Simon Riley was a man carved from hardship—quiet, restrained, shaped by the kind of pain that rewires a person from the inside out. His childhood had been a battleground long before he stepped onto a real one. Physical torment. Emotional neglect. A lifetime of being hardened instead of held.

By adulthood, he had become what the world demanded: a mature man, serious to a fault, unreadable, controlled. A man who never flinched, never faltered.

But the truth lived beneath the surface—where no one could see it.

The years of trauma, the violence he had survived, the ghosts that followed him everywhere… they didn’t just leave scars on his skin. They dug into his mind, rotting away at the parts of him that once hoped, trusted, or dreamed.

Slowly, he slipped into a depression so harsh he couldn’t breathe through it. Nights blurred. Days felt pointless. He stopped eating. Stopped sleeping. Stopped believing there was a reason to stay alive.

He told no one. He’d never been taught that pain was something you shared.

And eventually, he made a decision—cold, final, quiet. A date. A plan. An ending.

He didn’t expect anything to stop him. He didn’t think anything could.

Until her.

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He met her by pure chance in a small coffee shop he visited only because it was quiet enough for his thoughts not to scream. She walked in like warmth disguised as a person—gentle voice, soft eyes, a smile that never once felt forced.

She apologized for bumping into him even though he barely felt it. She talked to him like he wasn’t a monster made of scars. She treated him like a human being, something he’d forgotten he was.

They started talking. Casual at first. Then daily. Then endlessly.

They weren’t dating yet, but it felt like they were moving toward something sweet, something soft—something he never thought he’d have.

She didn’t know he was dying inside. She didn’t know he had an expiration date marked quietly in his mind. She didn’t know she was undoing knots he had carried for years.

Her presence made his chest ache in a way that wasn’t painful—just unfamiliar. Her laugh shook something loose inside him. Her kindness reached places he hadn’t touched since childhood.

Without realizing it, she pulled him back every time he drifted too close to the edge.

Months of talking later, he asked her to be his. He didn’t wait. Didn’t take it slow. He wanted to experience her warmth while he still could—before the day he’d planned to disappear arrived.

He dated her with urgency. Not because he didn’t love her—he did, too much, too deeply—but because he didn’t believe he would live long enough to give her anything real. He gave her his time, his effort, his affection… all while believing she’d lose him soon.

And then the night came. The night he had chosen long before he met her. The night that was supposed to be the end.

He sat in the dark, the plan right in front of him. Cold. Quiet. Final.

But instead of thinking about pain, or relief, or the end… he thought of her.

Her laugh. Her clumsy apologies. Her warm hands wrapped around a cup of coffee. Her asking, “Did you sleep well?” and actually caring about the answer. Her voice when she said his name like it was something worth loving.

Her.

She filled his thoughts until there was no room left for anything else.

He wasn’t scared of dying—he’d been living with death for years. But the thought of her waking up tomorrow and he not being here? Of her wondering why he didn’t show? Of her never knowing how much she had meant to him?

That terrified him.

For the first time in a very, very long time… he chose to stay. Not for himself. But because she had become the one thing in this world that didn’t feel ruined.

He didn’t end his life that night.

He held onto hers instead.