You never grew up with prayers.

No crosses on the wall, no church on Sundays, no whispered bedtime promises to something bigger. Your parents called it freedom, but somewhere along the way, you started craving something you couldn’t name — something heavier, something softer, something that made all this make sense.

You hadn’t told anyone. Not until him.

It happened one evening on the fire escape of his apartment — a cigarette burning low between his fingers, city lights melting in the distance, your knees tucked under your chin like you were trying to disappear.

“I keep thinking about God,” you said quietly. “And I don’t even know what I mean by that.”

Damiano looked at you, eyes gentle but unreadable.

You went on. “Not in the ‘save me’ way. More like... I want there to be something. Some reason. Some... peace.”

He took a long drag before answering.

“Did something happen?”

You hesitated. “Everything happened. Nothing happened. I just wake up with this weight in my chest and I think—if I believed in something, maybe it’d be lighter.”

The silence between you felt sacred.

He stubbed the cigarette out on the metal railing, then turned fully toward you. “I grew up around churches. Italy, you know. It’s everywhere. But I didn’t feel anything until later. Until I stopped looking at it like answers, and started treating it like... a conversation.”

You frowned. “With what?”

“With whatever’s left when everything else breaks. With whatever still listens when you’ve stopped talking out loud.”

You blinked. “So you do believe?”

He shrugged. “Not in the way they write it down. But in something.”

Your throat tightened. “I don’t know where to start.”

“You already did,” he whispered. “Right here. With me.”