WHO IS HE?
The sound of rain drop echoed in the air , thin drops tapping against the tinted glass of the Adams family car as it slowed near the old woody made restaurant. Grace Adams of the adams family lost in deep thoughts.
Her gaze was fixed somewhere far from the window, caught in the poor street light , trapped in thoughts that had become heavier than sleep. At twenty-six, she had what every woman crave for at her age —riches , comfortable, a fame and statues. Yet she is not satisfied.
Only one word runs through her mind
,,Marriage,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,.
The word echoed like a threat, not a promise.
She had recently received a distress cal from her parents earlier. Cold voices, carefully chosen words, but the message was the same: *she sighs .
Time is no longer on your side
her mother retorted
. You cannot remain a spinster forever.* life partner awaits for it left for you to chose . Family are waited. Expectations waited.
But love did not.
Grace.how am I supposed to make up to my mother she think deeply,
Grace pressed her fingers together in her lap, nails biting into soft skin. She feared many things, but loneliness has become her worst enemy —the idea of standing in a wealthy house filled with silence,marrying to a man who sees her as a ladder to wealth and fame
.....
She wanted a man she could build a future with.
Not someone perfect—but real. Someone who would struggle beside her, choose her beyond her surname, see her as more than a merger of family interests.
Yet such men did not walk into the world of Grace Adams.
The car stopped at a red light.
Across the street, the doors of a small restaurant flew open.
A young man stumbled out, shoulders rigid with humiliation, face drained of colour. His apron was still tied around his waist, hands trembling as he tore it off and flung it into the gutter.
Jacob a bachelor who is writer is been humiliated by his boss qnd and deprived of his monthly earnings.
Grace's eyes found him before she understood why she was looking.
He stood frozen on the sidewalk as rain began soaking through his thin shirt, head bowed like someone who had just lost a battle he'd fought alone. Voices drifted from inside the restaurant—angry, cutting.
"You're useless!" The boss said
"Writers don't belong in kitchens!"
Something tightened in Grace's chest.
She watched him drag a hand across his face. Watched his shoulders curve inward, protective, defeated. Even from inside the car, she could see the way shame moved through him—the way he seemed to be folding into himself, trying to disappear.
He started walking away , and each step looked heavier than the last.
Grace with no sense of familiarity made her move towards him .
She is so curious,because she didn't know his name, his story, where he'd come from or where he was going.
Who is this handsome young man thought struggling to think straight.
But she recognised something in the slump of his posture, in the way he moved through the rain like someone invisible to the world.
She recognised his loneliness.
Her phone rang.
She flinched. Picked It up
"Grace," her mother's voice came through, warm but edged with purpose, "your father and I need to speak with you tonight. About the engagement meeting tomorrow."
Her breath stopped.
Tomorrow...…...
The word landed like a bomb in her chest.
She looked back at the young man, now halfway down the block, rain streaming down his face and neck. Soaked. Beaten. Abandoned by circumstance to walk alone through a city that didn't care.
An impossible thought flickered through her mind.
*What if...*
The car began moving forward.
"Grace? Are you listening?"
She wasn't.
Her eyes stayed locked on the stranger's retreating figure, on the notebook bag slung over his shoulder, on the way he walked like someone who'd run out of places to go.
"Stop the car," she heard herself say.
Her driver glanced back, confused. "Miss Adams?"
"Stop. Please."
The car rolled to a halt.
Grace's mother was still talking, something about the Harrington family, about suitable matches, about duty. The words blurred into noise.
Without fully understanding why—without a plan, without logic, driven only by the desperate pulse of her own trapp ed heart—Grace opened the door.
Rain rushed in.
"Grace!" her driver called, alarmed.
She barely heard him.
She stepped onto the wet pavement, phone still clutched in her hand, her mother's voice a distant hum. The rain was cold, immediate, real in a way the last few months of her life had not been.
The young man was twenty feet ahead, shoulders hunched against the downpour.
"Excuse me," she called.
Her voice came out quieter than she'd intended, nearly swallowed by the rain and the street noise. But somehow, he heard.
He stopped.
Turned.
And in that single moment—caught between desperation and coincidence, between fear and reckless hope—Grace Adams made a decision that would destroy and remake both of them.
His eyes met hers. Confused. Wary. Empty of expectation.
He had no idea his life was about to change.
Neither did she.
Grace lifted her phone, her mother's call still glowing on the screen, still demanding answers she didn't have.
She looked at this stranger, this nobody, this man the world had just thrown away.
"I..." Her heart hammered. "I need to ask you something."
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**To be continued...**