Kings of Anarchy (Brutal Boys of Everlake Prep #3) - Caroline Peckham Page 0,180

been trying to build for myself with the family I’d hand picked would be allowed to exist in the way I’d dreamed for it to.

Of course it was foolish of me to rely on anything at all in this world after my upbringing. But Kyan Roscoe was quite probably the strongest, toughest, meanest motherfucker I’d ever had the fortune to meet. It made no fucking sense for him to get sick and die like some feeble soul or old aged pensioner. He was a mountain of a man, a beast without limitation, an endless well of energy and force and fury and yet somehow, he’d been stopped in his tracks by this.

My fingers were cramping against the keys as I played what must have been the fiftieth piece of the night and I cursed as my notes got sloppy. Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata went to shit beneath my clumsy hands and I cursed loudly as I snatched my hands away from the keys and slammed the fall down over them.

Fuck this.

I stood suddenly in the achingly quiet room, my hands clenching and unclenching as my breaths came powerfully and I stood on the very edge of my self control.

I tipped my head back and roared my frustration and heartache and fucking all consuming fear to the vaulted ceiling, the noise bouncing around me as I found myself paralysed within the moment. I didn’t want to go back to The Temple. I couldn’t bear how quiet it was while Kyan slept and Tatum comforted him and I had to face each and every minute that ticked by on the clock, knowing that it could be his last.

Monroe and Blake had been sitting before the fire when I’d left, waiting for news. It was a cruel and desperate kind of way to spend the night and when I realised I couldn’t take it I’d come here instead, making them swear to call me if there was any news.

It wasn’t like I hadn’t known that life was fleeting, fragile, unpredictable and cruel. I just hadn’t thought that his life would be like that. If I had ever imagined that I might lose him to any twist of fate, I always would have guessed it would be a more violent end. Not this lingering, aching, decline into death which no amount of power or money or need could reverse.

And I did need him. I needed Kyan Roscoe like I needed air in my lungs. He was more precious to me than I could ever put into words and I didn’t even know if he fully understood that.

He was the first friend I’d ever had. The only person who had looked at the darkness in me and seen it as something worth getting to know more about instead of something to run from.

He’d never once feared me. He’d never cowered or flinched from even the worst of me and he’s been as stoic and reliable as the sun rising every morning, always there for me no matter what I needed, no matter how badly I treated him.

He wasn’t one in a million. He was one in seven point eight billion. I could search the entire world and never find a single human being who compared to him. He was a man without morals, fears or regrets. He was my brother in the truest, purest sense of the world. We didn’t need blood to bind us, our connection was so much purer and truer than that. He was one of the first people in this world who had made me realise that love was a real emotion.

I loved him in a pure, hateful, selfish way which I knew would destroy everything in me if it was stolen away.

Blake wouldn’t survive his death. In my heart I knew it would equal his death too one way or another. And Tatum and Monroe wouldn’t stay with us if our unit was broken either. I didn’t know how I knew it, but I just did. I could feel it. This balance the five of us had created held its own special kind of harmony which would be destroyed if any one of us were to be stolen away.

Everything I’d ever wanted or needed hung right here in this moment and yet there was nothing I could do to alter the course of events.

I grabbed my jacket and tore from the room, not even bothering to pull it on and welcoming the cold kiss of the air as I made it