Page 18

Every time I walked through the doors of Prima Care Medical Center, a surge of life would burst through me. There was a permanent smile I had for the workers and patients there, and sometimes, I had a doughnut, too. Working there and interacting with the beautiful people made me believe I was on the path of fulfilling some bigger purpose.

My life was like a kindergarten; it was simple and all planned out. I could laugh, live, and breathe. It never felt like I was walking with weights on my shoulders.

Not until two weeks ago happened, and now I had two pits burrowed in my heart. One was filled with regrets for what I’d done, and the other nursing a hollow ache for deliberately avoiding Miron.

Standing at Amelia’s door, I released a deep breath and dropped two soft knocks.

“Come in.”

My legs felt like they’d been strapped to tons of bricks as I stepped into her office and shut the door behind me. “Hazel, please, take a seat. How are you feeling?”

“A lot better, thank you.”

“That’s great to hear. We really missed you around here.”

Her smile was warm and welcoming, as it always was. But looking at her seated behind her desk, buried in tons of paperwork, jogged a not-so-distant memory from a month ago, when I’d practically barged into this same office and begged her for a challenge.

Yes, I’d wanted it, craved it, even—but heavens knew I did not need or expect one to blow through my life like a damn hurricane, tearing up everything on its path. One that was hot and cold one minute and then settling between my legs the next second.

I’d sat on this same stupid chair, chest puffed up, with an expectant smile and na?ve eagerness, telling her nothing was going to be too difficult. I told her I was ready for anything.

Oh, Hazel.

If only I could see into the future…. I never would have complained after Mr. Harold Plumley’s session.

“Hazel, are you listening?”

Salty tears stung the back of my eyes, and I sniffled, smiling as warmly as I could. “I’m sorry, Amelia. I lost you there for a second. Can you go over what you said one more time?”

She gave me a once-over like she wasn’t sure but went over it again.

“I was saying Miron’s been showing positive signs on the progress charts so far. The past two weeks you’ve been away, he’s kept to time with the scheduled sessions and enquired about your whereabouts.” Amelia smiled more to herself than to me. “Honestly, it’s the softest I’ve seen him in a while. You’re doing a great job, and I don’t even know how you’re doing it. There’s been no reports of him randomly flaring up or exhibiting explosive, destructive reactions….”

Just hearing his name made my heart clench. I knew he’d dropped by the clinic. I knew he’d been consistent. He’d sent messages; I read and ignored them all. That second pit in my chest burrowed deeper.

Amelia continued giving a summary report on Miron, offering tips in between and general professional advice on how to handle the client. I almost laughed out my pain in her face when she pointed out the one rule I’d trampled on and thrown into the trash:

Never get too mixed up in the client’s personal business; always keep things professional.

“Great! Once again, welcome back, Hazel. It’s a blessing to have you here. That will be all for now.”

“Thanks, Amelia.” She didn’t notice, but this time, the smile didn’t get to my eyes.

I left Amelia’s office more downtrodden than I’d been when I’d gone in but kept my head up to avoid further questions from passersby.

Down the corridor, I caught sight of my office before I got close enough to see that it was ajar.

My pulse sped up because I knew the client waiting inside. It was nine-thirty a.m. on a Monday. I didn’t only know him; I’d tasted him, kissed him senseless, dragged my nails down his broad back, and moaned my pleasures into his ears. Jesus. The hairs on my skin were already rising, just recalling the details of the steamy moments.

Clearing my throat, I pushed the door farther, keeping my eyes locked on my couch as soon as I stepped in and shut the door behind me. I dropped the Chanel bag first and took a moment to properly regulate my breath before I settled down and faced him.

God. The sight of him on that green settee blew me away. He was even more handsome than the last time I saw him, like a perfect sculpture representation of one of the gods of Olympus. Just sitting there, with one arm crossed over his chest and one hand under his chin, dressed in his regular white shirt and black dress pants, he was delectable.

“Good morning, Miron.”

“Miss Sinclair.” He nodded curtly, and my brows rose.

Miss Sinclair?

That night…his texts. He’d called me Hazel. I was disappointed. Maybe a small part of me wished he’d call me by my name, and if he did, I might have just abandoned all my reservations and thrown myself into his arms because, deep down, I wanted to relive that one reckless night with him again.

Miron’s eyes held mine, but there was no warmth. It was blue and cold, like the frozen seas in the Arctic. We sat close enough, and yet he seemed so far away now. His entire demeanor was the complete opposite of the nice things Amelia had to say about his progress charts in her office.

Taking my iPad from my bag, I held my breath before proceeding. “How was your weekend?”

“Do me a favor, will you? Let’s skip the unnecessary bullshit and go right into the reason I’m seated on this fucking couch because I know you really don’t care, and I don’t appreciate my time being wasted.”

I jerked like I’d experienced a bad case of whiplash and struggled to keep my jaw from dropping. He sounded like anything but the man who’d groaned into my hair and held me close to his chest as if his life depended on it. This one, staring at me with contempt, was not the one I’d daydreamed about for the past two weeks.

Amelia’s advice rang out in my head: Never get too mixed up in the client’s personal business; always keep things professional.

