Therapy Session
Kyle
Dr. Shah sits in her usual chair, legs crossed, notebook balanced on one knee, waiting for me to settle. But I don’t settle, I don’t think I could even if I wanted to.
She glances at the clock, then back at me. “How did the week go, Kyle?”
“Which part do you want first?” I scoff, my chest full of things that don’t fit anymore. “The part where the entire world thinks I’m dating someone I can’t have, or the part where I almost threw away her career because I couldn’t keep my mouth shut?”
Her expression doesn’t shift. That’s the thing about her: She gives me nothing to react to except myself. “Before we dive into that, did you try the observation homework?”
“Yeah,” I mutter, scrubbing a hand down my face. “I did.”
“And what did you notice?”
“Everything. Too damn much. It’s like my body’s been waiting for permission to tell on me.”
“What did it tell you?”
“That I’m completely and utterly gone for her.”
Her pen stills, but she doesn’t look surprised, just present. “Where do you feel that?”
“In my chest.” My fist presses against it instinctively.
“It feels like someone took a hot knife and carved her name behind my ribs. When she’s close, it…
settles. My body thinks she’s the cure to something I didn’t even know was wrong.
And when she pulls away, it feels like something inside me slips. ”
“Tell me about the moments when she walked away.”
“It was like watching her close a door on us. Even though there isn’t an ‘us.’ Even though I’m not allowed to want it.” I stare at the floor because looking anywhere else is too much. “But I do. God, I do.”
She lets the silence breathe, letting me sit in everything I’m feeling, which is almost worse. “Tell me what happened this week.”
“There was a press conference. Some asshole reporter made a joke—one of those backhanded comments that aren’t technically insults, but they might as well be.” My voice hardens as I drag a shaky breath in. “She flinched like he slapped her. It wasn’t anything big, but I noticed. Fuck, I felt it.”
“And what did you feel at that moment?”
“Anger, white-hot and fast, like someone lit a fuse inside me.” I swallow, but it doesn’t go down. “It wasn’t normal anger. I couldn’t breathe through it. It hit all at once, like my whole body went electric and someone reached inside my chest, twisting something sharp.”
“Where?”
“Everywhere. My skin got tight. My vision tunneled. I couldn’t hear anything but my pulse in my ears, loud and hard, like a crowd booing. My whole body said Move—do something—fix it. I couldn’t stand still and watch her be humiliated.”
My hands ball into fists, and the tendons in my hand strain as my voice fractures. “I didn’t even think. It was instinct. She was the only thing in the room that mattered, and everything else went blurry.”
“And afterward?”
“Everything fucking exploded.” The words rip out of me, rough at the edges. “Cameras. Reactions. Headlines. People shouting over each other like a feeding frenzy. And she just… took it.”
The memory slams into me. Alycia’s stiff shoulders. Her eyes dimming. The way she tried so damn hard not to show she was gutted.
“She stood there while the world decided she was part of the joke, and I’m the one who put her there.”
A sound slips out of me—small, uneven—like the breath you let go when you finally stop pretending you’re fine.
“My chest burned like I couldn’t get air. I kept seeing her flinch, and I knew I was the one who caused it. I’ve taken hits that knocked me flat. I’ve been benched. Booed. But nothing—not a single goddamn thing—has ever felt as bad as watching her brace herself against something I started.”
My throat burns, hot and humiliating. “I never wanted to hurt her. Ever. That’s the one thing I swore I’d never do, and I did. Worse than anyone else could’ve.”
The confession hangs in the room like smoke, and I’m choking on it.
“Kyle,” Dr. Shah says gently, “did you hurt her… or did the situation hurt her? Those are not the same.”
“Feels the same,” I whisper.
“Tell me about the fake dating situation.”
“Oh, yeah.” I choke out a laugh. “Apparently, the only way to salvage the mess I created is for the two of us to pretend we’re together.”
Dr. Shah doesn’t react, just waits patiently the way she always does when she knows I’m circling the real wound. “And how did you react to that idea?”
“How do you think?” My voice turns raw. “I’m already halfway in love with her.”
The words leave me like something torn loose. She doesn’t flinch or correct me. She just holds the space like she’s steadying it for me, as if she knows I’m one wrong breath away from falling apart.
“And now I have to pretend it’s just a PR stunt and that every time she looks at me, I don’t feel it in my fucking bones.”
“And what do you feel when she looks at you?”
My voice is barely there. “Home.”
“And when she avoids looking at you?”
“Like she’s ripping the floor out from under me.”
My hands curl against my knees, knuckles aching. She has no idea that every avoided glance feels like a bruise blooming under my ribs.
Dr. Shah sits forward slightly, not enough to intimidate, but enough to anchor. “Three days of distance,” she murmurs. “That sounds difficult.”
“It’s been torture,” I admit, the word shaking loose from somewhere low and hollow inside me. “She walks past me like I’m no one. Like I didn’t hold her in my arms and feel her shake when I kissed her. I feel it every time she pretends I don’t matter.”
“And what does your body do when that happens?”
“Clenches like I’m shrinking into myself. Everything in me folds inward so it doesn’t spill out. “Like I’m sixteen again and being told not to want things I can’t have.”
Something in my chest twists, deeper than the rest. “I guess that makes sense,” I mutter. “I never really had a dad to tell me otherwise.”
The words come out small, almost an afterthought, but they crack something open. “He died before I was old enough to remember him. Everything I know about him is from stories or from my brothers and my mom. It’s like pieces of someone I never actually got to meet.”
I rub a thumb over my knee, grounding myself. “My brothers became… I don’t know. Stand-ins. Versions of the dad I didn’t have. Cooper pushing me because someone had to. Beau keeping everyone steady. Cole making sure I never felt alone.”
A breath shivers loose. “When I mess up, disappointing Cooper feels bigger. When Beau hid how sick he was, it felt like he disappeared. And when Cole cut us off for a while… it felt like losing something I didn’t know how to get back.”
I blink fast, trying to steady the shake in my hands, but it’s useless.
“Kyle,” she says, voice quieter now, “what do you want?”
The question is a punch straight to the sternum. Something inside me buckles.
“I want her. Not for show or because this PR bullshit that makes us look like a highlight reel.” My pulse hammers as the truth spills out, too big to hold in. “I want the way she looked at me before she remembered she wasn’t supposed to.”
The want in me is so sharp it borders on ache. I grip the couch cushion like it’s the only thing keeping me grounded.
“And what scares you?”
“That she’ll convince herself she meant it when she said it’s just business,” I whisper, the words unraveling. “And I’ll lose something I never even got to have. Again.”
I blink hard, jaw locked against the sting behind my eyes. God, I hate how vulnerable this feels. She lets me break open where I’ve been duct-taping myself together.
“You’re not dangerous when you feel. You’re honest. The danger comes when you pretend not to.”
I look away, breathing through the tightness in my chest, because no one’s ever said something like that to me. Not in a way that felt like truth instead of reprimand. My eyes burn as I try to swallow it all down before it spills over.
“Your new homework is to notice the moment when the line between pretend and real blurs. And don’t judge or rationalize it.”
The words hit somewhere deep and terrifying because I already know what my body does, and it all leads back to her.