text and finding it was from Kyan.
Kyan:
Where are you? We're losing our minds. Please answer me, baby.
My heart tugged with guilt as I realised I'd been here for a couple of hours. The school day was over and the Night Keepers would no doubt think something awful had happened to me considering everything we'd been through lately.
I tapped out a reply, blinking back my tears as I focused on sending my response.
Tatum:
I'm sorry. My dad's ashes arrived. I just need to be alone.
I tucked my phone away again, clutching the box tighter and drawing in a long breath. I fell into myself again, unable to find that safe place within me anymore to escape this slicing pain. Nothing could save me from this emotional turmoil.
After a while footsteps pounded up the stairs and the door opened across the room. I wiped my tears away, figuring I'd need to leave if students started arriving, but then I saw it was Kyan.
His eyes found me like a magnet, and he strode across the room with a fierce expression on his face. Was he angry for me staying away from them? I couldn’t deal with it if he was. I wasn’t nearly strong enough to have an argument right now.
"I don't need a lecture," I forced out, my voice cracking as he reached me, his shadow surrounding me.
He leaned down, scooping me into his arms without a word and carrying me over to the large table at the back of the room where there was a model of the school filling it. He knocked over a section of trees and sat me down in the bare space, pressing his hands down either side of me as he leaned close to my face.
"I'm not here to lecture you, baby." He captured my chin, tilting my head up to look at him and he took in my puffy eyes and tear-stained cheeks with his brows knitting tightly together.
"I need to be alone," I croaked but he shook his head.
"No, you don't," he said simply. "You need a good man and a warm hug. But you'll have to compromise and take a son of a bitch and a dirty fuck." His joking tone brought a smile to my lips and he sighed. "Ah, there she is." He leaned forward and kissed me sweetly. It wasn't like the way he usually kissed me, with a possessive heat that blazed directly into my soul. This was all giving, no taking. Was Kyan hurting for me?
He looked down at the box clutched in my arms with a dark frown and I glanced away from him, not wanting pity. But I didn't know what it was I did want. Maybe nothing. Maybe to make him leave, or maybe to curl up in his arms. But I was tired of falling apart and stitching myself back together again. It was never ending, exhausting.
"Cremation always seemed like the better option to me," he said thoughtfully and I frowned, my interest piqued by the strange comment.
"Why?" I asked.
"Beats being put in the ground and eaten by worms." He shrugged. "At least you can be sure you're dead when you're burned to a crisp."
I released a breath of amusement. Typical Kyan to think of death like that. "I guess."
"Doesn't really matter either way, I suppose."
"Because you're dead and gone and you're not around to care anymore?" I questioned, my tone bitter as I held the box even tighter protectively. I'd never attended church or really believed in a god as such, but I had hoped that there was something beyond this life. If only to comfort me when I'd lost Jess, so I could write to her and hope that somehow she was getting those messages. But maybe deep down, I knew that that was all it was. A comfort.
"No," he said, shaking his head. "I mean the only thing that matters is how you went out, right? Like for example, I quite like the idea of dying in a fiery blaze of gunfire. Seems like your old man went out in a pretty epic way."
He was so frank about it all, it somehow worked to stop me falling apart again. Made me see it in a new way I'd never considered, even if it still came to the same thing. "I guess..."
"Naw baby, think about it. There's a million ways to die and he got a Viking's death. If Valhalla exists, he's drinking mead with the gods now out of a golden chalice."
"Kyan,"