Chapter 2: The Boy Who Held It All In

Emmett Jaxon Malcolm was thirteen when his world broke apart.

It was raining that night — heavy, wild rain that lashed against the windows and turned the roads into rivers. His mother, Olivia Malcolm, was supposed to be home by dinner. She had called earlier, said she’d be back soon. She never made it.

Her car was found wrecked at the side of the road. A sharp turn, wet roads, and a crash that changed everything.

They said it was an accident. Nothing anyone could have done.

But to Emmett, those words meant nothing.

His mother — the person who held his hand when he was scared, who made pancakes on Sunday mornings, who told him stories late at night — was suddenly… gone.

The next few days were a blur.

Family came. Neighbors whispered. Flowers were delivered. His father barely spoke, moving like a ghost through the house.

But Emmett?

He just sat.

He didn’t cry. He didn’t scream. He didn’t ask questions. He stared at the front door as if his mother would walk in any second and say it was all a bad dream.

No one knew what to do with him.

And then came Liya.

When she heard the news, something inside her ached. She had been through the same thing. She remembered the sound of the crash that took her parents. The smell of blood. The cold hospital room. The way the world changed overnight.

So she understood.

She didn’t ask him how he was. She didn’t say “I’m sorry for your loss.” She just came over, sat beside him on the back porch, and said nothing.

That silence spoke more than words ever could.

Liya knew what it felt like to lose the person who made your world feel safe. She knew what it meant to wake up and forget for a moment — and then remember all over again.

She started sitting with him every day.

Sometimes, she brought a sketchbook. Sometimes, she played soft music on the piano in the music room while he sat in the corner. She never asked him to talk. She just let him feel what he needed to feel.

One day, she handed him a small notebook.

“This helped me,” she said simply.

It was her old grief journal. The pages were filled with drawings, random words, and scribbled emotions. Emmett didn’t open it in front of her, but that night, he read every page.

And he cried.

He cried for the first time since the accident.

Liya didn’t try to fix him. She just stayed.

And then there was Macsen.

Macsen had always been Emmett’s closest friend — more like a brother. Their families were tied together by love and history. From childhood, they’d done everything together: raced toy cars, explored forests, built forts.

Now, Macsen became Emmett’s anchor.

He didn’t force cheerfulness or try to distract Emmett with jokes. Instead, he showed up every day — with food, with stories, or just to sit beside him in silence. Sometimes they would play old video games they used to love, not for fun, but for comfort.

When Emmett finally spoke about the night of the accident, it was to Macsen.

“She was wearing her green scarf,” he whispered. “She said she’d be home in fifteen minutes.”

Macsen listened, eyes burning but voice steady. “I miss her too,” he said.

The three of them — Liya, Emmett, and Macsen — became a quiet trio.

They didn’t go out much. They didn’t talk about school. But they spent long hours together in the Jeffery estate, walking through the garden, watching the sky, listening to music. They didn’t say much, but everything they needed was in the silence.

It was in the way Liya passed Emmett a blanket when he looked cold.

In the way Macsen handed him headphones with his favorite song already playing.

In the way Emmett finally began to breathe again.

There was one night, just a few weeks after the funeral, when Emmett came over during a thunderstorm. The rain was loud, and the sky kept flashing with lightning. Liya opened the door and saw him soaked, holding a photo frame.

He handed it to her.

It was a picture of him and his mother, taken on his eighth birthday.

“I don’t want to forget her,” he said, voice trembling.

“You won’t,” Liya promised. “She’s part of you. Always will be.”

They sat by the fireplace that night. Macsen joined them with mugs of hot cocoa. The thunder roared outside, but inside, the quiet warmth between them softened the fear.

From that night on, Emmett started smiling again — just a little.

He started sketching in the notebook Liya gave him.

He played piano when no one was watching.

He started looking at the world, not like it was ending — but like it might be okay again one day.

For Liya, helping Emmett gave her purpose. For the first time, she wasn’t the one being helped. She was the helper. She understood his grief, and in helping him carry it, she began to carry her own a little better.

And for Macsen, it reminded him that friendship — real friendship — was about showing up even when things were ugly, even when words weren’t enough.

They didn’t know it then, but something beautiful was beginning to grow.

Not just healing.

But love.

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