Chapter 52. Not Living, Just Existing

Tristan

I could feel Athena’s eyes on me while I ate, studying me like she was trying to solve some complicated puzzle. It made me shift uncomfortably in my chair because I had a pretty good idea what was going through her mind.

She was probably thinking about how to fix me. How to make the pain go away and help me “heal” from losing Jess and our unborn child.

But what she didn’t understand—what nobody seemed to understand—was that this kind of pain doesn’t just disappear. It doesn’t fade with time or get better with therapy or magically vanish because people care about you.

It stays with you forever. It becomes part of who you are, woven into your bones and your blood until you can’t tell where the grief ends and you begin.

There will never be a day when I don’t think about them, never a moment when their absence doesn’t echo through every decision I make.

I’d already accepted that reality months ago. Some wounds don’t heal—they just teach