“This was brave,” Jade said finally. “Sharing this. I know it didn’t feel like it, but it was.”
Maddox nodded because she didn’t trust her voice, and she stood, her legs unsteady. Zeus rose with her. At the door, she hesitated and turned back. Jade was still in her chair, watching with a look that was professional but also something more, like she’d been affected by the story in a way that went beyond clinical distance.
“Thank you,” Maddox said quietly.
Jade’s small smile was sad at the edges. “Same time next week?”
“Yeah.”
Maddox left with Zeus by her side, and for the first time in eight years, Titan’s memory didn’t feel quite so much like drowning.
The drive home passed in a blur of familiar streets and spring sunshine that felt too bright after the dimness of Jade’s office. Zeus sat in the passenger seat of her truck, quiet and watchful,and Maddox kept both hands on the wheel even though her body felt like it was vibrating at the wrong frequency.
Home was exactly as she’d left it that morning: empty coffee mug in the sink, Zeus’s water bowl half-full, the silence pressing in from all sides. She should’ve felt worse, should’ve felt raw and exposed after spilling eight years of guilt in a single session.
Instead, she felt like she could breathe.
Zeus followed her through the house as she moved without purpose from the kitchen to the living room to the back door and out onto the small porch. The May afternoon was warm, the kind of weather that made Phoenix Ridge feel alive after the long damp spring. She sat on the top step, and Zeus settled beside her with his head on her thigh, his tail thumping against the weathered wood.
She’d expected the telling to break something open that couldn’t be closed again, but instead it felt like settling something down that she’d been carrying too long. The guilt was still there—she wasn’t naive to think one session would erase that—but it sat differently now. Less suffocating, more like grief than failure.
Jade had done that. She’d listened without judgment, had challenged the guilt without dismissing it, had seen the worst thing Maddox carried and hadn’t looked away.
The thought settled in her chest, warm and complicated.
This wasn’t about the therapy. Or it was, but not only that. The trust she’d felt in that office, the safety to finally speak Titan’s story…that was professional. Jade was good at her job, no doubt about that.
But the rest of it—the way her pulse kicked up a notch when Jade had leaned over, the awareness of her presence, the coffee shop moment that had been simmering underneath everything—that was something else entirely.
She’d been conflating them. Thinking that opening up meant she was just transferring feelings, that the draw she felt was gratitude dressed up as something more. But sitting here in the afternoon sun with Zeus warm against her leg and her chest finally able to expand more, she could see the distinction clearly.
She trusted Jade as a therapist, yes.
And she wanted her as something more.
Both were true; both were separate.
The realization sat in her stomach, equal parts terrifying and clarifying. She could stay here and let this remain theoretical, show up next week for another session, and keep everything in its proper box.
Or she could get in her truck and drive to Jade’s apartment and see if this thing between them was as mutual as that coffee house moment.
Zeus lifted his head, looking at her with those dark eyes that always seemed to understand more than they should.
“Yeah,” Maddox said as she stood. “I know.”
Jade’s apartment building was modest, tucked into a residential neighborhood close enough to downtown that Maddox had driven past it a dozen times without really seeing it. The address had been easy enough to find in the PD directory, and now she stood outside the main door with her heart hammering in her chest and no clear idea what she was going to say.
This was stupid. This was probably a terrible idea. Jade was still technically her therapist, even if the mandatory sessions had ended, and showing up at her home crossed about fifteen different professional boundaries.
Maddox pressed the buzzer for apartment 2B before she could talk herself out of it.
The intercom crackled. “Hello?” Jade’s voice sounded surprised and slightly wary.
“It’s Maddox.”
A pause, long enough that Maddox wondered if she’d made a massive mistake, then the door buzzed open.
The stairs to the second floor felt steeper than they should’ve been. Jade’s door was already open when Maddox reached it, and Jade stood in the doorway with her hair down and wearing jeans and a soft gray sweater that Maddox had never seen her in before.
