Free Keeper Chronicles: Awakening by Katherine Wynter Page B

and wrapped it around herself, then tucked her wet, dark hair behind her ears. “What the hell, Gabe! Ever heard of knocking? Get out! Now!”
    He took one more look at her, memorizing her beautiful soft curves as she slammed the door in his face. As he walked back upstairs, past the confused-looking guests and an angry Mia and Dylan, he couldn’t keep a small smile from the corners of his mouth.

Chapter Eight
    The funeral service for her father was small—he wouldn’t have liked anything fancy. The funeral home handled most of the details, shepherding her through the visitation and cremation so she only had to point or make simple decisions. Dylan had stayed at the bed-n-breakfast to manage things for her, and Mia shadowed Rebekah’s every move. She’d have to thank them. Sighing, she filed that thought in the back of her mind to deal with later.
    His will had left specific instructions for his ashes. The pewter urn was cold in her hands as she walked down to the beach and into the water. Standing up to her thighs in icy November waves, she traced the outer rim of the urn. A life should amount to more than a bit of grey dust. A wave drenched her middle, greedily pulling at the urn and nearly ripping it from her arms. She shivered. Some faint pink clouds lingered on the indigo horizon. Soon, night would fall and the first stars poke through the veil. When she was a girl, her father had said those stars were each a lighthouse, their beacons shining down to give hope to the world.
    Salt-water spray washed away her tears. Rebekah pulled the top off the urn and let the wind take her father into the ocean.
    As the stars turned on their lights, Rebekah waited.
    Wasn’t death supposed to bring some kind of insight or life affirmation? Wasn’t she supposed to redouble her will to live and be happy knowing her father was in a better place? Maybe that was the problem. She didn’t know he was somewhere better or even think it likely. He was just gone. Swallowed by the darkness at the end of life and recycled from stars into stars. The pain would fade to a dull ache, she knew. She’d think about him less every day. Then she’d begin to forget details: his acorn eyes or the scruff of his beard when he’d kissed her good night as a girl or his calloused hands shuffling a deck of cards or the way he’d never put sugar in his coffee or his gruff laugh she could never hear enough. Now, in this moment, as the salt spray of the cold Pacific water mingled with her tears and the stars pierced the veil of night, only emptiness arrived and filled her to bursting.
    She shivered, legs trembling so that any wave could be the one to pull her under, but she couldn’t make herself walk away.
    “Beks?” He touched her shoulder. “Beks, you need to come inside.”
    “I can’t.”
    “You’re shaking, Beks. If you stay out here any longer, you’ll hurt yourself.”
    But the water was the only connection they had left. When she stepped out of the ocean, he’d really be gone. Rebekah looked over her shoulder at Gabe and nodded once.
    He carried her to shore, and she let her head rest against his familiar chest. The walk didn’t take long; the beach was just down the cliff from the bed-n-breakfast, and he carried her to the faded blue storm cellar door on the back of the house, safe from prying eyes.
    He said nothing as he carried her downstairs and into her bedroom, standing her at the foot of her bed and peeling her icy clothing off like one would skin an orange. This time, she didn’t scream at him or fight him seeing her naked. She didn’t have the strength to fight. Rebekah’s teeth chattered as he pulled back the comforter and laid her in the bed. She watched him blankly as her traitorous body trembled.
    “You’re freezing,” he whispered, looking around the room as if there were an answer there to her chills. Gabe stared at her a moment, his face darkened in the dim room, as if deciding something. “Oh, I’m going to get