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Matt stood under the harsh spray of the shower, his eyes closed and his fists clenched. The hotel’s water pressure was too hard and he’d turned the temperature up too hot, but he didn’t move away.
He wanted to go numb.
There was a hollowness in his chest, a hard lump of sorrow in his throat.
It was over now. It was all over.
He cursed himself for coming here. This trip had always been a terrible idea.
Foggy was so excited about it, his pulse thumping like mad. “You need armor, buddy, and this guy is amazing.”
His name was Luke Jacobson, and he was tailor to the superhero elite.
Foggy had discovered him through a friend of a friend, he said. Matt thought it was too dangerous to trust someone they didn’t know, no matter his reputation, but Foggy convinced him to give it a shot, and Luke’s voice on the phone was persuasive. He promised complete confidentiality, and impressive defensive capabilities. Matt gave in, and Foggy sent off Matt’s measurements and photos of his old costume, plus a few of Foggy’s own ideas “for inspiration.” They waited.
When it came time for the final fittings, Foggy surprised Matt with a plane ticket to Los Angeles.
And then it clicked, why Foggy’s heartbeat had always seemed slightly off when talking about Luke. He had an ulterior motive.
LA didn’t just mean a new suit.
LA meant Karen.
“It’s not going to work, Foggy.”
“You have to go anyway,” Foggy countered. “And if you get a chance to talk to her while you’re out there, it couldn’t hurt to try again.”
“She’s made it clear how she feels.”
“And you’ve made it clear that you’re miserable without her.”
Matt opened his mouth to protest, but he couldn’t speak.
“Listen, Matty, you’ve tried really hard to keep up a happy front. I know that. But I also know you. I see the cracks in the armor.”
All this time, Matt thought he’d done a better job of keeping up appearances. He’d gotten a second chance at life — how could he ever complain about that?
“Even if you’re right,” he told Foggy, “it doesn’t matter. She doesn’t want to be with me. It’s too much to ask.”
He’d abandoned her. Five years in the dust. And it didn’t matter that it wasn’t his fault this time. It didn’t change that she’d been through hell. She couldn’t do it again, she said. She couldn’t risk it. So she stayed in LA, the place she’d fled to after years of lonely grief in Hell’s Kitchen. She had a job on the radio, and a very nice guy who took her to dinner and to the farmers’ market on the weekend. One who wasn’t the Devil.
“I know how hard it was for her. I saw it. Those years were the worst time of our lives,” Foggy said. “But you have to remind her how good it was, before. You have to make her remember.”
They’d had one year together. One beautiful year of laughing and arguing and working side by side again to help the people of Hell’s Kitchen. One year of sharing meals and making love, before it all went up in smoke.
“She doesn’t want to remember,” Matt said.
He got on the plane anyway.
He told himself that the least he could do for Foggy and his mother would be to wear armor. He’d left them to mourn for five years. He wasn’t going to stop being Daredevil, he couldn’t, but he would do everything he reasonably could to stay safe.
He hated to fly. His hands shook as he boarded, but with recordings of Karen’s radio show keeping him company in the air, he made it across the country without falling apart.
The fittings at Luke’s shop were upbeat and entertaining. A multitude of final adjustments were made. Luke revealed he’d done the suits in gold and red, which Matt wasn’t sure about, but he figured he couldn’t do much but trust the designer’s taste. At least he knew Battlin’ Jack would approve of the color scheme.
Just when Matt was set to go back to New York, Luke offered him a substantial sum of money to represent him against a client who was suing over a wardrobe malfunction. Luke’s heartbeat stayed strong and steady when he denied the failure was in any way his fault, and between the expensive suits and the firm’s usual bills, Matt could really use the money, so he stayed.
The case took all of one court appearance to get dismissed.
Riding the high of his easy win, Matt gave in to his deepest desire and sent a message to Karen, asking if they could meet.
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” she wrote back.
Crushed, he drowned his sorrows at a bar near his hotel. He was a fool, holding on to a love that he couldn’t have. Karen had made her choice, and she was sticking to it. He couldn’t moan or mope anymore. He had to move on.
And then Jen Walters walked into the bar. She liked him.
At first, playing Happy Matt was almost easy.
Almost.
