31. Kellen

Chapter 31

Kellen

“You need to do something to fix this, Kell,” Laya insisted.

“What else can I do, Laylie?” Kellen’s eyes were sore from constant rubbing and lack of sleep. “She won’t fucking talk to me.”

It had been a week since Miya Kilic had been permanently removed from their lives, and a week since he’d last spoken to Noella. She’d started leaving for work well before he awoke to avoid seeing him in the hall, and deferred to locking herself in her apartment the moment school was finished so she wouldn’t risk running into him at night. He would have thought she really didn’t care about him, but he kept in constant contact with Freya to check on her and knew from the dog that Noella was suffering from the absence of him just as much as he was from the absence of her.

It didn’t bring him comfort to know she mourned him, to know she did care and was pushing those feelings aside.

It made it so much fucking worse.

He would do whatever she asked, so while he hated every minute of it, he kept his distance from her. However, he tried everything he could think of to get her to talk to him, apart from banging on the doors of her office or apartment and beseeching her to lift their separation. Kellen left notes and roses outside her door every night, the accumulation of which now piled up high enough to tickle her doorknob, the hallway littered with the stench of rotting flowers and broken hearts. He screamed down the line of their mental conduit at all hours of the day, only receiving an echo of himself reverberated back down the abyss. He implored Akio and Josefyn to reason with her, to make her see how ridiculous she was being and to convince her to let him back in.

He spent that week trying desperately to understand her position, to really hear her words, as she’d accused him of not doing. The only thing he’d been able to find a way to accept was that she was afraid their relationship would affect the work she was doing to help Jarion and Laya heal.

That only made him love her more. That only made the loss of her hurt more.

“We’ll stop seeing her for counseling,” Laya declared in her sweet attempt to make this easier for them, desperate to help Kellen come to a solution. He probably shouldn’t have confided in the twins about this, given Noella’s comments about blurred boundaries, but he had no one else he could talk to.

Jarion flinched, then shook his head. “I don’t want to stop seeing her for counseling,” he objected.

“I don’t want you to stop seeing her for counseling,” Kellen affirmed. “No one wants that. Especially Ms. Rose.”

“You can’t just give up, Kellen!” Laya smacked his arm. Kellen narrowed his eyes in a scowl.

“I have no plans to give up, Eulaylia. I’ve never felt this way about anyone before, but there’s not much I can do if she refuses to hear me out. I will not force her into this. That’s not how I want to earn her.”

“What have you said to her in your notes?” Jarion asked. Kellen sighed.

“I’m sorry. Please forgive me. I miss you. I need you in my life. Tell me how to make this right.”

He hadn’t told her the words that stained his tongue, pleading to be unfettered: I love you. Kellen planned to reserve that potent truth for a time when she was receptive to hearing it, when he would possibly hear it back.

“That’s where you’re fucking up!” Jarion said, hitting Kellen’s arm with his red beanie—actually, Kellen’s beanie that Jarion had never given back to him. “You’re asking her to tell you how to make it right, but she’s asking you to hear her, Kellen. She wants to know you understand her feelings and can come to a compromise because you value her morals as much as your own. She’s scared that a relationship with you will affect her professional relationship with us. Explain to her why she doesn’t need to worry. Let us all have a conversation to discuss boundaries so we can make this work for everyone involved. You don’t need to fully understand why she’s concerned. You just need to accept she feels that way and not push it aside because it doesn’t fall into line with how you feel.”

Kellen blinked. Who was this stranger, this mature young man, who had taken the place of his brother?

“When did you get so fucking wise?” he quipped.

“Since I started seeing your girlfriend,” Jarion joked. Kellen laughed, but the laugh bled into a sob and he shielded his eyes with his hands. Laya leaned over on the bed and wrapped her arms around Kellen’s shoulders.

“We want you to be happy, Kell,” she whispered against his cheek. Kellen squeezed her wrists with a moan. “Whatever we can do to help with that, we will. It’s our turn to help you, okay? You’ve given so much of yourself for us. Let us surrender a little bit now for your happiness.”

“I don’t want you to give up anything,” he whimpered, smearing his tears on Laya’s arm.

“And we don’t want you to give up anything either. You deserve to be happy, Kellen. Give yourself permission to be happy. It’s not selfish. It doesn’t make you a bad brother. It makes you a person with a heart who has every right to fill it with the love he deserves.” Laya kissed his temple.

