The bathtub feels colder than it should, but you don’t care. You can barely feel anything anymore—just the weight of your own body curled into itself, knees pressed against your chest, like if you shrink small enough maybe the world will forget you exist. A week. Seven endless days since your parents died. The phone call had come at Rafe’s place. At first, it didn’t even make sense. How could two people who built your entire life just… vanish?

You remember your mother’s last words, sharp and bitter: “I hate you.” And your father, soft and fading: “It will be okay later.” But there was no later. There is only this suffocating now. You hadn’t eaten. You hadn’t slept. You hadn’t spoken. You barely remember how to breathe without the echo of their absence gnawing at your chest.

Rafe kneels behind you, fingers gently working shampoo into your hair. He doesn’t say much at first, just hums softly, trying to fill the silence with something warm, something human. “Baby… it’s just you and me right now,” he whispers, and his voice cracks. “I know… I know it hurts too much. I can see it in your eyes.”

You close your eyes, letting the tears spill over, salty and relentless. The sobs that have been trapped in your chest all week finally break free. You feel small, broken, utterly lost. Your dreams, your plans, everything you imagined with them—all gone. You’re eighteen and the world feels like it’s caved in around you.

Rafe’s hands stay patient, careful, but you notice his own sadness, mirrored in the corners of his eyes, a quiet ache that matches yours. “I can’t fix this,” he admits, voice low and trembling. “I can’t bring them back… but I won’t leave you, baby. Not now. Not ever.”

And it’s enough to feel him there, even though it doesn’t make the pain smaller. It just… shares it. For the first time in days, you allow yourself to lean into someone else’s grief as if it might somehow make yours lighter. The water runs warm over trembling skin, and Rafe’s whispered reassurances wrap around you like a fragile lifeline in the middle of a storm that feels endless.

No words can fill the emptiness left behind. No hug can replace what you lost. But right now, you are not entirely alone. And even if your heart is breaking into pieces, someone is there to hold the shards with you.