Matt dried off slowly after his shower. He didn’t have to be at the airport for hours yet.
Overwhelmed by what he’d done, he’d rushed out of Jen’s place without even putting his boots on. He’d tried to keep up his act, pretend nothing meant anything and his life was carefree, but as soon as the door to his hotel room closed behind him, he’d burned with agony.
The shower had only helped a little.
He paced his room and checked his messages, not letting himself even hope anymore.
His phone announced one voicemail from Luke. “Thanks again for your help last night, Mr. Devil Himself. I need you to do one more thing for me before you go. There’s someone you need to meet.” He rattled off an address.
Matt tried calling back but got no answer.
He had nothing else to do.
He called a car to pick him up.
As soon as Matt stepped out into the salty ocean air, he knew why he was here.
Her scent carried on the wind.
Her heartbeat told him she was on the beach, just yards away.
He could get back into the car. He could flee.
“You need help getting down there, man?” the driver asked.
“No, that’s OK.” Matt swung the door closed and waited until the car eased back onto the road. Then he made his way down the beach.
He didn’t have any hope. He just didn’t want to leave town without hearing her say his name one last time.
Karen’s toes sank into the sand. The wind lifted her hair away from her face. She stared into the crashing waves, knowing that the churning of the Pacific was nothing compared to the swirl of emotion inside her.
All it took was one message from Matt to pull her into the undertow.
Even her favorite spot on the beach brought her no calm, no comfort. All she wanted was to see him again; seeing him again was her worst nightmare.
She should have expected he’d appear. Foggy had been a bit too curious about her plans for the day. But she startled at the sight of him, in his slacks and his crisp gray shirt, carrying his cane. Matt was a creature of the city, and to her, he looked entirely out of his element, like someone had photoshopped in the wrong background.
But he was real, and he was here, and it was as if all the bandages stuck too tight to her skin were ripped off at once, the wounds bleeding freely.
“What are you doing here, Matt?”
“Well, from what I can tell, I think we were set up.” He folded his cane and set it down on the sand.
“I got that part,” she said, unable to keep the edge out of her voice. “What I mean is, why are you here in town?”
“I had a case.”
It was a simple explanation, but it made no sense. “Since when can you practice in California?”
“I passed the bar a few months ago.”
“But why?”
He hesitated. “I thought…if you changed your mind, you might want to stay here.”
The words exploded like tiny little bombs. He’d done it for her. She turned her head away. “We’ve been over this.”
“I know. You told me to move on. So I finally tried,” he said. “Last night.”
Karen had to swallow a gasp. Steel-sharp pain slashed through her gut, but she forced herself to feign nonchalance. “How—how was it?”
“Hell.”
She dug her fingernails into her palms. “You shouldn’t say things like that.”
He jerked his chin. “So you can change your mind.”
“What do you mean?”
“After all this time, now you want me to lie to you.”
Karen sighed. “I don’t want you to lie. I just… I want you to accept it.”
“How can I accept what I don’t understand?” he said roughly. “How can being together be worse than this—this constant ache?”
“I don’t know what else I can say.”
“I know you’re afraid—”
At that word, her tenuous hold on her composure snapped. She whirled on him. “I’m not afraid, Matt, I’m terrified. I watched you crumble right in front of my eyes. Every second you’re here, I’m waiting for it to happen again. Can’t you hear my heartbeat? Can’t you feel how I’m shaking?”
Matt stepped toward her. “I’m not going anywhere. It’s not going to happen again.”
He was so close. Too close. Karen held out her hand to stop him, but he moved until his chest was flat against her palm. He curved one of his hands over her own, a million nerve endings catching fire, and he guided her hand over his heart.
“I don’t want to live this life without you,” he said.
“Sometimes you don’t get a choice.” Her hand balled into a fist, clutching his shirt. “I still feel the weight of every single day that you were dead. It broke me.”
“And I hate that you went through that. More than words can say. But we have another chance.”
“We’ve had so many chances.” She shook her head sadly. “For me, it’s always ended in heartbreak. I know you didn’t ask for this to happen, but I can’t be with you again. Because I can’t lose you again. I won’t.”
“You never lost me. Not really. Even as ash, I loved you. I always will.”
