“No,” I interrupt, sharper now. “I’ve answered this. Over and over. You’re not getting a different story just because you ask it with a different face.”
Her mouth tightens. “This isn’t about you being cooperative. This is about preventing it from happening again.”
I let out a hollow laugh before I can stop myself. It sounds wrong in the room. Thin. Mean. “Then maybe start with the people who let it happen.”
The air shifts. Tension snaps tight, immediate and unmistakable. Larkin’s eyes harden just as King finally limps toward the exit, pausing long enough to glance back at me. He gives a small salute with two fingers and mouths don’t get soft, like he’s not walking out while I stay behind. Something bitter coils deeper in my chest. He disappears past the curtain, and just like that the room feels emptier than it did a second ago.
Jon is leaning against the far wall when King leaves, arms crossed, expression unreadable. He hasn’t been at my bedsidemuch lately. He comes and goes, checks charts, speaks to doctors, signs forms, stands in doorways like a man guarding a building instead of a person. But he doesn’t look at me the way he did that first day. Whatever wall he rebuilt, it’s solid now, reinforced with steel and silence.
Larkin continues, undeterred. “When you attempted your escape, did you intend to leave King behind from the start?”
My head snaps toward her. “I didn’t leave him.”
“You left the cell.”
“I was coming back.”
“With what support?”
My patience snaps like a wire pulled too tight. “With the same support I’ve always had. Myself.”
“That’s not an answer,” she says coolly.
“That’s the only one you’re getting.”
Jon pushes off the wall then, his boots heavy against the floor as he steps closer. “Delilah,” he says, his tone stern in a way that makes my spine bristle instantly. “Dial it back.”
I turn on him, heat flaring hot and fast. “Or what?”
His jaw tightens. “This isn’t a personal attack. She’s doing her job.”
“And what am I doing?” I fire back. “Because from where I’m sitting, it feels a lot like I’m being punished for surviving.”
“That’s not fair,” Jon says sharply.
“Neither is this,” I snap, gesturing weakly at the IV, the monitors, the endless questions. “King gets discharged, patted on the back like some fucking hero, and I’m still stuck here being dissected like a liability.”
Larkin steps in. “King’s injuries were physical. Yours—”
“Don’t,” I warn, my voice low and dangerous. “Don’t finish that sentence.”
Silence crashes down, thick and suffocating. Jon looks between us, something conflicted flashing across his face before it hardens again.
“You’re not being cleared because you’re not stable,” he says, measured but unyielding. “And until you are, this is how it goes.”
The words land like a slap. I stare at him, really stare, taking in the distance in his eyes, the way he’s already compartmentalized me into something he can manage instead of something he feels. Something breaks quietly in my chest.
“Then stop pretending you care how I feel,” I say, my voice eerily calm. “Because if this is how it goes, you don’t get to act surprised when I stop playing nice.”
Jon’s expression flickers—hurt, anger, something dangerously close to regret—but he doesn’t respond. Larkin clears her throat and makes a note on her tablet, already moving on, already planning the next time she’ll come back and pick at the scab.
As they leave, I sink back against the pillows, exhaustion dragging at my bones. I watch the empty space where King’s bed used to be and wonder how it feels to walk away while someone else keeps asking you to relive the worst moments of your life like they belong to them.
Jon pauses at the curtain, hand hovering like he might say something else, something real. He doesn’t. He leaves instead.
And for the first time since I woke up in this place, I let myself feel it—not the fear, not the pain, but the cold realization that whatever we were before, whatever safety I thought I had with him, is slipping through my fingers.
The room is quiet again, the hum of monitors and the occasional beep from the IV like a metronome marking time I don’t care to keep. I close my eyes and let my thoughts drift—dangerous, reckless, and intoxicating—and suddenly I’m somewhere else. Somewhere warmer. Safer. And yet, it still carries the edge of possibility that makes my stomach twist.