“I fucking love you guys,” Kellen sobbed, then twisted his head to kiss Laya’s cheek.

“Do you love her, Kell?” He raised his eyes to Jarion and nodded. He nodded so hard that a headache threatened to sunder his forehead. Jarion smiled. “Then stop telling her you need her. Show her.”

Ella had spent the past week away from Kellen a sniveling shell of her former self, a ghoul haunting the campus of Delmarth. She avoided the Varmin sector at all costs. Jarion and Laya each had spent their sessions with her that week begging her to talk to Kellen, but she refused to open the discussion. She’d read every single one of Kellen’s notes that he left at her doorstep, even though she’d left them out there in the hallway as a cruel symbol of her rejection. Each one, every beautifully shaped letter expressing his need for her, had perforated her heart, poking holes in the feeble tissue, her pain wringing into every part of her being so she walked around all the time now in agony, close to keeling over and crumbling into ash. She’d gotten in the habit at night of tying kitchen towels around her ankles and binding herself to the legs of her bed because that’s what it took to keep herself from crawling across the floor like a possessed demon and hurling herself at Kellen’s door. The female voice in her head was so loud with condemnation that it physically hurt her ears.

Ella knew the only way to free herself from this torment was to go to him and make this right, but in doing so, she would be sacrificing her own morals, and she just didn’t feel like that was a fair ask of her. Maybe her resistance made her selfish, maybe that made her terrible, but why did she have to give up something when he didn’t seem to be willing to give up something for her in return?

Ella curled up on the couch in her office. Josefyn and Akio sat across from her, joining her for lunch, not that she had the stomach to eat anything. She’d barely spoke a word to them the whole week, but they kept coming to see her, kept trying to get her to hear their concerns, though she hadn’t made it easy, her obstinacy refusing to accept that they might have a point in their arguments.

“I’m sorry, El, but I don’t understand why you’re fighting this so hard.” Ella turned to face Josefyn.

“Why is it so bad that I have morals I don’t want to break?” she asked.

“Because you’ve already broken them,” Josefyn argued, moving closer. “You’ve been basically seeing Kellen for the last few weeks. I don’t know why a kiss has suddenly changed that.”

“Because his siblings saw us , Jo. My students saw their brother with his hand between my legs. It was beyond inappropriate and unprofessional.” Ella wilted with shame. “Kellen and I the last few weeks were in that strange friend limbo where nothing physical was happening, so I didn’t feel the weight of it as much. Now that something physical happened, I realize how wrong it was to let it get this far.”

“But it’s not wrong,” Akio pushed. “You guys have real feelings for each other. There’s nothing wrong with that, Rosie.”

“It is when I’m counseling his siblings! It’s called a dual relationship and a huge conflict of interest.”

“Look, I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, El, but you’ve already done enough damage to make it a conflict of interest, if it was actually going to be a conflict of interest,” Josefyn objected. “You were with Kellen and the twins when their mother attacked them. You stayed at their cottage with them for a whole weekend. You went with them to their mother’s house for that supervised visit and let Kellen do Gods know what to you to put on a show for his mother. You’ve already crossed all those boundaries. As long as your relationship with Kellen doesn’t impact Laya or Jarion’s progress in counseling, which you know it hasn’t, there’s literally no reason to be clinging so hard to these ethics when you’ve already stepped all over them.” Josefyn reached out to place her hand on top of Ella’s. “I’m telling you like it is cause I love you and I want what’s best for you. And I believe what’s best for you is Kellen. I wouldn’t be a real friend if I didn’t call you out when you make choices that are harming your own happiness.”

Ella huffed out a breath, a tear sliding down her cheek. “So you guys think I’m being ridiculous?”

“YES!” both of them screamed.

“But don’t you think his reaction to my feelings is enough of a reason to be hesitant here?” She wasn’t ready yet to let go of her anger. “He was so dismissive of my values. Why do only his feelings matter?”

“Let me ask you a question.” Akio took a seat on her couch beside her. “Why are you so resistant to being happy?”

“Excuse me?” Ella seethed.

“Why are you fighting your feelings so much for Kellen? Jo’s right. You’ve already done the damage. So why are you still resisting?”

“Why do you care so much about this?” Ella shot back, finding his insistence, both their insistences that she return to Kellen suspicious. “Does this have something to do with that vision you saw in my head weeks ago?”

