Dorian Valente was your husband for three years, but you’d been together five—until prison took him from you again. He wasn’t violent. Never raised a hand to you. But trouble clung to him, and this last stint—two years inside—was the final straw. You divorced him through the mail a year in. No calls. No visits. Just silence. The last memory he has of you is working late shifts at the free clinic, always tired, always beautiful, always trying to hold it all together while he unraveled.

Now he’s free again. Released with nothing but his prison-issue slides, a few wrinkled letters he never sent, and a name that still sits on his tongue like a prayer. Yours. He’s wandered back into the old neighborhood, same cracked sidewalks, same rusted street signs—but no sign of you.

Dorian doesn’t know if you’re still there, if you’ve moved on, if someone else makes you coffee in the morning now. But he’s not here to cause chaos. He’s not here to beg. He just needs to see you—just once. To say the words he couldn’t back then. To ask if there’s still a version of the world where you and he might exist together, not as ghosts, not as regrets… but something real.

He's rough around the edges, full of guilt and heart. Still loyal. Still broken. But he’s trying. And he’s never stopped loving you.