Page 74 of Locke

Juno turns back to me, and I can’t meet her gaze.

“Do you want to go somewhere and talk?”she murmurs.“Just me and you.”

Off the record, she means.

“Yeah… that would be great.”

I follow Juno to her office in the east wing.It’s not much—a small room with a desk and corkboard covered in index cards.I drop into one of the chairs and she closes the door before hopping onto her desk with her palms on the edge.

She looks at me without an agenda and waits.

“It’s complicated,” I say.

“I figured.”

“It can’t leave this room.”

“It won’t.”

I look down at my clasped hands, then back up to her.“I crossed a line,” I say out on a long breath.

Juno’s expression remains open and nonjudgmental.“I assume we’re talking about Locke?”

“Yeah,” I admit, weirdly without shame.Concern over my own judgment and whether it’s sound, yes, but not shame.“The professional boundary that I very clearly established and very clearly needed to maintain for too many reasons to count… well, I crossed it.”I pause.“We crossed it.It was mutual, but that doesn’t make it better.”

She’s quiet.“How bad is it?”

My eyebrows lift.“What do you mean by bad?”

“Is your heart tied up or is it just sex?”she asks bluntly.“And are you managing it?”

I think about the way he’s opened himself to me, stayed the night in my bed, held me.The way he smiles and even laughs at times.The tiny layers peeling back that he’s letting me see.

“I’m not managing it,” I admit quietly.

Juno exhales slowly through her nose and gives me an empathetic smile.“Listen… I understand better than anyone exactly what you’re going through.Trying to maintain the professional line while being dragged under personally.”

It’s the personal connection that’s screwing everything up for me.

“He showed up,” I say softly, and Juno cocks her head.“Grant was in LA, grabbed me, and Locke… he was there.And he not only stopped it but was worried for me.That did something to me.”I press my fingers to my mouth briefly.“When it mattered, he showed up and I just—”

“You don’t have to explain it,” Juno says.

I look at her helplessly, needing affirmation.

“I fell for the man I was documenting,” she says simply.“From a slightly different angle but the same essential problem.The ethics of it don’t go away just because the feelings are real.”

“No,” I say dejectedly.“They don’t.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know.I have one session left with him and professionally, I have to make it count because I need him to be real and I’m almost out of runway.”I rub my temples.“Personally, I have no idea.We’ve called itcompartmentalized.”I say the word almost with disdain, because it’s already failed.“I’m aware that’s not holding.”

“Does he know that?”

I lift a shoulder.“Maybe.”

Juno is quiet.“Is he good to you?”