into her hair. The word feels foreign on my tongue, dangerous even. "Okay."
She collapses against me, her crying softening into shuddering breaths. I hold her there on my threshold, the woman I loved. The woman I destroyed.
It's my responsibility to clean this mess up now.