My voice tore straight out of my grief...raw, broken, feral.
“Quit touching me!Quit touching my baby!Quit USING him!Let us BURY him!PLEASE...just stop!”
Silence didn’t fall; it didn't last.Everything exploded around us.Time blurred, and then Eli was there, wrapped around me, tucking me in beside him like he could shield me from everything.
“We’re leaving,” he growled.“Clear a path.”
Security pushed bodies aside, and Nate's teammates physically blocked reporters from reaching me again.Kenzie held my other hand so tight her knuckles went white.We moved through the chaos like a ship trying to break through a storm.
Shouts and flashes followed us.Someone screamed, “YOU’RE CARRYING THE LAST PIECE OF HIM.TESSA, PLEASE...YOU OWE HIS FANS!”
I didn’t look back.Inside the SUV, the doors slammed, muting the roar outside.
I collapsed forward, elbows on my knees, hands grasping my stomach.I cried so hard it sounded like something breaking open.
Eli pulled me into him, “They don’t get to have him,” he whispered.“And they don’t get to have you either.”
I shook, sobbing into his shirt, "I can't do this alone...He is gone, and they are still going to keep coming back for more."
Eli kissed the top of my head, "You are not alone.I am here, and I have you, Tessa."
I closed my eyes and grounded myself in the comfort of Eli.As the SUV tried to move forward and the crowd pushed in, I let myself slip away.
Chapter 48 - Tessa
There are so many things’ people don't talk about when it comes to grief.The fact that it isn't one thing.Sometimes it can be loud and aggressive; sometimes it can be numbing; sometimes it can be a solitary thing, and then everything at once.You can grieve as a family, as a group, or it can pull you away from everyone and everything.
But the quiet.The quiet is dangerous.
The silence that wasn’t real silence, more like cotton shoved in my ears, dulling everything except the sound of my own pulse, too loud and too fast.A kind of quiet that allowed it to be easier to be numb than to feel.
After the funeral, Kenzie led me to the guest room in Chase's house, her hands gentle, careful, like touching me too firmly might crack something open she couldn’t put back.She didn’t ask me to talk.She didn’t ask me if I was okay.
She just sat on the bed beside me and stayed.
Hours passed, I think.Maybe minutes.Maybe days.
Someone, Adam, maybe, came by with food.Something warm, something that smelled like rosemary and garlic.My throat locked every time I brought a fork near my mouth, like my body was disgusted with the idea of food, so the plate sat untouched on the nightstand until someone quietly took it away.
Kenzie didn’t force it.She tried once, just one small spoonful of soup lifted gently toward my lips, but I flinched so hard I almost knocked it out of her hand.
She only whispered, “It’s okay, Tess.We’ll try later.”
She didn’t try again.
I lay on my side, facing the window.Snow kept falling outside, slow, constant, peaceful, and somehow that felt cruel.How could the world keep doing soft, beautiful things when mine had collapsed in the middle of a frozen road?
Someone knocked.
The door opened, and Maggie slipped in.She didn’t speak.She just walked around to the other side of the bed and sat behind me, her knees touching my back through the blankets.Her hands hesitated, then gathered my hair gently, slowly, like she was lifting a fragile thing from wreckage.
She brushed it.She brushed it as she talked to me in soft, hushed tones.
God, the tenderness of it…
I almost cried.
But the tears wouldn’t come.
