True Affliction - Chapter 4

The morning had the audacity to be brilliant. London gleamed like it had scrubbed itself with ice and light; pavements looked newly cut, windows too clean, the sky so attentively blue it felt like it was trying to sell me something I wasn’t ready to buy. I walked to the clinic as if I could meet it halfway, shoulders back, chin high, but the brightness slid off me and pooled on the street.

Inside, the townhouse did its soft-shoe hush, all linen and pale wood and that expensive quiet that makes you lower your voice even when you’re alone. Maya was at her desk, typing at a velocity that suggested her group chat had entered a state of national emergency; she lifted her eyes, clocked me in a single sweep, and returned to telling the internet about my face.

I slipped into my office. Coat off. Bag down. Drawer open.

My fingers met the handkerchief, still folded with military precision, still wicked against my skin, still wearing A.A. like a smirk. I stared at it as if it might suddenly become a receipt or a biro or some other harmless object, but the silk sat there and remembered his mouth better than I could bear. I hadn’t thrown it away, and I hadn’t returned it either; both options felt like surrender, just dressed in different coats, so I’d done the most cowardly thing and tucked it out of sight, which of course meant I could feel it from across the room.

I shut the drawer a shade too hard and reached for my phone, already bracing for the first email of the day, and remembered, right no phone.

A knock. Maya drifted in with a sleek black box held like contraband and a look that said she’d sell her soul for a live unboxing.

She set it down. “For you.”

“From?”

“No name,” she said, pleased.

Roses. White, arranged so precisely I could hear the metronome that put them there. In the centre, a small black card, silver lettering that caught the light.

The silk was restraint.

Friday isn’t.

Don’t be late.

- A

I didn’t swear; I merely closed the lid as if that might contain whatever was already in my bloodstream.

The intercom buzzed. “Courier just dropped a phone,” Maya said, too innocent. “Any use to you?”

I was already moving. “Yes. God, yes.”

At reception the courier handed it over and I cradled it like it had my pulse in it. Warm. Familiar. Entire. I unlocked the screen and there it was, inevitable as weather.

Alex: You left this. I almost kept it. I’ll settle for your time. Friday.

I went very still. Then I set the phone on my desk like it might leap, turned it face-down, and breathed in through my teeth.

“Knock knock,” Reece said, already easing through the door with the careful tread of a man who can spot a hairline fracture at twenty paces. His eyes did their sweep, professional, humane, nosy in the way that matters. “How’s your week treating you?”

“Productive,” I said, aiming for dry and landing somewhere between polite and defensive.

He allowed himself the ghost of a smile. “Is that our coded terrible, or genuinely productive?”

“Let’s say somewhere along the centre line and pretend I planned it that way.”

He didn’t sit, Reece only sits when it’s an intervention, just rested two fingers against the doorframe, a metronome of thought. “Good work with Ella Hamilton,” he said. “I wasn’t entirely sure she’d come. She reads… delicate.”

“She reads careful,” I said before I could tidy it. “There’s a difference. She’s strong.”

“Better,” he agreed, warmth in the word. A small tilt of his head. “If you need to re-balance your load, you’ll tell me.”

“I will.”

“Good.” He tapped the frame, once, a benediction, and left me to my ghosts.

Silence returned with all its furniture: me; my notebook; the roses breathing their pale arrogance; the phone sulking face-down; and the knowledge that the man who had placed himself in the margins of my day was never, in fact, a prelude. He was the opening note, the one you recognise in your bones before the song begins, the one you don’t come back from.

---

I had a ten o’clock.

Nothing unusual. Just a regular patient, Theo, thirty-four, consultant, bright and burnt out in the way successful men often are. We’d been working together for six weeks. His anxiety wasn’t debilitating, just familiar. Shiny watch, restless hands, the language of someone who’d always outrun discomfort until now.

He sat on the sofa with one ankle crossed over his knee, tapping his fingers lightly against his leg.

“I couldn’t sleep again,” he said. “I tried the breathing thing. I tried the audio file. But my brain just... spirals. Over everything.”

I nodded, automatically. “What does the spiral sound like this week?”

He gave a short laugh. “You know. Deadlines. Presentations. The possibility that I’m a fraud and everyone’s going to figure it out any second now.”

I smiled faintly. “Classic spiral.”

He relaxed a little.

But I wasn’t really there.

I was nodding. I was taking notes. I was saying all the right things. But my mind, my mind was still back in my drawer, curled around a folded piece of silk.

Don’t be late.

The words echoed louder than Theo’s voice. Louder than the sound of my pen scratching the page.

He was talking about a new manager now. Someone passive-aggressive. Someone whose emails made him question whether he existed. I wrote something down that wasn’t a full sentence and looked up at him too slowly.

He paused mid-thought.

I knew that pause.

