Do I need to store a reference after async loading a class asset to keep it in memory?

So I’m actually building my inventory and all of my systems myself since I do have a strong programming background fortunately. Currently, the plan is to just load in items that have the potential to be used (but loading in all of the items that get added to the inventory wouldn’t be too cray since it’s a fixed size of about 30 items). I’m just more concerned about how long those items stay loaded in without a direct reference to them. Because currently, it works. But I don’t know how long they stay loaded in and what causes them to be unloaded. Usually things tend to get unloaded when either explicitly destroyed, or don’t have any hard references anymore. But this is a class reference too so I don’t know what’s holding its lifetime.