He was quiet for a moment, and I saw the internal debate play across his face. Push back or comply. Challenge the boundaries or accept them.
"What do you want to know?" he asked finally.
"When did it start? The performing."
"I told you. After my mother died."
"You said you were seventeen. That's when it started. But when did you realize you were doing it?"
He blinked, caught off guard by the question. Good. I needed to keep him off balance, keep the focus on him, keep myself from noticing the way the afternoon light caught the planes of his face.
"I don't know," he said slowly. "Years later, maybe. I was at a family dinner—some holiday, I don't remember which—and I was doing my usual thing. Telling jokes, keeping theconversation light, making sure no one got too close to anything real. And my sister looked at me across the table with this expression..." He trailed off.
"What kind of expression?"
"Sad. Like she could see what I was doing and it hurt her." He shook his head. "That was the first time I realized it wasn't just... me. It was a strategy. A wall."
"What did you do with that realization?"
"Nothing. Kept performing. What else was I supposed to do?"
"You could have stopped."
"And then what? Let everyone see the mess underneath?" He laughed, but there was no humor in it. "My family needed someone to hold things together. If I fell apart too, what would be left?"
"So you sacrificed your own authenticity to maintain the family structure."
"That's a very clinical way to put it."
"Is it inaccurate?"
He didn't answer, and the silence stretched between us. I watched him process the question, watched the mask flicker as something real moved beneath it.
"No," he said finally. "It's not inaccurate."
"How does it feel to say that out loud?"
"Like I'm admitting something I've been running from for fifteen years." His eyes met mine. "You're good at this. Making me say things I don't want to say."
"That's my job."
"Is it?" He leaned forward slightly, and the distance between us shrank. "Because sometimes it feels like something else."
I held his gaze, refusing to look away, refusing to acknowledge what he was implying. "The therapeutic relationship can feel intense. That's normal. It doesn't mean—"
"I know what it means. I know what you're going to say. Transference, professional boundaries, all the clinical terms that are supposed to make this make sense." He shook his head. "But you feel it too. Don't tell me you don't."
My heart was beating faster. I kept my voice steady through sheer force of will. "What I feel is irrelevant to your treatment."
"It's not irrelevant to me."
"Mr. Zelenov—"
"Rodion."
"We've discussed this."
"And yet here we are, discussing it again." He sat back, and something in his expression shifted. Less pushing, more... honest. "I'm not trying to make you uncomfortable. I'm not trying to cross lines. I just—" He stopped, ran a hand through his hair. "I've never talked to anyone the way I talk to you. I've never wanted to. And I don't know what to do with that."
