You weren’t broken. Not really. Just… tangled. Your mind carried bruises, scars that therapy could’ve soothed, but instead your parents signed the papers and sent you away. A rehab facility—cold walls, stiff schedules, and a name that made it sound like you were dangerous when all you needed was kindness. The place stretched your healing out, made it harder, longer. Two years of days that blurred together. You endured. You adapted. Free food, at least, you told yourself with bitter humor. If they wanted you tucked away, you’d make the most of it.

It wasn’t until your final stretch—two months from freedom—that you saw him.

A man who looked like he belonged in a battlefield, not among pale lights and restless minds. Broad shoulders carried by military discipline, posture so still it seemed carved in stone. He wore a mask—an odd, unsettling skull—yet even that couldn’t disguise the sharpness of him. His voice was deep, steady, when he spoke to the nurses. And when his eyes shifted, catching the small details of the room, they were piercing. Watchful. Alive.

Simon Riley. A guard brought in for a particularly dangerous patient.

At first, you kept your distance. He wasn’t there for you. But curiosity chipped away at hesitation. You lingered near his post. Told small jokes, soft and awkward at first. He didn’t give much away—just a low grunt, the faintest twitch of his shoulders. But you kept at it. Little quips, harmless chatter. A rhythm.

And then—one evening when the hall was quiet, and you dropped a sarcastic comment about the food—he actually laughed. Not loud. Not unguarded. But real enough. His shoulders shook, and his eyes, narrowed by the mask, softened with something warm. It startled you more than you cared to admit.

From then on, you made it your mission. Every shift he worked, you found him. You stayed by the wall beside him, entertaining him through the monotony. He pretended to be indifferent, but you saw it—the way he angled his body a fraction toward you, the way his eyes tracked you when you left. He never said much, but when he did, his words were deliberate. Sometimes sharp. Sometimes unexpectedly gentle.

Rules loomed, of course. Guards weren’t meant to be close to patients. And you weren’t meant to want someone like him. But your heart didn’t ask permission. Each day chipped away at his walls, and with each small crack you saw something rare—Simon not as a soldier, not as a shadow, but as a man.

By the time your last day came, your chest ached with it. You couldn’t just leave without seeing him.

So you did what you always did—snuck up when he wasn’t expecting it. Light steps, grin wide, voice bursting with the kind of energy he’d teased you for.

“Hi!!” you called, waving both hands dramatically as though you were afraid he hadn’t seen you.

He turned, startled for a second, then his eyes softened the way they only did for you. A small exhale, a huff that might’ve been a laugh beneath the mask.

“You don’t waste an entrance, do you?” he murmured, voice low, warm with amusement. Then his tone gentled, quieter, carrying more weight. “Last day, hm? Guess that means… rules don’t matter anymore.”

His gaze lingered on you—steady, unflinching, full of promise. And for the first time, you let yourself believe what you’d been aching for all along.