We were within the four walls of my office, so here, I was the boss.

“Fine.” I looked away, determined to keep my eyes on the glowing screen till ten-thirty. “We will be monitoring your progress so far, and I will do that by asking you a couple of questions you have to answer honestly. Is that okay?”

“The questions, Miss Sinclair.”

My fingers curled around the device, and I clenched my jaw. “How have you been managing your emotions since our last session?”

“Which? The last two sessions you intentionally ditched under the guise of being sick? Or the private session we had at my penthouse?” he answered casually, though the undertones of aggression couldn’t be any louder.

The memories came rushing back like the floodgates had been opened, and I gritted my teeth. “Mr. Yezhov….”

“If it’s the former, let me see…I’ve been managing just fine. I do more breathing exercises, some physical bag-punching routines, and I soap my cock at night. Everything’s under control. Nothing is unsettled.”

I resisted the urge to look up and continued with the questions. “Can you describe a recent situation where you felt angry or irritated? How did you respond?”

“Skip.”

I inhaled slowly, still keeping my cool. “Mr. Yezhov, you can’t skip questions. Each one has a purpose: to monitor your progress since the commencement of your sessions. So, can you please describe a recent situation where you felt angry or irritated? How did you respond?”

“Miss Sinclair,” he said slowly, his brows creasing and the frown on his face etching deeper. “I don’t fucking care about the purpose of the question. Whether it’s a cause for the greater good or not, I say we’re skipping it.”

It was on the tip of my tongue to argue with him and insist on the question being answered, but I guided myself against it. He had given no hints, but my instincts said I was the recent cause of his irritation and anger. And I wasn’t ready for the chaos that could possibly accompany such an admission.

“Fine. Next question. Can you think of a recent situation where you felt like you were about to lose your control? If you can think of that, how did you handle it?”

A sudden hush fell between us, and it lasted for more than a minute. When I thought it would drag on for much longer, I raised my head. Only to find his eyes already on me.

“I wasn’t about to lose it; I lost it,” he said quietly, with his gaze still hardened. “And I didn’t handle it; I fucked her. And it turned out to be one of the best fucking nights of my life, though I can’t say the same for her.”

The walls I’d labored so hard to build from the commencement of today’s session crumbled to dust between our feet. I didn’t have to press; I just knew he was talking about that night, and it was necessary for me to keep things professional. We still had more than half an hour to go with the session, and I was obligated to record his answers to the questions for the reports.

“Okay.” I adjusted in my seat, ignoring the burning sensation behind my ears. “We’ll address your lack of control later. Let’s move on to the next question.”

“Why?”

I almost bit my tongue. “Why should we move on to the next question? I’m sorry, I’m not following. You were the one who requested that we move right on to the questions.”

“Don’t play dumb with me, Hazel. I’m tired of this stupid charade of formalities. Tell me why you’ve been avoiding me. Why have you taken it upon yourself to be so cold and detached?” For a moment, the shutters went up, and I saw the slow warmth melting through the Arctic. Roaring blue seas surfaced with waves of it crashing against the seashore.

If I turned a blind eye to the man’s question, I knew what was going to happen next; Miron wasn’t a patient man. He would stand up from the couch, walk over to Amelia’s office, and demand that another therapist handle his case. She wouldn’t refuse him because all our actions had to be in the client’s best interest, and then I would never see him again.

I set the iPad aside, crossing one leg over the other to convince myself that I hadn’t completely lost control and there was a sliver still left. Breathing exercises were becoming my specialty. “Mr. Yez—”

“Fuck it, Hazel! It’s me, Miron!”

My shoulders quaked under the effect of his voice echoing off the walls. This was the first time he’d shouted at me, the first time I knew what it truly felt like to have a blazing dagger rammed through one’s beating heart. It hurt more than anything else.

He was out of his chair now, crossing the room in long strides to stand in front of me, his nostrils flared and eyes narrowed. My head tilted further back to meet his gaze until I forced myself to rise to my feet.

“Miron,” I mumbled shakily and had a hard time looking him in the eye. Saying his name aloud made our situation a lot more real, and my silly heart wouldn’t stop pounding in my chest. “I…I gave it a lot of thought, okay? That night was, um…it was… it can’t happen again.”

“What?”

“Hold on, I have to say this. I know it was consensual. We were two consenting adults.” Standing close to him was messing with my logic, so I side-stepped to inhale something other than him. “We were swept up, enraptured in the heat of the moment, and that’s it. That’s all it will ever be, Miron—a mistake.”

He took a step closer, and I took one back, leaning closer to my desk to have something to grasp onto when I pulled the rug from under our feet.

“Hazel, listen to me—”

“No, Miron. I want you to listen to me.” I tried to muster a smile, but the tears were starting to blur my vision. “That night was a mistake for so many reasons, and I’ll do you a favor by starting with the most obvious one: Look around. We’re in my office. The desk behind me? It’s mine. It’s my seat of control during working hours because I work here. That one over there, the green one? That’s yours, and that is because you are my client. I know you don’t understand this, but here, I am responsible for you, your well-being, your progress, and your recovery. I can dig into your personal life, only to help you. Nothing else. No form of intimacy is allowed. If Amelia gets wind of what happened, I could lose my job, and I do not want to lose this job, Miron. It’s almost everything I have left. What we did was wrong and against the codes of professional conduct guiding our relationship. It was unethical and should never repeat itself.”

