Always You | Tyler Joseph

Chapter One

"A thousand miles away from the day that we started."

July 2017

Lennon Davis stared at the remaining pile of burnt rubble where a treehouse used to be.

She remembered the night she'd watched it burn down.

It was bitterly comical, really, the metaphor of it all. Witnessing her childhood burst into flames, seeing its remnants being carried away by the wind, and losing the man that set it ablaze.

She lost him that night.

Maybe not physically; but in every other sense of the word.

She knew she was stalling, standing in the middle of an empty forest instead of facing the reason why she came back here.

The blackened ash, that seemed forever embedded into the faded green grass, taunted her. It called her a coward for hiding away in the same spot she would run to decades before. The wooden structure was no longer there to cover her fears. She was not safe.

She was vulnerable, and that was a thing she hated to be.

She was here for a purpose, though. She had to see him. She promised she'd see him. She knew he wouldn't want to see her.

She drove down heartbreakingly familiar streets, purposefully taking the longest way to her destination. Her heart was pumping overtime as nerves ate away at her stomach. She hated admitting how well she knew this route. She'd driven it so many times, each of them riddled with mistakes.

She told herself that this time would be different. It had to be different. The cycle had to end.

Time dauntingly ticked away as she ran out of roads to turn down and was faced with the house she thought she'd never step foot in again.

Trembling legs brought her to the front door - the only thing blocking her from the thing that scared her the most.

Reluctantly, she knocked.

Then, she waited.

And waited.

And waited...

Defeated, but some part relieved, she turned to retreat back to the safety of her car. She would go back to LA and pretend that she never came home to Columbus in the first place. She would keep pretending that this part of her life never existed.

The small click of the door opening had to be the loudest sound Lennon had ever heard.

She stood stopped in her tracks, willing herself to turn around. Slowly, she did.

All thoughts of running escaped her as she saw the disheveled man standing in the doorway.

Tyler Joseph.

Her childhood best friend. Her first love. The man who consumed her every thought. The man who she hadn't seen in two years.

She'd often dreamed about what would happen if she ever saw him again. Would he run to her? Would he hold her like he used to? Would he tell her it was finally time? She had wondered so much, mulling over the possibility of this moment, and now here he was looking