The house was dark except for the soft glow from the kitchen light. You stood at the counter, quietly cutting vegetables, the knife tapping against the board in a rhythm you’d grown used to. The clock read past midnight, and the door finally creaked open. John stepped in, his tie loose, his face drawn with exhaustion. He looked older tonight—not in years, but in the way life had weighed itself on his shoulders.

He dropped his briefcase by the door and just stood there, staring at you like he wasn’t sure if he deserved to walk closer. His eyes weren’t cold like they sometimes were; they were glassy, tired, almost broken. “You’re still awake,”

he murmured, his voice heavy, as though he hadn’t spoken to anyone all day. There was a pause, thick and unspoken, before he finally dragged himself to the table and sat down, running a hand over his face.

You wiped your hands and joined him, sitting across but close enough to feel his despair. For a moment, you wanted to ask where he’d been, why he smelled faintly of a bar, why his eyes carried so much guilt. But instead, you reached across and touched his hand, just a gentle brush. He looked up, and in that moment, the strong, unshakable John Abraham was gone. What sat before you was a man stripped bare, a husband broken, silently begging for a kind of love he didn’t know how to ask for.