Chapter 2 - Keira
The door clicked shut behind him, and I sat in the silence he'd left behind.
I should have been making notes. That's what I did after every session—transcribed my observations while they were fresh, noted patterns to explore, questions to revisit. Professional. Methodical. The way I did everything.
Instead, I sat in my chair and stared at the one he'd just vacated, trying to figure out why my hands weren't quite steady.
Zelenov. The name was wrong. I'd known it the moment he said it—something in the way it sat in his mouth, like a coat that didn't quite fit. Men like him didn't use their real names with strangers. I didn't blame him. I didn't use mine either.
I finally reached for my notebook and wrote the date at the top of a fresh page. Then I stared at the blank space beneath it, pen hovering, and tried to organize my thoughts into something clinical.
Patient presents with chronic insomnia. Likely duration: months to years.
Contributing factors: work stress (stated), family dynamics (deflected), possible underlying anxiety or depression (unconfirmed).
Patient is guarded, uses humor and charm as defense mechanisms. High-functioning. Successful at masking symptoms.
All true. All useless.
I tapped the pen against the page and admitted what I didn't want to write down: he'd gotten under my skin.
I couldn't pinpoint why. I'd treated dozens of men like him—powerful, wealthy, armored in confidence that cracked if you knew where to press.
They came to me because they couldn't sleep or couldn't stop drinking or couldn't figure out why they had everything and felt nothing.
I listened, I asked questions, I helped them peel back the layers they'd built. It was my job. I was good at it.
But I'd never wanted to keep peeling the way I wanted to keep peeling him.
It was the eyes, I decided. That smile of his was a weapon—he knew exactly what it did, exactly how to deploy it—but his eyes didn't match. They were tired. Watchful. The eyes of a man who hadn't stopped scanning for threats in so long he'd forgotten how.
I recognized that look. I saw it in my own mirror every morning.
Stop it.
I closed the notebook and stood, moving to the window. The city was shifting into evening, lights beginning to flicker on in the buildings across the street. I pressed my palm against the cold glass and made myself breathe.
He was a patient. That was all. Whatever I'd felt in that room—that pull, that curiosity, that absurd flutter when he leaned forward and actually answered a question honestly—it was transference.
Or countertransference. Some clinical term that meant this is normal, this happens, you're a professional and you'll handle it.
I'd see him next week. I'd maintain appropriate boundaries. I'd help him with his insomnia and never think about the way his voice dropped when he stopped performing, the way his whole body had shifted when he admitted he didn't remember the last time he felt rested.
I wouldn't think about any of it.
I was already thinking about it.
***
My last patient of the day was a hedge fund manager with anger issues and a marriage falling apart.
He spent fifty minutes complaining about his wife's spending habits while carefully avoiding any discussion of the affair I suspected he was having.
I nodded in the right places, asked the right questions, and felt nothing at all.
After he left, I locked up the office with the same routine I'd followed for three years. Check the windows. Check the back door. Set the alarm. Test the handle twice. Old habits, the kind that became muscle memory when you'd spent enough of your life looking over your shoulder.
Margaret, my receptionist, had already gone home. The waiting room was dim and silent, chairs empty, magazines untouched. I stood there for a moment longer than necessary, listening to the quiet, before I finally left.
The walk home was twelve blocks. I could have taken a cab—it was February, and the wind cut through my coat like it had a personal grudge—but I liked the walk.
Liked the movement, the cold, the way the city swallowed me into its crowds.
In New York, everyone was anonymous. Everyone was running from something.
I was just another woman in a dark coat, head down, moving fast.
I'd chosen this city for that exact reason. Far enough from Chicago to breathe. Big enough to disappear.
My apartment was on the fourth floor of a prewar building on the Upper East Side—nice but not flashy, the kind of place that said successful professional without inviting questions. I'd decorated it the same way I'd built my practice: carefully, strategically, with nothing that revealed too much.
No photographs on the walls. No art that meant anything. Bookshelves lined with psychology texts and novels I'd bought by the yard at a used bookstore, chosen for their spines rather than their contents. A kitchen I barely used. A bedroom with a view of the building across the alley.
A life that could be packed into two suitcases and abandoned in an hour if necessary.
I dropped my bag by the door and went straight to the kitchen, pouring myself a glass of wine I probably shouldn't have. The first sip burned going down, and I leaned against the counter, letting the silence settle around me.
This was the hardest part of every day. The hours between work and sleep, when there was nothing to do but exist in my own company.
