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He reads it immediately, but no reply comes through.

Maybe I really have pushed him too far this time.

???

It’s been two days. Two days since I’ve pushed Austin away. My brother has had his surgery, and when he’s come out of his coma, we’ve talked about what happened. Eventually, Luca also visits and speaks privately with Danny. I’ve been hoping Austin would turn up, too, but he hasn’t.

Danny knows about the video, which means he’s found out about Austin and me. I can’t say that hasn't been the mostawkward conversation of my life.

So here I am at the brink of potentially losing my business, losing the man I love, and now losing my brother. He’s not outright said how pissed off he is, but I can tell. Either he’s furious or his pain meds aren’t working nearly as well as they should be.

So this has led me to Dr. Alfie Freaking Adams’s couch. His real one, not his psychologist one.

I’m curled up with a hot tea, my legs tucked under me as I flip through a book on trauma. Yeah, Dr. Alfie doesn’t do light reading. I certainly can’t imagine him reading werewolf smut.

“How are you feeling?” he asks, leaning back into his armchair.

Probably the most awkward part of this situation is feeling like I’m constantly in a therapy session. How much should I say? How much should I ask? This man knows Austin better than anyone alive. He holds all my answers.

“I’m angry.”

He nods. “Understandable.”

We’re silent for a few minutes until I can’t bear it any longer.

“Have you heard from him?”

“He checks in daily.”

Daily?

He must see my expression because he decides to throw me a bone.

“Books like that one”—he points at the huge hardback on my lap—“they can only teach you so much. Some things are only learned by experience, and there’s no way, as a therapist or as a partner, that we’ll be able to understand someone completely or why they do the things they do. Trauma alters our DNA; it alters our brain chemistry. Undoing that damage takes years, and even then, another traumatic event can slip us right back into those unhealthy coping mechanisms. Austin has almost had two lives. He’s killed off one life, or at least, he’s tried to. So his new life began two years ago. Would you expecta two-year-old to have the emotional maturity of someone who was thirty-two?

“No, of course not.”

He shrugs. “Austin has had to learn how to be human. Honestly, if you think of him as a bit of an alien, in the kindest way possible, it’s like he’s come to a new planet. Experiencing new things and, importantly, new emotions.

“Austin is well aware of how he wants to treat people. In fact, that's one of the easiest parts of treating him. He’s always known how he wants to treat others. Or maybe I should say he knows how he doesn’t want to treat people. He works in negatives. He’ll see a situation and tell me what he doesn’t want to do rather than what he does. But when it comes to his own treatment, how he treats himself, how others treat him...he can’t fathom being loved or cared for. His previous life was stripped of all affection. There was only competition and brutality. Not just his job. His relationship with his father and his brother are equally problematic. It’s only his friendship with Luca where Austin has seen any true loyalty.”

I nod. “I just want to help him.”

“I know, and you have. You’ve helped him far more than I have in the last month alone.”

I shake my head, hugging the book to my chest.

“But this isn’t your responsibility, Olivia. You have your own life and no doubt your own problems, as we saw from that video.”

Yes, the video.Which is why I’m here. Dr. Alfie has agreed to house me for my own protection. The deal is that we would be seen together publicly to curb any belief that the “Masked Man” was Austin. We would stand close together, snap a few selfies, and hope that the media would do the rest. Dr. Alfie is enough of a household name that my face would get out there as a potential girlfriend. Luckily for me, it’s not often that he’s photographed with a woman, so this kind of seems like a bigger deal than it is.

It does mean the comments on my videos have beengoing wild. Speculation of Dr. Alfie as the “Masked Man” has tripled in the last two days. Comments on my videos and the one posted by Millie and Travis have gone, frankly, nuts.

I’ve not responded at all, which seems to have incensed Millie and Travis further. They’ve posted another video, backtracking that they were given the information from a credible source and that it’s not their fault that they didn’t know the truth.

The fact that the School of Agriculture at Elwood University has announced its collaboration with Austin’s vertical farming company “The Unseen” has only discredited their video further. The university’s marketing team has really jumped on the hype, too, posting a video of those at the underground farm looking positively confused, dressed as cartoon-like robbers—trying to steal a load of plants. It is pretty genius.

“Are you sure you’re meant to tell me this? Don’t you have doctor-patient confidentiality?”