CHAPTER 16: Therapy

POV: Avalon Pierce

Dr Morrison’s office feels different when you are alone in it.

Avalon sat on the singles chair in the room, but without Selene beside him, the space felt larger. More exposed.

“Tell me how you’re feeling,” Dr Morrison said, settling into her own chair with practised ease.

“Exhausted.”

“I meant emotionally.”

“That too.”

She smiled faintly. “Fair enough. Let’s start somewhere concrete. The board voted. How did that feel?”

Avalon leaned back, considering. “Like winning a battle I shouldn’t have had to fight.”

“Why ‘shouldn’t have’?”

“Because Marcus only had leverage because of my marriage. Because Selene’s past became a weapon. My relationship that should be private became a corporate strategy.”

“And whose fault is that?”

The question landed sharply.

“Marcus’s,” Avalon said.

“Anyone else’s?”

He knew where she was going. “Mine. For marrying someone I hadn’t seen in ten years. For not anticipating that Marcus would dig into her background. For—”

“Stop.” Dr Morrison held up a hand. “I’m not asking you to list your failures. I’m asking you to examine your relationship to control.”

“What about it?”

“You believe you should have controlled the outcome. Anticipated every variable. Protected Selene from scrutiny.” She leaned forward slightly. “But Avalon, you can’t control other people’s actions. Only your response to them.”

“If I’d been smarter—”

“If you’d been omniscient, maybe. But you’re not. You’re human. And humans make decisions with imperfect information.”

Avalon was quiet.

“Tell me about the miscarriage,” Dr Morrison said.

The shift was deliberate, he realised. She was peeling back layers.

“What about it?”

“How does it feel knowing Selene went through that alone?”

“Like I failed her.”

“How?”

“I should have known. Should have noticed she was pulling away. Should have fought harder to understand why.”

“You were twenty-two. You didn’t know she was pregnant. How could you have known what you weren’t told?”

“I could have tried harder.”

“Or,” Dr Morrison said gently, “Selene could have trusted you with the truth. Both things can be true.”

Avalon exhaled slowly.

“I keep going back to that time,” he admitted. “Replaying conversations, looking for signs I missed. Wondering if there was a moment I could have changed everything.”

“And if there was? If you’d known she was pregnant?”

“I would have been there. At the hospital, holding her hand and grieving with her.”

“Would you have stayed together?”

The question caught him off guard.

“I don’t know,” he said finally. “Maybe. Or maybe the grief would have torn us apart anyway. Maybe we would have resented each other. Maybe—”

“Maybe a lot of things,” Dr Morrison interrupted. “But you didn’t get that choice. Selene made it for you. How does that feel?”

“Like she didn’t trust me.”

“With what?”

“With her pain. With the truth. With our future.” His voice roughened. “She decided alone that I was better off not knowing. And I spent ten years hating her for a choice she made thinking she was protecting me.”

“And now?”

“Now I don’t know what I feel. Angry that she left. Grateful she’s back. Terrified, I'll lose her again. All of it at once.”

Dr Morrison made a note. “Let’s talk about fear. What specifically terrifies you about losing her?”

Avalon was quiet for a long moment.

“That I’ll finally let myself love her again,” he said softly, “and she’ll disappear. That I’ll tear down all these walls I’ve built, and she’ll decide I’m not worth staying for.”

“Has she given you reason to think that?”

“No. But she did once. And trauma doesn’t care about logic.”

“No. It doesn’t.” Dr Morrison set down her pen. “Avalon, you’ve spent ten years building an empire. Creating systems, anticipating risks, controlling variables. It’s made you enormously successful. But relationships don’t work that way.”

“I know that.”

“Do you? Because from where I’m sitting, you’re trying to engineer your relationship with Selene the way you’d engineer a product launch. Measure the risk, test the variables, protect yourself from failure.”

The observation hit harder than it should have.

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing, if you want a business partnership. Everything, if you want a marriage.”

Silence.

“Then what do I do?” Avalon asked.

“You sit with the fear. You acknowledge it. And then you make a choice—do you let that fear control you, or do you choose Selene anyway?”

“What if I choose her and she leaves?”

“What if you don’t choose her and spend the rest of your life wondering what you missed?”

