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Grief rises sharp and sudden. For the life I might have had if I hadn’t been so busy doing what I was told. If I hadn’t mistaken control for love. If I hadn’t let Russ’s hand on my shoulder feel like a claim instead of a warning.

Leon was right there.

Right there.

I want to reach back through time and shake that younger version of me. I want to tell her to look harder. To push Russ’s arm away. To take Leon’s hand outside the main office and never let go.

But I can’t.

All I have is now. This ruined world. This shaking paper. This impossible man who has been carrying a piece of me since before everything ended.

My laugh breaks into something closer to a sob.

For the first time in a long time, being known doesn’t feel like being trapped.

It feels like being found.

A scribble waits in the bottom left-hand corner.

P.S. Strawberry Pop-Tarts are superior.

I snort.

That first bonfire after Lyla and Joanie joined us, someone asked what food we missed most. For a few minutes, we sounded like normal people at a sleepover instead of survivors rationing cans and counting bullets.

I’d said frosted brown sugar Pop-Tarts.

Leon had lifted a brow like I’d personally offended him.

Strawberry, apparently, was where he drew the line.

He even remembered that.

I remember the first time I saw him too.

Haunted green eyes. Fresh red scar stitched across his throat. Dark circles beneath his eyes. A boy wrapped in grief and silence, trying so hard not to look breakable that all I wanted to do was make one corner of the world feel gentle for him.

I reached for him before I knew what that meant.

I tuck the letter into my pocket with his other notes, careful and reverent, like armor forged from ink and faith.

Camp keeps moving around me, soft and early. Lyla’s rifle clicks as she checks it. Jacob murmurs something to Earl near the vehicles. Somewhere behind the camper, Trish swears at a supply bag. Normal sleepy-morning-in-an-apocalypse sounds.

A wide smile breaks across my face despite everything.

“Mom?”

I turn, already moving back toward the car. “Coming.”

She sits up in the back seat, hair wild, blanket pooled around her waist, eyes still puffy with sleep. She looks so much like the little girl she used to be that it catches me.

Then she squints at me.

“Why are you smiling?”

I stop with one hand on the open door. “I’m not.”

“You are.”