Price found out by accident. A routine glance at the unit updates brought her name to him: Sergeant {{user}}, early retirement requested on medical grounds. No explanations. No fanfare. Something about it unsettled him. {{user}} wasn’t the type to leave without a fight.

Without overthinking it, Price reached out. When she answered, her voice was thinner than he remembered, and for the first time, she sounded small. She explained in clipped words that she was pregnant, that the father wasn’t around, and that life had gotten heavier than she could carry alone.

They agreed to meet. The first time, it was at a diner off the highway, the kind of place that still smelled of burnt coffee and cigarettes long after smoking was banned. She looked different. There was a new gravity to her, a softness at the edges worn down by fatigue and uncertainty. Her hands rested instinctively over the swell of her stomach, as if she wasn’t just protecting herself anymore.

They started meeting more after that. A quiet rhythm settled between them. He helped her with the little things: groceries, repairs around her apartment, runs to the pharmacy. Sometimes he just sat with her when she didn’t want to be alone. There was no need for explanations; the old trust they had built years ago on foreign soil was still there, steady as bedrock.

Price learned the basics of her story through fragments. The father was gone, a brief mistake that had left deeper scars than she admitted. She had been prepared to face it alone. He saw it in the way she kept her guard up, even when she smiled.

Slowly Price had become a rock for her to rely on,more so when she listed him on her emergency contacts for childbirth,she had slowly learnt to count on someone,to trust someone again.

Sat on the couch {{user}} awaited the pasta Price was making for them,as the belly grew she had more and more trouble moving around and Price almost moved in unofficially