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She nods. The understanding we have doesn’t need words, just the shared weight of loss.

I should probably say something. Tell her that grief isn’t linear. That it doesn’t shrink, you just grow around it. That she won’t always feel like this.

But I don’t.

Because I’m not sure how true that is anymore.

“I’m glad you’re here,” she says. “Even just for a few days. It can feel suffocating trying to navigate things like this with my family.”

I meet her gaze, lips pressed. “I’m glad too.”

Neither of us says anything for a bit.

Just the steady thud of hooves on packed earth and the occasional snort cutting through the crisp morning air.

The ghosts we wish we could shove somewhere deep and forget about for a while, riding alongside us.

The more I think about Emily’s loss, the more mine claws its way back up, uninvited.

It’s been two years since my world was flipped on its head—since I said goodbye to Laurel. She wasn’t just my best friend; she was my other half, the keeper of all my worst.

There are things I shared with her that I could never share with anyone else in the world. Memories, fears, the thoughts you don’t dare speak out loud to anyone. She held the unedited version of me. And now she’s gone, and I’m just here, carrying it all on my own, a locked diary no one else has the key to, gathering dust, full of stories and bullshit no one else will ever hear again.

We spoke a language only two people spoke, and now I’m the only one left who remembers it.

Her cancer didn’t offer us a gentle descent. It slammed into our lives like a wrecking ball, merciless and swift.

One second, she was there. The next, the world was smaller. Emptier. Like the air had been sucked out of it, and no one else even noticed.

I didn’t talk about it back then. I still don’t.

People never know what to say when someone dies, and I didn’t have the patience to hold their hands through their awkward condolences. So I disappeared. Threw myself into my work, my research, my endless hunt for answers. I knew if I stopped moving, I’d have to sit with the only thing I couldn’t fix.

She was gone. And I was still here without her.

Emily shifts in the saddle, and I’m yanked back to now. To her grief. And mine.

Then, because I am me, and I cannot allow emotions to sit uninterrupted for longer than thirty seconds. “Hey, do you think I could convince Theo to try horseback riding?”

Emily barks out a laugh. “Absolutely not. He’s stiff as a board.”

My mouth curves before I can stop it. “You’re right. It’s bad enough that I made him come here at all. So much socializing.”

“Mm. So tragic for you, having to suffer through all that unresolved sexual tension in the same bed every night.”

I whip my head toward her. “Excuse me?”

Her lips tilt slightly. “Lila, I may be the saddest panda right now, but I’m not blind. I saw the shock on his face when I laid you bare last night, even through my drunkenness. Fuck that man and put him out of his misery.”

I roll my eyes so hard I practically sprain something, but before I can argue, Emily squeezes her heels, nudging her horse into a canter, setting off across the field like she hasn’t been inches from her own demise all morning.

I release a curse, nudge my own horse forward, and chase after her.

Because that’s what we do.

Even when it hurts.

Even when grief tries to pull us under.