Wildfire

Chapter 4

Monday felt like waking into a dream. Lauren stood before Dr. Winters' office building again, but something was different. The morning light hit the glass and steel differently, casting shadows that seemed to reach for her. Even the revolving doors moved with an eagerness she hadn't noticed before.

The elevator ride was exactly the same - thirty-five floors of anticipation. Yet when the doors opened, the reception area felt warmer somehow. Sarah's perfect smile carried a knowing edge.

"Dr. Winters is ready for you," she said, without Lauren having to check in. As if she'd been expected. Waited for.

The hallway of identical white doors seemed shorter today. Or maybe she was just more prepared for its pristine emptiness. The last door on the right opened before she reached it.

"Lauren." His voice was different too - still precise, still controlled, but with an undertone she couldn't quite place. "Please, come in."

Dr. Winters stood by the windows, Manhattan spread out behind him like a backdrop he'd arranged precisely for this moment. The wire-rimmed glasses were gone. His white shirt caught the morning sun, making him appear almost luminous against the city's glass and steel.

When he turned to face her fully, his smile carried none of Thursday's clinical distance. "I trust the weekend was... interesting?"

Lauren's pulse quickened. How much did he know about the manuscript pages? The shifting reflections? The way reality had begun to bend around anything connected to him?

His eyes held hers, waiting. Patient. Hungry.

"Interesting," Lauren echoed, taking the same chair as before. The leather felt warmer today, more inviting. "That's one way to describe it."

"Tell me." He sat across from her, his posture still perfect but somehow less rigid than Thursday. No notepad today, no pen. No glasses to catch impossible light. Just his undivided attention, as if she were the only person in his carefully curated world.

Lauren hesitated. How to explain the manuscript pages that read themselves? The rippling reflections? The way his text messages appeared and disappeared?

"The weekend was..." she searched for words that wouldn't make her sound completely unhinged. "Unexpected."

"In what way?" His voice carried the same authority, but softer now, wrapped in something that felt almost like intimacy. When she didn't immediately respond, he added, "You're wondering if you should maintain your professional persona here. If you should edit your experience into something more... acceptable."

The gentle accuracy of his observation made her breath catch. "How do you always know?"

"I pay attention, Lauren." The way he said her name had changed too - less clinical, more... something else. "To what you say. To what you don't say. To how carefully you choose your words, even now."

She found herself leaning forward slightly, drawn by this subtle shift in him. "Things are happening that I can't explain. That I'm not sure I should try to explain."

"Because explaining makes it real?" His smile held understanding that bordered on conspiracy. "Or because you're afraid I'll stop seeing you if you tell me exactly how reality has begun to... bend?"

Lauren's pulse quickened. There it was - that moment of perfect comprehension that had drawn her to his videos. But in person, without the barrier of screens and glasses, it felt more powerful. More dangerous.

"The walls between what's real and what we create," he continued, his voice dropping lower, "they're not as solid as most people think. As I suspect you're discovering."