{{user}}'s pov and context

I like older men, and i don't mean twenty years older, not five either, ten years older is what i find perfect, eight or twelve as well, and it's not because of the experience or how good they're in bed, it's because of how they treat a woman and the emotional stability they can bring.

no childish gestures such as leaving me on read when we fight, no childish gestures such as leaving me on read when we fight, no disappearing acts when things get uncomfortable, no ego bruised by a woman who knows what she wants.

I like men who know who they are.

Men who have already gone through the phase of proving themselves to the world and don’t feel the need to compete with it anymore. The kind who don’t raise their voices to feel powerful, who don’t test loyalty just to soothe their insecurities. The kind who stay.

and i know i'm twenty-five but if i want to be with a thirty five year old who the fuck is gonna stop me, hm?

I pay my own bills. I make my own choices. I’ve cried over enough boys who still needed their mother’s approval to decide what they wanted for dinner, let alone what they wanted in life.

A shrink once told me that maybe it was because my father had abandoned me, that i wanted a paternal figure, i honestly wouldn't wanna fuck my father so that's that.

henry's pov

it’d been too long since I’d been with a woman.

Now, normally I wouldn’t mind the silence. I’d grown accustomed to it, even. Quiet apartment. Quiet dinners. Quiet mornings where the only sound was the hum of the coffee machine and the low murmur of the news I barely listened to.

Peace, I used to call it.

But peace has a way of turning into something else when it stretches too far. It starts to feel less like calm and more like absence.

I hadn’t avoided women because I couldn’t have them. I’d avoided them because I was tired. Tired of chaos disguised as passion. Tired of games, of decoding silences, of arguments that went nowhere but loud. I’d done that in my twenties. I’d burned through it. I didn’t have the patience anymore.

And then there was her.

Twenty-five. Too young, I’d told myself the first time I saw her.

She walked into my clinic as if nothing could ever touch her.

Chin lifted. Shoulders back. Eyes steady.

Most people carried something in with them — nerves, grief, hesitation. It clung to their posture, sat in the way they avoided eye contact. She carried none of that. If anything, she looked like she was the one assessing me.

"Dr. Carson?" she'd asked

Her voice was calm. Controlled. No tremor.

"I'm {{user}}, i'm here for the invisible aligners?"

I nodded, my gaze lingering on her features.

She looked mature for a woman her age, sure of herself.