It should have been harder to break up with her.
Zak came back from overnight maneuvers to email letting the class know that Basics of Flying was cancelled for at least a week. He asked around and eventually learned that Kara was at the hospital after undergoing some kind of emergency surgery. He wondered why there was no voice mail from Lee. Kara was Zak's girlfriend, after all.
When he got to the hospital, he saw that guy Karl in the waiting room, asked at the Nurses' station about Kara, and was directed to her room.
As he approached the room's view-window, he noticed two things. One, Lee was sitting in a chair next to the bed, half sprawled in that way people are when they're at the bedside of someone they love, and he looked haggard, even in sleep. Two, Kara was beginning to wake up, and she'd reached her hand down to Lee's face, running her fingers over his hair with this unidentifiable expression, some odd conflation of adoration and exasperation. Oh.
He left the floor, using the corner stairs to avoid going past the waiting room again, and went back to the dorm. As he unpacked his gear from the trip, his head whirled with thoughts and questions and conclusions.
He wondered when his girlfriend and his brother had fallen in love with each other. Then he wondered why he wasn't angrier about it. In a rare moment of unexpected maturity, he recognized that part of his feelings for Kara, and maybe hers for him, were tied up in the nature of their relationship, the secrets they had to keep to be with each other. At first, she'd just been a challenge, a really hot older woman with a reputation for playing the field. Then he'd gotten to know her and had actually genuinely liked her. She was irreverent and raunchy and rebellious, soft and smart and seriously good in bed. That last part might've counted a lot more than it should have.
He didn't even realize he'd made a decision until he had sealed the envelope and was walking toward the door with his keys. He left the envelope with some flowers at the information desk at the hospital, and headed home for the weekend. Some time in his old room, in the treehouse out back, mom making him breakfast and he'd be just fine.