"I can't do this."
The words left Brianna Sparks's lips not as a statement, but a fractured plea, a whisper so thin it barely disturbed the sterile office air. Her pen slipped from numb fingers, its quiet clatter against the mahogany desk the only other sound.
The man standing in her doorway filled the space, his broad shoulders blocking the Los Angeles sun streaming in from the hall window. He was a silhouette she'd recognize in a pitch-black room, a shape carved into the deepest, most ruined part of her memory.
Zane.
Five years. Five years of meticulous rebuilding, of therapy, of learning to breathe without the phantom ache in her chest. It all dissolved in the space of a single heartbeat. The air turned thick, syrupy. Her lungs refused to work properly, each gasp a shallow, desperate thing.
Her office, her sanctuary of calm beige walls and degrees she'd earned through bloodshot eyes and sleepless nights, now felt like a trap. The space between them, a mere ten feet of plush carpet, yawned like a canyon she was terrified to cross. Her own pulse roared in her ears, a frantic drum against the sudden, deafening silence.
His face, older now, more weathered, was exactly as she remembered. Hypnotic dark eyes that had once looked at her like she was the only star in a black sky. The full beard that used to leave a delicious, rough warmth against her cheek. His hair, still dark and just long enough to curl slightly at his neck. He was taller than she recalled, or perhaps the sheer force of his presence simply expanded to fill any available area. He was more. More solid. More real than any ghost had a right to be.
And he was looking right at her, his own expression a mask of pained astonishment, as if he'd walked into a dream he hadn't dared to have.
A tremor started in Brianna's hands, a fine, uncontrollable shake that traveled up her arms and seized her core. Don't cry. Don't you dare cry. You are Dr. Sparks. You have clients. You are professional. You are healed.
The internal mantra was a feeble shield against the tsunami of him. Her vision blurred, the sharp lines of his jaw, the familiar curve of his kissable lips softening behind a sheen of unshed tears. How many nights had she cried herself to sleep over that mouth? How many days had she spent training herself not to wonder where he was, who he was with?
His voice, when it finally came, was a raw, shattered thing. It scraped out of him, rough with an emotion that mirrored the one strangling her. "My pretty girl."
The old endearment. The one he'd whispered over fuzzy long-distance calls, murmured into her hair the few precious times they'd been in the same city. It was a key, twisting in a lock she'd soldered shut.
A half-sob, half-scream tore from her throat. "Don't you fucking do that, Zane..."
She took a stumbling step back, her hip connecting with the solid edge of her desk. The pain was a brief, grounding shock. He doesn't get to.
He flinched as if she'd struck him, his own composure cracking. "Brianna, I... a friend... I saw your card. I didn't know if it was really you." He took a single, cautious step into the room, and the scent of him—clean soap, faint musk, and something uniquely Zane—wafted toward her. It was the smell of her early twenties, of hope and heartbreak.
Focus on the facts. The psychology. Not the man. Her training was a lifeline. His posture was rigid, military-straight, but his hands were clenched into white-knuckled fists at his sides. His eyes, those dark, captivating pools, held a haunted exhaustion she recognized all too well. This wasn't the swaggering soldier who'd been too busy for her. This was a man who had also been to war with himself.
"You can't be here," she managed, her voice gaining a sliver of steel. "This is my place of work."
"I know. I'm sorry. I just... I needed to see you." He ran a hand through his hair, a gesture so achingly familiar it made her chest physically hurt. "I've thought about you. Every damn day."
The confession hung between them, charged and dangerous. Every day. While she was meticulously boxing him up, labeling the container 'Past - Do Not Open,' he'd been carrying her with him. The injustice of it, the messy, complicated truth of it, threatened to pull her under.
A single, traitorous tear escaped, tracing a hot path down her cheek. She swiped at it furiously, the movement jerky. He doesn't get to see you break. Not again.
She saw his gaze drop to her hand, to the faint, silvery lines that marred the inside of her left arm—old scars from a time when the internal pain demanded a physical outlet. A fresh wave of anguish contorted his features. He knew. He remembered the fragile girl she'd been.
"Brianna..." His voice was softer now, a broken whisper filled with a regret so profound it filled the room.
The air crackled with everything unsaid. The years of silence. The burned-out phone calls that ended in tears. The desperate, lonely nights on opposite sides of the country. The way he'd drowned himself in his work, and she in her grief.
He was here. In her city. In her office. Looking at her like she was a miracle and a calamity all at once. The carefully constructed dam inside her, the one that held back a ocean of old love and older pain, developed a hairline crack. Then another.
Her professional demeanor crumbled. The psychologist vanished, and all that was left was the woman whose heart had never fully learned how to beat without echoing his name. A ragged breath shuddered through her. Her shoulders slumped. The fight drained out of her, leaving only a devastating, weary ache.
She wrapped her arms around herself, a feeble attempt to hold the pieces together. Her next words were a choked whisper, a surrender to the tidal wave of history currently washing away her present."Why now?"
