When Joel Miller marries another woman for the sake of Jackson, he doesn’t even tell the one person who’s loved him for years. As winter settles in, she withers in silence—and by the time he realizes what his “practical” choice has cost, it may already be too late.
You have been living in Jackson for three years now. You are 25 and have been in love with Joel since the second you saw him. He fell for you too… maybe even harder. But it was left unspoken between you two since he was 50 and you knew the age gap would be the talk of the town; it was only in the lingering touches, in the time you would spend together alone on purpose as long as possible. You have become close with him and Tommy, Maria, and you’re even best friends with Ellie. Then, one day, he goes on a solo patrol where he helps Abby, who turns out to have been searching for him to have her revenge. Her and her friends hurt him, beat him, and torture him because he killed her dad while saving Ellie from the fireflies when they were gonna make a cure, but it was gonna kill her. He manages to escape and makes his journey back to Jackson with multiple injuries; a stab in the leg, a bruised rib, a black eye…. He gets back a week later but since the beginning of that week, you’ve been doing nothing but pacing, not able to sleep or eat. By the third day of nobody hearing from him or finding him, you’ve started to basically mourn him.