CHAPTER 54: LOVING FROM THE SIDELINES.

Alexander’s POV

I’d become part of a small gang — nothing grand, nothing organized, just a group of lost kids pretending we were dangerous so no one would look too closely at how scared we actually were. I drew my first tattoos with shaking hands and stolen ink, lines that weren’t straight but felt permanent anyway. Each mark was a quiet rebellion, a promise to myself that I belonged to something — even if that something was broken.

Withdrawing was harder than getting in.

It meant cutting off people who had started to feel like armor. It meant learning how to be bored again without destroying myself for stimulation. It meant fighting the itch in my palms whenever anger crawled up my spine and demanded violence as release.

And through all of that...

Charles stayed.

He didn’t threaten me.

Didn’t shame me.

Didn’t beg.

He just waited.

And somehow, that patience did more damage to my bad habits than any punishment ever could.

It was around then that he introduced me to Louis.

Louis looked like a saint.

And, infuriatingly, he acted like one too.

He was seventeen — two years older than me — with calm eyes and a measured voice, the kind of boy who didn’t raise his tone when he was angry because he never learned the need to. The kind of boy you could bring home to your parents without bracing for impact. Clean. Polite. Untouched by the things that had already softened my edges into scars.

From the very first meeting, I felt it.

His disapproval.

He watched me like I was a temporary mistake in Charles’s life. Something inconvenient that would eventually be corrected. He didn’t insult me. He didn’t threaten me.

That would’ve been easier.

Instead, he was quiet about it.

Controlled.

Distant.

And somehow that hurt more.

He didn’t approve of our friendship.

Not openly.

But I saw it in the tight way his jaw set when Charles laughed with me. In the way his eyes lingered on my tattoos just a second too long. In the silence that fell whenever I entered a room he already occupied.

Louis didn’t think I was good for Charles.

And, for the first time in a long while, I wondered if maybe... he was right.

But none of that stopped the feelings I had for Charles.

If anything, it made them grow faster — louder — more reckless.

Loving him felt inevitable, like gravity. Like something my body chose long before my mind was brave enough to admit it. I watched him without meaning to. Memorized the way his brows furrowed when he was thinking. The way he smiled without showing his teeth when he was tired. The way his voice softened when he said my name.

I told myself it was nothing.

Just attachment.

Just gratitude.

Just habit.

But lies rot from the inside.

I realized soon enough...

My feelings were one-sided.

At first, it was subtle. Easy to ignore.

Then it wasn’t.

Charles’s feelings for Louis stopped hiding themselves from us — from me, from Anna, from Daniel. From the whole world.

He started learning to bake.

Charles, who once burned instant noodles, stood in the kitchen for hours just to perfect whatever pastry Louis casually mentioned liking once. He crushed eggshells into batter with clumsy hands and laughed when flour dusted his hair. He searched recipes late into the night like it was some sacred mission.

And when he finally brought the results to Louis — nervous, hopeful — his eyes shone in a way I had never seen them shine for anyone else.

He listened to Louis the way people listened to sermons. With full attention. With devotion. With belief.

Every word Louis spoke mattered.

Every opinion shaped him.

Every smile redirected his entire day.

And I...

I became background noise.

I watched it happen slowly, like watching a door close in inches instead of slamming shut. I watched as Charles leaned closer to Louis than he ever leaned to me. Watched as his laughter changed pitch around him. Watched as his world rearranged itself with Louis quietly placed at the center.

It wasn’t jealousy that hurt the most.

It was understanding.

The terrible, gentle understanding that you can be loved deeply by someone...

And still never be the one they choose.

I didn’t hate Louis for it.

That was the cruelest part.

Because I saw it — the way he tried not to smile too much, the way he pretended not to notice how hard Charles was trying. The way he pretended distance even as his eyes betrayed warmth.

They were falling into each other naturally.

Softly.

Inevitably.

And I was standing just close enough to feel the warmth — but never close enough to be held by it.

So I did what I had taught myself to do long ago.

I swallowed it.

