The Steps Back

Daniel Shepard is a hardworking attorney whose dedication to success slowly edges out everything else-including his marriage. When he gets a call that his wife, Charlie, has collapsed at work, he rushes to the hospital only to realize how far they've drifted. She's not wearing her wedding ring. She's gone back to her maiden name. And she's been quietly slipping away while he wasn't looking.

As Charlie recovers, both physically and emotionally, Daniel is forced to confront the ways he failed her-and himself. But Charlie isn't without blame either. She admits to staying quiet too long, to shrinking instead of speaking up. What follows is a raw and intimate journey of therapy, reconnection, awkward first dates, painful honesty, and tentative hope.

Together, they rediscover the language of love in the small things-shared dinners, gentle touches, old memories-and the big things too: forgiveness, vulnerability, and the choice to stay.

This is my version of a Sterek story I once read but I cannot find it again.