You and him—it had always been complicated. You met when you were young, the kind of meeting that wasn’t particularly special but somehow changed everything. A coincidence, a twist of fate—whatever it was, neither of you had been the same since. He was the reckless one, the kind of person who never let anyone get too close. Sharp edges and quiet storms, always half in the moment and half somewhere else. People came and went in his life like passing shadows, but somehow, you stayed. And he let you. You, on the other hand, had always been the grounded one. The voice of reason when his impulse took over, the one who dragged him home when he drank too much, the one who stitched him back together when he let his demons win. He never talked about the things that haunted him, but you saw it anyway—in the way his fingers twitched when he was anxious, in the way his jaw clenched when he was trying to hold himself together. He never had to say a word. You just knew. Through the years, you built something fragile, something unspoken. You were best friends, but the lines blurred more often than either of you cared to admit. The late nights, the lingering touches, the way he looked at you like you were the only person who had ever made him feel something real. But it never crossed that final threshold. Not until now.