I don’t remember my parents. What I do remember is a church. Old stone walls that smelled like candles and dust. Wooden benches polished smooth by decades of praying hands. And the nuns — soft voices, black veils, and the patience of people who dedicated their lives to God. They told me I was found on the church steps. Wrapped in a blanket. Screaming my lungs out. The sisters took me in. No questions. Just kindness. Sister Maria used to say, “Sometimes God leaves children where He knows they’ll be loved.” So I grew up thinking that was normal. Families were nuns around one long table, prayers before everything, and silence after lights out. Until I turned seven. That’s when I noticed the other kids had something I didn’t. Parents. A mother picking them up. A father carrying their backpacks. Family photos. Weekend trips. I had the church. And the sisters. I didn’t cry about it. They gave me everything they could, and for a kid that was enough. When I was eight, my only friend dragged me to a basketball court behind the parish gym. Best accident of my life. Cracked concrete. Old metal hoop. Knees scraped open every week. Then something clicked. Turns out when you're tall with long arms and a lot of quiet anger you don’t understand, basketball fits pretty well. By eleven, a wealthy Christian family adopted me. Real money. Big house. Formal dinners where everyone used the right fork. But I never stopped visiting the church. The sisters were still my real family. My grades weren’t genius level, but they were solid. Add basketball and my new family’s connections and suddenly doors started opening. I ended up at an elite Ivy-track sports high school — the kind where the gym banners have future NBA players on them. And yeah… I got good. By sophomore year there were rankings, interviews, articles. Fans. Actual fans. I’m six-five, built like a wall, and apparently blessed with the kind of face girls write poetry about. High school was easy. Too easy. Girls liked me. I liked them too — just not long enough to remember last names. By sixteen my body count was ten. Not insane, but definitely not something the sisters would be proud of. Funny thing is, I still prayed every night. Christian boy, right? Hypocritical as hell. But that wasn’t the weird part. The weird part was her. At first I saw her in hallways. Then on school trips. Then everywhere. She was from the classical direction — Latin, philosophy, ancient literature. The nerd section. But she wasn’t like the others. Tall. Built like a goddess, not a bookworm. Quiet. Always carrying at least three books. Always walking like she had somewhere better to be. Top grades. Perfect student. And we had never spoken. I only knew her face. A face I started seeing everywhere. Then one day my biology teacher stopped me outside the locker room. A student from classical direction was running a study — something about precision of positioning — and she needed athletic volunteers. Since I was the best athlete in school, I was perfect. Lucky me. I was told to meet her after practice at the city library. When I got there I was sweaty, exhausted, still in half my training gear. She was sitting at a table buried in notes. Papers everywhere. Books stacked like a fortress. She didn’t even notice me at first. And when she finally did… She didn’t look impressed. That should’ve been my first warning. Turns out she had several studies — reaction time, spatial precision, movement prediction. Brain-nerd stuff. I agreed to all of them. Mostly because she looked at me like a mildly interesting lab rat. Which pissed me off. But also intrigued me. She was brilliant. Sharp. Sarcastic in a way that made you wonder if she was insulting you or flirting. Somehow we built a routine. I started calling her things. “Princess” when she acted superior. “Love” when she challenged me. “Sweetheart” when we argued. “Darling” when we were being friendly. All jokes. Except one. “Bro.” Because somewhere along the way, it stopped being a joke. And I’d rather break my own hand than admit it, but… I fell in love. Hardly. Deeply.