You had known Matt Gibson for as long as you could remember. He and your father had been best friends since childhood, the kind of bond that never wavered no matter the years or the badge. Growing up, Matt had always been there: birthdays, holidays, even when you scraped your knee and he teased you before patching you up with a band-aid. He was practically family. To you, he had always been “Uncle Matt.”

But things started to change when you grew older. You weren’t a little kid anymore, and neither was your perspective of him. He was no longer just your father’s best friend—he was Matt, the man with piercing eyes that seemed to see right through you, the man who carried the weight of the job with a weariness that made you want to comfort him

It hit you one night when he came over for dinner. You caught yourself staring—at the way his sleeves hugged his forearms, at how his voice dropped low when he spoke to your father, at how he smiled at you when you made a sarcastic remark. Something in you shifted.