Levy’s eyes scan my face as he ponders my words. “Were you intentionally doing that in a sexual way?”
I shake my head, not sure how to make him understand.
“Not initially. But he reacted to it sexually, and his reaction, I don’t know, soothed something inside me. Like, if I could tell he was turned on, I had proof that what I was doing was effective.”
Hell, Abraham, how can you make him understand when you still don’t understand it yourself?
“Bram, you have to know that was…”
“Deeply unethical,” I say, answering for him.
“Have you ever done this with other patients?”
I shake my head vehemently. “Absolutely not. I don’t know what it was about Nacho. He’s beautiful, clearly. But from the beginning, there was thisenergybetween us I couldn’t put words to. Things were sexual between us, even when they objectively weren’t sexual. I don’t understand why, and I don’t know why I leaned into it. I only know that his early release was on the line, and he seemed to comply better across the board when I took charge. When I was successful, when I was able to show that he was cooperative, the warden released him.”
“How did that make you feel?” Levy asks, shifting into a more therapeutic stance.
“I was proud of him, but I missed him so badly it hurt. I didn’t know what to do with that feeling or the reality of what I’d done, so I quit.”
Levy takes a few steadying breaths, still struggling to understand.
“This dynamic…you’ve not had it with any other patients. Have you had it with any other people? Is that how you and Louis handled things?”
I shake my head. “No. I’ve never done anything like this sort of power exchange, ever. I fucked it up actually. Which you’ll think is hilarious because he’s the one who called me out on it.”
“Nacho called you out on fucking it up?”
“Yeah. He looked it up online, and the first element of a positive dynamic is good communication, and we had never talked about what it was we were doing.”
“Wait, wait, wait.” Levy holds up his hands as if to physically stop me. “You ordered him around, he reacted to it sexually, which did something for you, and neither of you ever talked about it?”
“No.”
“Did you know he was out here? Did you know he lived in the area?”
Biting my lip, I nod.
“Did you take this job because you thought you could be near him?”
“Notconsciously. But I think at some subconscious level, I was hoping I’d run into him. I didn’t know there would be this much of a connection between what we do and what he does.”
“What are you going to do now?”
“Well, I’m falling in love with him, and he’s agreed to be my boyfriend, so…I’m going to keep seeing him as long as he’ll let me.”
Levy’s jaw drops, and he stares at me, confused and maybe even a little hurt.
“You could lose your license.”
I nod. “We’re a few months shy of the two-year cutoff.”
“For the sex, yeah, but…that little dynamic you two had…”
“Nothing they could prove in a court of law.”
He gives me hisc’mon, Bramlook. “You knew what you were doing was wrong when you were doing it.”
“Yes.”
