Chapter 9 #4
“My dahlias can wait,” he says, taking his seat neatly.
He's in his late twenties, younger than I expected a therapist to be when I first hired him, younger than me by several years, with dark blond hair still damp from the rain, rectangular glasses, and the kind of face that somehow reminds me of an English professor.
Always faithful to his scholar style, he wears dark velvet trousers, a beige shirt buttoned at the throat, and brown loafers that stand out in this setting.
Behind him, the city presses itself against the glass walls, silvered by rain.
My office smells faintly of coffee and leather.
Two phones lie beside my laptop, both turned face down, both vibrating often enough to remind me that outside this room, my empire is still bleeding.
To my left, the chessboard sits untouched, and the ghost of my silent princess appears there, seated in my chair while I stand above her.
Even when she is not here, she is still everywhere.
In the taste of my coffee. In the contracts I read, searching unconsciously for the letters of her name until I find them.
“We have an hour,” Elias reminds us, catching the time on his brown leather vintage watch before opening his notebook on his lap.
“Where would you like to start?” I lean forward, elbows on my thighs, hands clasped between my knees because if I put them on the desk, I will start rearranging objects into parallel lines.
“I don’t know where to start.” He waits with that look that tells me he has done this a hundred times before.
Waiting for vaults to open. My gaze lowers to my shoes, and I begin telling him about the last two months, which feels impossible because the last time I saw him was four months ago, before Ella existed in my life.
I tell him enough without betraying the sacred moments we shared.
I do not tell him about the sound she made in that cell after the gun went off.
I do not tell him how fear follows her into the dark, or how I installed a small night-light in my bedroom so she would never have to wake up afraid of the shapes around her.
Some things will always stay between us, kept in the secrecy of the trust she gifted me.
Still, I tell him about Cole, who is not being mentioned for the first time.
About Mara, about Ella’s father, about my public downfall and the current police investigation going on.
Elias listens without interruption, his pen moving only occasionally.
When I stop speaking, the smell of rain permeates the air.
My phone vibrates again. I look only to make sure it is not Ella. It is not. Then it can wait.
“So,” he sighs at last, “your nervous system is under significant stress, and you’re trying to treat it like, well, a problem to solve quickly instead of… information.”
“Which means?”
“I would say that you are reacting normally to rather abnormal circumstances. There seems to be a sort of…conflict inside you. Fear, guilt, anger, exhaustion,” he clears his throat, “protectiveness.” His hands weighting invisible words in his palms.
“That’s one way to put it.” I lean back.
“As we’ve discussed in our previous sessions, Tristan, your emotions are not departments or businesses reporting to you.
” He presses a finger to the bridge of his glasses, nudging them back into place.
“Try to take them for what they are, information. Signals from your brain, trying to bring your attention to what has been ignored for too long.”
I rub a hand over my mouth. “Ella reopened something.” Rain meets the windows, blurring the outside world. “She makes me want things I had no business wanting.”
“What kind of things?”
“A life.” The word tastes unfamiliar. “Marriage, children. A house that isn’t just a place to sleep between meetings.
I didn’t think I had a right to any of that.
I still don’t know that I do.” He remains quiet, letting the rest come out.
“And she’s younger. Much younger. After everything she has survived, I don’t want to pressure her into something she isn’t ready for.
I don’t want her to think she doesn’t have a choice here.
” Elias folds one hand over his notebook.
“Are you afraid she might stay because you feel safe to her right now?”
“I…” I look away. “I don’t think she would. She isn’t that kind of person. She’s… No. I don’t think so.”
“It’s important to be aware of an imbalance and to make sure you don’t exploit it,” he says. “But awareness is different from assuming she has no agency.”
“I know she has agency.”
“Do you?” I glare at him, and he accepts it without flinching, which is better than most men would ever manage.
“You described her as reserved and shy,” he clarifies, “but you also described a woman who worked nights to fund her studies, survived mistreatment at home, adapted to a world that did not always meet her language, and endured captivity. That does not sound like someone incapable of discernment.” The words sit between us, too accurate to dismiss.
“She is too good for me,” I let out in a breath. Ella is a force of nature. A silent one, yes, but damn it, there is not an inch of her I do not admire.
“Let’s look at it from another angle.” Elias’s voice remains mild. “Perhaps the question is not only about her agency. Perhaps it is also about trust.” My throat tightens.
“Everything she went through happened because of me.”
“Did you hurt her?”
“No.”
“Did you kidnap her?”
“No.”
“Did you ask Cole Vodianov or her stepmother to exploit her connection to you?”
“No.”
“Then perhaps we can make room for responsibility without turning it into self-condemnation.” I look away as he gives me a moment.
“Excessive guilt never helped anyone,” he adds.
“If you make yourself the sole cause of her suffering, you erase the choices of the people who harmed her and reduce Ella to someone without judgment of her own. I understand the instinct, but you’re a man of facts, Tristan, and right now you’re letting your imagination run the room.
” I hate that. Mostly because some part of me already knows it.
“But she should blame me,” I argue.
“Has she?”