Chapter 24 #2
I take a steadying breath, my fingers tightening around the glass, and then I go back to Levi.
He hasn’t moved from where I left him, but something about him looks…
smaller. Like saying the words out loud took what little strength he had left.
I settle onto the bed beside him, finding a space for the water on the crowded nightstand.
I don’t speak, don’t force anything. I just wait.
Levi shifts slightly, his hand searching for mine. “It’s stupid,” he mutters. “It’s been years. I should be able to…” He exhales sharply, a frustrated sound. “I shouldn’t still come apart like this.”
I tilt my head. “Like what?”
His throat bobs again. “Like it just happened yesterday. Like I can’t breathe when I think of Brent. Like if I start crying, I’ll never stop.”
His voice cracks on the last word and something inside me cracks right along with it.
Grief doesn’t play by the rules of time. It doesn’t fade just because people say it should. It lingers. Festers. And it reshapes the person left behind, slipping into the slivers of who they used to be.
I reach for him before I fully process the decision, my hand resting against the curve of his back once he’s fully wrapped in my arms. He’s too warm. Like the grief is burning through him, eating him alive.
“I don’t think it works like that,” I say gently. “Grief doesn’t come with an expiration date, baby. It doesn’t finish. You just learn to live with the hole it leaves.”
Levi laughs exactly once, sharp and bitter. “Great. Love that for me.”
“If all you do today is breathe and drink water, that counts.” My lips twitch, just slightly. “Everything else? You don’t have to carry it alone.”
Levi stills, and I let my fingers flex against his spine, like I need to feel him there. Real. Solid. Alive.
“I don’t know how to let someone in like that,” he admits, voice barely above a whisper.
I swallow behind the lump in my throat.
“You don’t need to,” I murmur, my lips pressing into his hair. “Just let me be here.”
Levi falls silent. He’s unraveled, stripped bare, every carefully placed brick of his sunshiny persona crumbling around him, leaving nothing but raw, open grief.
It’s a living thing, sinking into my skin like it’s mine.
Maybe, in some ways, it is. Because this isn’t just about what he lost. It’s about what he’s held on to for so many years.
The weight of a child shouldering something too big, too devastating.
The way he made himself easily digestible so others could survive.
Levi shifts, and I realize my arms have gone tight around him, like I’m trying to hold him together with sheer force alone.
His breath stutters against my throat, his fingers curled weakly into my sweater like he’s bracing himself, like he’s waiting for something… anything…to make this pain bearable.
And I would give him anything if I knew how.
I rest my chin against the crown of his head. “Levi, I wish there was something I could say or do to…”
“You’re doing it,” he whispers, interrupting me as he nuzzles closer.
My shadows slip across the sheets, reaching for him without asking. They comfort instead of consume, covering him like a blanket.
He doesn’t tense. He doesn’t flinch. If anything, he melts farther into me, pulling his knees up slightly, curling himself into the embrace. Into me.
“This is a first,” I murmur, barely recognizing I’ve spoken aloud.
Levi shifts, voice slurred from exhaustion. “Guess even your shadows are officially Team Levi now.”
I press my lips to his temple. Just a breath of a kiss, something soft, something I’m not sure I even meant to do until it’s already done.
“They should be,” I whisper. “Because I am.”
He doesn’t respond. He’s slipping toward sleep, finally.
“I’ve seen a lot of grief,” I murmur eventually, my voice careful. “But I don’t think I’ve ever felt it like this.”
Levi sniffles. “Lucky you.”
I huff a quiet laugh, my lips brushing against his hair.
“I don’t mean yours,” I amend, tightening my hold on him. “I mean…feeling it. Understanding it.” I exhale. “I’ve spent so long at the edges of grief, I never knew what it meant to truly wade into it.”
Levi’s cheek presses against my chest. His voice is tired. “And now?”
I hesitate. “Now…I don’t think I can stand at the edges anymore. Not with you.”
The words are too raw. Too honest. But I don’t take them back.
They’re true. Grief still burns through me when I take on too much. It always has. Every mortal ache, every loss…it finds its way in and leaves a mark. I can already feel it now, the exhaustion settling deep in my bones, the weight of his story threading itself into mine.
But I stay. I choose to stay.
Because with Levi, the cost doesn’t scare me.
Because loving him is heavier, and somehow, it’s worth the ache.
Levi shifts, his breath catching, and I rest my chin on the top of his head. “You don’t have to do it alone anymore,” I whisper.
Because the choice is clear, and I’m not going anywhere.
“I thought about telling you a hundred times,” he says, his voice slightly strained.
“But somehow, ‘Hey, you probably met me when I was seven and crying uncontrollably at your funeral home’ didn’t feel like a great opener.
” He gives a humorless laugh, brittle at the edges.
“I didn’t know how to bring it up without making it feel…
real again. Without admitting how much power that day still has over me. ”
His truth settles between us, weighted with years of unspoken hurt. I rub his back slowly, grounding us both.
“I wish I’d connected the dots sooner. That it was you, your family, your grief,” I say hesitantly. “Thousands of souls blur…names, their relationships. But their auras and their faces never fade. The photo of you and your brother on your fridge? I remembered him immediately.”
Levi tenses in my arms, his breathing uneven as he absorbs my words.
“It never occurred to me that you’d remember him.”
I shake my head gently, my chest aching with something deeper. “No soul is ever just another to me. I remember their faces. Your brother carried a gentleness and warmth. Even after, it stayed with me. He stayed with me.”
He shifts, pulling closer against me, fingers knotting in my sweater as if to anchor himself in this moment.
Levi trembles, my shadows settling tighter around us, attuned entirely to him. “I’m just glad you’re here now,” he finally says, voice small and vulnerable.
My heart swells. “You don’t have to carry this alone anymore.”
He nods slowly against my chest, breathing evening out, body growing heavier as sleep finally claims him. And as I hold him tighter, my shadows protecting him, I realize something important.
All this time, I thought my purpose was helping others move past grief.
Now, I understand that my true purpose, my real power, might be to simply stay with them through it.