The memory shatters.
My heart is hammering so hard it feels like it might bruise my ribs from the inside. My lipstick is smeared faintly along Jon’s jaw, a stupid, intimate detail that shouldn’t matter and somehow matters too much. My gun is still in my hand, grip locked tight, muscles coiled like I’m waiting for a door to blow inward instead of my parents standing ten feet away with a cake that’s starting to tilt in my father’s grip. Music still bleeds weakly from inside. Frosting sags at one edge. Somewhere behind me, laughter has died so completely it feels sucked out of the air.
My father is staring at me like I’m someone he’s never met.
“Delilah,” he says again, sharper now. “What is that?”
I open my mouth. Nothing comes out.
Because how do you explain years of lies wrapped up in silence? How do you tell the man who raised you that you didn’t just disobey him once—you built a whole life around the one thing he begged you not to do? How do you tell him you chose the dark anyway?
Jon steps forward smoothly, voice steady, hands open in a way meant to de-escalate. Will, I know this looks—”
“Don’t,” my dad snaps, eyes never leaving me. “Don’t talk around her like she’s not standing right here. I want to hear it from her.”
My throat tightens. The pendant suddenly feels heavier than it should, like it’s dragging every secret I’ve ever kept straight down the center of my chest.
“I wasn’t in school,” I say finally, the words tumbling out rough and unpolished. “Not like you thought. I wasn’t getting some degree that led to an office and a quiet life. I was… working. Training. Deploying.”
His face hardens with every word. I watch it happen in real time—shock giving way to comprehension, comprehension curdling into betrayal.
“Working where,” he demands, even though I can see the answer forming already, ugly and undeniable.
“With Greenport,” I say. “With him. With the task force.”
The room erupts.
He’s talking over me now, voice loud, incredulous, angry in a way I’ve never heard directed at me before. He talks about promises, about my mother, about everything he lost and how he refused to lose me the same way. He talks about betrayal like it’s something I chose lightly, like I woke up one morning and decided to shatter his trust for sport. Every word feels like a stone thrown from a place that used to be home.
I try to speak. I try to explain.
“I didn’t do this to disappear,” I say, stepping forward despite Jon’s subtle attempt to keep me back. His hand catches at my elbow for half a second and lets go. “I did it because someone had to. Because the people who took Mom are still out there. Because fighting them matters—even if no one ever knows my name.”
“That’s not your burden!” he shouts. “You don’t get medals for dying in the dark!”
“No,” I say, voice breaking despite myself. “We don’t. That’s the point.”
My mom reaches me then, hands coming up to cradle my face like she’s trying to make sure I’m real, that I’m not about to vanish into smoke. Her palms are warm. Her eyes are wet. Her perfume is sweet and familiar and suddenly too much. “Hey,” she whispers, voice shaking. “It’s okay. You’re here. You’re safe. We’re together.”
Safe.
The word detonates inside my chest.
The lights feel too bright all at once. The voices blur together, overlapping, closing in. My breath turns shallow, each inhale scraping like I’m pulling air through something narrow andunforgiving. My hands start to shake, and suddenly all I can feel are restraints that aren’t there, hear a voice that isn’t my father’s, smell damp concrete instead of frosting and perfume and expensive liquor.
I drop my gaze to the floor, trying to ground myself.
You’re here.
You’re fine.
You’re not there anymore.
My body doesn’t listen.
“Delilah,” Jon says, closer now, his voice cutting through the noise like a line thrown to someone drowning. “Look at me. You’re not back there.”
His hands come up, careful, familiar, and for a split second I lean into them without thinking, desperate for something solid.
