Chapter Three: The Session
1369 Words
Selene’s POV
I didn’t sleep that night.
Not because I wasn’t tired—but because every time I closed my eyes, I saw his.
That intense look he gave me—it felt like it could see right through every wall I’d built to protect myself.
It wasn’t the look of someone confused or trying to recall something.
It was the look of someone who already knew the truth… just waiting for me to say it out loud.
The sound of wind whistling against the glass walls of my quarters filled the silence. The mountains outside looked peaceful under the morning light, but the peace felt… fake. Manufactured. Like everything in this place.
The file said Damien Voss had suffered a neurological breakdown after collapsing during a live investor conference. He had blacked out for seventy-two hours. When he woke, three days of his life were gone—erased like someone had sliced them clean out of time.
No one could explain it.
Not even him.
But after what I saw in that room… the way he looked at me… I wasn’t sure I wanted to find out.
When I entered his room for the second session, he was already waiting.
No clipboard this time. No staring out the window.
Just him—sitting in that same chair, completely still, hands pressed together under his chin like someone getting ready for battle.
The tension was immediate.
You could practically taste it in the air.
“Morning, Mr. Voss,” I said carefully. “How are you feeling today?”
He didn’t answer right away. His eyes drifted up to meet mine, and I swear I felt that gaze inside my chest.
“I didn’t expect you to come back,” he said finally, his voice smooth—too smooth.
“I’m your therapist,” I replied evenly. “It’s my job to come back.”
He smiled faintly, a small, humorless curve of his lips. “Is that what you tell all your patients, or just me?”
My pulse flickered. He was testing me again—probing for cracks. Every word he spoke felt deliberate, calculated. Like a game of chess where I didn’t yet understand the rules.
I sat across from him, crossing one leg over the other, careful to maintain the calm, professional posture that used to come so easily to me.
It didn’t anymore. Not with him.
“Tell me about the blackout,” I said, keeping my tone light. “What’s the last thing you remember before it happened?”
He leaned back in his chair, his eyes never leaving mine.
“Do you really want to know,” he said slowly, “or are you just doing what they told you to do?”
“I’m here to help you remember,” I said, but my voice didn’t sound as steady as I wanted it to.
“Interesting,” he murmured, “because I get the feeling you’re here to make sure I don’t.”
The silence that followed felt alive.
I could hear the faint hum of the ventilation system, the rhythm of his breathing, the faint ticking of my pen in my hand. He was watching everything—every movement, every flicker of my expression.
He wanted to see what would make me flinch.
But I didn’t.
Not yet.
“Mr. Voss—”
“Damien,” he interrupted, his voice low. “You should call me Damien.”
I hesitated. “That’s not—”
“Professional?” he finished, his tone edged with something dark. “Neither is pretending you’ve never met me before.”
My chest tightened.
“Damien,” I said quietly, “we’ve never met before your admission here.”
He chuckled softly, there was nothing funny about it. “You’re a terrible liar, Dr. Ward.”
My throat went dry. He said it with such calm certainty that for a split second, I almost doubted myself. Almost.
I forced my tone to steady. “Why do you believe we’ve met before?”
He leaned forward slightly, his elbows on his knees. His eyes darkened, their intensity pulling me in against my will.
“Because I remember the sound of your voice,” he said. “And the way it trembled when you said my name.”
I felt my heart slam against my ribs. “You could be confusing me with someone else—”
“No,” he said sharply, cutting me off. “I know what I heard. I know what I felt.”
The air between us changed again—charged, electric. I could feel it buzzing in my fingertips, coiling low in my stomach. It wasn’t supposed to feel like this. Therapy wasn’t supposed to feel like this.
“You were there,” he whispered, his tone soft but unrelenting. “In that house. The villa with the red chair. You spoke to me. You told me to forget.”
My hands tightened around the pen.
There was no possible way he could know that. That detail wasn’t in his file. It wasn’t anywhere.
Only I—and the agency that sent me—knew about that night.
“How do you know about the villa?” I asked quietly.
He smiled. “So it’s real.”
Damn it.
He rose from his seat, taking a slow, deliberate step toward me. I stood too, instinctively, though I wasn’t sure if it was out of defense or something else entirely.
The space between us shrank, and suddenly, I could smell him—clean, crisp, like cedar and something faintly metallic, expensive. His presence filled the room, consuming it.
“I found the footage,” he said. “A fragment from the clinic’s security archives. They tried to erase it, but not well enough. I decrypted it myself.”
My mouth went dry. “And what did you see?”
He tilted his head slightly. “You.”
The word landed like a drop of ink in water—spreading fast, staining everything.
For a moment, neither of us spoke. My pulse was thundering in my ears, and I was suddenly very aware of how close we were standing.
“Damien,” I said, forcing a calm that didn’t exist, “I need you to understand that memory can be deceptive after trauma—”
He laughed softly, shaking his head. “You keep saying that like it’s going to make me believe it.”
His voice dropped, low and dangerous. “You think I’m imagining you? That I invented the way you looked at me in that chair?”
He stepped closer—close enough that I had to tilt my chin to meet his gaze.
I could feel his breath now, warm against my skin.
For a terrifying, breathless second, I didn’t move.
Then—
“I think this session is over,” I said quickly, taking a step back, my voice more brittle than I wanted it to sound.
But he didn’t argue.
He just watched me.
Studied me.
And in that silence, I knew exactly what he was thinking.
He was right.
Something did happen during those seventy-two hours.
Something I couldn’t tell him.
Something I wasn’t supposed to remember either.
When I reached my quarters that night, I locked the door behind me and pressed my back against it, trying to breathe.
The storm outside had grown worse, the snow thick against the windows, the wind howling like something wild.
I went to my drawer, pulling out the thin, metallic device they’d given me when I arrived—a communicator linked to the agency. I pressed my thumb to the screen, and it flickered to life with static.
“Report,” a voice demanded. Cold. Detached.
I hesitated. “He’s remembering.”
There was silence on the other end. Then:
“How much?”
“Too much,” I whispered.
Another pause. “Then you know what you need to do, Dr. Ward.”
I closed my eyes, gripping the device tightly.
I didn’t answer.
Because deep down, I already knew what that meant.
If Damien Voss kept remembering…
He wouldn’t just destroy himself.
He’d destroy me too.
- Writer