Buried it.

Smiled like it didn’t break something inside me every single day.

Because loving Charles meant wanting him happy.

Even if his happiness never came with me in it.

That was the truth I never said out loud:

I hurt.

Constantly.

Quietly.

But I forced myself to be happy for him.

Because they really did look in love. Not the loud, reckless kind I was used to — but the soft kind. The kind built in glances and shared silence and the way Charles started to smile before Louis even spoke.

Every time I saw them together, something in my chest tightened like a fist closing around my lungs. I couldn’t stand too close without feeling it — that sharp, sinking ache right beneath my ribs. The kind that doesn’t scream, but never truly fades either.

So I stepped back.

Further and further.

Until one day, I realized I wasn’t just distancing myself from Charles.

I was running from the boy I’d been when I first loved him.

And I couldn’t be that boy anymore.

At eighteen, I made my choice.

I walked in my grandfather’s footsteps.

The military didn’t ask me to feel.

It didn’t care what I was afraid of.

It only cared that I obeyed.

That suited me just fine.

I traded cigarettes for drills.

Alcohol for exhaustion.

Helplessness for discipline.

Pain became something with rules.

Something I could measure.

Something I could survive.

The day I left, Charles stood at the station with that same worried crease between his brows.

"Are you sure?" he asked.

I smiled at him the way I always did when I was lying.

"Yeah. I am."

Louis stood a step behind him — watchful, unreadable. The saint with silver shadows in his eyes. The man who had quietly taken the place in Charles’s heart I would never touch.

Neither of them knew the real reason I was leaving.

That staying near them hurt too much.

That loving Charles from the sidelines was slowly killing me.

So I chose a different kind of danger.

When the bus pulled away, I didn’t look back.

Because I knew if I did —

I might not leave at all.

The bus was filled with all kinds of individuals — different faces, different voices, different ways of sitting with their nerves — but we all had one thing in common:

A story.

A history.

Something we were running from... or toward.

Some of them talked too much, laughing too loudly like they were afraid silence would expose what they were really feeling. Some stared out the windows with clenched jaws, pretending they weren’t leaving a whole life behind. Others slept with their heads against the glass, already exhausted before it even began.

I sat near the back, hands resting on my knees, feeling the vibration of the engine travel up my bones.

My grandfather had been proud.

He didn’t show it with hugs or tears. Men like him didn’t do that. But the way he stood a little straighter that morning, the way his hand lingered on my shoulder half a second longer than necessary — that was his version of pride.

"You’ll make it," he told me.

Not good luck.

Not be careful.

Just a certainty.

My mother, on the other hand...

She was afraid.

Her eyes had followed me from the doorway to the gate like she was already watching a ghost walk away. She tried to be strong for me — like she always tried to be — but her hands shook when she fixed the collar of my jacket.

"remember to keep in touch." she whispered.

I nodded.

I didn’t promise.

Because promises had never meant much in my life.

As the bus pulled onto the highway, I watched the city shrink through the window until it became nothing but blur and dust. And for the first time since I was a child, I felt something unfamiliar settle in my chest.

Not fear.

Not anger.

Uncertainty.

Training shattered every illusion I’d ever had about the military.

It wasn’t the righteous world of honor and flags I’d imagined as a kid watching my grandfather polish his medals.

It wasn’t the corrupt nightmare my father always sneered about either.

It was something far more complicated.

It was a place where good men followed bad orders.

Where bad men hid behind good intentions.

Where discipline could save you... or hollow you out.

Pain was constant.

So was routine.

We woke before the sun.

We ran until our lungs burned.

We learned how to break bodies and rebuild them again — sometimes our own.

No one cared who I’d been before.

No one cared who I loved.

No one cared what I carried in my chest.

All that mattered was whether I could keep going.

And I did.

Day after day.

Bruise after bruise.

Scar after scar.

Some nights, lying on the thin bunk with my muscles screaming and my hands still shaking from exertion, I thought of Charles.

