She's back ~ L. Hamilton

107. | Supermarket Flowers

Grief is supposed to come in waves. That's what people say.

But for me, it didn't.

It didn't crash and retreat, didn't come and go like something I could brace for. It was a weight, pressing on my chest, unrelenting. A fog thick enough to suffocate me, thick enough to make time itself blur.

I don't remember much about those days. Not really.

Not the way I remember matches, where every second is a sharp, precise cut in my mind, where every movement and breath is something I can replay over and over.

These days were different. They slipped through my fingers, half-remembered in flashes, in broken images that didn't feel real.

I remember the rain.

I remember Tasha standing in front of me, drenched, mascara running, her perfect composure shattered.

I remember the way my body collapsed before my mind even caught up, how the world tilted, how Lewis caught me before I hit the pavement.

I remember the sound I made. The way it ripped from my throat, raw and broken.

And I remember Daniel.

Daniel, who arrived before dawn, his face pale, his jaw tight. He didn't ask questions. He didn't even say anything at first. He just pulled me into his chest, gripping the back of my hoodie like he was the only thing keeping me from shattering completely.

Everything after that is in flashes.

The house, too quite,

The phone calls I didn't answer.

The funeral plans I didn't help make.

The media asking for me to comment

The flowers from just about everyone I'd ever so much as shaken hands with.

The world knew how much Marco meant to me, so they were extending their sympathy with.........flowers.

The blue flowers from Nicki - I'd thrown them in the bin.

The matches I had once obsessed over, the be-all-end-all tournament that suddenly meant nothing.

But I do remember this:

I wasn't alone.

No matter how much I wanted to disappear, no matter how much I tried to shut down, two people refused to let me.

Lewis.

Daniel.

The only two people in the world who loved me enough to refuse to leave me alone.

And the only two people who wanted to kill each other just as much.

They didn't fight.

That was the first strange thing about it.

Lewis and Daniel had spent the last year treating each other like mortal enemies. Hell, they were mortal enemies. The world knew them as bitter rivals, locked in a brutal battle for the World Championship. I knew them as two idiots who couldn't be within ten feet of each other without throwing punches or trading words sharp enough to cut.

But here, now, they didn't fight.

They didn't speak either...

But both of them were here.

Both of them were refusing to leave me.

I don't know when Daniel figured it out. If he saw the way Lewis hovered too close, the way his hands steadied me when I swayed. If he saw the way I reached for him in return, even without thinking.