He wasn't wrong. I'd let this go too far, let him push past boundaries I should have reinforced from the start. And the worst part was that some treacherous part of me didn't want to stop.
I thought about my father. About the careful life I'd built, the walls I'd constructed, the reasons I didn't let anyone get too close. I thought about how easily this man—this stranger—had slipped past defenses I'd spent years perfecting.
"Our time is up," I said. My voice sounded strange to my own ears. Thin. "Same time next week?"
He blinked, thrown by the abrupt shift. I saw him consider pushing, demanding we finish whatever this conversation was becoming. Then something in his face changed—acceptance, maybe, or strategy.
"Same time next week," he said.
He stood. I stayed seated, not trusting my legs to hold me. He looked down at me, and for a moment neither of us moved.
"For what it's worth," he said quietly, "I know this is complicated. I know there are rules and reasons for those rules. I'm not trying to make your life difficult."
"Then what are you trying to do?"
"I don't know." A ghost of a smile. "Figure out why you're the only person I've wanted to talk to in months. Maybe figure out who I am when I'm not performing." He paused. "Maybe just... see you. The way you see me."
I didn't have a response. Didn't have words for what I was feeling—the fear, the longing, the desperate urge to tell him everything, and the equally desperate urge to run.
"Goodbye, Mr. Zelenov."
"Rodion," he said again.
"Goodbye."
He held my gaze for one more moment. Then he turned and walked out, and the door clicked shut behind him, and I was alone.
I sat in my chair for a long time, staring at the empty seat across from me. The light shifted from gold to gray. The building settled into evening silence around me.
I thought about what he'd said.You see me.I thought about how long it had been since anyone had seen me—the real me, not Dr. Walsh, not the careful construction I presented to the world.
I thought about Chicago. About my father, dead in a warehouse, a man I'd spent my whole life running from. About the hollow feeling his death had left behind, the grief and relief and guilt all tangled together.
I thought about how dangerous it was to let someone in. How much I had to lose.
And I knew, with the certainty of someone who had spent her life studying the ways people fell apart, that I was in trouble.
The smart thing would be to refer him to a colleague. End this before it became something I couldn't control. Protect myself the way I'd always protected myself—with distance, with walls, with the cold comfort of professional boundaries.
I picked up my phone. Pulled up my list of colleagues who took referrals.
I stared at it for a long moment.
Then I put the phone down, gathered my things, and went home.
I'd see him on Thursday. God help me, I'd see him Thursday.
Chapter 5 - Rodion
I told myself I was going home.
I made it three blocks before I turned around.
She left her building at 5:53, wrapped in a dark coat, bag over her shoulder. I watched from across the street, half-hidden in the doorway of a closed boutique, feeling like exactly the kind of man I'd always prided myself on not being.
What are you doing?
I didn't have an answer. Or I did, but I didn't like it.
