Page 173 of Letters From A Stalker

The moment lingers between us for a beat before the silence settles again, carrying everything neither of us knows how to touch yet.

“She found you someone?” he asks after a while. “Mara, I mean.”

I nod. “Dr. Levin. I saw her for a few weeks. We tapered off, but I know I can go back if I need to.”

Relief moves openly across his face before he remembers he no longer gets to have an opinion about my therapy.

I almost smile. “You can be glad, Kai. I’m not going to report you for facial expressions.”

His mouth curves. “Good to know.”

I look at him for another second, taking in the man standing where both versions of him used to exist separately in my head, and then ask the question I have been waiting to ask since the moment I saw the motorcycle.

“How are you?” I want to know that more than anything.

“I’m okay.” The answer is careful enough that I raise an eyebrow.

“That sounded dangerously close to fine.”

Something familiar flickers through his eyes. “I was hoping you wouldn’t notice.”

“I learned from an annoyingly persistent psychiatrist.”

The smile he gives me is small, but real.

Then I ask, “How did it end with the Board?”

The change in him is immediate, though not defensive. He glances toward the ground before answering.

“I kept my license. I’m back at the practice.”

The relief that moves through me is stronger than I expect.

“I have conditions,” he continues. “For the first two weeks after I reopened, another physician had to be onsite while I was seeing patients. Now I meet with him once a month, he reviews my records, and the Board gets reports. I’m still going to therapy too.”

“For how long?”

“The supervision? Two years unless they decide otherwise.”

I nod slowly, letting the information settle.

“But you’re working again.”

“Yeah.” A single word tells me more than the rest did. His voice changes around it, something quiet and grateful moving underneath.

“I’m glad.” His eyes lift to mine. “I mean it. I know what you did to me was wrong, and none of this changes that, but you were good at what you did before you fucked everything up so spectacularly.”

A rough laugh escapes him, though there is almost no humor in it. “Fair.”

“You helped me, Kai.”

His expression stills.

“That was the part that took me the longest to make sense of afterward.” I pull one hand from my pocket and rub my thumb over my fingers, suddenly aware of how cold they are. “I kept going back through everything, trying to figure out where it became fake because you were Ghost too, and I couldn’t find it.”

He says nothing.

“The things you taught me didn’t stop being true just because you lied to me about something else. The way you cared when I was falling apart didn’t suddenly feel acted. Neither did the way you pushed me to stop apologizing for existing or to finally get angry at people who deserved it.”