It was the pause of someone who noticed you’d left the room, even if you were still sitting in it.

“I’m sorry,” I said quickly. “Go on.”

Theo gave me a look I couldn’t quite read. Not suspicious. Not judgmental. Just... surprised.

“You okay, Dr. Thorne?”

I nodded, too fast. “Of course.”

He said nothing for a beat. Then picked up where he left off, almost graciously.

But I felt it. That shift. That fracture in the space between us, small, but real. The one that says: I trust you a little less now.

And I hated it.

I’d spent years learning how to be the kind of therapist who could carry other people’s storms without leaking my own.

But today, today I was cracked open.

And it showed.

By the time I got home, the sky was bruising into dusk and my head felt like it had been wrapped in static all day.

I dropped my keys in the dish, kicked off my heels, and didn’t even bother to take off my coat before pouring a glass of wine.

Nounou greeted me like she hadn’t seen me in a decade, then immediately demanded her dinner. I fed her, topped up my own glass, and collapsed on the couch.

Ten minutes later, the doorbell rang.

Rosie, long red coat, bottle of rosé, two bags of chips, and that expression on her face that always meant: I know you didn’t ask for this, but I’m here anyway.

She breezed past me without waiting for an invitation.

“God, your hallway still smells like eucalyptus and emotionally repressed women.”

“I’m a therapist. It’s part of the aesthetic.”

“You’re a repressed woman.”

“Touché.”

She handed me the bottle, kicked off her boots, and flopped onto the couch like she paid rent.

“I figured you’d need backup,” she said, already opening one of the chip bags. “How was the Great Breakup?”

“Quiet.”

“Ew.”

“No, I mean… gentle. It wasn’t dramatic. Just honest.”

She studied me with that unnerving accuracy only best friends have, then nodded slowly. “Okay. That’s almost worse.”

“Why?”

“Because if he’d screamed or stormed out, you could blame the aftermath on him. But now you have to sit in the reality of it.”

I took a long sip of wine.

She smirked. “Which is why I brought snacks.”

“I can’t tell if you’re a genius or a disaster.”

“I’m a genius because I’m a disaster.”

She leaned over, grabbed the remote, and queued up something loud and ridiculous with people who seemed deeply committed to ruining their own lives for streaming ratings. I let her. We watched two full episodes of couples screaming in kitchens. I didn’t follow the plot. That wasn’t the point.

By the third glass of wine, I felt something in me finally loosen.

“You ever end something,” I said suddenly, “and feel like you didn’t just lose the person… but also the person you were when you loved them?”

Rosie looked at me like I’d just explained gravity.

“Of course,” she said. “That’s half the pain. The part no one warns you about. You’re grieving two people.”

I blinked. “You’re surprisingly profound when you’re half-drunk on rosé.”

“Please. I’m always profound. People just don’t listen because I wear leopard print.”

I smiled. Really smiled.

And for a moment, one full, whole, peaceful moment, I didn’t feel like my life was tilting sideways.

We poured another glass. Talked about everything and nothing. She told me about a café barista she was convinced had proposed with his eyes, and I told her about a recurring dream where Nounou inherited a townhouse and wouldn’t let me in.

We didn’t talk about Tom.

We didn’t talk about work.

We just were.

And when Rosie finally left, hugging me like she meant it, shouting goodbye to Nounou like she was a small, furry queen, I stood at the window and watched the city exhale.

The streetlights were on. The air had shifted. Still soft, still cold, but breathable in a way that felt almost kind.

I grabbed Nounou’s leash and stepped outside.

The pavement shimmered faintly under the amber glow.

My head was light.

Not dizzy, not clumsy, just rosé-loose, thoughts softened around the edges.

The kind of tipsy that made colors brighter and shadows less sharp.

Everything felt one degree removed from real.

And honestly, that was a relief.

Nounou trotted ahead with purpose, as if she had somewhere very important to be. I let her lead. Past the little bookshop with the crooked ‘Closed’ sign, past the wine bar spilling laughter out onto the pavement, past a row of townhouses with soft lamps glowing behind sheer curtains.

The city was beautiful like this.

I took a slow breath. The kind that fills more than just your lungs. The kind that clears out whatever’s been sitting inside you too long.

A few people passed, couples, a man in headphones, a kid on a scooter, all of them ghosting by like extras in a film I wasn’t really starring in.

Just a girl walking a dog. A little drunk. A little lost. And, for once, not hating it.

We turned down a quieter street. The kind where the pavement narrowed and trees hunched close to the curb. I was starting to think about heading back when it happened.

Nounou jerked the leash.

Something darted across the street, and my tiny four-legged queen launched after it with all the rage of a creature ten times her size.

The leash yanked.

Slipped.

Gone.

“Wait Nounou-!”

She darted into the road.

I followed. Instinct, not thought.

Straight into the mouth of the street.

