Chapter 2 #2
Everything looked the same.
Yet none of it felt real.
The framed photos on the hallway table. The faint indent in the couch where she used to sit. It all felt like a set built around a life that had already ended.
David sat slumped on the couch, still wearing his funeral suit like he’d been embalmed in it. A half-full glass dangled from his fingers like a rosary; the bottle kept vigil at his foot.
“David, I…” I cleared my throat. “I’m so sorry for your loss.” The words felt hollow even as they left my mouth.
Minutes passed before he looked up. His eyes weren’t just empty—they were a wreckage.
His mouth twitched into something like a sneer, then collapsed into a broken sound halfway between a sob and a breath that forgot how to leave his lungs.
This wasn’t the grief of a funeral. This was the aftermath of a life shattered.
I took a step forward. “What can I do?”
He grunted. Turned back to the television. He wasn’t watching it, just letting it exist so he didn’t have to.
“Is Elliot home?” I asked.
Silence.
A door slammed on the floor above. Footsteps thundered down the stairs. My chest seized. I followed the sound just in time to see Elliot burst into the kitchen like something chased him, limbs chaotic, trembling. Cupboard doors flew open and banged shut. Something hit the floor with a hollow crack.
By the time I reached the doorway, he was on the floor. Curled tight around himself like a body trying to fold inward and disappear. Natalie’s favorite mug lay beside him, unbroken. The faded smear of her lipstick still clinging to the rim.
That undid something in me.
He was shaking hard enough that his teeth clicked.
I tried to breathe around the ache in my chest. “Elliot—”
“I can’t breathe in here,” he snapped, and the edge in his voice was new — sharp, almost angry, like he needed the pain to point somewhere else. “She’s everywhere… and yet she’s not even here.”
His fingers dug into his arms like he was trying to hold himself together by force.
I froze. Felt the taut wire of his pain snap tight in my chest, sharp enough to steal my breath. Every instinct in me surged forward. Cover him, shield him, take it from him if I could.
But I didn’t reach for him. I didn’t trust myself not to make it worse. Didn’t trust that if I touched him, I wouldn’t pull him apart trying to hold him together. So I stayed still. Held myself back with everything I had.
He bolted. Out the back door and across the yard. I followed, boots abandoned, grass freezing my feet, rain soaking my shirt before I noticed. The wind howled as we reached the cliffs. The ocean below churned violently, waves smashing against rocks like the world itself was grieving.
Lightning fractured the sky, illuminating him for a fraction of a second—golden-brown hair plastered to his forehead, chest heaving, eyes rimmed red.
He screamed. The sound tore out of him like he was being ripped open.
“Why didn’t you take me instead?!” he hurled into the storm. “Why her?! She was the best of us! You took her and left me with nothing!”
I moved closer. Close enough that the heat of his fury reached me through the cold.
He clenched his fists, trembling, soaked to the bone. I stayed, the soles of my feet sinking into mud and sand, every fiber of me aware of him.
His breath caught. A soft whisper slipped past the storm. “Come back. Please… just come back.”
A flash of lightning lit his face, and in that brief silver glow, he shivered. I saw the tremor in his jaw, the way his hands curled in pain. I took another step closer, letting my presence press silently against his, like a wall he could lean on without having to ask.
“I… I’m here,” I breathed again, softly, almost to myself. Not a hero. Not a savior. Just someone who could stand through the storm beside him.
His lips moved as if forming words, but no sound came. His shoulders shook violently, but I noticed the slight slackening in his stance, the micro-movement that told me he sensed me, even if only barely.
We stayed like that. No one speaking, no one touching. just the thin, fragile act of not pulling away. The cliffs, the ocean, the storm blurred into background noise. All that mattered was the space between us and how carefully we were holding it.
One breath. Then another. Each one a small decision. Each one a thread, binding us together without hands.
When he finally tilted his face toward the sky, exhaustion ghosting his features, he whispered again, voice barely there, “Don’t leave.”
“I won’t,” I said, just loud enough for the wind to take it. Not so he could hear it, but so he could feel it.
It was like the cliffs held their breath. That was the moment I understood Elliot wasn’t just mourning her. He was lost—just like David—unmoored, drifting without an anchor.
I didn’t know whether I was strong enough to pull him back to shore. But I knew I couldn’t walk away. Because grief this deep didn’t need words. It didn’t need fixing. It needed someone willing to stay inside it.
So I did.
I stood with him in the rain and the wind and the wreckage of it, letting his pain pass through me instead of swallowing him whole.
“I won’t,” I whispered again—not to him this time, but to the promise itself.
I meant it with everything in me.