[Verse]

Sixteen on a dead man’s porch with a half-paid wage

Gas needle buried in red

Storm in the mirror, dirt on her name

Now she’s watching a man half-dead

He said, “Don’t move nothing, don’t ask why”

She said, “I won’t stay long, sir”

Two lives backed into the same dead end

Neither one looking for another

[Pre-Chorus]

They don’t say what they’re afraid of

They don’t ask what they lost

They just sit in the long quiet

Like it’s easier than the truth would cost

[Chorus]

It was never supposed to turn out this way

Two last chances at the same red light

No signal comes before the fall

Before it turns on you at night

She was running, he was done

Both said the ride was over

But the door moved when no one touched it

Yeah, better late than never shows up

When hope falls lower

[Verse]

His hand still shakes when he pours the cup

Leaves a river on the wood

He jokes about getting old too fast

Like jokes can’t bleed like they should

She hears his name in a checkout line

“That old house on the hill?”

She nods once — and the room goes still

Like the air just lost its will

One hot night his memory breaks

Says, “Girl, I was young there once”

She sees a life he never finished

In the way his breath gets lost

[Pre-Chorus]

There are questions that wait their whole life

For a mouth brave enough to speak

There are truths that show up quiet

Right when you think you’re too weak

[Chorus]

It was never supposed to turn out this way

Two last chances at the same red light

No signal comes before the fall

Before it turns on you at night

She was running, he was done

Both said the ride was over

But the door moved when no one touched it

Yeah, better late than never shows up

When hope falls lower

[Bridge]

Through courthouse dust and sun-bleached ink

Through names time tried to drown

She finds the truth in a folded page

Still breathing in that town

What he lost in another life

Stood standing in his room

The past didn’t knock — it crossed the floor

And changed who he was too

[Chorus]

It was never supposed to turn out this way

But mercy don’t follow plans

The best laid plans don’t stand a chance

Against the past that knows your name

She was searching, he was spared

By a truth neither one saw coming

You can miss your whole life chasing a sign

And see it clear when the running is done

And the light comes on

Yeah, better late than never comes

When hope is gone

[Outro]

The yard light hums on the same old wire

Where he once stood alone

She sets her bag by the front door now

Like it’s the first place she’s known

A dandelion lifts from the gravel slow

On an August wind back home

Sometimes the leaving brings you home again