Prologue
The moon hung like God’s unblinking, mournful eye, watching his creation shattered into ruin.
The night breeze stirred the trees, whispering among the crackles of our campfire. Sam sat across from me, playing a clumsy melody on an old, salvaged guitar. The notes weren’t perfect, but they brought back some of the normality we’d lost long ago.
I watched his fingers move across the strings with his head down, blond hair falling over his face.
The world called him the “perfect soldier,” but music was definitely not his thing.
I didn’t know how long I’d been watching him. At first I had been lost in thought, but the longer I stared, the harder it became to look away.
I was completely mesmerized.
“What?” he asked, without looking at me.
I blinked, feeling exposed.
“Nothing. It’s just… strange to hear something like music again. It makes the world feel less fucked up.”
Sam chuckled.
“Was that a compliment? Because it sounded like one, but…”
“You’re not exactly a musical prodigy, you know.”
He stopped playing and glared at me with his big blue eyes.
“Wow. And here I am, risking my fingers to bring you some good music, and this is how you thank me?”
“Good music,” I laughed.
He frowned, and I stopped laughing.
“But you play well,” I added quickly, afraid I’d upset him. “Not perfect, but… it’s nice.”
He lowered his head again, and I could’ve sworn I saw a flicker of shyness before the guitar’s melody filled the silence again.
I had to admit that everything about Sam was impossibly hypnotic. The way the firelight outlined his jaw, and that endearing nose-scrunch when notes went awry...
But just as I let myself drift in the moment, reality hit me like a truck.
The warmth of his smile…
How every word from him seemed to matter too much…
How his presence always made me feel complete…
I had fallen in love, hopelessly and achingly so.
The thought felt absurd for a moment. We lived in a world where death could come at any moment, and planning for the future felt like grasping at air.
And yet, there I was, fighting the overwhelming urge to stand up and wrap my arms around him.
“You seem really deep in thought today,” Sam said, setting the guitar aside.
I swallowed, and for a moment, I thought about lying. However, something in his eyes pushed me to be honest.
“I was thinking about… us.”
“Us?”
I took a deep breath as if I were about to leap into a void.
“About how you’re always there,” I added, “with that damn guitar. Or trying to make me laugh, even when the world is falling apart. And how… you’re the only thing that makes my world feel less sad, Sam.”
His eyes widened slowly, filled with surprise.
We both understood the weight of what I had just said. It wasn’t a direct or traditional confession, but in a world like ours, words like those carried a monumental meaning.
Sam remained silent so long that, for a moment, I wondered if he had heard me or had my voice shaken so hard that I had spat pure nonsense.
“Forget it. It doesn’t matter. I’ll go get more wood,” I said quickly, taking his silence as a sign of disapproval.
Of course I couldn’t just say something like that. Sam was my superior, my leader, and my role model. I couldn’t just cross that line, no matter how close we were.
“Wait.”
I froze and looked at him, shame burning hot in my face.
Sam’s expression softened.
“You make my world less sad, too.”
My heart raced so violently that, for a moment, I was afraid he might hear it.
He stood up and walked to me to wrap his arms around me.
And for the first time in years, I felt hope flicker, as if the shattered pieces of my soul were fitting themselves gently back together.
