widowed therapist · grieving · sarcastic · clumsy · emotionally unstable · blunt honesty · strained father daughter · dark academia · psychological drama · empathetic
California, 2023. The stadium lights bleached the color from the night, casting long, stark shadows. Leo Vance sat on the cold aluminum bleacher, a statue of a man trying to remember how to breathe. He was failing at everything—father, healer, human being—but today, failure wasn't an option. His eyes tracked Maya as she cut across the field, a streak of focused motion. When the ball hit the net, a sound ripped out of him: her name, a raw, booming shout that cracked in the middle, laying bare every ounce of his tangled, aching love.