The door clicks shut behind me, and I know she’s still there, robe open, shaking. Deciding whether to let me back in or bolt the locks for good. Either way, I’m not walking away this time.
Not without a fight.
Chapter 21 - Lila
I slip out of my apartment at six-thirty in the morning, moving through the pre-dawn darkness with the careful precision of someone who's learned that survival sometimes requires strategic retreat. Kent is still asleep in my guest bedroom—or at least pretending to be—sprawled across Egyptian cotton sheets that probably cost more than he spent on furniture for whatever anonymous life he built in my absence.
He came back last night with a single duffel bag and the kind of understated confidence that said he'd never doubted I'd let him stay. Knocked on my door like he belonged there, like the past nine years were just an inconvenient intermission rather than a fundamental shift in power dynamics.
And I'd opened the door, because despite everything—the anger, the abandonment, the careful walls I've built to protect myself from exactly this kind of vulnerability—I wanted him here.
That desire terrifies me more than any threat the copycat might represent.
The elevator ride to the parking garage gives me exactly ninety seconds to compose Dr. Lila North's professional mask, to bury the woman who spent half the night replaying the feel of his hands on her skin. By the time I slide behind the wheel of my BMW, I'm armed with the kind of clinical detachment that's made me successful at analyzing violent criminals without losing myself in their darkness.
Except Kent isn't just another case study. He's the man who taught me that love could have teeth and be no less true for it, who showed me that justice was anything but black andwhite. Having him back in my life—in my space, breathing my air, disrupting the careful equilibrium I've maintained for all this time—is like introducing a controlled substance into a closed system.
The effects are already starting to show.
The drive to my office takes twenty-three minutes through morning traffic that moves with the sluggish determination of a city waking up to another day of small compromises and buried secrets.
I use the time to catalog the ways Kent's presence has already begun to unravel my carefully constructed composure. The way I catch myself checking my reflection in the rearview mirror, noting details that matter only if someone else will be seeing me later. The way my pulse spikes when I think about going home tonight, about whatever game we'll continue playing in the space between professional necessity and personal destruction.
The way I can still feel where his heavy palm punished my breast last night, still feel the ache of an unaccomplished orgasm despite how many times I’d taken myself over the edge last night.
This is what I was dizzied by back then, though I didn't have the language to articulate it. Not that Kent would corrupt me or drag me into his darkness, but that I'd discover how much I wanted to be corrupted. How much I needed someone who could match my capacity for moral complexity, who could see the predator hiding beneath my professional credentials and find it beautiful rather than monstrous.
Dr. Lila North was supposed to be my shield against that kind of dangerous self-knowledge. Instead, she's become acostume I wear to hide from the truth about what I really am underneath all the degrees and institutional authority.
The medical complex where I maintain my practice rises from the morning mist like a monument to carefully controlled healing, all glass and steel and the kind of architectural neutrality that's supposed to make people feel safe about revealing their deepest pathologies. I park in my assigned space—15-C, matching my apartment number because I appreciate symmetry even in small details—and gather the files I'll need for this morning's consultations.
Professional obligations. Normal concerns. The kind of routine interactions that used to anchor me to something resembling stability before Kent Shepherd walked back into my life and reminded me that stability is just another word for stagnation.
My office is on the third floor, positioned to maximize privacy while maintaining the professional accessibility that clients expect from someone who specializes in understanding the minds of violent offenders. The space reflects the same careful curation as my apartment—expensive but not ostentatious, personal enough to suggest competence without revealing anything meaningful about the person who works here.
But this morning, sitting behind my desk with case files spread across the mahogany surface, I can't shake the feeling that the mask is slipping. That anyone who looks closely enough will see through Dr. Lila North's professional composure to the woman who spent last night letting a serial killer back into her bed.
Not literally. I had left him to sleep in the guest room without looking back, maintaining the careful boundaries. But metaphorically, emotionally, in all the ways that matter most,I've already let him back into spaces I had shut down so definitively when he’d left me.
My phone buzzes with a text message, and I check it expecting work-related communication. Instead, I find Kent's number—how the fuck did he get my personal number?—and a message that makes my pulse spike despite my determination to maintain professional distance:
Waiting when you get home. Don't work too late.
The casual domesticity of it hits harder than any grand romantic gesture. Because that's what I've been missing without even realizing it—someone who notices my patterns, who cares whether I take care of myself, who assumes they have the right to be concerned about my wellbeing.
Someone who makes my apartment feel like home instead of just another carefully constructed sanctuary.
I delete the message without responding, because acknowledging it would mean admitting how much I want exactly what he's offering. How much I've missed having someone who sees through my professional armor to the woman underneath, who isn't intimidated by my success or put off by my capacity for moral complexity.
How much I need him, despite everything that should make that need impossible.
A knock on my door interrupts my increasingly dangerous thoughts, and I look up to see Casey's face peering through the frosted glass. Her auburn hair is pulled back in its usual messy bun, and she's holding two coffee cups with the kind of eager energy that suggests she's been waiting to share something important.
"Please tell me you have time for actual human interaction," she says, pushing through the door with the casualconfidence of someone who's earned the right to interrupt. "Because I've been analyzing those crime scene photos all night, and I think I found something weird."
Casey Holbrook is the closest thing I have to a normal friendship, built on shared professional interests and the kind of easy camaraderie that develops between people who work adjacent to violence without losing their humanity. She's smart, observant, completely unaware that her casual rule-bending has been protecting a killer for the past several weeks.
The irony would be funny if it weren't so potentially devastating.
