She leaned forward, clasped her hands together, and tried again. “Tell me then what it felt like being in love with him.”

Shayla sputtered and gasped, like a car engine rumbling, trying to turn over, but failing until finally she stopped running.

“I don’t know,” she whispered, and then they talked more, digging deep for the next fifty minutes.

As the session neared its end, she was still in tears, but they were starting to dry up.

“What do I do about the fact that I’ve never truly loved him?” Shayla asked.

“We’ll have to deal with that next time,” Michelle said. “But I promise you, we will deal with it. And we will figure out a way for you to navigate all the things you’re learning.”

“I’m scared,” she said quietly.

“Of what this might mean?”

Shayla nodded. “And how he’ll react. He gets unhinged at times. Paranoid, even.”

Unhinged was not a good word.

“How is he paranoid?”

“He went through my email once when he thought I was cheating on him. I never was, but if he thinks something is up he might snoop.”

Michelle nodded, glad for the warning. She’d dealt with this before with spouses. “I will help you through it all.”

Shayla left first, mouthing a heartfelt thank you. As Michelle gathered her purse and started to shut down her laptop, a sense of calm washed through her. She’d done something positive for a long-time patient. She’d held her hand, metaphorically, and helped her walk into the dark, dangerous woods of the unknown. As she closed various browser windows, she spotted a few new emails that looked important, but she resisted the urge to check. That was why she had a phone. Well, two, really. Anything that had come in at seven o’clock on a Friday could be dealt with later. Once her computer was off, she locked the door and left, checking her work email in the elevator.

She scrolled through some notes from colleagues, answering a few brief ones on the ride down. As the elevator doors opened at the lobby, she clicked on the next note and nearly squealed for joy. One of the European journals she’d submitted her paper to loved her research and wanted to talk to her about the next steps for publishing it.

Michelle beamed, because this journal was the European equivalent of Psychology Today. To have an article run there had been a dream of hers, and would be a huge career high. She’d been wanting this, craving this, hoping for some sort of placement for her research. This could serve her quite well in her field, and earn her more recognition. But more importantly, this placement had the potential to spread her findings far and wide. Which, in turn, meant that more of her colleagues would be aware of how to better help patients struggling with love and sex addiction.

Equal parts pride and happiness filled her as she let those words echo through her body—next steps. Then she saw there was more to the note. She read on.