Jade shakes her head once like she can shake the truth loose. “No,” she says, voice fierce. “No. There has to be something. Trials. Something.”
“I’m looking,” I say too fast.
Because that’s the only part of this I can control.
“I’m looking at everything,” I insist. “Every trial, every program, every?—”
Blakely nods like she believes me. “Of course you are.”
Jade steps closer, voice softer now. “Then let us help.”
“I don’t need—” I start.
Jade cuts me off. “Yes, you do.”
Blakely reaches out then, fingers brushing my arm gently. “Have you told Coach?”
The idea makes my stomach turn.
Coach is kind. Coach is fair, and he’d immediately tell me to take time off, to step away, to breathe.
And the thought of stepping away, of sitting still with all ofthis, feels like drowning.
“No,” I say. “And I don’t know when I’m going to.”
Jade frowns. “Sloane?—”
“If I take time off,” I say, voice sharpening, “what does that do? It doesn’t stop it. It doesn’t change anything. It just gives me more hours to sit in my room and think about my dad dying.”
Blakely’s eyes soften painfully. “Sloane…”
I swallow hard. “I can’t just…pause my life.”
Because if I pause, the grief will catch me.
And I’m not sure I can survive being caught.
Jade exhales slowly, then nods once like she’s deciding her strategy. “Okay,” she says. “Then you’re not doing it alone.”
I shake my head. “You don’t have to?—”
“Yes,” Jade says, voice firm. “We do.”
Blakely nods, her expression steady even through tears. “Tell us what you need.”
I stare at them, throat tight.
What I need is impossible.
What I need is a miracle.
What I need is time.
I don’t have that.
Instead, I say the only thing I can say without shattering.
“I need…normal,” I whisper.
