Page 79 of Enzo

My heart hammered. I could feel the walls pressing in, my hesitation curling around me like smoke. I hadn’t thought this through. What if saying it out loud made it real? What if I panicked when the door shut and needed to run? “Can you try shutting the door?”

“You never let people inside,” Doc’s frown deepened, his attention sharpening. “Enzo will kill me.”

I went to the door and called over to Enzo, “Doc is inside with me!” Enzo started to come over, but I tugged Doc inside and shut the door, trying not to freak the hell out at someone being inside with me.

“I need to have sex?” I blurted, too loud in the quiet space.

Doc stared at me as if I’d grown a second head. His mouth opened, then closed again. “What the actual fuck, kid?” he said, voice sharp with disbelief. “Jesus…” He scrubbed a hand down his face, horrified and stunned. “I’m not fucking you?”

“Not with you! I mean I wanted to be able to have sex. Can I? Will it hurt? Will I freak out? Will I ruin it?”

“The fuck?” Doc snapped his expression hard. “I’m not a fucking therapist, kid.”

That pushed me over the edge. I shoved him hard and caught him unaware so he ended up stumbling to my bed and landing on his ass. He was up again snarling but I held out a hand. “I’m not a fucking kid, and I’m fucking paying you for this shit!” God, where had that come from?

“Jesus! Who do you want to fuck?”

“No one.”

His gaze grew calculating. “So not Enzo then?”

He tilted his head, thumbing toward the door, and my stomach turned to lead. Heat crawled up my neck, a full-body flush that burned. It frustrated me that he could see it so clearly—that I wasn’t as subtle as I had imagined.

“No.” My voice was immediate, firm. The word came too fast, too sharp, like a slammed door. I couldn’t look at him. I couldn’t let him discover the truth because I wasn’t ready to confront it. Enzo’s name surged up my throat, but I swallowed it down. Did I feel safe? More than with anyone else. But did I trust myself? Did I trust my body to want and not panic and shut down?

Doc let the silence stretch, studying me and waiting for me to take it back, to admit what we both already knew.

“Can you get it up?” he asked.

My face went hot, shame curling in my gut. I knew this was just a doctor asking a medical question, but it still felt humiliating, as if every inch of me was under a microscope. “I do… sometimes. But I can’t keep it and get off. Not really. It just… stops… and there’s no… um… end to it.”

“There’s a pill for that?—”

“No.” The word shot out before I could stop it. “Sorry, I don’t want pills. I need agency.” I tilted my chin. “I read about agency and it applies to me.”

“Save me from self-help shit,” Doc grumbled.

“I need my body to work itself, not because of chemical enhancements to force my body to respond.”

“Fuck,” Doc said.

“And sometimes,” I pushed on, ignoring how my voice wobbled, “sometimes I’ve been getting hard, and it doesn’t hurt now.” The words tumbled out before I could stop them. “They had a cage on me. You saw…”

“Yeah, I remember,” Doc muttered, and for a second, something flickered in his eyes—anger, maybe. Probably pity, or maybe he didn’t even care at all. “You’re not dead. That’s what matters.”

I exhaled, pressing my palms to my knees like I could ground myself.

“I have scars,” I murmured. “Inside and out.” My voice dropped to almost nothing. “When I get hard, they’re so obvious. You said I was fucked when you first saw them. The skin stretches… it feels wrong. Like I’m not even in my own body.”

“Jesus,” Doc muttered. “Okay.” He tapped his fingers against his knee as if this whole thing was a waste of his time. “Medically, you’re healed. You’re not in pain? Your junk works?”

“I guess.”

“Then the rest is mental.” He waved a hand like it was simple. “Look, you overthink everything. You want a magic switch to flick everything back to normal, but you’re too stuck in your head.”

“I know,” I muttered.

“Your brain’s gotta get there before your dick does.”

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