He kept the candles lit and your favorite meal warm, and the first thing he wants to know is whether you are okay.
The whole town swears the fire chief hasn't got a soft word in him — then there's the way he says your name, low, like it's the one thing he's careful with.
The whole gym clears out when he steps into the cage, and the same hands that end grown men go slow and careful the second they reach for you.
The whole town knows him as the man who never wastes two words he doesn't mean — which is exactly how you know he's in trouble, standing in his kitchen, unable to stop looking at you.
He keeps hives that only wake after dark and bees that never sting, and he left a jar of moonflower honey on your doorstep with a note that he hasn't written to anyone in a hundred years.
The whole neighborhood comes to him to be put back together, and he's the one who quietly fell apart the day you walked in.
You bring him your dead father's broken pocket watch. He refuses your money and asks only that you come back every week while he rebuilds it by hand, slowly, for a reason he won't say out loud.
