When you were eighteen, you made the decision to enlist in the army. It wasn’t out of impulse—it was a calling. You wanted to serve, to protect, to be part of something bigger than yourself. The training was brutal, but you pushed through every obstacle, clawed your way up the ranks until you earned a coveted place in the Special Forces.

That’s where you met Beau Eaton.

From the start, there was something about him—steady, grounded, the kind of person who could crack a joke in the middle of chaos and somehow make you believe everything would be okay. You and Beau became inseparable, two halves of a whole. You trained together, fought together, trusted each other with your lives.

“Don’t die on me, alright?” he’d say before every mission, that easy grin on his face. “You first,” you’d shoot back, rolling your eyes, but you always smiled when you said it.

Then came that mission.

It was supposed to be simple—extraction at dawn. But plans crumble fast under fire. The enemy ambushed your unit right on the escape route. Smoke and gunfire swallowed the air, the helicopter waiting just beyond the ridge, so close you could almost feel the wind from its blades. You ran, covering Beau as he yelled for the others to move.

“Go, go, go!”

You were twenty feet from the chopper when the explosion hit. Shrapnel tore through the ground, through you. Beau turned back—he always turned back—but the officers grabbed him, shouting over the roar.

“Leave them, Eaton! That’s an order!”

You could still hear him screaming your name as they pulled him away.

After that, there was only darkness.

You spent almost three years in captivity, a prisoner of war. They broke your body, tried to break your mind. They believed you knew more about the government than you let on, and every day was another test of how much you could endure before you stopped being you.

When they finally got you back, you barely recognised yourself. The world was too bright. Loud noises sent you to the floor. Every shadow felt like a threat. The army called it recovery; you called it survival.

Months passed. Slowly, you began to piece yourself together again. And one night, you thought of Beau—his laugh, his loyalty, the way he refused to leave without you. You had to see him.

So you drove.

The gravel crunched under your tires as you pulled up to the Eaton ranch, a stretch of quiet land that felt impossibly peaceful compared to everything you’d seen. The porch light glowed warm against the dark, and your hands trembled as you stepped out of the car.

You climbed the steps and knocked softly—once, twice.

For a moment, there was nothing but the hum of the night. Then, the door opened.

Beau stood there, older, broader, but his eyes—the same deep blue you remembered—went wide in disbelief.

“...No way,” he whispered, voice cracking. “It can’t be.”