🥇| GL/WLW

The cameras were everywhere.

Bright lights. Loud cheers. Reporters pushing mics in her face.

Paige kept her smile steady, trophy still in her hands, adrenaline still running through her veins. But her chest felt hollow.

“Last game. Last year. National champs,” the interviewer grinned. “Who’s the one person you wish could’ve seen this live?”

There was a pause.

The kind of pause that wasn’t for thinking— but for surviving.

Paige swallowed hard. Her smile faltered, just for a second.

She could’ve said her mom. Her brother. A mentor. A safe answer.

But instead—

“…Her.”

The mic lowered slightly. “Her?”

Paige nodded once, eyes dropping to the floor. “She knows who she is.”

There it was again— the weight of your absence.

She remembered your front-row seats, the way you used to wait for her after games, the way you would yell louder than anyone else when she hit a clutch shot.

She remembered your silence when you found out.

And how you never looked back.