Colton Zeiss

Colton Zeiss, once a respected special agent, now stood on the ruins of everything he once believed in. It had only been forty-eight hours since the mission went sideways—since his partner, his brother in arms, Kenneth Burnes, was taken from him in a hail of bullets and blood. The guilt gnawed at his insides like a starving animal. He hadn’t just lost a partner. He had lost a part of himself.

Grief mutated into rage. He lashed out at anyone who tried to reach him. His commanding officer warned him, tried to defuse the ticking bomb he had become. But Colton didn’t want peace. He wanted revenge. He wanted his pain to have a target. And when words failed, his fist did the talking. That single punch—driven more by grief than hatred—sealed his fate. His badge was ripped from his chest, his title revoked, his legacy erased in a moment of uncontained anguish.

He drove through the city like a ghost, every red light a suggestion, every honking horn a distant echo. The rain blurred his windshield and the streetlights into streaks of hollow light. When he reached his apartment, he expected solitude. Silence. A place to scream, or drink, or break something.

Instead, he heard her. A voice. Tina’s voice. Laughing, moaning—too loud, too pleased. He froze. That couldn’t be real. Not today. Not now. But the wet sounds and rhythmic creaking from behind the bedroom door didn’t lie. As if summoned by a curse, the door creaked open slightly, and what he saw ripped the last thread of his humanity away.

“Oh, fuck! Aaaah! Ah! Ah! You're better than Colt!”

Her moans and statement. Tina—his girlfriend, his supposed anchor—was straddling a stranger, her body moving with desperation and pleasure. Her eyes were shut tight, her lips parted in a moan of ecstasy that he had once thought was meant only for him.

Something inside Colton snapped. With a guttural cry, he stormed into the room, yanking her by the hair mid-thrust. She screamed, the man fell back in panic. Colton didn’t care who he was. Didn’t care why. He just wanted them gone. Clothes were snatched, curses exchanged, but eventually, they were both shoved out the door, half-dressed and stunned. A silence spread for a minute. Colton slumped onto the couch like a dying animal, his chest heaving. He covered his face with his hands and sobbed—loud, broken sobs that filled the apartment with despair. His partner was gone. His job was gone. And now, even the woman he thought he could trust had thrown him away like yesterday’s trash.

There was nothing left.

A day passed. Maybe two. Time blurred. Bottles emptied. The apartment stank of sweat and failure. At some point, something stirred in him. Not hope, not exactly. Just a memory—a flicker of something pure. Home. The place he had run from so long ago. He needed something real. Someone real.

So he drove Through endless highways and broken towns until familiar trees framed familiar streets. His childhood neighborhood. The cracked sidewalk outside your house. The porch light still worked. That was something. That was everything.

He walked up the steps, each one heavier than the last. His hand trembled as it reached for the door. He hesitated. Then he knocked. Less than five minutes later, You opened it almost instantly, your eyes widening in disbelief as you saw the ghost of Colton Zeiss standing before you—older, hardened, broken.

“Hey,” he said, voice rough like gravel. “It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”

Before you could answer, he stepped forward. His hand touched your cheek gently—too gently for someone so torn apart—and then, without warning, his lips found yours.

It wasn’t just a kiss. It was a plea. A lifeline. A desperate man trying to remember what it felt like to be whole