Chapter 24
Chapter Twenty-Four
DK
Tomorrow.
One more day until the lake house.
One more day until the rest of the world falls away.
No campaign schedules, no secret glances, no hiding. Just us.
But as the anticipation builds, it’s shadowed by a sharp, jagged dread. I have to tell Luna about Washington. I have to reach into that dark part I’m loath to remember and pull it out into the light.
After work, I prop my iPad on the kitchen counter for my virtual session with Don.
As I wait for the video to connect, the screen reflects a version of myself I’ve spent my professional life perfecting: the trimmed beard, crisp shirt, the steady, unblinking presence. The man who has his shit together.
Nearly seven months ago, that man shattered.
I still remember every detail like it was yesterday.
The empty murmur of the office at 9:00 PM.
The blue light of monitors glowing from the workstations, the sound of a vacuum getting closer as the cleaners made their rounds.
I was packing up after a typical fourteen-hour day, planning to do more work from home.
My blood was singing with the usual cocktail: coffee, Red Bull, and caffeine pills.
I reached for my briefcase when I suddenly felt lightheaded and dizzy, my hands were shaking.
Not just the minor tremors I’d ignored several times before—this was violent quaking.
It spread fast. Coursing up my arm and ripping across my chest. Pain thrashed behind my ribs, and my entire body turned on itself. In seconds, the rough fibers of the carpet met my cheek, and the thick, suffocating darkness swallowed me.
The next thing I remember was waking up in a hospital bed. Bright fluorescent white. My mouth felt like it had been stuffed with wool. My arm was hooked up to an IV drip, and every beep of the monitors was a needle in my ear.
“DK.” My mother’s voice cut through the noise and fog of my brain. “Ngiyabonga Nkosi.”
At hearing her thank God, I blinked her into view. She wasn’t the same woman with a quick smile. Her eyes were rimmed with dark circles, and her once smooth face was ravaged with mournful lines.
I would soon learn that the cleaners found me, and I was rushed to Medstar, where I spent five days in the ICU, unresponsive. My family were gathered around, praying I would wake.
The doctor’s diagnosis was like a gavel.
“Complete systemic collapse,” she said. Not just that my body ran out of gas, the engine had seized.
“Your heart was ‘red-lining,’ and your kidneys were starting to shut down. You are lucky to be alive.” She paused on that chilling note, then introduced me to Donavan Wright. The psychologist on call that day.
He was this George Costanza–looking dude with a bedside manner that was direct to the point of discomfort. I hated him at first. Hated the mirror he held up. Hated needing help.
Mostly, I hated the words complete systemic collapse and what it made me feel.
Weak.
A failure.
Like I’d lost control of my own body and mind.
My family wanted me at home. I wanted to get back to work. To feel in control again.
Don put it bluntly: “You’re choosing a death sentence and calling it purpose.”
But the real breaking point wasn’t his warning.
It was waking in the middle of the night to find my dad—the most stoic man I know—holding my hand and crying.
I’d never seen him shed a tear, yet there he was sitting in the dim hospital light, his shoulders shaking with silent, pained sobs he didn’t know I could see.
My fault.
The guilt of hurting him… of hurting my family broke me. I vowed then never to put them through that again.
There’s a rustle of movement before Don’s face fills the screen. He smiles in that serious way he has.
“How were the first weeks back in the saddle?” he asks, cutting straight through the small talk.
“Fine. I’m following the rules.”
“Rules are imposed. Guardrails are the tools you chose,” he says, like there’s a massive difference.
“Either way—blocker apps, alarms, caffeine limits… feel like I’m wearing an ankle monitor.”
“You are your own keeper.” Don leans closer to his camera. “You’re rewiring years of habit. That takes time. Give yourself grace.” He pauses, his eyes narrowing as if he can see right through me. “You seem agitated. What’s the real weight on your mind?”
I scrub a hand over my jaw. The rasp of my beard against my palm is the only thing that feels solid right now.
“I’ve met someone. Rayne.” Her name is like a secret I’m finally allowed to say out loud to someone other than Neo.
I tell him about that first night, how hard it was to walk away, and how none of what I felt faded when I saw her again.
“For the first time in my life, a woman is a higher priority than the grind. She’s important to me. ”
He offers a slow, encouraging nod, letting the admission breathe.
“It means I have to tell her about Washington,” I continue, the words feeling like lead on my tongue. “She needs to know what she’s stepping into. But I’m scared as hell that she’ll look at me the same way my family does.”
“What way is that?”
“Like I’m made of glass. Like I could collapse again. That’s what happened,” I snap out, the anger pointed inward. “I worked myself into the fucking ICU. How is Rayne supposed to feel like she can count on me when I couldn’t even count on myself to function at a desk job?”
“Being reliable doesn’t mean being indestructible,” Don says, meeting my gaze. “You’re a man, Dakarai, not a machine. You pushed yourself to a superhuman limit until your system could no longer operate. That’s not a character failure. It’s biology. That’s why you’ve set boundaries.”
I get it on an intellectual level, but… “It’s a lot to lay on someone.”
“And you don’t think Rayne will want that?”
I rub the back of my neck where I store my tension. “I know she won’t judge me. Rayne’s open and caring. But between the insomnia and my breakdown, I’m worried she might think it’s her responsibility to hold me together. She deserves better than that.”
Don gives me that penetrating look, the one that warns he’s about to give me something to think about.
“Inviting someone who matters to see the blueprint—what you’ve survived and what you’re building now—isn’t a burden.
That’s intimacy. That’s honesty. And if Rayne is the woman you say she is, she’ll want to know the whole man. Not just the polished version.”
We discuss that some more, then set an appointment for next week. When the screen goes black, I sit there, letting Don’s words settle like a drizzle after a storm.
The shadow of my confession still looms, but the wire in my gut isn’t cutting quite as deep. Don always gives me perspective—a way of looking at the same issue and seeing something different. Something not as bad as the way I framed it in my mind.
I have the logistics for the weekend handled. Every contingency, every “what if” of this secret getaway has been vetted and neutralized. I know how to mitigate political risk, how to strategize and direct the desired outcome.
That doesn’t work with emotions. I can’t project-plan the truth. It’s messy. But if Luna is trusting herself to spend this weekend figuring out how she feels, then maybe I can trust that I don’t have to be perfect or polished—that the man I am now is enough.