I'd gotten better at it over the years—learned to fill the time with books, with cooking, with the kinds of solitary hobbies that didn't require other people—but it never felt natural.
It felt like holding my breath. Like waiting for something I couldn't name.
My phone buzzed on the counter. I glanced at the screen and felt my stomach drop.
Chicago area code.
I didn't answer. Didn't even pick it up. Just watched it ring, four times, five, until it finally went to voicemail. The notification appeared a moment later: New voicemail from unknown caller.
I deleted it without listening.
There was nothing anyone in Chicago could say that I wanted to hear.
I'd made that clear years ago, when I'd packed everything I owned into my car and driven east until I hit the ocean.
I'd changed my name, built a new life, become someone else entirely.
Whoever was calling—whatever they wanted—it didn't matter. That part of my life was over.
I poured myself more wine and told myself I believed it.
***
Dinner was leftover pasta eaten standing at the counter, a book propped open in front of me that I wasn't really reading. My thoughts kept drifting back to the session. To him.
Zelenov.
Even the fake name had a certain elegance to it. Russian, obviously. He'd had the faintest trace of an accent—not in his words, which were pure American, but in the rhythm of his sentences. The way he paused before certain phrases, like he was translating from some internal language I didn't speak.
I wondered what his real name was. Wondered what he really did, because "investments and development" was the kind of vague answer people gave when they didn't want you to look too closely. Wondered what—or who—had put those shadows under his eyes.
None of your business. He's a patient.
I washed my dishes, wiped down the counter, checked the locks on my door twice. Then I sat on my couch with my wine and my book and tried very hard to think about something else.
It didn't work.
He'd been so careful, so controlled, that every moment the mask had slipped felt like a gift.
When he'd admitted he didn't remember feeling rested.
When he'd said "fine" in that flat voice that meant anything but.
When he'd paused, just for a second, before answering my question about his family, and I'd seen something flicker across his face—grief, maybe, or guilt, or some combination of the two.
I'd wanted to push. To dig into that pause, to find out what was buried beneath it. But I'd held back, the way I always did in first sessions. Built rapport before building pressure. Let them think they were in control before showing them they weren't.
Except I wasn't sure who was in control in that room.
He'd deflected my questions with the ease of long practice, but he'd also watched me—really watched me, with an intensity that had nothing to do with flirtation and everything to do with assessment.
Like he was trying to figure out if I was a threat.
I should have found that unsettling. Instead, I'd found it... interesting.
You're being ridiculous.
I finished my wine and went to bed, even though I knew I wouldn't sleep. Not well, anyway. I hadn't slept well in years—not since I'd left Chicago, not since I'd seen my father's name in that news article and felt something I still couldn't name. Relief? Grief? Some toxic combination of both?
He was dead. The man I'd spent my whole life running from, the man whose shadow had shaped every choice I'd ever made, was dead. Shot in some warehouse, according to the article. Gang violence, the police suspected. As if there were any doubt.
I'd read that article four times, searching for something—closure, maybe, or some sense that the world had finally righted itself. Instead, I'd felt hollow. Empty. Like I'd been bracing for a blow that never came, and now I didn't know what to do with all that tension.
I hadn't cried. Hadn't called anyone. Hadn't done anything except close my laptop and pour myself a drink and sit in the dark until morning.
That had been two months ago. I still didn't know how to feel about it.
The ceiling of my bedroom was a pale gray in the darkness, featureless, familiar.
I stared at it and thought about the patient who couldn't sleep, wondering what kept him awake.
Wondering if his ceiling looked like mine.
Wondering if he was lying in some expensive bed right now, staring at nothing, feeling the same hollow ache I felt.
I wondered if he was thinking about me.
Don't.
But I was already there—replaying the session, analyzing every word, every gesture, every moment his charm had flickered and shown me something real.
He'd walked into my office expecting to perform his way through fifty minutes, and instead he'd actually talked.
Not much. Not nearly enough. But more than he'd planned to, I was certain of that.
And he'd made another appointment.
I rolled over and punched my pillow into a different shape, annoyed at myself, annoyed at him, annoyed at the whole situation.
He was a patient. I was his therapist. Whatever I'd felt in that room was a product of proximity and professionalism and the particular intimacy of the therapeutic relationship.
It happened. It was normal. It would pass.
I repeated that to myself until I almost believed it.
When I finally fell asleep, somewhere around 2 AM, I dreamed of whiskey-colored eyes and a smile that didn't reach them, and woke up more unsettled than before.