He pulled her closer and she tried to stay stiff, to maintain her precious distance, but it was useless. She melted against him, so solid, so alive, her arms going around him and her face finding that perfect spot in the crook of his shoulder.
There was no way to shut down the sensations that radiated through her. Matt had always done this, whether he meant to or not. He had always shown her that she could feel so much more than what seemed possible, that her capacity to love was boundless.
“Karen,” he said, a breathless invocation that held so many shades of meaning. Somehow, deep in her bones, she understood them all. And then he shifted, and his mouth was on hers, full of longing and need and utter, wanton destruction.
She let him crash through her walls, she let his soft lips worship hers, she let his hands retrace familiar pathways, her hair, her neck, her waist. She clung to him, to all she had to hold onto, until a cold wave swirled over her feet and she slammed back down to the earth, recalling that her capacity for pain was boundless too.
“I can’t,” she whispered, tears stinging her eyes. “I’m sorry. I can’t.”
“All right,” Matt said soothingly. “All right, love.” He pressed one last kiss to her forehead, then gave her a smile so painful she winced. “I guess I never really deserved you anyway. I should just be glad we had any time together at all. You want to forget it, but I won’t.”
He turned away and began to walk back up the beach.
“Matt, please,” she called and he paused. “Remember for both of us.”
Karen didn’t know how it was possible that she could still cry. After all these years, how did she have a single tear left inside?
Looking around her apartment, she could already feel the change in herself. Seeing Matt, touching him, had left permanent cracks in her armor. As beautiful as it was here, in the sun, in the sand, it wasn’t where she belonged. She was stifled and stunted by her bland little life.
Once she had known so much richness — but she couldn’t think about that.
Her phone buzzed with a text from Foggy that was characteristically vague. “It’s definitely not him,” it said.
Karen’s stomach dropped as she scanned through headlines, through social media. Was there a plane crash? Had something terrible happened?
What she found was Daredevil, in an outlandish gold and red suit, carrying his boots through an LA neighborhood. There was a raging debate going on in the replies. Some people said it was a Halloween costume or some kind of cosplay — it had to be, because Daredevil had never been spotted in that suit, or outside of New York. Others backed an analysis showing it was indisputably the real Daredevil — as long as you were looking at him from behind.
Even if Karen didn’t already know Matt had been in LA, Foggy’s suspicious text would have been confirmation enough.
This was Matt moving on.
Her Matt.
And it was one thing to bury it, to push it down and try to forget. But until today, she had never truly confronted the reality of Matt moving on.
She thought she might be sick.
He said it had been hard for him, but it would get easier. Karen knew it would. Eventually he would find someone. And maybe it would never be the same, but he would share a life with them.
A shared life. A full, rich life, like the one she still caught glimpses of in her dreams. All at once, those memories began to rush through the cracks, fast and thick, and finally, finally, she let herself remember.
Not the way Matt crumbled to dust, but the way he held her in his arms at night. Not the promises he couldn’t keep, but all the little ways he said I love you. The cups of coffee and the midnight roses and the three squeezes of her hand when she was anxious. The way he flirted with her shamelessly on dreary afternoons and made her eggs after rough nights.
Each memory was an electric pulse to her heart, shocking it back into its old rhythm. She knew now that hiding and denying wasn’t going to work. Staying away wouldn’t make losing him again hurt any less. And the only thing that could possibly be worse than losing him again was never having him again.
She stood up so fast she knocked over her chair.
Matt told Foggy he needed a sick day. He blamed the jet lag.
But what he really needed was to find his equilibrium. He needed to be able to play Happy Matt again. If only Luke Jacobson could make him a mask for that.
Matt sat on the floor, trying and failing to meditate. Every time he cleared his mind, Karen’s voice filled it again.
I can’t. I’m sorry. I can’t.
He could hear her heartbeat pounding.
He could hear her footsteps on the stairs.
Her footsteps—
Matt stopped breathing. He didn’t dare move, afraid to shatter the illusion, until a knock sounded at his door. He got to his feet like a shot and practically ran down the hallway, still half-expecting to open the door and find empty air.
But it was Karen, breathing hard, her hands trembling.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
“I got homesick,” she said.
He opened his arms to her, and Matt embraced a happiness he didn’t have to fake.