"It's not sick. It's a conditioned response."
"Same fucking thing."
"No." He moved closer but didn't touch. Smart man. "Conditioning can be overwritten. You've been doing it for months. New patterns replacing old ones."
"Not deep enough." I turned away from the mirror, unable to stand my own reflection. "Not when he's this close. It's like... like everything you helped me build is just paint over rust. Pretty on the surface but corroded underneath."
"So we add more paint. More layers. Whatever it takes."
"There's no time—"
"There's always time."
He said it with such certainty that I wanted to believe him. Wanted to trust that three and a half hours was enough to reinforce the barriers between who I'd been and who I wastrying to become. But my body had other ideas, trembling with chemical reactions I couldn't control.
"I need..." I stopped, throat closing around words I couldn't say.
"What do you need?"
To not exist. To be someone else. To burn away every synapse Gabriel had ever touched. To curl up in Nathan's arms and pretend we were different people in a different life.
"I don't know," I admitted. "Everything feels wrong. Like my skin doesn't fit. Like I'm wearing someone else's nervous system."
He studied me for a long moment, then held out his hand. "Come here."
"Nathan—"
"Trust me."
Trust. Such a simple word for such a complicated process. But I took his hand, let him lead me back to the bed. He sat against the headboard and pulled me between his legs, my back to his chest. Safe. Contained. Unable to see his face, which somehow made it easier.
"Tell me what you're feeling," he said against my hair. "Not thinking. Feeling."
"Scared." The admission scraped out of me like broken glass. "But not... not the right kind of scared. Not afraid of dying or failing or even pain. Afraid of—" I stopped, choking on truth.
"Afraid of what?"
"Afraid of wanting it." The words fell between us like stones in still water. "When I see him. Afraid some part of me will want to kneel. Want to be good. Want to be his again because that's what I was made for."
Nathan's arms tightened around me, but he didn't deny it. Didn't offer empty reassurances. We both knew how deepconditioning could run, how the body could betray even the strongest will.
"What else?" he asked.
"Angry. So fucking angry I can taste it. I want to tear him apart with my hands. I want to make him suffer for every minute he stole, every piece of me he rewrote." My hands clenched into fists. "But the anger's tangled up with the conditioning. I can't separate what's mine from what he put there."
"What else?"
I turned in his arms, needing to see his face. "Empty. Like I'm just... reactions and training and learned responses. Like there's no actual person underneath, just programs running on damaged hardware."
"That's not true."
"How do you know?"
"Because programs don't fall in love."
The words hung between us, dangerous and undeniable. My heart stuttered, then raced. Fight or flight or something else entirely, flooding my system with chemicals that had nothing to do with conditioning.
"Nathan—"
