She held Sienna close and watched the light change and didn't move.
15
SIENNA
Helen's office was on the second floor of a sandstone building three blocks back from the waterfront, above a physiotherapy clinic and a bookshop that smelled of coffee and old paper. Sienna had walked past it dozens of times without going in. She'd known the office was there, known it was available, known that Helen had told her more than once that her door was always open.
She'd never opened it.
The drive across town had taken twelve minutes. She'd counted the traffic lights. Four green, two red, one amber she'd accelerated through because sitting still felt impossible. Her hands had gripped the steering wheel at ten and two, knuckles white, as she used to hold her tennis racquet before a serve, and her mouth had been dry the entire drive. She'd parked in the small lot behind the building, turned off the engine, and sat in the car for another six minutes, watching a cat doze on the bonnet of a silver hatchback in the next space.
Then she'd gone inside.
The waiting area was small and painted a warm grey. Two armchairs, a low table with a jug of water and two glasses, aframed print of the coastline that could have been anywhere. No receptionist. Helen ran her own practice, saw her own clients, managed her own diary. Sienna sat in the armchair closest to the window and pressed her hands flat against her thighs and tried to stop her knee from bouncing.
She had never sat in a therapist's waiting room before. Not as a patient. She'd referred athletes to sports psychologists, discussed treatment protocols with Helen over coffee, read clinical literature on cognitive behavioural therapy and trauma-informed care with the same detached interest she brought to any professional development. But she had never been on this side of the door. The side where you were the one with the problem.
The problem. She turned the word over in her head, examining it as she'd examine an X-ray, looking for the fracture line. What was the problem, exactly? That she'd slept with a patient? That the sex had been so overwhelming she'd cried in front of another person for the first time in twenty years? That she'd woken up in Elise Moreno's bed with the morning light on her skin and the taste of Elise still in her mouth and the terrifying, absolute certainty that she was falling in love with someone she was supposed to be treating?
All of the above.
She'd left Elise's apartment late yesterday morning, after breakfast, after more kissing, after standing at the door unable to stop touching Elise's face while saying goodbye. She'd driven home in a daze and showered and stood under the water for twenty minutes staring at the tiles. Then she'd picked up her phone and texted Helen.
_Can I book a session? A proper one. Not coffee._
Helen had replied within minutes. _Tomorrow at ten. I'll clear the slot._
No questions. No surprise. Helen had probably been waiting for this text for months.
The office door opened. Helen stood in the doorway in her usual uniform, dark trousers, grey cardigan, the chin-length dark hair threaded with silver framing a face that was calm and watchful. She smiled.
"Come in."
Sienna stood. Her legs were unsteady, which was absurd. She performed examinations on professional athletes. She'd relocated shoulders and stitched lacerations and made split-second calls on concussion protocols while twenty thousand people watched. She could walk through a door.
She walked through the door. Her palms were damp and she wiped them against her trousers, a nervous habit she thought she'd trained out of herself years ago on the junior tennis circuit in San Diego.
Helen's office was simple. Two armchairs facing each other at a slight angle, a desk by the window that she clearly didn't use during sessions, a bookshelf, a box of tissues on the side table. The window overlooked a narrow lane planted with sweet olive, the apricot scent drifting in through the cracked glass. Sienna sat down and placed her hands in her lap and folded her fingers together because otherwise she would start picking at the hem of her shirt.
Helen sat in the opposite chair. She didn't have a notepad. She wasn't recording anything. She crossed one leg over the other and regarded Sienna with an expression of gentle attention.
"So," Helen said. "You're here."
"I'm here."
"What brought you?" A pause. "And before we start, I know this is unusual. Me being your friend and doing this. If you'dprefer someone else, I have colleagues I trust. But if it’s me you want, that’s fine.”
"I'd rather it was you," Sienna said.
"Good. Then let's talk."
Sienna opened her mouth and closed it again. She'd rehearsed this in her car, sitting in the car park, running through the words she would use. Clinical words. Clean words. Words that would explain the situation without exposing the rawness underneath. She'd had the sentences ready.
They disintegrated the moment Helen looked at her.
"I've been sleeping with Elise," Sienna said. The words came out flat and bare and nothing like the careful explanation she'd planned.
Helen's expression didn't change. The same calm regard, the same slight tilt of her head.