Page 159 of Dishonored

Still she managed to turn the tables.

She was always doing that to him.

“Marry me, mia cara donna.”

Breathless, trembling, and barely able to breathe with his hand still tight around her throat, she whispered, “On one condition, il mio tiranno.”

This was the condition.

This therapy.

This couch.

This woman.

Twice a week, it never failed, even on his goddamn wedding day because that was just how the fucking appointments landed. It didn’t matter. He still needed to come, and face this woman for at least an hour. He had to spill his darkest secrets, and bare his tar-black soul.

It hurt.

It was vicious.

It left him raw.

Caesar told Amber things he had only ever told Aria, but here, it was different. Here, he had no relationship with his therapist that muddied up the waters. Here, he was not fucking her or loving her like he did Aria.

“I know Aria trusts me,” Caesar said, coming back into their earlier conversation again. “And that’s why I come here, Amber. I did this for her—I continue to come for me. I don’t think for one second that a couple of months of this is going to rewire the shit in my brain that’s made me the way I am.”

“But?” his therapist pressed.

“But here I am—I want to be here.”

Even if it was his fucking wedding day.

Even if he could be doing literally anything else.

Here he was.

Amber set her paper pad and pen aside before folding her hands in her lap. “And on my other question—what do you have to say for that?”

Caesar sighed, and rested back in the chair. “What, how I go into sex with her?”

“That, yes. And how you still view it—is it still inherently shameful for you, or to be used as a way to harm someone else even if you’re doing none of those things during sex?”

“You are getting close to my line.”

His one do not cross in all of this was Aria.

And sex with her.

He didn’t—and would not—bring their sex life into this fucking mess. He had brought their sexual activities into his mess more than enough, and it wasn’t going to happen again.

“Caesar, you know that’s not what I’m asking,” Amber said.

“Maybe not, but it feels like it.”

“Give me an answer, Caesar. So, then you can go into today and beyond this day knowing. And maybe you can feel like Aria knows it, too.”

Fine.