Alle Kapitel von SHE WAS NEVER HIS MISTRESS : Kapitel 151 – Kapitel 159

VIVIAN’S POVI had been a therapist for eleven years. And in all that time I had never once crossed a professional line. Not in thought, not in behavior, not even in the quiet of my own apartment after a long week. I built my entire practice on the belief that a therapeutic relationship required complete integrity or it became something harmful to the person who came to me most vulnerable.I knew the signs of transference. I knew how to spot when a patient was developing feelings and how to address it without making them feel ashamed. I had navigated that before and I was good at it.What I had not navigated before was this. Dominic. I sat at my desk after Dominic’s Thursday session with his file open in front of me. I was not reading it. I was thinking about something he said three weeks ago about his mother. About the fact that he had been arriving eight minutes early for the past six sessions and I had started looking at the waiting room clock wishing time passed quickly to get to

DOMINIC’S POVFor two weeks I had been careful. I arrived exactly on time instead of eight minutes early. I kept my answers shorter and more focused on what I was doing rather than how I was feeling. When Vivian asked how something landed with me, I gave her the practical version instead of the one that would have required me to sit in the room with her as a person instead of a therapist. I knew what I was doing. I knew it was avoidance. And I knew she had noticed it too.Last Thursday she had asked, in that calm way of hers, if something had shifted. I told her I was processing some things privately and she accepted it without pushing. That was the correct therapeutic response. It was also what made everything harder.I booked today’s session knowing what I was going to do. I arrived on time, sat in the same chair I always sat in, and waited for her to settle across from me. The room looked the same. It always looked the same. I was the one who had changed.We started the way we usua

DOMINIC’S POVDr. James Sterling’s office felt different from the one I had left behind. The walls had warmer colors. More books lined the shelves, a large plant sat in the corner, its leaves reaching toward the window like it had been there for years. James himself was fifty-two. He moved with the kind of stillness that came from decades of sitting with other people’s difficult truths without being shaken by them. I sat down across from him and felt the weight of starting over.This was my first session with him. I had transferred because I needed a different approach. I told him that much. I said I felt the previous work had reached a point where I needed fresh eyes on things. James nodded without pressing for more details. He simply asked me to tell him what I hoped to work on.I talked about the patterns I had been fighting. I told him about Aria and how I got obsessed. About how I had turned love into control and scared her. I used plain language because he was a stranger and str

DOMINIC’S POVThree days had passed since that last session with James and his words would not leave me alone. I kept hearing him say that fear of my own feelings was not the same as healthy self awareness. I had spent the last three days walking around my penthouse and asking myself the same questions again and again. Was I really different now? Or was I just delaying the same mistakes with a different face?The doorbell rang and pulled me out of my thoughts. I opened the door and found Mia standing there with two bags of groceries in her hands.“Hi Mia… what… what are you doing here?” I asked.“I have come to cook for my brother,” she said, stepping inside without waiting for an invitation.“Mia, I am fine. I can cook for myself.”“I know you can but I want to. Let me take care of you would ya?”She walked straight to the kitchen and started unpacking. I followed her and helped put things away. We moved around each other the way we used to when we were younger. For a while we worke