♡ Kiss the Match Ch.3 out now ♡
“What felt urgent enough that you called for an extra session?”
Chad drags a hand down his face.
A lot of things, apparently.
The words don’t come right away. He keeps looking everywhere except at her—at the bookshelves lined up too neatly against the wall, at the ceramic lamp in the corner with its ugly beige shade, at the rain slipping down the window in thin, crooked lines. Anything but Dr. Rosen, who sits across from him with her notebook balanced on one knee and the kind of calm expression that makes it impossible to tell whether she’s worried or just waiting.
A year ago, he wouldn’t have called for an extra session. A year ago, he would’ve laughed in somebody’s face if they suggested it. Mandated therapy was one thing. Showing up because he knew he was getting bad again and didn’t trust himself to just wait it out was another.
Finally, he mutters, “I saw a guy get dropped off a building on live TV.”
That gets her full attention, even if her face barely changes.
“He was some hero getting exposed for taking bribes or whatever. Didn’t even matter.” Chad rubs his thumb over the seam of his jeans hard enough to feel the fabric drag against skin. “The point is, this fucking villain, Red Veil, had him by the leg, cameras everywhere, half the city watching, and then he just—”
He cuts himself off and flicks one hand downward.
“Dropped him,” he says. “Like it was nothing.”
The room goes quiet again.
Outside, tires hiss over rain-slick asphalt. Somewhere down the hall, a door shuts.
Dr. Rosen asks, “He died?”
Chad gives her a look. “What do you think?”
“Since then, I can’t sleep for shit.” He lets out a laugh with no humor in it and scrubs a hand over the back of his neck. “Or I sleep, and then I get punished for it.”
“What happens when you do sleep?”
“I keep seeing him fall.”
“No,” he says more quietly.
He leans back, then forward again almost immediately, restless in his own body. Heat keeps gathering under his skin in little waves. Not enough to spike the temperature of the room. Just enough that he can feel it crawling over his arms and chest, asking to be let out.
“It’s not really about Kingfisher,” he says. “I mean, yeah, it’s fucked. Obviously. But I’ve seen murder before. I was a villain. I’ve seen people die.”
His thumb keeps working over the seam in his jeans. He only notices because it’s starting to hurt.
“It’s just...” His voice roughens. “Every time I think about it, every time I close my eyes, it stops being him.”
Dr. Rosen doesn’t interrupt.
Chad exhales sharply through his nose and leans back like moving will help. It doesn’t. His chest still feels too tight, like there isn’t enough room inside it for lungs and heat all at once.
She gives him a second before asking, “And when you picture Robert there, what’s the thought that comes with it?”
“That he’s already dead,” Chad says, too fast. Then he drags a hand over his mouth and adds, “Or that he’s alive and that’s somehow worse.”
“You’re afraid he might still be alive but suffering.”
“And not knowing feels unbearable.”
Chad huffs a breath and drops his head back for a second, staring at the ceiling. “For the first few months after he went missing, I kept thinking we’d find him. It was just a matter of time. We’d get a lead, kick down the right door, have some dramatic reunion, fix the problem, move on. Because Robert’s...” He catches himself before the wrong name slips out. “Because he’s a hero. He’s supposed to come back from shit like this.”
Dr. Rosen watches him carefully. “And now?”
“Now it feels like I was being delusional.”
“Have you started to believe you won’t find him alive?”
Chad stares at the floor.
Belief sounds too deliberate. It’s felt more like his confidence has been wearing down a little at a time without him admitting it. Every bad lead, every dead end, every day without Robert has chipped away at the part of him that used to be sure they’d find him alive.
“I think,” he says slowly, “I think I’m getting used to the idea that there might not be an ending to this I can live with.”
He can hear the faint hum of the vent. Rain tapping the window harder now. His own pulse making itself obnoxious in his ears.
Dr. Rosen asks, “Do you think it would be easier to know what happened to him? Even if the answer is terrible?”
Chad shuts his eyes for a second.
The words come out rougher than he means them to.
