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A nervous, broken laugh tears from me. It sounds jagged, entirely wrong.
“I don’t know.” I shrug again, the movement jittery. “He wouldn’t give me a straight answer. He just stood there, giving me that dead, impenetrable look, so I lost my shit. I threw a punch. I started fighting him, trying to tear him apart, and the next thing I knew, I was slammed onto the hardwood and he was pinning me down.”
The words tumble over each other, fast and chaotic, a runaway train I can’t put the brakes on.
“I could fight him off. I know I could. If I actually wanted to hurt him or throw him off me, I have the training. But the second his weight was on me, I just… I went weak. I don’t know if it’s because I’ve been so touch-starved for him that any friction felt like an electric shock. Just being underneath him, feeling his breath on my face… it felt like a holy blessing. So I kept poking the bear. I baited him. And then he slapped me.”
I keep my eyes glued to her face. Something subtle flickers behind her irises—a sudden spark of clinical recognition. She knows. She knows the exact wiring in my fucked-up brain that equates pain with permission to exist. She knows precisely why a hard slap across the jaw was the trigger that sent me straight to my knees on his office rug.
“I see,” Joanna says quietly, her mind clearly cataloguing the pieces at full speed. “And how did all of that end?”
“Well, if it had a happy ending, you wouldn’t be seeing my lunatic face today, would you, Joanna?” I spit, the venom bleeding into my voice before I can catch it.
I instantly regret the bite, but the words are already out there, staining the air.
Joanna doesn’t even flinch. She just lets out a slow, measured sigh, her eyes boring into mine with an intensity that strips away all my armor.
“I didn’t ask if it ended well,” she says gently. “I asked how it ended because I want you to let it out, Maksim. You don’t have Alex’s mugs to shatter in here, and I certainly won’t allow you to smash my clock. But it’s completely okay if you need to break down in this chair so we can figure out how to put you back together.”
I stare down at my hands, watching my fingers twitch and curl into empty fists as if they’re desperately trying to hold on to something that has already dissolved into smoke.
“I think he still sees me as a child,” I whisper, my voice cracking right down the middle. “Last week, when he came to bail me out of the station, he looked me straight in the eye and said he doesn’t give a fuck about me. He told me he only protects me and keeps me out of a cell because my family writes his checks.”
My ribs squeeze against my lungs, suffocating me.
“I was manic before he showed up,” I choke out, my throat closing up. “I felt invincible. And then those words… he just dropped an anvil on my head and dragged me straight into this black, suffocating pit. And because I’m so fucking stupid, so pathetic, I walked right back into his orbit days later. I let him choke me on his cock because I wanted him to realize that whatever the fuck this is between us isn’t just a stupid childhood crush. I wanted to be good for him. I want to be perfect for him, Joanna. But he doesn’t see it. He’s never going to see me as an equal.”
The room falls into a heavy, suffocating silence. The only sound left is the ragged, uneven hitch of my breath and the relentless, metallic tick of the clock on the wall.
Joanna lets the silence breathe. She doesn’t rush to speak, letting the raw grief settle before she leans in, her voice low and grounding.
“I’m going to ask you something, Maksim,” she says carefully. “And I want you to sit with it for a moment before you give me an answer.”
She pauses, holding my gaze until the racing behind my eyes slows down just a fraction.
“Do you genuinely believe Tristan when he tells you he doesn’t care about you?”
I blink at her, completely derailed.
My pulse stutters hard against my ribs. A sickening wave of panic rises in my throat, because if I say no, if I admit that I think he’s lying, that I believe he cares because no matter how badly I fuck up, no matter what jail cell or gutter I land in, he is always the one who comes through the door—what does that make me?
Will she think I’m delusional? Will she think my borderline brain is weaving grand romantic fantasies out of breadcrumbs and duty?
I swallow the truth and jerk my shoulder in a tight, dismissive shrug.
“I don’t know,” I lie, shaking my head violently. “I don’t fucking know. I just know that it hurts. I hate admitting it, but he’s tearing me apart from the inside out, and I don’t know how much more of this I can take without snapping. If I don’t put a bullet in him, I swear to God I’ll put one in Jake. I’ll do it right in front of him just so he has to watch me ruin his perfect little life the way he’s ruining mine.”
A tiny, faint smile touches the edge of Joanna’s mouth. It isn’t mocking, and it definitely isn’t pitying. It’s warm. Relieved, almost, that the poison is out in the open instead of rotting inside me.
“It is entirely valid that you feel that level of rage, Maksim,” she says calmly. “Though, for the record, I strongly advise against shooting either of them.”
A tiny huff of air escapes my nose, involuntary and reluctant.
“From everything you’ve shared with me,” Joanna continues, “Tristan’s cruelty says far more about his own internal state than it does about your value. People lash out and build walls because they have demons they don’t know how to manage. Because they are terrified, and because they are hurting too.”
She pauses, letting the words hang in the space between us.
“From where I’m sitting, it sounds as if you’ve convinced yourself you’re fundamentally unworthy and that you are the defect in the equation. When in reality, Tristan has just as much work to do on himself as you do on yourself.”
