The Billionaire's Fake Fiancée Fell Asleep

Dr. Zara Chen's rule about crying was simple: don't. She wasn't crying now. The watering eyes were allergies. The tight throat was dehydration. The urge to scream into her coffee was just Tuesday. "Dr. Chen?" The man in her doorway was tall, rumpled, visibly vibrating. Hair sticking up at impossible angles. Suit expensive and unpressed. Eyes bloodshot. Coffee cup trembling. "You're late," Zara said. "Mr. Vance, our appointment was 2:30. It's 2:47." "Time is a construct." He smiled, unexpectedly charming. "Also your building has seventeen floors and none of the elevators go to all of them. Metaphor for capitalism." "It's a medical building." "Exactly." He collapsed into her client chair, legs sprawling, coffee sloshing. "Capitalism." Zara checked her watch, her bank account, her rapidly deteriorating patience. Leo Vance. Tech billionaire. Insomniac. The retainer from his company would solve 73% of her financial problems—if she could actually help him. "When did your insomnia begin?" "Birth." He sipped his coffee, winced. "Cold. When did your machine break?" "I don't offer coffee. Caffeine interferes with treatment." "Barbaric." "Your intake form says seventy-two hours without sleep. Accurate?" "Approximately. I lose track after forty-eight." He waved a hand. "Everything becomes fluid. Time, space, appropriate comments." "Medication?" "Ambien made me buy a boat. I don't sail. Don't even like water." He shrugged. "There's a lawsuit. Lawyers are fluid." Zara wrote: Medication contraindicated. Impulse control issues. "Baseline sleep pattern?" "Four hours. Good nights. With alcohol." Something flickered beneath the charm. Tired. Scared. "I'm twenty-nine. Running on four hours and spite since sixteen. Built a billion-dollar company on caffeine and the delusion that rest is for people who aren't changing the world." "And now?" "Now I can't sleep at all. The world changes without me." He looked at his trembling hands. "Board thinks I'm unstable. Competitors smell blood. And I—" broken laugh, "—I just want to close my eyes and not see equations. Not see everything I haven't done." Zara set down her pen. This was why she'd become a sleep therapist. Not prestige. This moment. Human to human. "I can help you sleep," she said quietly. "But you have to want it. Really want it. Not as achievement. As need." "I don't know how to be vulnerable." He whispered it. "Don't know how to want things I might not get." "Then we'll learn together." She pulled out the contract. Standard terms, six weeks, twice weekly. But Leo was staring at her bookshelf. At framed photos—graduation, sister's wedding, parents in happier times. "You're alone," he said. Observational, not accusatory. "In all of them. Even surrounded by people, you're alone." Zara's throat tightened. The rule. The armor. The loneliness of competence. "Mr. Vance—" "Leo." "—inappropriate." "Probably." He signed without reading, handed it back, stood with grace that shouldn't exist on zero sleep. "But I'm paying triple your rate, so I get one inappropriate observation per session. Today's: you're alone. Tomorrow's: excellent taste in pens." At the door, he paused. Looked back. The real smile, not the performance. "Dr. Chen?" "Yes?" "I think this is going to be interesting." The door closed. Zara sat in silence, surrounded by photographs that suddenly looked like evidence, and felt something she hadn't felt in years. She felt awake. [End Chapter 1]