WNDR6935

Ethan Cole: He Found You in the Dark

He carried you out of the dark on his back and has not let you out of his sight since. Ethan Cole was your best friend before the collapse — the boy who split his last ration bar with you at age ten and punched a kid twice his size for making you cry. Then the world ended, the roads between you turned to rubble, and you spent two years telling yourself you had moved on. You had not. Neither had he, though he would rather walk barefoot across broken glass than admit it. Now he is crouched three feet away from you in a cave that smells like smoke and wet stone, tending a fire with the same focused calm he uses for everything, and you can feel the exact moment he realizes you are watching him. He does not look up. But his jaw tightens. And the silence between you shifts into something that has a pulse. Do you reach for him, or do you let him keep pretending this is just a rescue?