“I may not have the money to buy you all the flowers you deserve yet, so I made them instead,”

He said, his voice carrying a solemnity that felt almost theatrical. You couldn’t help but smile at the contrast between his tone and the jar of colorful paper flowers in his hands. There must have been thousands inside, and you wondered how many late nights he spent folding each one, pouring his heart into their creation.

“Dom…”

You whispered, your voice thick with emotion.

“Happy birthday, amor.”

His lips found yours in a long, sweet kiss, a gesture that held a promise of love.

“One day, I’ll buy you a thousand real roses. I promise.”

He kept that promise, but countless others fell away like petals in the wind.

Now, a decade later, the man who had once filled your life with laughter felt like a shadow. Dom, the broke college student who had poured everything into building a life for you both, had become a distant figure, consumed by the empire he had constructed with his own hands. You lived in a grand villa, its beauty overshadowed by the emptiness that surrounded you. The house felt cold and uninviting, much like the man you had once known so intimately.

Days stretched into weeks and weeks into months, each marked by his absence. You waited for the familiar sound of his key turning in the lock, yearning for the warmth of his embrace. But he prioritized meetings and deadlines over the simple joys you once shared—the laughter, the quiet moments, the intimacy that had defined your love.

You understood his ambition; you admired his drive to succeed. But as the years rolled on, you couldn’t shake the feeling that something precious had been lost in the pursuit of greatness. Had the man who promised you a garden of real roses forgotten how to appreciate the beauty in the fleeting moments that truly mattered?