When I opened my bus doors she was helping a women pick up her groceries. She looked up, brown eyes sparkling and I felt time skip a beat. Or maybe it was just my heart and I was to stunned to notice the difference.

I drove her 45 minutes to work every day and in a single witnessed moment of kindness everything was different. The weight of all our hours together settled within me.

I knew then that I had been looking for her all my life.

She smiled and tilted her head, searching my face. I blinked and she was standing next to me holding out her fare. I lifted a hand to her cheek, she leaned down and someone in the back muttered, “About time.”

A brief touch of our lips, a promise. She whispered, “Hold that thought, I forgot my bag.”

She stepped back onto the sidewalk. My bus was cheering. I grinned like a fool.

Then I heard the keen of a motorcycle and police sirens. She looked back at me.

Tires screeched and I saw a flash of black.

The sick crunch of bone and metal.

I couldn’t breathe.

She was gone.