"Love," Rae corrected. "Just because he's..." she didn't say the word, "doesn't mean that I stopped loving him." She swallowed thickly and sniffled. She knew, deep down, that Leah hadn't meant it like that, but it was still... there had been too much past tense. And even though she knew he was dying, that didn't mean that her love for him was dead. "Like... like I said in there. I'll always love him."
How? How did someone deal with feeling so empty? "What if I become someone different?" she asked. She didn't say what they were both thinking; even though she was devastated, miserable, she didn't want to offend Leah. "I..." she shook her head. "I... I know you don't have the answers. I'm sorry. I shouldn't be asking you things like this, expecting you to know what to say." Especially when Leah herself hadn't known what to do, to the point that she'd turned into someone who hated everyone for no reason they'd caused.
She'd volunteered for it. "Oh," she said, genuinely surprised, as she reached up to wipe her eyes. "No. No, that's not what I meant at all." She cleared her throat to push away the crack that had appeared in her voice. "I'm just... I'm surprised." She swallowed thickly. "Thank you." Which was strange, because seconds ago she'd been screaming at Leah, telling her to let her go. But truthfully, Leah had been the only person who would've been able to get her to listen.
He was gone. It was over. She didn't know what to do; it was like someone had knocked the cognitive thought out of her and she'd practically forgotten how to move.
"I..." she tried to speak between sobs, during breaths, but nothing came out quite making sense. So she just hugged Leah, blindly clinging to the fabric on the back of her shirt and vaguely aware that she should probably say something, do something. But she was afraid to move.