She was awake.

What time was it? She blinked her eyes to block out the glare from the large alarm clock Cort kept by his bed. The digital read out read 4:45 am. It was still dark outside. She had been asleep for about five hours, but she’d tossed and turned the entire time. Had she even been asleep? She must have because the time passed too quickly.

Teegan was worried. She felt as if she was almost on the verge of panic. The confusion was setting in. An overwhelming feeling of doom was gripping her as if some invisible boogie man had taken control of her body and her mind. What was happening to her?

She’d had a beautiful evening with Cort. The flirtations under the table had been perfect. The food, the wine, the music—it had all been like something out of the most romantic old movie. She felt like Sophia Loren or some kind of Hollywood royalty.

But something was wrong. She had to leave. She didn’t know why exactly but this was becoming all too real for her. It wasn’t right. She knew that Cort loved her just as much as she loved him. And it was love. There was no mistake about it. The love she had for Cort bordered on total worship. It was breaking her heart to even think about not being near him, to believe that there could be a world where she was not being touched by him, but she knew it was the right thing to do.

She had to leave. She could not become Queen of a nation she did not really know anything about. And she could not fall in love and rearrange her whole life for a man she’d known barely a week. She had to go home. It was time for her to get back to her life and forget that Cort Monreau even existed, no matter how difficult that was going to be. She couldn’t think about it; she couldn’t rationalize it. If she did that she was going to talk herself out of it because her heart would be doing all of the talking and when that happened she ended up in trouble. She just had to leave and she had to do it quietly without any real thought.

Teegan slipped out of the bed in the dark. She grabbed her phone off the nightstand and turned on the flashlight. Carefully shielding the light from Cort’s eyes she cast it downward with her hand as she looked for her clothes. She found them folded up on the floor. For the life of her she couldn’t even remember how she had wound up in bed, let alone how her clothes had all ended up here in the bedroom in a neat little pile.

She was completely nude and the rush of the air conditioning chilled her bones quickly. Teegan grabbed her panties, then her bra. She put both on hastily, being as quiet as she could. If Cort woke up he would talk her into staying and it wouldn’t have taken much convincing. She loved him so much.

What was she doing? This wasn’t right, was it? Tears stung her eyes as she struggled with her feelings and finished getting dressed. She didn’t know what she was doing. For the first time in her life she had no idea who she was or what she was doing. But she knew that she had to get out of here and she had to go home. She would feel much better when she got out of this fairy tale world she’d somehow stepped into.

Teegan put her shoes on and slipped out of the bedroom quickly. Somehow she remembered the way down the hall and the stairs, and past the guards standing just outside the door of the castle. It blew her mind how something could look like a castle outside but a regular palatial mansion inside. The guards barely glanced at her as she said goodbye. Maybe this was not such a different thing to have a girl leaving the palace in the middle of the night?

She called a taxi and rode back to her hotel. Teegan quickly packed her things and took a cab to the airport where she traded her tickets in for an earlier flight. Luckily she only had to wait three hours before a flight to San Diego boarded. She was ready to go home.

Once she was on the plane she felt somehow safer. It was almost like the past week had been some kind of a weird dream. Life was starting to make sense again. She felt like she was actually doing what she was supposed to. It would be so good to see her family, her friends, her students, to get back to her life again.

But she missed Cort. Already she missed him. She wanted so badly to wake up in his bed, to be in his arms, to have breakfast with him every day. The tears did not stop rolling down her face the entire trip back home. If she was doing the right thing then why was she crying so much? Life just did not make any sense to her anymore. What was she doing?

As she got closer to home she began to miss Cort more and more. Teegan was questioning her decision. Why did she leave so abruptly? Cort would be crushed. She knew that and the thought of hurting him felt like a large dagger being jammed into her heart and twisted around inside of her chest. She couldn’t breathe. Every single gasp of air was deliberate and labored.

She felt sick as a dog. She wanted to run back to Cort and be in his arms. When she landed she would have to call him and apologize. He had to know what she was thinking and that she loved him.

But when she landed she could not bring herself to make a call, text, or even send an email to the only man she’d ever loved.

He might be the only man she ever loved.

And she’d left him.

What had she done?