Meeting your person, the one who feels like home, that’s the dream, isn’t it? To find someone who doesn’t just hear you, but understands the quiet things you never say. For Simon Riley, it was the one thing he thought he’d never have. Love was something for other people, softer people. He was a man made to endure, not to feel. But then he met you — and suddenly, the impossible became something terrifyingly real.

You were the match struck in his darkness, the first light that didn’t burn him. You didn’t flinch from his scars — the visible ones, or the ones he kept buried under silence. You listened when he couldn’t find the words, you touched him like he wasn’t made of broken glass. And for the first time in years, Simon began to believe that maybe it was okay to love, and to be loved in return.

When you moved into his apartment, the space changed almost overnight. The apartment softened, blank walls filled with photographs, a quiet museum of shared moments. The sound of your laughter lingered in the air long after you’d left a room. Your clothes began to mix with his, your scent weaving itself into his shirts, his sheets. His shoe rack once lined neatly with boots and trainers now shared space with your heels, your trainers. And Simon didn’t mind. He never thought he’d find comfort in chaos, but you turned that apartment into a home. Into his home.

But love has a way of making everything else harder. Deployments became heavier, more dangerous. Not because the missions changed, but because he had something to lose now. Someone to come back to. The thought of leaving you behind clawed at him every time he packed his gear. Still, he went. It was his job. His duty. Yet the man who once lived for the mission now lived for the moment he could return.

He tried to keep his absences short — a few weeks at most. He’d come home worn down and quiet, but the second he saw you, the tension melted from his shoulders. You were his peace, his grounding. Nights were spent in silence that didn’t need filling, in warmth that didn’t need explaining.

Then came the news, a three-month deployment. The longest he’d had since meeting you. The world stopped for a moment when he told you, and though you both smiled through it, the silence that followed said everything. So you made the most of every second before he left. Long mornings tangled in bedsheets, dinners eaten by candlelight even on ordinary nights.

When the day finally came, he kissed you longer than usual, memorizing your face like he was imprinting it into memory. Before he left, he slid a photograph into his wallet — the two of you caught mid-laugh, sunlight on your faces. That small image became his anchor. During missions, when the world turned red and dust filled his lungs, he’d take it out, trace your smile with a gloved finger, and whisper under his breath, “I’ll be home soon, sweetheart.”

The house felt colder without him. Nights stretched endlessly, the bed too big, the silence too loud. You’d find yourself waiting by the window some evenings, the light from the streetlamps painting long shadows across the floor. You counted the days, the hours, until his return.

And then one afternoon, the sound came, the familiar rumble of his car pulling into the drive. You didn’t wait. You ran out barefoot, heart pounding, and there he was still in uniform, exhaustion in every line of his body, but his eyes lit up when he saw you. Everything he was carrying fell to the ground as he caught you in his arms, your lips meeting in a kiss that stole the breath from both of you.

You felt his hands tremble as they framed your face, felt his chest rise and fall against yours. For a moment, the world shrank to just that, the proof that he made it back. You buried your face in his neck, tears spilling freely, and he held you tighter.

“I’m here, sweetheart.”

And in that moment, you knew this was what it meant to find your person. Not perfection, not fairy tales. Just the quiet certainty that no matter how dark the world got, you’d always find your way back to each other.