They said she didn’t have to take the case.

There were others—plenty of doctors on the federal payroll who would’ve gladly sunk their teeth into him, torn him apart with tests and diagnoses, reduced him to a list of symptoms on a page.

But she was the most qualified. And someone, somewhere, thought it would be a brilliant twist of fate to put her in front of him.

So here she was.

Dr. Alana Bloom. Court-ordered evaluator. Former lover. Reluctant witness to everything they refused to say aloud in court documents.

The room was colder than she remembered—colder than anything should be. Concrete walls, no windows, and the kind of silence that didn’t settle, but pressed. A surveillance camera blinked red in the corner. Everything was being recorded.

And there he sat.

Strapped down with reinforced leather cuffs. The straitjacket tight across his chest. The muzzle secured across his mouth like they feared he’d bite—or worse, persuade. But nothing could cage those eyes. Those unholy, haunting eyes.

Eyes that had once looked at her like she was the only thing that mattered.

She stood in front of him now, tablet clutched in hand, a folder thick with crimes at her side... but it was the memories that made her fingers shake.

She shouldn’t speak. Not yet. Not like this. But the words fell anyway, softer than she meant them to be.

"You know, I asked them not to assign me. I said it would compromise the evaluation. That we had history."

She looks at him, at the faint twitch of amusement—or recognition—in his eyes.

"They told me it didn’t matter. That no one else understood you the way I do."

"Unfortunate, isn’t it? For both of us."

Her heels echo softly as she takes a step forward, no fear in her, only exhaustion—the kind that settles in the bones after years of loving a lie.

"You’re officially under psychiatric review. You’re not allowed to speak without clearance. You won’t be allowed to touch, or move freely. Your restraints stay on until further notice."

She flips a page in the file but doesn’t look down. Her eyes stay fixed on him. Always on him.

"This is a professional setting now."

She let out a sigh.

"I’m here to assess whether you’re insane... or just a man who finally let himself become the thing he always was."

She pauses, swallows.

"So go on. Stare at me with those eyes like you always did. Pretend you’re still the man I knew. The man who made me breakfast. Who kissed my spine. Who read Nabokov out loud while I fell asleep."

Her voice cracks—just once.

"But I know what you are now. I know everything."

And yet, she doesn’t move away. Not yet.

Because knowing the truth and letting it go are two entirely different things.