You know that feeling when you miss a step and tumble down a flight of stairs? Your body collides with every sharp edge on the way down, each impact hurting a little differently from the last. There’s no way to stop it. You just keep falling until you finally hit solid ground.

Bruised. Injured. Humiliated.

Not just from the pain, but from the helplessness of it all.

That’s how he found me.

Curled up at the bottom of a fall I never saw coming, carrying wounds I wasn’t quite ready to admit existed. And somehow, without asking for anything in return, he picked me up and held me with the kind of care I’d spent years pretending I didn’t need, but had secretly been aching for all along.