**Standalone Contemporary Romance**<br><br>He found me in blood and tears.<br>I stayed with him through darkness and fire.<br><br>We loved each other in the moment between innocence and bitter truth.<br>We were the kids easily ignored, who grew into adults we hardly knew.<br> <br>We weren’t meant to last forever. And we didn’t.<br> <br>He ran away.<br>I tried to move on.<br> <br>Yet I never stopped thinking about the boy who had fought to keep me alive in a world that would have swallowed me whole. He was the past that I buried, but never forgot.<br> <br>Until the day I found him again, years after believing I had lost him forever.<br> <br>And in cold, resentful eyes, I saw the heart of the man who had been everything when I had nothing at all. So I vowed to hold onto the second chance that was stolen from the children we had been.<br> <br>Sometimes fate is ugly. Life can be twisted.<br>And who we are can be ruined by who we once were.<br> <br>For two people who had survived so much, we would have to learn how to hold on before we were forced to let go.<br><br>**trigger warning- contains mature themes that are intense and imply abuse, though are not graphic**<br>