People talk about grief like it’s all sadness.
Like it’s crying into tissues and whisperingI miss youinto the air.
Like it’s soft.
Mine isn’t soft.
Mine has sharpened from my broken pieces.
For days, maybe weeks, I lived underwater.A fog thick enough that sound couldn’t reach me.But when it finally broke, when I clawed my way out long enough to breathe again…
All that was left was rage.
I woke up one morning, and it was just...there.
A pressure behind my sternum, sharp and hot, radiating outward like I’d swallowed fire.I don’t know what set it off.A knock at the door?A shirt of his folded on the dresser?Or a headline notification lighting up my phone:
“CAPTAIN CARSON’S TRAGIC PASSING REIGNITES CONVERSATION ABOUT ATHLETE BURNOUT.”
The article linked to something the Kodiaks PR team released, trying to say that Nate was retiring due to burnout....
Burnout.
They called what they did to himburnout.
I hurled the phone across the room so hard it spidered the wall.
Kenzie heard it and came rushing in and took one look at me, standing barefoot in the middle of Chase’s guest room, shaking, chest heaving, and instead of telling me to breathe, she just nodded once.
“Okay,” she murmured.“Good.Let it out.”
And I did.
But it wasn’t tears.
It wasn’t grief the way everyone expected.
It was fury.
Fury at the GM and PR director.
Fury at Nate’s face on every sports network thumbnail.
Fury at articles dissecting his final season stats like he was still a commodity.
Fury at fans demanding access to my pain like it was their rite.
Fury at myself for letting him go instead of holding him tight.
Fury that he believed them, that their expectations weighed more than his lungs, his heart, his life.
Fury at the universe for giving me a baby and taking away the person who was supposed to help me raise her.
I ate enough in Chase's presence that he stopped threatening to admit me to the hospital.
People talked about the baby, but I didn’t respond.Not because I didn’t care, God, I cared.But I couldn’t feel it.Not through the rage.Not through the smothering grief that had hardened around me like armour.
When the baby moved, I froze every time.
