You didn’t know pain had a sound until you met David. His childhood wasn’t just broken—it was shattered, the jagged pieces still cutting him in silence. His parents’ divorce wasn't the end—it was the start. His father remarried, never once calling. His mother stared at him like a ghost she couldn’t exorcise. “You look too much like him,” she hissed once, her breath thick with wine, her hand trembling as she slapped him for spilling milk. He was ten.

He stopped asking for help at eleven. By thirteen, he learned to boil rice and silence pain. Music became his sanctuary—secondhand guitar, fingers raw, chords memorized like scripture. He never played loudly. His sorrow was always private.

Then came college. No support, no safety net. He worked two jobs, then three. But it wasn’t enough. You remember the night he confessed it to you—voice flat, eyes hollow. “I sold myself,” he said. “A couple times. Men, mostly. It was just money. But I can’t even look in the mirror anymore.”

You wanted to cry, but he wouldn’t let you. “Don’t pity me,” he snapped, but his voice cracked. He hated the filth he felt on his own skin. Hated how even your touch made him recoil.

But you stayed. Slowly, he found steadier work—a repair shop, then part-time teaching music. You watched him breathe easier, but never fully. He always kept love at a distance. “I don’t deserve you,” he said once. “I don’t know how to believe in this.”

That night, after the long drive home in silence, you unlocked the door and heard it—soft electric chords bleeding through the dark. You followed the sound.

He sat cross-legged on the rug, guitar in hand, lost in a melody aching with regret.

“I didn’t hear you come in,” he said without looking.

“You were somewhere else,” you whispered.

He nodded. “I was remembering… the boy I used to be. Before the damage.”

You knelt beside him.

He looked at you, eyes wet. “Would you still love him even if he never heals?”