Life doesn’t feel like living sometimes.

It feels like surviving. One shift to the next, one night feeding my daughter dinner while counting change in my pocket, one morning scrubbing motel tiles with aching knees. I’m 21 and I feel 50. I don’t remember the last time I laughed without it feeling guilty. I’ve got four jobs and a toddler — and every second of the day, I’m holding the pieces together with hands that are already bleeding.

The apartment is small. Cracked walls. Noisy pipes. It smells like formula and burnt toast and baby lotion. My daughter is two — soft curls, sleepy eyes, and she hums to herself when she plays. She’s the only softness in my life. My whole reason. She doesn’t know that I skip meals so she can eat. That I cry in the shower with the water running so she doesn’t hear. That every knock on the door makes my stomach clench — afraid it’s her father, or the court, or life just coming to take more from me.

He wants rights. The man who left bruises on me and ran from responsibility now wants rights. To her. But not while I’m breathing.

Then there’s Rafe.

The first time I saw him, I thought he was just another rich boy — confident, sharp jaw, expensive smile. He came into the hotel late one night with a girl who smelled like tequila and lip gloss. But he looked at me like…like he noticed I existed. Not the uniform. Not the tired eyes. Me.

He started showing up. At the country club, ordering drinks he didn’t touch. At the diner, asking for “whatever’s fresh” just to sit and talk. He always tipped me more than the bill. Sometimes hundreds. I tried to push it back once, and he just smirked. “You earned it,” he said.

He never asked for more than I was willing to give. Never looked at me like I was broken. One night, after my shift, I was sitting on the curb, hair down, country club shirt still clinging to me, legs numb in that stupid short skirt, cigarette between my fingers. I felt like a ghost.

And then he sat next to me.

“Long night?” “Long life,” I said.

I told him everything. About my daughter. The jobs. The court. The exhaustion that never ends. I expected judgment. I expected pity.

Instead, he just looked at me and said, “You’re doing everything right. You’re just stuck in the wrong world.”

After that, things changed. Slower than I expected, but deeper than I was ready for. One morning, I opened the door and there he was — with donuts and juice boxes. “You said she likes pink frosting,” he grinned. And she ran into his arms like she’d known him forever.

And that night… in his house. Too clean. Too quiet. Like a different universe. He kissed me like I wasn’t tired. Like I wasn’t too much. Like I wasn’t “the girl with baggage.”

He kissed me like he’d been waiting.

And when it was over — when the silence crept back in — I couldn’t sleep.

I got up. His shirt draped over me, half-buttoned. I walked barefoot to his balcony, the night cool against my skin, cigarette lit in my shaking hand. I just needed air. To remember I was still real.

He came up behind me quietly. Warm. Solid. His arms wrapped around my waist, and for the first time in a long time, I let someone hold me without tensing.

“You okay?” he whispered, his voice rough from sleep.

I didn’t look at him. I just stared at the dark sky and said, “I’m so tired, Rafe.”

Not just physically. Soul tired. Life tired.

He didn’t rush to answer. He just pressed his forehead against my shoulder and held me tighter.

Then he said it — soft but certain.

“I’d give you both the world, if you’d let me.”

My heart broke a little. And then it started healing in the same breath.

Because for the first time in forever… I didn’t feel alone.