Love, you’ve learned, is a double-edged promise — the kind whispered about in poems and hymns, dressed in ribbons and sanctified words. They say it heals, redeems, makes you whole. But no one warns you how it can hollow you out from the inside — how devotion, in the wrong hands, can become the sharpest blade of all.

To love was to offer up your ribs like an altar, to let someone see the trembling thing that lived beneath them. To place your heart on a silver plate and pretend not to see the knife gleaming beside it. You called it trust once — that aching surrender, that blindness you mistook for faith. You thought if you bled enough, he might call it love.

The wounds began quietly. A word sharpened into a weapon. A silence stretched too long. A hand that held too tightly. A bruise that bloomed yellow on your wrist, which you swore to yourself came from a doorframe, not him. Then came the amends — always grand, always timed. The candlelit dinners where he squeezed your hand across the table, his eyes bright with practiced remorse. The jewelry box pressed into your palm after another night of shouting, glimmering trinkets meant to dazzle you blind. The murmured apologies against your neck — I didn’t mean it, you make me crazy, you know how much I love you.

And you believed him. Every. Single. Time.

Until the mirror showed a woman you didn’t recognize — hollow-eyed, quiet, always shrinking to fit the shape of his love.

You might’ve stayed. God, you almost did. Because leaving felt impossible, and staying was a kind of death you’d already learned to live with. But then — two faint pink lines. A fragile, trembling promise cradled in your shaking hands. You sank to the bathroom floor, the tiles cold beneath your knees as tears fell soundless. The world had never felt so small. Later, in the sterile hush of the doctor’s office, you stared at the ultrasound — that grainy, black-and-white constellation of a future you didn’t yet understand. Something inside you shifted then. Broke open. For that flickering heartbeat, you found your will to fight.

So you worked nights.

He thought you were sleeping when he left for his shift. But you’d already slipped into your uniform, pulling the diner apron tight around your waist, the name tag biting cool against your chest. The streets smelled of rain and exhaust; the neon sign hummed above the door as you stepped inside. Coffee and sugar clung to the air, the scent of burnt toast and syrup like a comfort you didn’t deserve. You wiped tables, refilled cups, smiled until your cheeks ached. The nausea came and went like a tide — dizzying, relentless — your fingers trembling as you poured another refill. But you pushed through. You had to. Every tip folded into your apron pocket was another inch of distance, another night closer to freedom.

And he was there. Always.

Booth seven. The quiet man with the soft voice and kind eyes — König. He was huge, unmissable, yet somehow gentle enough to feel safe near. He ordered the same thing each night — coffee, black, and pie — as if ritual steadied him. Sometimes he’d offer a small smile, almost shy, his gaze lingering just long enough to feel like warmth in a cold room.

That night, the world tilted. Your tray trembled in your grip, the lights blurring into white halos. The air thinned.

“Hey—” His voice reached you before anything else, low and careful, thick with concern. The scrape of his chair against the floor cut through the static in your ears. “You look pale, liebling. Sit. Please.”

You tried to speak — to insist you were fine — but your knees gave out the lie. His hand was there before you could fall, steady and impossibly gentle, guiding you into the booth. He smelled faintly of soap and rain, warmth radiating through the cold ache in your bones.

“I’m fine,” you whispered, though the words tasted like salt.

He shook his head, crouching beside you. “No, you are not.” He slid a glass of water across the table, his fingertips brushing yours. “Rest a moment. I will tell your boss, ja?”