She nods, settling into her own chair with the unhurried ease of someone who’s done this thousands of times. Doesn’t reach for a notepad. Doesn’t check her phone. Just sits, hands folded in her lap, watching me with that same steady attention I’ve seen from Nina when she knows I’m about to try something.
“I understand Nina Palmer referred you.”
“She recommended you. Said you were the best.”
“She’s generous.” A small smile. “She also mentioned you might be resistant to the process.”
“She’s not wrong.”
Dr. Reiner nods again, unsurprised. “Most of my clients are. Comes with the territory. The Agency doesn’t exactly recruit people who enjoy discussing their feelings.”
The acknowledgment of what I am, what we both know she knows, lets me exhale. At least we’re not pretending.
“So,” she says. “Why don’t you tell me what brought you here today?”
I’ve rehearsed this. On the drive over, after Tatiana’s text about going dark, I practiced what I’d say. Something professional, controlled. A sanitized version that hits the right therapeutic notes without actually cracking me open.
The words I practiced don’t come.
Instead, I hear myself say: “I made a promise.”
“To whom?”
“To them.” It sounds inadequate. “The people I’m with. I told them I’d try.”
“Try what?”
“This.” I gesture vaguely at the room, at her, at whatever this is supposed to be. “Talking. Processing. Whatever you want to call it.”
“What would you call it?”
I don’t have an answer for that. My training runs the opposite direction: compartmentalize, deflect, maintain cover. Feeling things is a liability. Admitting you feel them is worse.
But I promised Wyatt, in that hospital bathroom while Vicente’s blood was still drying on my clothes. I promised Nina, curled between us in the dark, that I’d try.
And I’m so goddamn tired of running.
“I don’t know how to do this,” I finally say. “I don’t know how to sit in a room with someone and just... talk. About the real stuff. The shit that actually matters.”
“What’s the real stuff?”
The question hangs there. I could deflect. Give her something true but manageable, ease into this slowly over months of careful sessions.
Or I could stop being a coward for once in my fucking life.
“Five years,” I say. The words come out rough. “I spent five years undercover with a man who—” I stop. Start again. “He was my target. The head of an operation I was supposed to be infiltrating. Then it became something else.”
Dr. Reiner’s expression doesn’t change. Her attention is steady, patient, and devoid of judgment.
“He conditioned me. Used sex, violence, intimacy—all of it tangled together until I couldn’t tell the difference anymore. Until I didn’t want to.” My jaw tightens. “Until I craved it. The control. The pain. All of it.”
I wait for her to flinch. To show something that tells me I’ve crossed a line, revealed too much, become unfixable in her eyes.
She doesn’t.
“That must have been terrifying,” she says quietly. “Losing yourself like that.”
The words hit something I didn’t know was exposed. My eyes burn, and I blink hard, trying to force it back.
