It took a long time for me to decide to wake Marlene up when I got back, but there were things I needed to tell her and I couldn’t leave them unsaid.
I hated it that she thought I was a coward, and that she had convinced herself I thought she was too stupid to understand why I was being so cold towards her.
The reality was that I had expected us to have weeks, and now I knew we only had days.
There was no way I could risk continuing this when we got back to the city - it had been sheer luck that Karl hadn’t shown up when she was with me, and he was only going to continue to plague me until I went home. If we stayed together, she would be in danger - we would both be in danger, because my father would not let an indiscretion like that go unpunished.
It made my heart ache to see the ange