“I genuinely don’t fucking know. Because if he’s dead, then at least it’s over, and even thinking that makes me feel like a monster. But if he’s alive and I can’t get to him, or he’s—” His jaw locks hard enough to hurt. “Alive, and every day we don’t find him is another day something’s being done to him. Maybe I’m sitting here hoping for the version where he’s alive because it makes me feel better, not because it’s actually better for him.”
The heat jumps inside him with that one.
He has to force his hands flat against the chair arms and breathe slowly through his nose before it gets away from him. The fire in him is restless. He keeps it down by habit now, but it takes effort. More than it used to.
Dr. Rosen lets him get his breathing under control before she speaks.
“That kind of uncertainty can be especially painful,” she says. “When there’s no confirmation, people often get stuck between hope and grief. They can’t fully mourn, but they also can’t rest in hope. The mind keeps trying to solve it, and the body stays on alert because, as far as it knows, the emergency is still happening.”
“Great,” Chad mutters. “So what do I do about that?”
Her answer comes without hesitation, which annoys him a little.
“You stop asking yourself to solve the uncertainty emotionally before there’s an answer.”
“You don’t have to decide right now whether hope is helping you or hurting you, or whether grief would be safer, or whether one outcome would be easier to survive than another. Those are impossible questions when you don’t have the information. Trying to answer them over and over is just grinding you down.”
Chad looks at her for a second. “That just sounds like a really nice way of telling me to stop thinking about it.”
“It’s actually the opposite.”
She sets the notebook on the arm of her chair.
“I’m saying you may need different questions. Not ‘Which answer would hurt less?’ but ‘What do I need when I don’t know?’ Not ‘What ending can I live with?’ but ‘How do I survive the waiting without destroying myself?’ Those are things we can work with.”
He hasn’t been handling the waiting well. It’s been fucking up everything. Sleep. Work. Eating. Every part of his life keeps circling back to Robert until sometimes it feels like he can’t think about anything else for more than five minutes.
Chad wets his lips. “There’s something else.”
Dr. Rosen doesn’t move. “Okay.”
He almost changes his mind.
Then he remembers the diner, the cold booth, the smell of burnt coffee, and the way one offhand comment from Chase had made his whole body go haywire.
“I...” He drops his gaze to his hands. “I think my feelings for him are maybe not normal.”
“What makes you say that?”
Chad laughs once, under his breath. “Because they’re insane?”
“That’s not an explanation.”
“We knew each other for what, a little over half a year before he went missing? We flirted. Kind of. We bitched at each other a lot. He got under my skin. I got under his.” Chad presses his thumb against his knuckle until it hurts. “That’s not enough to be this fucked up over somebody.”
Dr. Rosen studies him. “You think the intensity of your feelings means something is wrong with you.”
Because Robert would look at him like he’d lost his mind if Chad ever actually said any of it out loud. Because even now, the word love makes him want to crawl out of his own skin. Because he’s never wanted somebody like this before, not in a way that made his whole life rearrange itself around them.
He stares at the lamp instead of at her. “Because it’s too much. And because if I ever did say something, and he looked at me like I was a fucking weirdo, I’d have to move away and change my name.”
Dr. Rosen lets that settle before asking, “What makes it feel like too much?”
“You’re not just saying the feelings are strong,” she says. “You’re saying there’s something wrong with you for having them. I’m asking what part feels wrong.”
Chad looks away again. “The intensity of it, I guess.”
Dr. Rosen nods once. “Okay. That makes more sense. And I think there are a few different things getting stacked together for you.”
She shifts slightly in her chair, her voice reaches him a little more directly.
“There’s the fact that he’s missing. There’s fear. There’s uncertainty. There’s grief. There’s guilt. And then there’s whatever was already there before he disappeared. Those things can build on each other without all meaning the same thing.”
Chad rubs at his forehead. “That’s fucking annoying.”
He lets out a breath. “It feels like my entire life is revolving around Robert, and I can’t make it stop.”
“What does that look like day to day?”
