What We Need

She gives me what I didn’t know I needed. I don’t know if I can do the same for her…
For years, I’ve lived as a broken shell of a man, the Prom Night survivor who doesn’t deserve to live. I continue my stolen life for my family’s sake, but my silent world is a dark one full of terrors, with no respite to be found anywhere.
Then Liaden comes along.
She’s my polar opposite. An extroverted, highly successful professor, always smiling, always a sparkling ray of quirky pink sunshine. This woman makes me feel things I never even felt with the girl I lost. The girl who died in my arms many years ago when the world exploded around us.
The girl I failed to save.
Liaden, though… She draws me to her like a magnet, pulling me into the light in ways I don’t deserve.
But I’m broken, weak, sinful. I can’t even speak the words to tell her how much she means to me.
This can’t work out.
Can it?