After some nights, the weight of it all began to suffocate him.
He would lie awake beside the woman who held his heart; his constant, his anchor, the life he worked years to build while the memory of another woman's breath haunted the hollow space inside his ribs. The music class, the dim hallway where she waited for him, the quiet tables at the coffee shop where she stirred her cup just to steady her shaking hands… all of it returned to him with cruel clarity.
Some nights he turned in his sleep, hating himself for wanting what he had no right to want.
Two women.
Two worlds.
One he loved without question: the world he had chosen with conviction.
The other… a storm he never invited, yet one that tore into his soul like destiny written before birth.
She wasn't fragile. She wasn't naïve.
She was the strong one; the woman who had survived heartbreaks that would have destroyed anyone else. The woman who had raised walls so high even life's sharpest cruelties couldn't scale them.
But she opened those walls for him.
For him alone.
And that terrified him more than desire ever could.
"What if she was breaking because of him?
What if he was the one cracking the fortress she had rebuilt with blood, pain, and strength?
What if she woke one morning blaming herself for loving a man she could never claim?"
He saw the truth even when she tried to bury it behind teasing words and quiet laughter.
He saw the softness in her gaze when she thought he wasn't looking.
He saw the way her breath caught when he walked into the music room after her, guitar slung casually over his shoulder.
He saw the way her hands trembled when their fingers brushed while passing a sheet of music.
She had begun to feel again because of him.
And that power; that sacred, dangerous power terrified him.
He craved her more than breath.
He feared her love even more.
And one night, with the ache in him too loud to swallow, he finally asked the question that had burned through him for weeks.
They were on a late call; the dim light casting her face in a glow that felt unearthly. Behind her was the soft chaos of sheet music, books, and the little windchimes she kept near her window. She thought she looked ordinary like this, but to him she looked like a prayer caught in human form.
His voice broke the silence.
"Why do you love me this much?
You know I can never be yours… then why?"
He expected her to fall quiet. To avoid the question.
To laugh it off or pretend it wasn't that serious.
But she didn't.
She lifted her gaze with a calm that unsettled him; the kind of calm that felt like stepping barefoot into a temple at dawn.
And when she spoke, her voice wasn't shaky.
It was sacred.
"If you want a reason for loving you, there is none."
Her eyes didn't waver.
"The connection I feel for you… it's ethereal. I don't want to own you. I don't hope to change your life. I don't love you for your looks; those will fade. I don't love you for your strength; it can crumble tomorrow. I don't love you for the man you may become one day. Even if you fail to become any of it, my love won't shift.
In sickness, in shame, in collapse, in triumph... nothing will move what I feel.
I don't love your body, your talent, your charm.
I love your soul. I love you for the man you are."
Her words didn't strike him like fire.
They struck him like revelation.
This wasn't obsession. This wasn't need.
This wasn't escape.
It was love in its purest, most terrifying form; a love without claim, without demand, without fear.
A love that bowed its head instead of reaching its hand.
A love that felt like prayer.
For the first time, he looked at her the way one looks at a miracle; not with desire, not with longing, but with reverence. He felt something shift inside him, something ancient and aching. Worship not of her body, not of her presence, but of the unearthly light inside her that chose him despite every reason not to.
And in that moment he wanted to protect her more fiercely than he had ever protected anyone.
Not from the world. From himself.
From the part of him that could hurt her without meaning to.
From the truth that he could never walk into the light with her.
Somewhere deep in the quiet storm of his soul, he made a vow she would never hear but would always feel in the way he touched her, in the way he looked at her, in the way he whispered her name.
He vowed to give her what he could give:
his honesty, his presence, his intensity, his fire; so long as it brought her joy.
But he also knew the bitter truth he would carry to his grave:
If she ever wanted to claim him openly, to step into daylight with him, to build what she truly deserved… he would have to let her go.
That was the cruelty of their fate.
And yet, in the end, the vow he made to protect her, the vow to honor even her smallest wish, would be the one vow he would break. He promised himself that as long as he could he would give her what she wants yet he knew that she will never ask for what he couldn't.