The rain fell harder than tears.
It beat against the broken windshield, washed over the twisted frame of the car, and splashed across the asphalt where glass glittered like fallen stars.
Amara Babalola stood barefoot on the road, her thin dress plastered to her skin, her hair heavy with rainwater. Her chest heaved, but no sound came out. She had forgotten how to cry.
In her hands, she clutched the only thing she had managed to salvage—a torn photograph from her father's wallet. Her parents' faces smiled up at her, frozen in a moment that would never exist again.
"Miss, you can't stand here," a police officer murmured gently, stepping in front of her. His expression was pitying, careful, the way one might approach a wounded animal.
"I'm fine," Amara whispered hoarsely. The lie scratched her throat, but she forced it out anyway.
The officer hesitated, then guided her toward the flashing ambulance lights. But Amara dug her heels into the wet ground. She didn't want comfort. She didn't want the low, rehearsed condolences of strangers. None of it mattered.
Her mother's laughter.
Her father's voice.
Their warmth, their presence—gone in a single night.
The world had collapsed, and yet the rain refused to stop falling.
Standing there, shivering in the downpour, Amara made herself a promise.
Two promises, in fact.
She would never need anyone again.
And she would never let anyone see her break.
The weeks that followed blurred together.
The funeral came and went in a haze of black clothes and murmured sympathies. Relatives whispered about debts she hadn't known her parents carried. The bank came knocking soon after, cold and unrelenting.
Their house—the only place she had ever felt safe—was no longer hers.
Friends sent messages at first. Stay strong. I'm here if you need anything. But soon the texts slowed, the calls stopped, and silence filled the space where comfort should have been.
By the time the month ended, Amara was alone in a cramped one-room apartment with peeling paint, a squeaky fan, and walls that seemed to lean inward when she couldn't sleep.
She learned to survive.
By day, she dragged herself to lectures, though the words of her professors blurred together into meaningless noise. By night, she tied on a stained apron and worked the night shift at a run-down diner, tucked between a pharmacy and an auto repair shop.
The pay was barely enough for rent and instant noodles. But it was something.
"This is temporary," she told herself the first night she scrubbed dishes until her fingers bled. "Just until I can stand again."
But days became weeks, and weeks stretched into months. Survival became routine.
And Amara kept standing.
It was close to midnight when the bell above the diner door jingled.
Amara was bent over the counter, fighting exhaustion as she wiped the same spot for the third time. Her coworker, Nkechi, had already slipped out fifteen minutes earlier, leaving her to handle the stragglers.
She expected the usual—a weary taxi driver, or maybe a couple of drunk students too loud to notice the sticky floor.
But the man who stepped inside was neither.
The moment he entered, the air shifted.
Tall, broad-shouldered, and wearing a suit that screamed money, he looked like he belonged in a boardroom, not this greasy little diner. Raindrops clung to his coat, catching the dull glow of the flickering neon sign outside. His expression was unreadable, his presence heavy, like thunder rolling in before a storm.
Amara froze for a second, rag still in her hand. She had learned to read people fast—customers, classmates, strangers in the street. Some came with open faces, others with hidden intentions.
This man carried shadows.
Without a word, he walked to the farthest booth and sat down. The cracked leather seat creaked beneath him, but he didn't flinch.
Amara straightened and forced herself forward, pen tucked behind her ear.
"What can I get you?" she asked, her voice steady despite the unease curling in her chest.
"Coffee."
The word was clipped, deep, more command than request.
She raised an eyebrow. "Kitchen's closed. All I've got left is tea. And it's been sitting for hours."
His gaze lifted to hers for the first time. His eyes were dark—cold, unreadable—and when they landed on her, it felt like she had been stripped bare.
"Then tea," he said simply.
Amara turned sharply, pouring a cup from the old pot and setting it in front of him. The tea was lukewarm, bitter, probably closer to boiled socks than anything else.
"You'll regret it," she muttered.
For the briefest second, the corner of his mouth twitched. Almost a smile, but not quite. He didn't touch the cup. He just sat there, staring out the rain-streaked window as though waiting for something—or someone.
Amara went back to wiping down the counter, but her eyes kept flicking toward him. There was something about the way he sat. Too still. Too heavy. Like a man holding back an ocean.
Her instincts told her to leave him alone. Her curiosity told her otherwise.
"Long day?" she asked, surprising even herself.
The man didn't look at her. His jaw tightened. "Long life."
The answer made her pause. She wanted to scoff, maybe roll her eyes. But instead she found herself gripping the counter harder, because in that single phrase, she heard something she recognized.
Pain.
The same kind of pain she carried in her chest every day, buried beneath forced strength.
For the first time in months, Amara felt her armor crack. Just a little.
She turned away quickly, forcing herself to focus on the last dirty table. She couldn't afford this—not curiosity, not softness, not the dangerous pull of a stranger whose shadows seemed to mirror her own.
But deep down, she knew.
The promises she had made on the night her world ended were fragile things.
And this man—with his storm-filled eyes and silence heavier than rain—was about to break them.