Hero (Tom Hiddleston)

11

She almost didn't answer, but she knew that if she did that, he'd freak out. After the last time, he was even more protective of her than he'd always been, and if she took more than half an hour to respond to a text, he started getting worried. If she didn't answer the phone at a time when she knew he'd be calling, he'd have a heart attack.

She took as much time as she dared to try to stop crying and pull herself together before finally swiping to accept the call and raising the phone to her ear.

"Hey." As soon as the word came out of her mouth, she knew she was failing at the act she was trying to put up. His concerned voice confirmed the fear.

"Shae, what's wrong? Are you okay?"

She kept trying anyway. "Yeah, I'm fine. Nothing's wrong, weirdo."

"Shae Maia Lawson, don't you even think about lying to me again." There was a certain playful note to the words, but it was obviously forced over what was total worry consuming his voice. "Now what's wrong?"

She sighed. "I was just having a moment, you know?"

He was silent for several seconds, before speaking again, this time with that playful note replaced with gentleness.

"Shae, I don't care how good a lie it is... how convincing it sounds, or how possible it is... I still know when you are lying to me, and I always will, because I love you too much and know you to well for it to be any other way. Now you start talking, or else I'm gonna fly out there tonight."

"You're in the Army, dork," she sighed. "You literally can't."

"Then I guess you should open your mouth so we won't find out what happens when I do."

That tone... that gentle tone that reminded her of her dad, and of Grey, when she lied to them, was finally too much, and she couldn't fight back the tears that returned to her just like that. She made the slightest sound in her attempts to keep them in, and she knew that was the final stroke and her best friend literally would get on a plane if she didn't tell him the truth.

"It's a long story," she whispered finally, starting to cry for real.

"I've got all night."

That was one of her dad's lines, and she knew he'd used it on purpose. He'd been Kye's confidant too, the person he vented to about anything and everything, and they'd had enough talks for Kye to know exactly what cards to play when it came to Shae.

And just like that, it all came out. The more she told him, the harder she cried, as she fully realized that her attempt at redemption had just somehow broke her life even further... and she hadn't even known that was possible after what she'd been through in the last ten months, in the last two years.

And just like that, like always happened when it came to Kyran, she kept talking, kept sharing things she knew in her head she should keep inside, but she knew in her heart she had to let out.

"What the use anymore, Kye?" she sobbed. "All I do is break and break things. Everyone would be better off without me."

"Shae..." He was crying too... crying with her, crying for her, and crying because he was so angry with the world that had done this to her. "Shae, you listen, okay? That is a lie. Satan is lying to you right now, and you cannot listen to him. You can't. Even if no one else did... and that's far from true... but even if they didn't, I need you enough for a million people. I barely survived without you, and I can't even imagine trying to do it again."

"That doesn't make any sense!" she protested desperately. "You have a million friends who are a million times better than me. And anyway," she added before he could argue, "I'm not me anymore, Kye! I'm not the girl you used to know... that girl was this craver who actually practiced what she preached, and a Christian who wasn't too broken to ever be loved, and a daughter instead of an orphan, and a total fangirl who actually laughed more than she cried! That girl didn't break everything she touched!"