A man in rumpled clothing sat next to Rachelle, and he turned to look at her.

“Reporter. You?”

Rachelle was hardly in the mood to talk, but she glanced up at the man for a moment before setting her gaze ahead.

“International networking conference; I’m in advertising.”

The man nodded.

“I heard about that. I was reporting live on the possible threats to Zaradi when bullets started flying past my head. I’m lucky to have escaped with my life. Others weren’t.”

He looked so haunted that Rachelle nearly reached out to squeeze his hand. She thought better of it. The man was a journalist, after all. He knew the risks of his job. They spent the rest of the ride in heavy silence, everyone’s ears pricked up for the slightest sound of combat. When the truck slowed to a stop, everyone held their breath.

The truck moved once again shortly after. Rachelle assumed they had reached the border and were safely out of Zaradi. Not long after, the truck stopped once again, and they heard the driver’s door close before the back of the truck was opened.

“Welcome to our military base, stationed out of Nurabi. Your flight is waiting to take you home.”

Blinking against the light of the morning sun, Rachelle and the others stepped out into a wide, open airbase. There were several planes lined up, and they approached a woman holding a clipboard, who appeared to be guiding them in the appropriate direction.

When Rachelle arrived, the woman glanced up.

“Destination?”

“Chicago,” Rachelle said.

The woman nodded.

“You’ll want to board that plane right over there—A386.”

“Thank you,” Rachelle replied, feeling numb.

Just twelve hours before, she had been living a fairytale dream come true. Now she was walking in borrowed shoes, with nothing but her purse, toward a plane on a military base, evacuating a war zone. Her thoughts drifted to Darian. Was he all right? Did he make it out? Would she ever know?

As she reached the plane, she took each step one at a time, reaching the top and meeting a flight attendant.

“Please feel free to sit wherever you’d like, ma’am. Should be a pretty empty flight.”

The man smiled at her, aiming for comfort, but Rachelle could only attempt a pitiful smile in return before picking a seat in the middle of the plane and staring out the window. A few of the others from her truck arrived, picking their own seats to allow everyone plenty of room. Not long after, the attendant announced that they had everyone and would be departing momentarily.

Rachelle stared balefully out the window as the plane’s cabin doors were closed, sealing them in. They taxied to the end of the runway before taking off, the vast desert spreading out below. Rachelle cast her gaze out east, where Zaradi would be, relative to where they were. Tiny plumes of smoke could be seen dotting the landscape, and a deep, needling worry pinched through her gut.

Please let him be okay.

Rachelle pulled Darian’s clean, white pajama shirt from her purse and breathed in the scent of him. She closed her eyes, rehashing the events of the morning over and over again.

Why would he tell her it was best if she never thought of him again? He had to have felt their connection, too. He simply had to. Rachelle had never put her heart on the line for anyone, but with Darian, it had been so natural.

She couldn’t help but fall in love with him.

Now he was gone, and she had no idea if or when she would ever see him again. As tears began rolling down her cheeks, somewhere during the twenty-hour flight, she realized that it was very unlikely that she would ever see Sheikh Darian Al-Adain again. Rachelle pressed her head against the window, doing her best to get some sleep and turn off her thoughts.

It was one of the longest flights of her life.

* * *

When they landed in Chicago, Rachelle’s phone began beeping like crazy. She watched as text after text came in from Phoebe, her parents, some old friends she hadn’t really spoken to in a while, and other folks from work, who were frantically trying to see if she was okay.

Unfortunately, they would have to wait for their answer. The plane taxied into O’Hare Airport, docking in an area Rachelle had never been before. When the cabin was opened, they were met with a soldier who escorted them to a private customs area. There, an older man in a highly decorated military uniform met them, asking them to take a seat.

“You’ve been through a lot. I understand that. If there is anything that any of you can tell us about that coup, however, the United States government would be very grateful for your information.”

Each of them went through, talking about how they had generally heard of the disquiet going on and had been warned to evacuate, but hadn’t taken the warning seriously. The military man frowned deeply.

“Perhaps you’ve learned a valuable lesson, then. Fortunately for you all, you get to return with your lives. Thank you for your reports. Please feel free to go update your friends and family.”

They thanked the man before heading out into the airport. Rachelle felt exhausted and dirty, and as she hailed a cab back to her apartment, she took the time in the back seat to text everyone back and let them know that she was back in Chicago and would be in touch with them soon enough.

Phoebe was the first to call her back.

Rachelle hesitated before answering the phone, but she knew Phoebe would persist if she let it ring. Tapping the accept button, she placed the phone against her ear.

“Hi, Phoebe.”

Phoebe cried into the receiver.

“I thought you were dead!” she sobbed. “We were so scared for you! All we could do was watch these terrible images on the news… Tell me you’re okay!”

“I’m okay. I answered the phone, didn’t I?”

“Why didn’t you sooner?”

Rachelle took a breath, reminding herself that she had been the cause of a great deal of worry and stress for her friends and family, and would need to calm them down accordingly.

“I had my phone turned off last night, and then we were emergency evacuated first thing this morning, so there wasn’t any time to check.”

“Are you all right? What happened?”

Rachelle continued to focus on her breath. She wasn’t really ready to relive everything that had happened to her in the past twenty-four hours, but if anyone deserved an explanation, it was Phoebe. Rachelle had ignored her well-timed advice, and she now had to pay the price of nearly losing her life for it. She left out the romantic bits, only saying that she had had dinner with the Sheikh, and decided to stay over.

She described the evacuation, breezing over the part where the man she had fallen for had told her to forget him for the rest of their lives.

She choked back a sob, then.

“You poor thing. I shouldn’t be making you relive this. Go home and get cleaned up, get some rest. No one expects you in at work for a few days, at least. I’ll let everyone know what happened so you won’t have to.”

“Okay,” Rachelle breathed.

She ended the call then as the cab approached her apartment building. She ignored the sympathetic look from her driver as she gave him a tip and stepped into her building, heading up in the elevator to her floor. The building was encased in silence, everyone already at work, the world turning on and on even as her own had come to a shrieking halt.

When she opened the door, her apartment looked exactly as it always had. As if her whole life hadn’t completely changed. She stared around her for a moment, her knees nearly buckling. Forcing herself to reach her bed, she clutched Darian’s shirt to her chest and closed her eyes tight.

And cried.