“I still go through every new Red Ring case with Chase after hours. Even when I’m exhausted. Especially then. He keeps assigning me to anything that might get us closer to Red Veil, and I keep taking it because...”
“Because if I stop, it feels like giving up.”
He thinks of the office on the third floor. Of Visi sneaking in more and more often and pretending she isn’t. Mal quietly asking around among her supernatural contacts—because if Robert is dead, then talking to the dead is one more lead to chase. Phenomaman looking as wrecked as he did when Blonde Blazer dumped him, which annoys Chad in a way he knows is irrational. Coupé’s perfume lingering there sometimes too, which nobody comments on.
Chase, who used to get angry at everything and now barely gets angry at all, like somebody scooped all the life out of him.
That part scares Chad more than he likes to admit.
“I don’t know how to face Chase some days,” he says. “He’s still going through all of it. Every robbery, every theft, every case that might tie back to Red Veil. And I’m there too, but if I’m being honest...”
“I’m not even sure I still believe it’ll bring us to Robert alive. I think I’m there because Chase is there. Or because I don’t know what the fuck else to do with myself.”
Dr. Rosen nods. “That makes sense.”
“Yes.” Her voice stays maddeningly calm. “Structure can keep people functioning when hope is inconsistent. So can loyalty. So can not wanting to be alone.”
That last one drags his attention back to her.
Which is exactly why he ended up at his mother’s house after the bar.
Rain on the windshield. His phone buzzing unanswered in his pocket. The front door opening before he even finished knocking. His madar taking one look at him and not asking stupid questions. Just stepping aside and saying his name the way only she does.
The kitchen light had been on. His sister was still awake at the table, one hand wrapped around a mug, the other going still when she saw him. His niece had been asleep on the couch under a blanket covered in cartoon fish, hair all over her face, one little sock half off her heel. The whole house smelled like tea and onions and detergent and wet shoes by the radiator. Familiar enough to hurt.
He hadn’t even realized he was shaking until his mother put both hands on either side of his face and told him to sit down.
No questions at first. Just food pushed at him until he took it. Tea poured whether he wanted it or not. His sister talking around him instead of at him, like she knew if she came at him directly, he’d bolt. His niece waking up halfway through and climbing into his lap without asking, pressing her warm little face into his neck.
He can still hear his mother’s voice, low and worried and trying not to sound it.
His throat tightens unexpectedly.
“I went to my mom’s house after,” he says.
Dr. Rosen is quiet for a second. “After the broadcast.”
“What made you go there?”
He laughs under his breath. “Probably the same reason Alice has been sleeping on my couch for a week.”
“You didn’t want to be alone.”
“Being in my apartment by myself is...” He shakes his head. “No. I can’t do it right now.”
There’s no point pretending otherwise. Alice showed up with some bullshit excuse about her shower being broken and then stayed for a week. He didn’t call her out because the last thing he wants these days is to be alone in that place with nothing but the fridge hum and his own head for company.
Dr. Rosen asks, “Have you been having thoughts of not wanting to be here?”
The question is gentle and direct in a way that makes his whole body go still.
He knows what she’s asking.
He thinks of the mall. Of flames. Of not leaving. Of how easy it had been, back then, to tell himself that if the whole thing came down with him in it, that would finally be the end. He thinks of the last few weeks, of chasing Red Ring across rooftops with the part of his brain that still knows the difference between reckless and suicidal running quieter than it should.
Dr. Rosen doesn’t react visibly, but her attention sharpens.
“A little as in passive thoughts? Wishing you could disappear, not wake up, stop doing this?”
“Not a plan,” Chad says quickly. “I’m not making a plan.”
“I hear that. I still need the full answer.”
He drags a hand over his face again.
“Sometimes it just feels like I’m fucking tired,” he says. “Like really, really tired. And the idea of having to keep doing this indefinitely makes something in me go blank.” He swallows. “I don’t want to die. I just... sometimes I don’t know how long I’m supposed to keep carrying all of it.”
Dr. Rosen nods slowly. He hates how relieved part of him feels to have it out loud.
