All Chapters of SHE WAS NEVER HIS MISTRESS : Chapter 151 - Chapter 160

VIVIAN’S POVI had been a therapist for eleven years. And in all that time I had never once crossed a professional line. Not in thought, not in behavior, not even in the quiet of my own apartment after a long week. I built my entire practice on the belief that a therapeutic relationship required complete integrity or it became something harmful to the person who came to me most vulnerable.I knew the signs of transference. I knew how to spot when a patient was developing feelings and how to address it without making them feel ashamed. I had navigated that before and I was good at it.What I had not navigated before was this. Dominic. I sat at my desk after Dominic’s Thursday session with his file open in front of me. I was not reading it. I was thinking about something he said three weeks ago about his mother. About the fact that he had been arriving eight minutes early for the past six sessions and I had started looking at the waiting room clock wishing time passed quickly to get to

DOMINIC’S POVFor two weeks I had been careful. I arrived exactly on time instead of eight minutes early. I kept my answers shorter and more focused on what I was doing rather than how I was feeling. When Vivian asked how something landed with me, I gave her the practical version instead of the one that would have required me to sit in the room with her as a person instead of a therapist. I knew what I was doing. I knew it was avoidance. And I knew she had noticed it too.Last Thursday she had asked, in that calm way of hers, if something had shifted. I told her I was processing some things privately and she accepted it without pushing. That was the correct therapeutic response. It was also what made everything harder.I booked today’s session knowing what I was going to do. I arrived on time, sat in the same chair I always sat in, and waited for her to settle across from me. The room looked the same. It always looked the same. I was the one who had changed.We started the way we usua

DOMINIC’S POVDr. James Sterling’s office felt different from the one I had left behind. The walls had warmer colors. More books lined the shelves, a large plant sat in the corner, its leaves reaching toward the window like it had been there for years. James himself was fifty-two. He moved with the kind of stillness that came from decades of sitting with other people’s difficult truths without being shaken by them. I sat down across from him and felt the weight of starting over.This was my first session with him. I had transferred because I needed a different approach. I told him that much. I said I felt the previous work had reached a point where I needed fresh eyes on things. James nodded without pressing for more details. He simply asked me to tell him what I hoped to work on.I talked about the patterns I had been fighting. I told him about Aria and how I got obsessed. About how I had turned love into control and scared her. I used plain language because he was a stranger and str

DOMINIC’S POVThree days had passed since that last session with James and his words would not leave me alone. I kept hearing him say that fear of my own feelings was not the same as healthy self awareness. I had spent the last three days walking around my penthouse and asking myself the same questions again and again. Was I really different now? Or was I just delaying the same mistakes with a different face?The doorbell rang and pulled me out of my thoughts. I opened the door and found Mia standing there with two bags of groceries in her hands.“Hi Mia… what… what are you doing here?” I asked.“I have come to cook for my brother,” she said, stepping inside without waiting for an invitation.“Mia, I am fine. I can cook for myself.”“I know you can but I want to. Let me take care of you would ya?”She walked straight to the kitchen and started unpacking. I followed her and helped put things away. We moved around each other the way we used to when we were younger. For a while we worke

ISABELLA’S POV I sat on the cold kitchen floor with my back against the cabinet. The bottle of red wine stood half empty beside me. I had gotten so bad with drinking that I did not bother with a glass anymore. I just brought the bottle to my lips and took another long drink. The taste barely registered as I think I have gotten used to the taste. The floor tiles pressed hard into my legs but I did not move. Moving felt like too much effort. Nine months had passed since that night with Dominic. Nine months since I watched the door close behind me and cried in the elevator like my heart was being ripped out. I thought the pain would ease with time. I thought one day I would wake up and feel like myself again. But the pain did not ease. It changed into something worse. It became this heavy numbness that sat on my chest and made every breath feel like work. I tried therapy for a while. I went to sessions twice a week and talked about my feelings. The therapist was kind and patient. Sh