Instead, she folds her hands over the notebook in her lap and lets out a soft breath—one of those therapist breaths that means something heavy’s coming.
“We need to talk about Luke.”
His name hits me like a slap I didn’t brace for.
NotMaddox.Notthe player.Luke.
My chest goes tight, and I try not to let it show, but she sees it. Of course she sees it. I glance away, focusing on the corner of the rug to avoid her gaze.
“I figured we would eventually,” I say, voice low.
“Eventually was three sessions ago,” she says gently. “You’ve talked about what happened. About the job. The fallout. But not about him.”
I press my tongue to the roof of my mouth and breathe in slowly through my nose. There’s a lump in my throat I didn’t invite, and it’s making it hard to speak.
She gives me a moment. And I’m pretty sure that almost makes it worse. That calm waiting that lets me process the feelings running through me at just the mention of his name.
I shift in my seat. “It’s not really about him anymore.”
Her brows lift just slightly, but her voice stays soft. “You sure about that?”
“I’m here, aren’t I?” I counter, then regret it instantly. It sounds defensive, even to me.
She doesn’t flinch. Just unfolds her hands and picks up her pen, not to write—just to hold.
“Silas, I’ve seen you enough to know that control is your constant,” she says, measured. “You hold on to it with both hands because, somewhere along the way, you learned that letting go hurts.”
I stiffen. Just slightly. Barely a shift. But she catches it.
“I’m not judging you,” she adds quickly. “We all build strategies to survive what life throws at us. But when those strategies start keeping us from healing—or from letting love in—they stop being protective and start being destructive.”
My jaw clenches. I don’t answer.
She watches me for another beat, then continues. “You’ve shared a lot about the fallout. The rules. Theconsequences. But you haven’t said one word about how it felt to let Luke go.”
I open my mouth.
Close it again.
She nods, like she expected the silence.
“You’ve talked about how itlooked. But I don’t think it was really about keeping him safe. I think it was about you staying in control. And I think that’s tied to something you’ve been carrying for a long time.”
A flicker. A name.
Xavier.
The breath I take stutters in my lungs.
She doesn’t say his name. But she doesn’t have to. My mind is already there—dragged backward to the memory I work the hardest to keep buried.
That one time, I let go. I listened instead of insisting. I believed Xavier when he said he was fine, when he said he could handle it, when he looked at me with that easy confidence and asked me to trust him.
And I did.
I gave him the control.
And it cost him everything.
