It's Okay Not To Be Okay

It's Okay Not To Be Okay
I shoot.

The sound of the gunshot echoed in my skull. Glass poured like sharp rain over us. Diamonds scattering across the nursery floor as the chandelier above Isla shattered spectacularly, the crystals catching the last sliver of evening light before they hit the ground. Isla flinched, ducking instinctively, arms raised to shield her head. It was the opening I needed. I shoved up from the floor, my shoulder screaming in protest as I slammed into her. We went down together, hard, her breath leaving her in a rush. My instincts roared to protect Bean, to protect both of us, even as my shoulder burned from the impact.
She clawed, snarled, cursed, pure grief displayed as fury, but I wrapped my legs around her waist, my arms around her shoulders, and held on tight. “Stop,” I gasped out. “Just stop.”
“Let me go!” she screamed, thrashing like an animal caught in a trap.
“I’m sorry!” My voice cracked. “I’m so sorry you lost your best friend, Isla. I’m sorry. I'm sorry that she's not here. I'm sorry that you're hurting. I'm sorry. I'm sorry!”
She kept fighting, sobbing and shoving at me, but I didn’t loosen my grip. I repeated the words again and again, a mantra, a prayer. “It’s okay. I’m sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.”
Something in her finally broke. The tension bled out of her muscles, her body sagged against me, and she let out a sound that didn’t even sound human, a keening, hollow wail that tore straight through the walls and right into my chest.

I eased us both down into a comfortable position, her body on my lap, my arms still wrapped around her as her sobs shook through me. Her hands fisted in my dress like a child clinging to a ghost. “It’s not fair,” she cried, her voice muffled against my shoulder. “She was supposed to be here. She was supposed to be the one.”
“I know,” I whispered. “I know she was.”
“She wanted this.” Isla’s words hitched, splintering on every syllable. “The house, the baby, the family...everything you have. And she’s gone, and you get it, and I hate that I hate you for it.”
I swallowed hard, the burn in my throat nearly unbearable. “Then hate me, Isla. If that’s what you need to do, hate me. But don’t destroy what she loved. She wanted this for all of us. She wanted peace.”
Isla’s tears came harder, soaking into my shoulder. The fight in her was gone, no screaming, no flailing, no venom left. Just grief. Raw and ugly and real.
“She was my person,” Isla whispered. “My sister. And I wasn’t there. I wasn’t there to save her.”
I pressed my forehead to hers, our breaths uneven and heavy. “We can’t save the dead,” I murmured. “All we can do is make sure their memory has something worth haunting.”
"I don't know how to do this. How to be okay with her being gone. My head is fucked up and I just don't know what to do with all of these feelings." She sobbed harder.
“It’s okay to break,” I whispered, brushing her hair back from her damp face. “It’s okay to cry, Isla. It’s okay not to be okay.”
She squeezed her eyes shut, another sob tearing free, raw and broken. I could feel her whole body tremble against me, years of bottled-up pain finally bleeding out. I didn’t see anger anymore, I saw a woman who’d been holding herself together with barbed wire and blame.
Her voice was barely a whisper. “I miss her so much. I don’t know who I am without her.”
I held her tighter. “You don’t have to know right now. You just have to breathe. One breath at a time, until it stops hurting so much.”

She nodded weakly against my shoulder. The room smelled like dust and gunpowder, tears and shattered glass. The chandelier’s broken pieces caught the faint light, scattering it around us like tiny stars. It felt…strangely peaceful. Two women sitting in the wreckage, bleeding different kinds of wounds but somehow stitching each other back together.
I stroked her hair, my voice low. “We’ll figure it out together. You, me, and Bean. We’ll make something good from all of this, yeah?”
Isla gave a shaky laugh through her tears, a sound that was half broken and half healing. “You really are crazy.”
I smiled softly. “Takes one to know one.”
She finally exhaled, long and trembling, and for the first time tonight, I felt the air shift, less like a storm, more like the quiet after it. The sound of a footstep in the doorway broke the fragile calm we’d found. Isla and I both turned our heads at the same time, and there they were, Kaiden, Hunter, Nico, and Mason, all standing just inside the door, their faces a mix of shock, concern, and quiet disbelief.

Isla instantly straightened up from my lap, swiping her hands over her tear-streaked cheeks, trying to tame her wild hair and hide the trembling in her shoulders. I could still feel her shaking, even from where I sat.
“I—I’m so sorry,” she stammered, looking from Kaiden to Hunter, her voice breaking halfway through the sentence.
Hunter was the first to move. He stepped forward slowly, his expression softening as he crouched a little to meet her eye level. “I understand,” he said quietly, and somehow those two words carried the weight of everything, the grief, the confusion, the heartbreak. “More than you think.”
Kaiden let out a low exhale, running a hand through his hair before gesturing around the room at the absolute destruction, the broken crib, the shattered chandelier, the splintered furniture. “Yeah,” he muttered. “I understand that you’re both fucking crazy.”

Despite the tension, Isla gave a tiny, watery laugh through her tears. Even I couldn’t help the ghost of a smile tugging at my lips.
Kaiden shook his head, half amused, half heartbroken. “And now Bean’s room looks like it lost a war.”
Before I could say anything, Nico stepped up beside him and clapped a hand on Kaiden’s shoulder. “We’ll fix it,” he said firmly. “We’ll make this right.”
The words landed heavy but sure, grounding all of us in the chaos. I looked back at the mess, then at Isla, her mascara smudged, her breathing uneven, and for the first time, I didn’t see an enemy. I saw a sister, broken in all the same ways I was.
“Yeah,” I said softly, my hand resting protectively on my stomach. “We’ll fix it.”
Kaiden met my eyes across the wreckage, and the corner of his mouth lifted. “For Bean.”
And just like that, amidst the ruin and the glass and the quiet grief, it felt like maybe—just maybe—we were all going to be okay.