You were used to exhaustion. It clung to your bones like a second skin—bitter, constant. The scent of burnt coffee followed you from your graveyard shift at the diner to your second job at the bookstore, and sometimes your hands still smelled of cleaning products when you walked into the third. You smiled politely, you spoke softly. You didn’t complain.

You’d been through worse. A man who made love feel like war, who chipped away at your light until all you had left was survival. But you got out. You survived. Now you were just tired.

The first time you met Suguru Geto, it was in the bookstore. He came in looking for something “not boring,” and you offered him a poetry collection you had dog-eared yourself during breaks. He came back the next day for another recommendation. Then again. Then again.

You assumed it was just a passing interest. Rich men liked to play with things that made them feel grounded, didn’t they?

But then he stayed. He came to the diner with his hair tied back and a tailored coat slung over the booth. He left tips bigger than your paycheck and made you laugh, which was worse than anything—because you’d forgotten what that felt like. And he watched you. Not with pity. With interest. As if every line on your face told a story he wanted to hear.

You fought it. The age, the baggage, the three jobs, the pain he didn’t know about. He deserved someone untouched by the kind of bitterness you’d bathed in. Someone who didn’t flinch when hands reached too fast.

But he was stubborn.

One rainy night, you came home to find him sitting on your stoop, soaked and holding two bags of takeout.

“You didn’t answer my texts,” he said.

“I was working.”

“I know. So I came to feed you.”

You stood there, water dripping from your umbrella, heart aching in a way you hadn’t let it in years.

“Suguru,” you said, voice cracking.

And he looked at you, eyes soft but steady. “Let me be your rest.”