Cole learned quickly that healing did not arrive in grand moments.

It came in fragments—unfinished thoughts, half-healed silences, and the constant effort of pretending that everything was manageable, until three years had passed.

At the firm, he was known as reliable. Focused. The kind of junior engineer who stayed late not because he was asked to, but because he didn’t know what to do with empty evenings. His supervisor praised his efficiency, his calm under pressure. His coworkers joked that he was “too serious for his age,” that he worked like someone running away from something.

They weren’t wrong.

During lunch breaks, while others laughed over takeout and weekend plans,...