Lights turned.

Brakes screamed.

A horn split the air in two like a blade.

My boots slid on the wet edge of the curb. I caught myself on a street sign with one hand, breath gone, heart thudding like punishment.

And then-

A voice. Low, furious. Controlled.

“Jesus, careful!”

And a hand.

Firm. Sure. Closing gently around my arm like it belonged there.

Like it had done it before.

I turned-

And of course.

Alex.

---

---

Wind had his hair in pieces, dragging blond across his brow and softening the sharp of that charcoal suit that fit like intent. The watch blinked once under the streetlamp-purpose, not flash.

He went to Nounou then.

“Come here, menace,” he said, palm low, voice pitched in that quiet register that does things to a nervous system. She trotted over, shameless, and climbed his thigh like she’d been waiting for his hands all evening. He rubbed the soft place behind her ear. She made a sound I’d never got out of her.

Then he looked up.

Blue. Direct. Heat under glass.

“You stepped into traffic,” he said. Not a question. “In those shoes.”

“I-”

“After wine,” he added, rising; the night adjust­ed itself around his height. “How long since you ate?”

“I don’t see how that’s your business.”

“It’s my business because I watched you put yourself in the path of a car and I’ve got a problem with that.” His gaze took a slow, precise tour, cheeks flushed, mouth bitten, the treacherous tremble I thought I’d hidden at my wrist. “And because I’m here.”

“I’m fine,” I said, clean lie, horrible in my mouth.

“You keep saying that like it’ll make it true.” He slipped a small key from his pocket. “Come with me.”

I should have told him to sod off. I followed.

He unlocked a gate set in the railings and held it with one hand high on the iron, broad shoulders filling the world as I passed. The square on the other side was an old secret, hedges, big trees, the rich smell of rain caught in soil. Moonlight set the gravel to glass.

He stopped at a long wooden bench and looked at me. “Sit.”

I didn’t move. “Is this where you start barking orders?”

The blue darkened, the hint of a smile gone. He stepped in close enough for the heat of him to lick at my skin. “No. This is the part where I stop pretending I don’t give a fuck if you step in front of another bloody car. Now sit, before I put you there myself.”

The air between us tightened. My jaw locked, my chin lifted, every part of me wanting to hold his stare and tell him where to shove it. But my legs betrayed me first. They bent before my pride could catch up, dropping me to the bench as though his voice alone had pulled the strings.

He just sat then, unhurried. His thigh brushed mine, solid, warm, heat bleeding through the fabric and setting every nerve on alert. He didn’t shift. Didn’t apologise. He stayed.

And Nounou, the shameless little traitor, circled once and dropped straight into his lap with a sigh, curling against him as if she’d known him all her life. A satisfied sound left her, soft, obscene.

---

He didn’t look at Nounou again. He looked at me. Long enough to make the night feel crowded.

“You’re shaking,” he said, quiet.

“I’m not.”

His hand found mine before I could tuck it away, warm and sure, turning my wrist up. His thumb pressed lightly to the flutter there, a slow circle that made my breath snag. He watched the place he touched like it told him a story.

“Liar.” he murmured.

Heat surged under my skin. I pulled back, or meant to. He let me have my hand the instant I tried to take it, the loss stupidly sharp.

“You’ve got form, haven’t you,” he went on, voice low enough to feel as much as hear. “Brilliant at everyone else’s damage. Bloody useless with your own.”

“That’s rich,” I said, aiming for cool and finding breathless. “You know absolutely nothing about me.”

He turned in, not much, just enough that the rest of the world slipped off the bench. “I know enough for tonight.”

The clean bite of his cologne threaded through me, cedar, smoke, something darker. His thigh stayed exactly where it was, heat seeping through wool. Nounou made another obscene little noise and went boneless across him.

“You’ve had wine,” he said, not unkind. “You haven’t eaten. Your blood’s low and your head’s high and you tried to walk your way out of it into a bonnet.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“It is,” he said, and leaned in that fraction, enough that his mouth was by my ear, warmth stroking the shell of it. “Breathe, Caitríona.”

My chest lifted as if he’d put a palm under it. Air went in, hot with him. The bench, the hedges, the quiet city, all of it shifted back into shape.

“Better,” he said.

“Don’t,” I warned, but it came out soft.

“Which part?” His voice was velvet over gravel. “The part where I make you steadier, or the part where you pretend you don’t want me to?”

His hand came up, unhurried, inevitable and the back of his fingers traced the line of my cheek. His thumb touched the corner of my mouth, a ghost of pressure that made my thighs press tight.

I caught his wrist. I meant to shove him off. Instead my fingers closed around bone and tendon and the steady thrum beneath, hot, alive. His skin was warmer than it looked.

He looked at my hand on him, then at my mouth where his thumb hovered, and the look he gave me was indecent, quiet, unblinking, a question he already knew the answer to.