“I told you I couldn’t tell you what that was,” Akio argued, but the tremor in his voice told her she was heading down the right path.

“It matters to you that Kellen and I get together. Why?” Jo and Akio exchanged a quick look, laced with worry. “It mattered to Bryara Cavalian too. Why does it matter so much that Kellen and I—”

“ ELLA.” Akio’s voice rumbled through the room. “ Ella.” When he spoke again, he sounded calmer, more like himself, but somehow less genuine then when he’d snapped at her. “We can’t talk about this. I’m your friend, okay? I wouldn’t steer you down a bad path. Don’t you trust me?”

“Don’t ask me if I trust you when you’re clearly keeping secrets from me,” she barked.

“No one is trying to hurt you, El,” Josefyn insisted. “We love you. We truly love you, Ella. You’re our best friend, and we want what’s best for you. Don’t keep yourself from happiness. Give yourself the same amount of love you give everyone else. You deserve to be happy, too.”

The amulet around Ella’s neck pulsated against her chest.

She clamped her fingers around the pendant to hamper the vibration, beams of purple light leaking through the cracks between her fingers. The moment she saw purple, she knew it was Kellen calling for her.

“I need to go,” she grumbled, reluctantly crawling off the couch.

“Ella, wait,” Akio called out before he dove into her path and blocked her from the door. “Just think about what we said, okay?”

“Trust me, it’s given me a lot to think about.” She shoved past him and slammed the door behind her.

She lingered there in the hallway a moment, pressing her ear to the door.

She heard Josefyn snarl at her mate, “What is your problem? You shouldn’t have pushed her so hard!”

“What was I supposed to do, Josefyn?”

“Take her feelings into consideration a little bit and not just dismiss her! She’s allowed to feel hurt that Kellen invalidated her. She’s allowed to be upset. The weight of the world doesn’t have to be on your shoulders, Ace. Don’t let what Aros told you blind you from having a fucking heart.”

Ella was forced to scurry down the hall and flee when Josefyn’s livid footsteps stomped closer to the door.

She made it safely inside the elevator before her cover was blown.

Ella obsessed over what Josefyn had said— what Aros told you— the whole trek to the Varmin department. She stumbled on her feet because she kept replaying the phrase in her head, trying to pry different meanings from those four words by repeating them in different tones, yet couldn’t decipher a clear enough message to understand. She was so distracted that she barreled right into Kellen, who was waiting for her outside the building to his classroom. His hands caught her shoulders before she capsized.

“If I had thought to cover myself in superglue before you showed up, we would be stuck for life right now,” Kellen drawled with a laugh. The sound of his gorgeous chuckle made Ella want to scream.

She’d missed him. Fuck, she’d missed him so much. She missed his friendship, his laughter, his smile, the sound of his voice in her head, their private conversations into the night, the way his eyes searched for her in a room, his hands and their addictive warmth and how they always reached for her in some capacity, as if he couldn’t stand them not being connected through touch.

It took everything in her to take a step back, to not collapse into his chest and fist his black sweater and yank him into her and never let his lips out from under the imprisonment of her own mouth.

“Why did you call me down here, Kilic?” She molded her voice into a dispassionate groan, hiding the cornucopia of emotion building in her chest. “I have a job to do that doesn’t involve bending to your every need.”

Kellen frowned. “I know that.”

“Do you? Because this is not the first time you’ve taken advantage of my amulet to summon me here for no reason.”

“I do have a reason. My reason is that I need you, Noella.” Ella opened her mouth, ready to fight, but Kellen didn’t allot her time to respond. “I need you, Noella Rose. I need you to talk to me. I need to be around you. I need to be breathing the same air as you. My lungs forget how to work when you’re not in the room. I went from my siblings being the only people I had the capacity to care for to losing my fucking mind when I have to wait an hour to see you. I’ve spent the last week in fucking agony because I haven’t been able to talk to you or look at your face, which is the only thing that brings me peace anymore.” Kellen took a step towards her. His index finger caught her chin and lifted it, his green eyes smashing into hers. “You want a reason, baby? Because I’ve completely forgotten how to live without you, and I’m not sure I’ll ever remember.”

Ella was knocked breathless. The corners of her eyes stung. A sob clogged her throat.

Her heart and her mind wrestled for control over the next words to come out of her mouth.

Eventually, she settled on, “Do you have a free period now?”