Avalon closed his eyes.

There it was—the real fear underneath everything else.

Not that Selene would leave.

But that he’d push her away first, to prove he’d been right to build walls.

“I don’t know how to be vulnerable,” he admitted.

“Yes, you do. You’re doing it right now.” Dr Morrison’s voice softened. “Avalon, vulnerability isn’t weakness. It’s the foundation of intimacy. And intimacy is what you’re actually afraid of.”

“Why?”

“Because it requires trust. And the last time you trusted Selene with your heart, she disappeared.”

The words settled into the room like stones.

“So what do I do?” he asked again.

“You decide if the possibility of love is worth the risk of loss. And then you act accordingly.” She paused. “But I’ll tell you what I told Selene—forgiveness is a process. You don’t have to have all the answers today.”

“What if I never forgive her completely?”

“Then you decide on whether you can build a life with someone you haven’t fully forgiven. Some couples do. Some can’t.” Dr Morrison met his gaze. “But right now, you’re stuck between grief for what was and fear of what could be. Until you let go of one, you can’t fully embrace the other.”

Avalon sat with that.

Let go of the grief.

Easier said than done.

“I wrote the letter,” he said suddenly. “To Elena.”

Dr Morrison’s expression gentled. “How did that feel?”

“Impossible. Then necessary. Then—” He stopped. “Like I was meeting her for the first time and saying goodbye simultaneously.”

“That’s grief. Holding both loss and love at once.”

“I don’t know how to do that.”

“None of us do. We keep trying until it gets easier.” She glanced at the clock. “We’re almost out of time. But I want to leave you with something.”

“Okay.”

“You asked what you should do. Here’s my answer: stop trying to control the outcome. Stop engineering safety. Just be with Selene. Be honest. Be present. Be scared if you need to be. But be there.”

Avalon nodded slowly.

“And Avalon? The walls you’ve built? They kept you safe. But they’re also keeping you alone. At some point, you have to decide which is worse.”

He drove back to the penthouse in silence, Dr Morrison’s words circling in his mind.

Stop trying to control the outcome.

Just be there.

The penthouse was quiet when he arrived. Selene’s door was closed.

He should go to his own room. Should process the session alone.

Instead, he knocked.

“Come in.”

She was sitting on her bed, laptop open, probably working on something for the nonprofit she consulted for. She looked up, surprised.

“Hey. How was therapy?”

“Hard.” He stayed in the doorway. “Can we talk?”

“Of course.”

Selene closed her laptop and gave him her full attention.

Avalon took a breath.

“I’m scared,” he said.

Her expression softened. “Of what?”

“Of this. Of us. Of letting myself want something and losing it again.” He moved into the room and sat in the chair by her window. “Morrison says I’m trying to engineer our relationship. Control the variables. Protect myself from failure.”

“Are you?”

“Probably. It’s what I do. It’s how I survived losing you the first time.”

Selene was quiet for a moment. “And now?”

“Now I’m trying to figure out if I can let go of that control. Suppose I can… be with you. Without guarantees. Without knowing how it ends.”

“That’s terrifying.”

“Yeah.”

She smiled slightly. “Welcome to how I’ve felt for ten years.”

“Fair point.” Avalon exhaled. “I don’t have this figured out, Selene. I don’t know if I’ll ever fully forgive you. I don’t know if we can make this work. But I want to try. And that scares me more than anything.”

“Why?”

“Because wanting means hoping. And hope is how you get destroyed.”

Selene stood and slowly crossed to him. Sat on the arm of the chair.

“Hope is also how you heal,” she said quietly.

She was close enough that he could smell her shampoo—something citrus and clean. Could see the gold flecks in her brown eyes.

Could remember what it felt like to kiss her.

“I’m not ready,” he said.

“For what?”

“For this to be easy. For us to just fall back into what we were.”

“Good. Neither am I.” She reached out, hesitated, then let her hand rest on his shoulder. “But maybe we can figure out what we are now. Instead of what we were.”

Avalon covered her hand with his.

“Yeah,” he said. “Maybe we can.”

They sat like that for a while, not speaking, just existing in the same space.

It wasn’t forgiveness, neither was it love.

But it was something.

A foundation.

A beginning.

And for now, that was enough.