Chapter Thirty-Two: The London Hour
The apartment was too quiet. The city lights outside her window, usually a comforting tapestry of distant lives, felt like a million indifferent stars. The silence pressed in, heavy with the weight of the day's revelations. A son. A locked room. An audition.
Amaya paced the length of her living room, the plush carpet doing nothing to muffle the frantic rhythm of her thoughts. She needed a voice that wasn't the clinical echo of Dr. Rowon's critiques or the speculative buzz of hospital gossip. She needed her translator. Her anchor.
She glanced at the clock. It would be late in England, but not too late. Liam, now a settled marine biologist with a wife, a toddler daughter, and a house that probably smelled of sea salt and baby formula, would be up. He was always up late.
She curled into the corner of her sofa, pulling a worn blanket over her legs—not the emerald cashmere from Elara, but a cheap, soft fleece from her university days. She tapped his contact. The familiar image of him, grinning with his baby daughter perched on his shoulders, filled the screen. The call connected, and after a moment of digital fuzz, his face appeared, lit by the warm glow of a table lamp.
"Gnome!" he said, his voice a little hushed but instantly, profoundly familiar. He was in what looked like a home office, shelves of books and specimen jars behind him. "To what do I owe the panic call? Did the spreadsheet finally propose a merger via PowerPoint?"
The old joke, the old nickname. It was a lifeline. A sob lodged in her throat, unexpected and violent.
Liam's smile vanished. "Whoa. Okay. Not a joking time. What's wrong? Is it Dad? Mom?"
She shook her head, swiping at her eyes with the back of her hand. "No, they're… they're fine. It's… it's me." She took a shaky breath. "I saw him, Liam."
There was no need to specify the pronoun. Liam's eyes widened. "Rowon? Where? How?"
"At the hospital. He's my new supervising consultant. Dr. Aris Rowon, Consultant Psychiatrist."
Liam's jaw dropped. For a second, he was speechless. Then he let out a low whistle. "You have got to be kidding me. That's… that's a cosmic joke. A really mean one." He leaned closer to the screen. "Okay. Tell me everything. Start from the beginning. Did he recognize you?"
"He recognized me enough to critique my clinical differentials within three minutes." The story poured out of her then—the sterile office, the photo of Elara's kitchen, his scalpel-like assessment, Dr. Vance's rationale, and finally, the cafeteria gossip that had shattered her afternoon. "He has a son, Liam. A little boy, maybe four or five. With some kind of… locked room, they said. A complex condition. And he's… he's looking for the right psychologist. And he's judging my work, and I'm failing, and it's not just about being a good intern anymore, it's like… it's like he's evaluating me for a job I didn't even know I was applying for, and I'm bombing it."
She finished, breathless, the tears finally spilling over. "And it hurts. It hurts so much more than I thought it would. I thought I was over it. I thought I'd made my peace, built my life. But seeing him… it's like all those years just… evaporated. I'm right back there. Feeling small. And foolish. And now, somehow… inadequate in a whole new way."
Liam listened, his expression shifting from shock to sympathy to a deep, brotherly anger. "Okay, first of all," he said, his voice firm. "You listen to me, Amaya Snow. You are not inadequate. You are a bloody doctor. You clawed your way out of a pit our family dug for you, and you built a career with your own two hands. You are brilliant. You are kind. You are the furthest thing from inadequate."
"He doesn't see that," she whispered.
"Then he's a blind idiot," Liam snapped. "But this… this son thing. That changes the math."
"How? It just makes it worse! It means he's capable of this huge, profound love, just… not for me. He has this whole secret life of devotion, and I was never even a footnote."
"Maybe," Liam said slowly, thinking aloud. "Or maybe it explains the vault. Think about it. If he's a single father to a kid with serious needs… that's his entire world. That's all-consuming. The Aris we knew was focused on his career to the exclusion of all else. This Aris… his focus is his son. Everything else—including inconvenient ghosts from his past—is noise he can't afford. It's not that he doesn't have the capacity to care. It's that his capacity is maxed out. On one tiny person."
Amaya hadn't considered that. She'd seen it only as a contrast—proof he could love, therefore his rejection of her was absolute. But Liam's interpretation was more nuanced, and somehow more painful. It wasn't that she was unlovable; she was inessential. A luxury his overburdened life couldn't accommodate.
"It doesn't make it hurt less," she said.
"I know it doesn't, gnome. I'm not trying to make it hurt less. I'm trying to get you to see the board. This isn't the same game. The boy on the porch, the tutor… he was playing for his own future. This man, Dr. Rowon, he's playing for his son's future. The stakes are different. Higher. And you…" He paused, his gaze intent through the screen. "You're not just his ex-crush or his former tutee anymore. You're a psychologist. You are, literally, the exact kind of expert he is desperately searching for."
She swallowed. "He thinks I'm a bad one."
"Then prove him wrong." Liam's voice was fierce. "Not for him. For you. You wanted to out-rowon Rowon? Do it. Become the most brilliant, insightful, capable clinician in that hospital. Become the lockpick. Not for his approval, but so that you know, in your bones, that you are. So that the next time he looks at you with those clinical eyes, you don't feel small. You feel… seen. For what you actually are."
He leaned back, running a hand through his hair. "And as for the hurt… you're allowed to feel it, Amaya. You loved him. It was real for you. That doesn't just go away because he became a dad or you got a degree. But don't let the hurt make you small again. Use it. Let it fuel you. Be so damn good that he has no choice but to see you."
She was quiet for a long moment, absorbing his words. The raw, childlike pain was still there, a bruise on her heart. But over it, a clearer, harder resolve was settling. Liam was right. This was a new board. A new game.
"I miss you," she said softly.
"I miss you too, you ridiculous creature." He smiled, the old warmth returning. "Now, go drink some water, yell into a pillow if you need to, and then get back to your fancy doctor books. And remember… you're not five feet tall anymore. You've grown. In every way that counts."
After they said goodbye, Amaya sat in the quiet for a long time. The hollow ache remained, but the paralyzing confusion had lifted. The lines were redrawn. Dr. Aris Rowon was a superior, a critic, and a desperate father. She was Dr. Amaya Snow, psychologist-in-training. And she had a lot of work to do.
She got up, walked to her bookshelf, and this time, she didn't just trace the spine of The Atlas of Forgotten Kingdoms. She pulled down her heaviest textbook on developmental psychopathology. She had an audition to prepare for. And this time, she intended to give the performance of a lifetime.