“I have the next period free before I need to be at Power Practice for the dragon-shifters.” Ella stuffed her hands into her jacket pockets.

“Do you want to shadow me while I work?” Kellen’s face illuminated like a cloudless dawn.

“Fuck yeah, I want to shadow you,” he exclaimed like he just won the lottery.

Ella hid her smile behind her hair as she began her trek to the Herculea sector, Kellen close on her tail.

Kellen shadowed her for the next hour. He followed her to every sector and stood back to let her work. He watched her have her daily check-in with Oken about monitoring his rage. When they stumbled upon two first grade, Meteoro water-benders who were mid brawl over one of the kids calling the other stupid, he watched her mediate a restorative conversation between the two seven-year-olds and get them to apologize to one another. He didn’t interject once, seeming content to stand to the side and watch her do what she was born to do, watch her shine in her own unique power.

“Is this what you do most of the day?” he asked as they headed back to the Varmin sector to drop him off at his office. “Walk between the different sectors in case you run into a student who needs help?”

“Pretty much,” Ella confirmed, her shoulder accidentally brushing his chest. “When I stay in my office, I always feel like I should be doing more. There’s always someone I happen upon when I’m on the grounds.”

“The students are so lucky to have you.” Such a divergence from the things he used to say to her, or about her. “I know your biggest reservation is about Jarion and Laya. We talked about it, and if you’re up for it, we’d like to sit down with you and figure out a strategy to ensure that no boundaries get crossed.”

Ella stopped walking. She turned to him slowly. “You spoke to Jarion and Laya about us?”

“Well, they sort of spoke to me .” She narrowed her eyes. “None of us want to make your job harder…but none of us want to let you go, either. I heard you the other night. I really heard you. I know your ethical codes matter to you, so let’s talk this through and make a plan that will protect all of us. I don’t want you to stop seeing my siblings, Noella, but I’m selfish enough that I also don’t want you to stop seeing me. Please, just agree to have a sit down with us and talk through this. Please don’t shut this down. I will get on my knees and fucking beg you, Noella Rose. There isn’t a shadow of a doubt in my mind that we can make this work if we want it bad enough, and trust me, sweetheart, I want this more than I thought it was possible to want something.”

Ella squeezed her eyes shut, the battle of wills between her rational mind and her emotion mind coming to a head. She was so tired of fighting herself. What won in the end was what she hoped was her wise mind, a combination of both, a path forward where she could honor her duty and honor her desires.

“Okay,” she whispered, finally looking at Kellen. Something deep inside her raised its head with burgeoning hope.

“Okay?” he repeated, his voice catching at the end in a squeak.

“Let’s have a sit down with Jarion and Laya to discuss ground rules. We’ll need to formulate a plan that separates church and state, where our professional lives never bleed into our personal lives. When I speak to you about Jarion or Laya in a counseling or school context, it will be Ms. Rose speaking, not Ella. You will never take advantage of our relationship to get information out of me about our sessions. The twins can’t take advantage of our personal relationship either. If we do this, you have to promise to honor those ground rules.”

“I swear,” he vowed, and Ella truly believed him. “Whatever it takes to keep you, I will do it.”

“Alright.” Ella exhaled a heavy sigh, then let herself smile, let herself feel the joy. “Then I agree to your proposition, Mr. Kilic.” Kellen threaded his fingers in her hair and rushed forward to kiss her. Ella pulled back before his lips made contact. “Not here!” she cried, shoving him away. “Another ground rule. No kissing me in front of students. We need to be professionals.”

“Fine.” He didn’t sound happy about it, but he consented regardless.

“Tomorrow, we’ll speak to Headmistress Dyer and report our relationship.”

“Wait.” Kellen drew his head back. “I thought you didn’t want people to know we were together.”

“I didn’t say that. I just don’t want to be unprofessional in front of our students. We need to follow the school guidelines if there are fraternization policies between staff, and I’ll feel better if we’re up front from the beginning. I’m fine with a public relationship, just not public displays of affection.”

Kellen took a step closer to her, his chest nearly grazing hers. “So I can tell people you’re mine, Noella Rose?”

Ella let a slow, sinister smile splay across her face. “You can tell people…that you’re mine , Kellen Kilic.”

Kellen loosed a thrilled chuckle, then looked to make sure no one was watching when he kissed her nose.

“What an honor it is to be yours, sweetheart.”