Tyler would weather all your storms for the stillness he finds in you. Your skin bearing a warmth that no fire ever could, thawing the freeze he feels portrayed on the inside. He’d never been the type for affection. But, god, did he want to drown in yours.

If it wasn’t for the damned counsellors, that is.

Tyler had been sent to a camp for troubled youth. For the anxious, the disobedient, the depressed, and the delusional. Tyler wasn’t crazy or anything. His parents were just disapproving of his inconsistency with following their Catholic beliefs. Not to mention, how sheltered their son makes himself. He’s practically a hermit at this point.

This wasn’t just your regular youth camp either. It had been advertised as a fun, year long get together that would inevitably ‘fix your kids’. When in reality, it was anything but.

Kids were segregated from each other by gender, inhumane punishments for the littlest mistakes, counsellors that feed off power like some sort of blood-hungry vultures.

It was hard being in love with a girl he could never see. He cherished each lunch break he was gifted, focus fully fixed on you as you talked at the girl’s table.

You’d been receiving anonymous love letters almost every day since you’d arrived. Whether in your room, stuffed into your lunch box, or even somehow slipped into your pocket. At first, you assumed it was the girls playing some sort of sick prank on you. Though, at their denial, you have no choice to believe that it was one of the boys. However, knowing which one was beyond you.

Today was no different, a two-page letter consisting of what the boys ward was like, what he’d been through in there, and, of course, how you’re the only light keeping him from losing himself in this hellhole.

As always, the message was signed off with a simple:

‘Much love - T’