Chapter 10 | Dangerous Pull
1523 Words
Leona’s POV
Tuesday arrived under a blanket of gray skies and cold rain, as if the world itself mirrored the heaviness inside me.
Sleep had been a stranger the night before. The nightmares violent and vivid had dragged me down into darkness so deep I woke tangled in sweat-soaked sheets, throat raw from screaming into the silence.
Marion had rushed to my side, eyes full of concern, but I’d brushed it off. Just dreams. Always just dreams.
Sitting in Dr. Volkov’s waiting room now, I chewed on the idea of telling him everything the dark storage room, the biting concrete, the screams that clawed at my mind. But I’d always skirted the edges of my past with him, revealing fragments without exposing the whole.
The door swung open, and there he was, framed in the dim light. No suit jacket today just a pristine white shirt, sleeves rolled up to reveal strong forearms dusted with dark hair. The expensive watch gleamed against his skin, catching the faint glow of the office lamp.
His slicked-back hair sharpened the angles of his face, and those amber eyes intense and piercing locked on me immediately.
“Leona,” he said, my name sliding off his tongue with that velvet accent. “Please come in.”
I took my usual seat, knees instinctively pulling up before I forced them down, feet flat on the floor a habit born of stress, a silent signal that I was scared.
He settled across from me, movements smooth and deliberate.
“How has the transition been?” His gaze searched me like he was peeling back layers. “To Marion’s home?”
“Good,” I said, surprised by the truth. “Her place is clean and quiet. She doesn’t ask too many questions.”
He nodded slowly. “And your sleep?”
My body tensed as if the question had reached inside me. “What about it?”
A slow smile played at the corners of his lips. “You have shadows under your eyes. You still have many nightmares?”
I stared down at my hands palms marked raw from my nails digging in. “Yes.”
“Tell me about them.”
The resistance flared up like a wall. But his gaze steady, patient, unyielding won the battle.
“They’re always the same,” I whispered. “The dark room. The cold floor. The sounds…” My throat tightened. “The screams.”
He leaned back, crossing one leg over the other the movement casual but somehow commanding.
“This dark room,” he said quietly. “It was in one of your foster homes?”
I nodded, words catching in my throat.
“I think it’s time we discussed this more thoroughly.” His eyes didn’t waver from mine. “Your journal says your parents died when you were an infant. Suicide, correct?”
“Yeah,” I breathed. “Together. They couldn’t handle the debt collectors. At least that’s what the note said.”
“And afterward, you entered the system.”
His words were a statement, not a question.
I nodded.
“How many homes?”
“Seven,” I answered. “The last one was when I was fifteen. That’s where I stayed until I aged out.”
His eyes narrowed, a flicker of something unreadable crossing them. “And before that? When you were twelve or thirteen?”
My heart thundered, panic prickling at my skin. How did he know to ask about that exact time?
“There was a home,” I whispered. “With a man named Roy.”
He sat still, jaw tightening just slightly. “Tell me about Roy.”
I took a breath, then another, as the words spilled out slow and painful.
“He was cruel. The house was cold and dirty. We never had enough food. And he—”
I stopped, throat closing around the memories.
“He hurt you?” His voice was gentle but carried a hard edge beneath it.
“Not me,” I said fast. “But the others. Their screams at night…”
“And you?”
I wrapped my arms around myself, shivering despite the warmth. “He locked me in a storage room. No light, no bed. Just cold concrete. Sometimes for days.”
“Because you refused him?”
I nodded, eyes refusing to meet his. “He said everything had a price. Food, blankets, water… and the price was always the same.”
“To let him f**k you.”
A silence hung between us, heavy and suffocating.
“But you never paid.”
“No. I wouldn’t. I went hungry. Cold instead.”
He was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke again, his voice dropped, thick with accent and something deeper danger, perhaps.
“This Roy… is he still alive?”
The question hit me like a punch.
“I don’t know. I never looked him up.”
Something flickered in his eyes calculating, sharp. It should have scared me, but instead, it made me feel… protected.
“And these nightmares?”
“Every night.”
“Do you feel unsafe at Marion’s?”
“No,” I said honestly. “It’s not that. It’s like… no matter where I go, the past won’t let me go. I can’t feel safe anywhere.”
He uncrossed his legs, the movement drawing my attention.
He leaned forward, knees nearly brushing mine.
Heat radiated off him, a wildfire licking my skin.
My breath caught, shivers racing down my spine.
At this close, I could see the amber flecks in his eyes, the faint laugh lines, the stories they told.
There was power in him a quiet command that didn’t ask permission.
I swallowed hard, trying to focus on anything but the way the air between us thickened with tension.
He was older. Ten years, maybe more.
But none of that mattered when his warmth pulled at me like a magnet, a flame drawing in a moth.
“Safety isn’t fleeting, Leona,” he murmured, pulling me from my thoughts. “Not when you’re with someone who can truly protect you.”
There was possessiveness in his tone, a dark promise that made my pulse quicken.
This wasn’t therapy as I’d known it.
I wanted to pull away, but I couldn’t.
“Is that what you do?” My voice was barely audible. “Protect people?”
A slow smile curved his lips, but his eyes stayed dark. “Among other things.”
The silence that followed was thick with unspoken things.
He rolled his sleeve up higher, revealing a thin scar tracing his wrist beneath the shirt cuff.
“These nightmares,” he said, voice low and steady, “are your mind trying to heal a wound too deep to see. What happened to you was a betrayal a theft of your trust, your safety, your childhood.”
“Will they ever stop?” I whispered, hating how vulnerable I sounded.
“Yes,” he said, with iron certainty. “With time. And the right… intervention.”
His last word hung in the air, weighted with meaning.
“I tried medication,” I said quietly. “It didn’t help.”
“I’m not talking about medicine.” His gaze held mine like a tether. “Some wounds demand a more… personal approach.”
“What kind?”
He smiled, slow and knowing. “First, we find the source of your fear. Not just Roy. Not just the room. But what they mean to you.”
“Like what?”
“Trust.”
“You need to trust again.”
“To place yourself in someone else’s hands completely.”
The weight of his words settled between us.
“I don’t know if I can.”
“You already are.”
Suddenly, his fingers wrapped around my wrist, warm and firm.
His thumb pressed gently against my pulse.
“Your heart races, yet you don’t pull away. Why?”
I couldn’t answer. Words failed me, drowned beneath the heat of his touch.
“Because,” he whispered, voice thick with promise, “somewhere inside, you know what you need. Who you need.”
The line between patient and doctor vanished.
Raw. Dangerous. Electric.
I knew I should move. Run.
But I stayed.
His fingers lingered on my wrist, my pulse pounding beneath his skin, butterflies fluttering in my belly.
“Our time is almost up,” he said, voice calm, but the clock hadn’t chimed.
Slowly, he released my wrist, fingers tracing along my palm as he withdrew.
“For next time,” he said, “think about trust. What it means to you. Who you’ve given it to and what it cost you.”
I nodded, speechless.
He rose with me, towering over my smaller frame.
The difference in our sizes had never been so real—his broad shoulders blotting out the window light, casting me in shadow.
“I should go…” I whispered.
He nodded but didn’t move away.
“Until Friday, then.”
“Friday,” I echoed—our fragile ritual.
- Writer
