There isn't a day that goes by where I don't think about Brook Grace.

People around Site-66 know me as the security officer who keeps to himself most times. They think that's just who I am. The truth is, they never knew the man I used to be. Before Ryan McGary, before the nightmares, before the Foundation, I smiled more than I frowned. I wasn't afraid to trust people. I laughed until my stomach hurt. Brook got to know that version of me. She didn't meet the man writing this document. She met someone who actually believed life would work itself out.

Brook was everything I could've asked for. She made me slow down and appreciate things I'd normally overlook. We'd drive around Wisconsin with no destination, windows down, country music on the radio, stopping wherever looked interesting. She'd drag me into little diners and convince me to try food I'd never order myself. Somehow, she'd always be right. I never told her enough, but those were some of the happiest moments of my life. She made me feel... normal. Like I wasn't just another guy trying to get through tomorrow.

Then Ryan McGray happened.

People say killing someone in self-defense shouldn't haunt you. They're wrong. They weren't there. They didn't hear him. They didn't see what I saw. I can still remember every second of that fight. I can still remember the silence afterward. Ryan died that night, but something inside me died with him. I stopped sleeping. I stopped talking. Every loud noise made me tense. Every stranger looked like a threat. I quit trusting people because the one person I thought would always have my back tried to kill me for money.

Brook stayed.

God... she stayed longer than anyone should have.

She held me when I'd wake up shaking in the middle of the night. She sat through hours of silence because I couldn't explain what was going through my head. She kept telling me that I didn't have to carry everything alone. I wanted to believe her. I really did. But every time she tried getting close, I'd build another wall. I convinced myself I was protecting her when, in reality, I was pushing away the only person who still believed there was something worth saving.

The day she left wasn't loud. There wasn't any screaming or fighting.

She just looked tired.

Not physically... emotionally.

She looked at me with tears in her eyes and told me she loved me more than anything, but she couldn't keep waiting for a man who refused to come back. She said she couldn't spend the rest of her life loving someone whose soul had been broken for so long without ever trying to heal it.

"I love you, Connor... but I can't save you."

Those were the last words she ever said to me.

I didn't stop her.

I couldn't.

Because she was right.

I wasn't living anymore. I was surviving.

Sometimes I wonder what would've happened if Ryan never made that decision. Maybe Brook and I would've gotten married. Maybe we'd have a little house somewhere outside of Wisconsin. Maybe I'd be complaining about mowing the lawn every weekend instead of carrying a rifle through containment halls.

Instead, I work for the Foundation.

I spend my days protecting people from things they'll never know exist, and I spend my nights wondering if Brook ever thinks about me.

I still have the ring.

She left it in a letter she sent me before I came to work for the Foundation.

I couldn't bring myself to throw it away.

Maybe that's because it's the last piece of the life I was supposed to have.

Or maybe...

It's because a part of me is still waiting for the impossible.

(Connor would set his beer down and walk out the Twin Pines bar...)