“Let go,” I said, but it didn’t land like an order. It landed like a prayer I didn’t mean.

“You first,” he murmured, close enough that the word brushed my lower lip.

We didn’t move.

The square held its breath. Somewhere beyond the hedge a taxi hissed past, a soft, failing applause. Nounou sighed, boneless in his lap. I realised my nails had marked him; I loosened, then tightened again, treacherous. His pulse nudged my palm like a yes. My own answered in my throat.

“Breathe,” he said at my ear, not a command. Permission.

Air went in, thick with cedar and heat. My grip softened, finger by finger, each release a small surrender I felt low in my spine. He didn’t chase it. He held exactly where he was, thumb hovering at the corner of my mouth, a promise and a threat suspended on a breath.

He didn’t move for a heartbeat, made me feel the space I’d made, then his thumb left my lip, and the absence was cold enough to hurt.

“This is wrong,” I said, though I couldn’t have explained which rule we were breaking that the night would respect.

He gave a small, humourless breath. “Probably. Won’t stop me saying what needs saying.”

“Oh good. Another sermon.”

“Eat when you get in,” he said, counting it off like a list built into his bones. “Water. A proper glass. Then bed. No making me pick you up off the tarmac.”

“Since when did you get a say?”

“Since I watched your life blink in front of my eyes and felt mine misbehave about it,” he said, brutally honest.

Silence swelled. My hand, traitor, went to my throat. He tracked the movement. Of course he did.

“You scare me,” I said, before I could stop the truth. “Not you. This.”

His mouth softened, not kind, hungry and furious with itself. “Good. Something honest.”

“I am honest.”

“You are careful,” he corrected gently. “And I can respect that. But careful doesn’t save you from me.”

I turned to him then, fully, the bench biting the backs of my thighs. “You are outrageous.”

He didn’t smile. “You are exquisite. And warm. And shaking.” His thumb returned to the inside of my wrist, one slow press that calmed and ruined at once. He held it a breath. Let go.

Then, as if he couldn’t help himself, his knuckles skimmed my lower lip once more, lighter than a secret. The sound in my throat wasn’t fit for public. He heard it and his eyes went molten.

“Don’t,” I whispered.

“If I don’t,” he said, equally soft, “I’m going to do worse.”

“Worse?”

“Closer.”

Something low in me clenched, traitorous and alive. “I don’t do this. I don’t-”

“Not here,” he said, and the restraint in his voice did worse things to me than any touch. “Not when you’re shaking.”

“I’m not-”

His thumb found that pulse inside my wrist again, a single press that told the truth I wouldn’t. “You are.”

I stared at the hedge because looking at him would finish me. The night smelled like wet leaves and him; my mouth tasted of his nearness. It would have taken so little. A tilt. A yes. The end of me.

I dragged air in and it hurt. Something in my chest unclenched; something lower coiled tight enough to make me want to beg for anything to break it.

“Don’t,” I whispered, not moving. “Please.”

He froze. The heat of him held. Then, precisely, he took his hand back and set it on his own knee, as if he’d leashed himself.

“Right,” he said, voice roughened, not raised. “Home.”

“I’m not a child.”

“No,” he said, eyes burning into mine. “You’re a fucking temptation I’ve got no business touching. And it’s killing me not to.”

My ribs forgot how to be ribs. “I can’t,” I said. Truth, apology, warning. All of it.

His jaw worked once. “I know.”

We sat in the ache a beat longer. Then I stood because my body went first, because staying would end in sins I didn’t have names for. He stood with me, immediate, automatic, Nounou sliding off his lap with an affronted huff. He bent, set a palm to her ribcage to still her, and the tenderness of it nearly undid me more than any of the rest.

At the gate, he reached past, the brush of his sleeve along my arm a shock, and opened the iron with a soft clank that sounded final.

I stepped through the gate because there was no air left on that bench for two people.

“Caitríona.”

I looked back.

He didn’t move. His hands were in his pockets like it took both to keep him there.

“Friday,” he said, soft as a brand.

My mouth opened on a protest I didn’t believe in. Nothing came. He watched the failure of it and his eyes darkened like I’d given him something precious.

“Go,” he murmured, a velvet order. “Before I change my mind about behaving.”

“And don’t run in heels tonight,” he said, a thread of rough in it. “I’ll take it personally.”

Against my better judgement, my mouth curved. “Everything’s personal with you.”

“Only you,” he said.

I had to leave then. I had to. I clicked down the pavement with Nounou tucked under my arm, each step a choice I wasn’t sure I believed in. I didn’t look back a second time, but I felt him. Felt the weight of his restraint on my skin like a touch I’d been denied. The air tasted colder without him. The night was bigger. And under my ribs, treacherous and bright, the slow burn he’d left there carried me all the way home.