“It’s the only one you’re getting tonight.”
A humorless laugh slips out of me, thin and brittle. “Funny. That seems to be a theme with us.”
His head lifts, eyes locking on mine. Something hot passes between us—anger, frustration, the shape of a confession neither of us is willing to bleed for.
“You want honesty?” he says, voice low. “Fine. You scared the hell out of me.”
The room goes very still. Even the machines seem quieter for a second.
My breath catches. “Jon—”
“I’m not done.” His tone sharpens, not enough to cut me, enough to keep himself in line. “You were in that place for seven days, Delilah. Seven. I listened to tapes I can’t get out of my head. I had your father on the phone asking me if you’d picked up his Christmas box. I walked into your quarters and smelled your shampoo on the pillow because you never came back to use it.” He stops there, throat working once. “So forgive me if I handled the aftermath badly.”
I don’t know what to say to that. I don’t know how to hold all of it at once—his anger, my anger, the image of him in my room, the mention of my father hitting like a bruise pressed too hard. The fact that he was there. That he noticed. That he broke enough to say it.
“You still don’t get to make decisions for me,” I say finally, softer than before, but no less true.
He nods once. “I know.”
“Do you?”
His gaze flicks to the monitors, then back to me. “Not as well as you want me to.”
The honesty in that is worse than defensiveness would’ve been. It leaves nowhere to hide. No villain to push against. Just a man who’s trying and failing and bleeding through the cracks.
I look away first, staring at the blanket pooled around my waist. My hands have stopped shaking, but I still feel wrung out, hollow in that exhausted, post-panic way that makes everything seem both too sharp and very far away.
“I hate that they keep asking for details,” I admit, the words scraping out before I can stop them. “I hate that every time I close my eyes, it all comes back in pieces. I hate that King got to walk out and I’m still in here proving I’m not broken enough to be inconvenient.”
Jon is quiet for a long moment. When he speaks again, his voice is different. Less command. More something I don’t want to name.
“You don’t have to prove anything to me.”
I let out a tired breath. “That’s not true.”
His expression shifts. “You think I see you as weak.”
“I think you see me as a problem.”
His eyes flash. “That’s not the same thing.”
“Close enough.”
He steps back, just one pace, but the distance feels deliberate. Necessary. “You’re angry.”
I almost laugh at the understatement. “Brilliant assessment, Captain.”
“And you’re allowed to be.” The line of his shoulders tightens. “But don’t confuse me trying to keep you breathing with me thinking less of you.”
I turn my head toward him again. “Then what do you think of me?”
The question slips out before I can stop it. Too direct. Too bare. The second it’s in the air, I want it gone. I want to swallow it back down and pretend I’m still better at this than I am.
He stills. The whole room seems to hold its breath with him.
For one reckless second, I think he might answer. Not with something safe. Not with rank or protocol or one of the many walls he knows how to build. Something real. Something dangerous enough to ruin us both.
Instead, he looks at me like I’ve stepped too close to the edge of something neither of us is ready to survive. “You should rest.”
