Chapter 315: Relationship Therapy
Leo
THREE WEEKS LATER,
"So tell me, what do you find attractive in Miller as a partner?"
The island couple treaty therapist pointed the tip of her pen directly toward me. She rested her elbow on her knee, leaning slightly forward, waiting with an aggravating amount of patience to hear what I had to say.
It had been exactly three weeks since we first arrived at SFE, and this was already my third individual session with the specialist assigned to us.
The entire concept of this place was supposed to help Enigmas understand their partners better, but after only three weeks, I was thoroughly fed up with walking into this office.
It felt like a repetitive, exhausting loop. Every single session, she asked the exact same questions using slightly different phrasing, as if she were desperately digging for a specific, dark answer that I had no intention of giving her.
"You asked me this two days ago, Pamela," I said, lifting a hand to rub the bridge of my nose where a dull ache was beginning to form.
Pamela nodded smoothly, completely unbothered by my irritation. "And your response then was entirely centered on his personality and his physical attraction—specifically his physique, if I recall my notes correctly."
I shrugged my shoulders, leaning back against the cushions. "What more do you want from me after I already finished answering all of your questions? There is nothing else to uncover, Pamela. I was physically attracted to Miller’s personality, and I like the way he looks. What else do you want me to say to satisfy the prompt?"
Pamela chuckled softly. She didn’t write anything down immediately; instead, she just stared at me for a long, quiet moment, observing the tension in my jaw and the way I crossed my arms.
Once she finished analyzing me, a small, knowing smile broke across her face.
"How deep is your connection with him?" she asked. It was the exact same heavy question she had dropped on me a week ago hours ago.
I heaved a deep, ragged sigh before responding, staring past her at the modern decor of the room. "I believe that Miller and I have a very deep connection. A permanent one. We are meant to be together, and nothing about that feels superficial to me."
"But the issue of marriage scares you, right?" she added seamlessly.
I shifted uncomfortably in my seat, the sudden weight of dread spreading through my chest like cold lead. The word alone made my stomach turn.
I could still vividly remember Miller bringing it up while we were riding the transport buggy through the camouflaged paths to SFE. The look on his face, the casual weight of the topic—it had haunted me all week.
"Yes, it does," I admitted, my voice dropping.
"And why is that?"
"Because I don’t want to become like my father."
"Who hated you for being an Enigma?" Pamela questioned immediately. She looked down at her notepad, her pen hovering over the paper as if she were about to scribble down a massive breakthrough. But she didn’t write a single word. Instead, she just kept her eyes locked on me, beckoning with a slight tilt of her head for me to expand on the wound.
I ran a frustrated hand through my hair, which was already getting long and full from weeks of letting it grow, and aggressively straightened the stiff collar of my leather jacket before responding. "I believe that I already answered that in detail during our first intake."
"And I am asking again because you just gave a one-syllable, defensive answer the last time we attempted this conversation, Leo. Do you think that your father played a major role in how you currently perceive yourself as an Enigma?"
"I..."
I stuttered like a complete fool, my mouth hanging open slightly as I tried to find the right words to deflect her. But the words wouldn’t come because, deep down, I knew Pamela was completely right.
It was infuriating.
I did, in fact, perceive my secondary gender as a curse because my father had hated my absolute guts for what I was.
"Leo," she called out, her voice sharp enough to snap my drifting gaze back to her face. "I believe that you are already beginning to spiral. Now is not the moment for that. Just give me the answers at your own pace."
"At my pace?" I let out a bitter, hollow chuckle, adjusting my glasses. "That man has been dead for over a decade and more, and still, I sit here and let him control my cognitive functions. It’s an executive dysfunction—a psychological phantom limb. The neural pathways associated with that past trauma trigger a chronic hyper-cortisol response, essentially hijacking my amygdala. It traps the brain in a loop of perceived threat, rendering my cognitive functions completely paralyzed because the subconscious is terrified that any assertion of my dominant nature will inevitably result in collateral damage to the people closest to me. I am fundamentally afraid that if I try to take control, I will hurt him."
Pamela gave me a highly clinical, questioning look, processing what I had said before she nodded in agreement.
"A classic psychosomatic response," Pamela countered, matching my terminology with her own breakdown.
"That specific trauma directly impairs the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, which is the exact part of your brain that controls your emotional regulation, executive decision-making, and self-perception. Until you actively begin to rewrite those neural pathways, consciously deconstruct that conditioning from your head, and see yourself as a great, worthy partner—an Enigma who deserves love—you will continue to fall into that cognitive nightmare over and over again."
I rubbed my face with both hands, letting out a breath I felt like I’d been holding for years, and rested my head back against the couch. "I love Miller so much. But the idea of being legally married to him, of spending the absolute rest of my life bound to him, is overwhelming. I am terrified that one day the Council might find out about the Enigmas hiding out there. If they take me away from him, how would he be able to live his life then? There is no way he would survive that kind of isolation or heartbreak."