“We need to make sure you’re not carrying it alone,” she says. “That means being specific when the thoughts shift from numbness to wanting out. It means using the people you already went to—your mother, your sister, Alice. It may also mean making the ‘war room’ and late-night case review off-limits on the nights when you’re most depleted, because those seem to be amplifying everything.”
Chad lets out a dry laugh. “You say that like Chase is going to love hearing I’m cutting back.”
“This isn’t about what Chase loves hearing.”
She continues, “If the waiting is destroying your sleep, your appetite, your concentration, and your sense of safety, then you need limits that protect you while the situation is unresolved. Not because you’re giving up on Robert. Because you’re trying to stay alive enough to keep going.”
The sentence makes something in his chest twist.
Dr. Rosen watches him carefully. “What are you noticing right now?”
He looks down at his hands.
They’re too hot again. His chest is tight, his skin prickling. He can feel the fire pressing against the inside of his wrists, looking for a way out.
“Too much heat,” he mutters.
He closes his eyes for a second and tries. In for four, hold, out slow. The fire doesn’t leave. It settles a little. Stops crowding his throat. When he opens his eyes again, Dr. Rosen is still there, waiting him out.
“There’s one more thing,” he says.
“Since that hero died, it feels like everyone’s been getting quieter. The whole team. They’re still doing the work, still kicking the shit out of criminals, still chasing Red Ring all over the city. But it’s like...” He searches for the least stupid way to say it. “Like we’re all behaving too well. Like nobody wants to be the one who says out loud what we’re all starting to think.”
“That Robert may already be dead.”
Dr. Rosen rests her notebook on the arm of the chair. “Sounds like you’re not the only one afraid.”
He knows that. He does. But knowing the others are hurting too doesn’t actually make any of it easier. It just means nobody says the worst part out loud anymore.
Then Dr. Rosen asks, “Can you tell me what you need today, before you leave here?”
The question catches him off guard.
He expected homework. A breathing exercise. Maybe a very polite threat about calling someone if he kept minimizing the not wanting to be here thing. Instead, she wants to know what he needs.
He sits with that for a second.
“Something that isn’t vague bullshit,” he says finally.
One corner of her mouth twitches.
“Fair enough. Then here’s something specific. You cannot force yourself to stop loving him, stop hoping, or stop grieving before you have an answer. What you can do is stop treating the uncertainty like a problem you have to solve every minute of the day.”
She goes on. “This week, I want three things. First: continue to sleep with someone in the apartment or stay with family if the nightmares are bad. No white-knuckling it alone. Second: no ‘war room’ after midnight. Third: when the image of him falling shows up, I want you to name what is actually happening in the present before your mind runs with it. ‘I am in my room. I am seeing an image. I do not have new information right now.’ It won’t fix the fear. It will keep the fear from turning into certainty.”
It’s practical enough that he doesn’t immediately want to argue with it, which is probably the best a therapy assignment is going to get from him.
Dr. Rosen studies him for another moment. “And if the exhaustion tips further? If ‘a little’ starts becoming more specific?”
He looks back at the rain streaking the glass.
“I really did think we’d find him,” he says quietly. “At first.”
“And now I don’t know what the fuck I believe.”
Dr. Rosen’s voice stays soft. “Then maybe today isn’t about belief. Maybe today is about telling the truth about how scared you are.”
The words land hard enough that he has to look away.
Because the truth is, he’s terrified.
Terrified Robert is dead.
Terrified that if Robert comes back, Chad won’t survive the relief of it.
Terrified that if he doesn’t, Chad will still keep revolving around him anyway, like his whole life got hooked there and never learned how to pull free.
He leans back slowly in the chair, feeling the heat shift under his skin, controlled for now but nowhere near gone.
“There’s something else I keep coming back to,” Chad says, staring past Dr. Rosen at the rain on the window. “I keep replaying the memory and wondering if I missed something.”
Dr. Rosen doesn’t interrupt.
“The fight against Shroud,” he says.
And before he can stop himself, he’s back there again.
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