I imagined him somewhere warm, maybe in a kitchen dusted with flour, baking for Louis the way he always did. I imagined him smiling softly, listening to that saint with shadows like he was listening to music.

Sometimes that thought hurt.

Sometimes it kept me alive.

The military didn’t make me righteous.

It didn’t make me corrupt.

It made me... balanced on a blade between the two.

I learned how to follow orders.

I learned how to think before I struck.

I learned how to hide everything that made me human behind professionalism and control.

But no matter how hard I trained —

No matter how far I ran —

I never completely outran the boy I had been.

The one who loved Charles quietly.

The one who left because staying hurt too much.

And maybe that was the real lesson the military never taught me:

You can survive war.

You can survive violence.

You can survive even yourself.

But the past?

The past never truly stands down.

I didn’t expect to rise so quickly.

In a world built on hierarchy and endurance, favor was something that usually took years to earn — or blood to buy. Yet somehow, within a year, my name was being spoken with something close to respect. Orders came easier. Eyes followed me longer. Commanders watched me like I was becoming something they hadn’t fully decided how to use yet.

I should’ve been proud.

But pride is a hollow thing when the people who once mattered most to you are far away.

The news didn’t reach me through official channels. It came the way most real truths do — quietly, through someone who still remembered my heart.

Anna.

Her message arrived late at night while the barracks were dim and quiet, the air thick with sweat and disinfectant. I sat on my bunk, boots still on when my phone vibrated.

Her name lit up the screen like a ghost from another life.

For a moment, I just stared at it.

Then I opened it.

Charles and Louis aren’t together anymore.

The words didn’t make sense at first. They sat on the screen like a foreign language my mind refused to translate.

They were fated.

My fingers tightened around the phone.

What do you mean? I typed.

The three dots appeared. Disappeared. Appeared again. Then—

Louis rejected him.

The room felt like it tilted.

Rejected.

Not drifted apart.

Not separated by circumstance.

Rejected.

My chest tightened in a way no physical training ever had the power to match. I could lift steel. I could endure hours without rest. I could take pain without flinching.

But that word ripped through me effortlessly.

Because I knew Charles.

I knew how deeply he loved.

How completely he gave himself once he chose someone.

Being rejected by a stranger would hurt.

Being rejected by a fated mate?

That would destroy something essential.

My hands shook as I typed again.

How is he?

The reply took longer this time. Too long.

He’s pretending he’s okay.

That was all Anna wrote.

But it was more than enough.

Because Charles had always pretended he was fine even when he was breaking apart. He hid his pain behind soft smiles and gentle hands and quiet acceptance. He swallowed his hurt so others wouldn’t have to choke on it.

And I could picture him perfectly — still baking, still caring, still listening — with something inside him now permanently cracked.

I pressed my phone to my chest like it might ease the ache.

I wanted to run.

To abandon post.

To board the first vehicle out and go to him the way I should’ve years ago.

But I couldn’t.

The military doesn’t pause for broken hearts.

Orders don’t bend for regret.

For the first time since I enlisted, the uniform felt like chains.

I stayed awake that night long after the lights went out. The ceiling above me was blank concrete, but all I saw was the boy who once crushed a cigarette beneath his shoe and told me I didn’t get to die.

The boy who had chosen Louis instead of me.

The boy who had just been turned away by destiny itself.

And the worst part?

A shameful, aching truth curled inside my chest alongside the grief:

Some small, selfish part of me whispered—

Now he’s free.

The thought made me feel sick.

Because I didn’t want Charles free if freedom came wrapped in devastation. I didn’t want my chances to be built on his heartbreak.

I wanted to be there for him the way he’d always been there for me.

But all I could do was stand on opposite sides of the world and bleed silently into my pillow like a coward.

That night, I didn’t think about war.

I didn’t think about orders.

I didn’t even think about my future.

I only thought about Charles.

Alone.

Rejected.

Still pretending to be okay.

And I knew — with a certainty that terrified me more than any battlefield ever had —

That if fate had broken him once...

It would come for him again.