He nodded and left.
As soon as I was back in at my screen, I called Doc. He picked up on the third ring.
“Everything okay?” he cut straight to the chase.
“You free to talk?” I asked, leaning back in my chair, eyes still on the monitors. “Not about the case…”
“I can be,” he said easily. “What’s going on?”
I exhaled slowly, dragging a hand over my mouth. “It’s Novak.”
A pause. “Okay?”
I watched a line of code scroll past and didn’t register a single character. “I don’t understand what’s going on here,” I blurted. “I’ve been trying to figure out where it shifted from… whatever it was at the start into what it is now, and there isn’t a clean point. No trigger. No obvious escalation. It just—” I broke off, frustrated. “It’s just there.”
On the other end of the line, Doc sighed. “Are you going to tell me what ‘it’is,” Doc asked.
I closed my eyes briefly, because saying it out loud felt like committing to it in a way I couldn’t take back. “I think I’m in love with him,” I said. “And that’s fucking stupid right? I mean he’ll never… he can’t…” Great, now I couldn’t even talk in full sentences.
Silence.
Clearly, I’d broken Doc.
“I don’t get it,” I went on quickly, words coming faster now that I’d started. “I know exactly what he is. I’ve seen it up close. The way he operates, the way he decides something, and just… locks onto it. There are no gray areas with him, no hesitation. That should be a dealbreaker. It should have been a dealbreaker the second I realized he wasn’t going to back off.”
“But you didn’t want him to,” Doc said.
I let out a short breath that might have been a laugh. “No,” I admitted. “That’s the problem. I should have wanted distance. Instead, I started noticing everything else. The way he pays attention. The way he doesn’t lie, not to me, and bought me all this candy and cookies because he knows I like chocolate donuts.” I shook my head, even though Doc couldn’t see it. “I kept telling myself it was just how he functions. That it doesn’t mean anything.”
“But you think it does,” Doc said.
“Doyouthink it does?”
He chuckled again. “Does it matter what I think?”
“No,” I said quietly. “It doesn’t. I just needed to talk to someone.”
“And out of everyone you chose me?” He sounded disbelieving. “What is it with people asking me for advice.”
“You know Novak.”
This time he huffed. “More than some I guess.”
I spun my chair once, slowly, staring at the ceiling for a second before focusing back on the screens. “This love thing wasn’t one moment,” I said. “It was a series of them. Him being there. Him choosing to be there. Every time I pushed back, every time I told him to stop, and he didn’t—not because he was ignoring me, but because in his head the equation didn’t change. I was still… his responsibility. His focus.” I swallowed. “Somewhere along the way, that stopped feeling like a threat.”
“And it started feeling like love?” Doc asked.
I hesitated, searching for something that didn’t sound completely unhinged. “Yeah, like love.”
There was the faint sound of a mug being set down. “Novak doesn’t understand love the same as you do,” Doc said. “You know that.”
“I do,” I said. “That’s why I don’t understand why I’m okay with this. I’ve spent years making sure I’m not dependent onanyone, not in a way that can be used against me. And now I’m sitting here trying to figure out why the idea of stepping back from him feels like shit.”
Doc didn’t answer immediately, and I let the silence stretch. “Okay.”
I rubbed at the back of my neck. “I look at him now and there’s no version of this where I don’t choose him. That’s the part I can’t logic my way out of.”
On the other end of the line, Doc was quiet for a beat. “Then stop trying to,” he said.
