CROWN OF CRACKS

Maya was 21 and already tired of being the strong one. Her dad’s addiction paid the rent late. Her mom’s goodbye letter paid nothing at all. So Maya worked two jobs, saved every dollar, and kept her walls up. Then Elias walked in. He was 23, with tired eyes and hands that knew how to fix things. He fixed the sink at her diner shift without being asked. He remembered she hated onions. He brought her coffee on nights she worked doubles and didn’t say a word about the dark circles. “You don’t have to do everything alone,” he told her, the first night he walked her home. Nobody had ever said that to her and meant it. For weeks, it was soft. He was her safe place. When her dad relapsed, Elias sat on her fire escape with her and didn’t try to fix it. He just stayed. When she talked about her dream — getting into design school, getting out of Port Harcourt — he listened like it mattered. “I see you,” he said one night, thumb brushing a smudge of paint off her cheek. “The real you. Not the one you show everybody else.” Maya fell fast. Hard. Because being _seen_ by him felt like water after a drought. The cracks showed later. She laughed too long with a coworker. Elias went quiet on the walk home. “You like him?” he asked, not looking at her. “No. I like you,” she said. “Then prove it,” he said. And he deleted the guy’s number from her phone while she was in the bathroom. “For us.” She should’ve left. Instead she kissed him. Because when he pulled her in, he shook. Like he was scared she’d leave too. “I’m not your mom, Elias,” she whispered. “I know,” he said against her forehead. “That’s why I can’t lose you.” Her best friend Layla saw it first. “He loves you like he’s drowning, Maya. That’s not safe.” Maya rolled her eyes. Then she went home to Elias and let him hold her until the shaking stopped. He did love her. Fierce. All-in. The kind of love that said _you’re mine_ like it was a prayer. And she loved him back — the boy who stayed when everyone else left. Even if staying sometimes felt like a crack she was trying to cover in gold. *