Praise Him, Counselor

I am a machine. I run a billion-dollar company, I execute strategies flawlessly, and I feel absolutely nothing.

For thirty-eight years, I have lived entirely in my head. Food is just fuel. Sex is just a mechanical release. I have never felt pleasure, joy, or warmth, and I accepted long ago that I simply wasn’t built for it.

Then I walked into Dr. Leo Rivera's office.

Leo is twenty-eight, brilliant, and practices a radically different kind of somatic therapy. He doesn't just want to talk about my past. He wants to rewire my nervous system. He wants to teach my body how to feel. And the access code to unlock me, it turns out, is his voice.

Every time he praises me, a wall comes down. Every time his hands guide me in the amber light of his studio, I come alive. Under his careful, devastating attention, I am learning what it means to be human.

But the closer we get, the more the clinical framework begins to crack. Leo is risking his license, his reputation, and his entire career for me. The professional boundaries are dissolving, and what is rushing in to replace them is a hunger neither of us can control.

He was supposed to teach me how to feel. But now that I can, the only thing I want to feel is him.