Green letters, cheerful font.
The cup is empty, a ring of dried foam around the inside, a lipstick mark on the rim that matches the shade Dalla was wearing yesterday.
A to-go cup.
From outside the compound.
I sit up slowly, careful not to wake her.
My mind is already racing.
That cup wasn't here when we fell asleep.
Which means sometime after I fell asleep, while I was unconscious beside her, Dalla left the compound.
Alone. Without telling me. Without protection.
After everything that's happened.
After the camera in the woods.
After the sedan.
After I explicitly told her there was a threat.
After she promised me she wouldn't keep secrets.
She left anyway.
The anger that floods through me is hot and immediate, burning away the last traces of sleep.
I want to shake her awake and demand an explanation.
I want to yell.
I want to put my fist through the wall.
I want to wrap her in my arms and never let go, because the thought of her out there alone, vulnerable, unprotected?—
It makes me want to burn the world down.
Instead, I take a breath.
Then another.
Then a third, because the first two didn't do shite.
I force myself to think like a soldier instead of a man in love.
She went out.
She came back.
She's here, in this bed, alive and unharmed.
Whatever happened, whatever risk she took, she survived it.
But that doesn't make it okay.