Miron surprised me with a sudden burst of laughter, but it sounded as dry and empty as the look on his face. “Now you’re only repeating some shit from an actual textbook. We both know the reason you’ve been avoiding me is beyond these four walls.”

“And you’re right,” I snapped back. “There’s also Nathan to think about, remember? My boyfriend?”

“Jesus.” He brushed a hand down his face, frustration slowly seeping through the cracks of his barely composed facade. “That cheating idiot? You’re still thinking about him?”

“Eight years, Miron!” I whisper-shouted. “Eight long years! Don’t you understand? We were building a life together, a life I laid the foundations of. We made plans. We had goals. Being with Nathan has always been a very big deal to me. That’s not a joke. That is not something I can just walk away from. I cannot turn my back on him. Not right now. I know there’s a possibility that there is another…but Miron, it’s hard to just walk away. Nathan is all I’ve ever known.”

Miron’s jaw tightened, and he exhaled sharply through his nose. The frustration simmered, and he drummed his fingers on his thigh, his restraint unraveling.

“You know you have to leave him. You are only hurting yourself by staying.”

We had sex for one night, and now he cares if I’m hurting?

“It is not that simple. I’ve already explained it to you.” The room felt smaller, suffocating, but I stayed pinned to the edge of that desk. “We’ve been together so long, it feels safe.”

“Safe?” He came closer, leaned forward. “You call this safe? Being stuck, miserable, afraid to let go?”

I flinched. “I’m not miserable.”

“It sure as hell looks like it. And I don’t know why I’m finding it so fucking hard to pull away. You think you’re the only one with things on the line?”

“No, Miron!” I was trying so hard to keep myself from exploding. “Can’t you see? That’s another reason why that was a mistake. You’re engaged, for crying out loud. Promised to another. What we did…it’s only going to be a continued cycle of hurt, and I can’t stomach knowing that I caused another that kind of pain.”

His frustration sharpened, his fingers digging into his fists before he let them open again. “I should walk out of that door right now and ask Amelia for a better person. Someone who wouldn’t play with my head and mess it all up like you’re doing to me. Hazel, when I look at you, I can’t think straight. I can’t stop myself.”

For a while, all I could do was stare up at him, my heart pounding in my chest, my breath shallow. His presence was suffocating, and yet, I found myself unable to pull away, to create that emotional distance I so desperately needed.

He reached forward, and his fingers brushed against the edge of my hand, just a whisper of contact, and I felt a jolt of electricity shoot through me.

My breath hitched, my pulse spiked, and before I could stop myself, I found myself leaning in ever so slightly.

“I don’t want to need you like this,” he continued, his voice dropping to a near growl. “But I do.”

I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t move. I wanted to say something, to tell him again that this was wrong, that he was crossing a line, that I was here to help him, not to be pulled into whatever this was between us. But the words didn’t come. Instead, I sat frozen, feeling the weight of his gaze on me, the intensity of his feelings pressing against me.

And despite everything inside me screaming to stay professional, I couldn’t deny the flutter in my chest, the undeniable pull that his words had on me. I couldn’t ignore the way my body responded to the heat of his proximity, the raw need that simmered just beneath the surface of his controlled exterior.

I wanted to pull back, to regain control. But in that moment, I didn’t want to.

And that terrified me.

“I can’t stop thinking about you, Hazel. You’re all I think about since that night. And I don’t know how much longer I can keep it together.” Then, thankfully, he stepped back, his gaze lingering on me, almost too heavy, too intense.

I swallowed hard to find my voice, trying to steady myself, but my heart was racing, my thoughts a whirlwind. “Sex isn’t all there is to life, Miron, and you know it. It was one night, and that’s all we’d have. It is not happening again. A few months or a week down the line, you’ll realize that you’ve broken free from the euphoria of that moment. Or better yet, when you see your gorgeous wife walking down the aisle.”

He parted his lips and started to say something, a bunch of incoherent Russian, but suddenly stopped. And my iPad chose that exact moment to chime on the couch.

Building my courage, I sucked in a sharp breath, brushed past him, and picked up the ringing device. “Ten-thirty. Our time for today is up. Hopefully, we’ll see more progress on your charts in the near future. It wasn’t the smoothest session, but everything eventually comes to an end. Unfortunately, this is the end of yours.”

Miron’s eyes hardened. “And you want me to leave.”

If I blinked, I would cry. So, I flashed the most professional smile I could muster and gave a curt nod. “I want you to leave.”

He scoffed but didn’t argue, and in a flash, I saw his broad back disappear through the threshold before the door slammed shut. My resolve crumbled like stacks of wooden blocks, and the tears I’d been holding streamed down my face with no reserve.

Watching him walk away felt like a slow, agonizing tug on a drawstring, gradually tightening the knot of heartache and longing that had been crashing inside me. Deep down, I knew I wanted this man, more than any logic or rationality could explain.

And that scared me more than anything else.