Page 9 of Borrowed Pain
I watched him order—black coffee, no sugar—while my stomach fluttered. This was Rowan Ashcroft. The voice that haunted my nights now had shoulders, stubble, and a gaze that didn't look away.
He returned with his coffee and settled into the chair across from me.
"So," I said, attempting the easy conversation that usually came naturally. "I have to admit, I wasn't expecting a call quite so early. Do all podcast hosts keep vampire hours, or—"
"You're nervous." He took a sip of his coffee, still watching me.
The directness of his statement caught me off guard. I was used to being the one asking questions, the one with professional distance. No social pleasantries, no easing into conversation—straight to the heart of things.
"Not nervous," I said, precisely what a nervous person would say. I winced at myself. "Okay, fine—maybe a little. I mean, it's not every day I meet the guy whose voice has been my white-noise machine slash sleeping pill for months."
"Has been what?"
"Helping me sleep. Your podcast, I mean."
My face flushed. How do you tell someone their voice has been your most intimate companion for years? That you know the rhythm of their breathing between thoughts, and how they pause before saying something difficult?
"I listen to it when I can't turn my brain off."
Rowan studied me for a long moment, eyes steady. Not cold, not prying—more like he was flipping pages in a book he already knew how to read.
"You didn't email me as a fan," he said finally, voice quiet but confident.
The words hit me like a diagnosis I hadn't been expecting.
"Tell me about Iris Delacroix," he continued, leaning forward slightly. "Everything you couldn't put in her file."
My throat went dry. The easy deflection I'd been reaching for—some quip about confidentiality or professional boundaries—vanished entirely. Rowan's gaze was steady and patient, like he had all the time in the world to wait for my answer.
"I can't—" I started, then stopped. "There are ethical considerations. Client confidentiality."
"She's dead." His voice was matter-of-fact. "And you've been drowning in whatever she told you for a year and a half."
If it had been anyone else, I would've shut down. Rowan Ashcroft wasn't anyone else. His voice had been in my head for years, and now it was in the room, stripping me bare.
"Even after death, there are limits, but I can tell you what she told me that night. She called at two-thirty. Her breathing was ragged, but her words were clipped—too controlled—the way she got when fear had her by the throat. I heard her mug rattling. She kept circling the same thing: she'd gone somewhere she shouldn't have. It was supposed to help. It didn't."
Rowan's expression didn't change, but something shifted in his posture. "Did she mention Riverside by name?"
My chest tightened. "How do you—yes. She said she shouldn't have trusted them and that the program was wrong. So scared, saying she'd signed things, legal documents that meant she couldn't talk about it."
"And you promised not to document the call."
It wasn't a question, but I nodded anyway. "She made me swear. Said if anyone found out she'd talked..." My voice fractured. "She was already dead a week later."
"You think it's your fault," he said.
"Isn't it?" The words came out sharper than I'd intended. "I had information. I knew something was wrong with this place, this program that had terrified her so badly she'd rather die than—" I stopped, feeling the gravity of my words. "I kept her secret. And she's dead."
Rowan was quiet for a long moment, studying my face with that unsettling intensity. When he spoke again, his voice was gentler than before.
"How many others have there been?"
"Others?"
"Since Iris. How many clients have you lost to programs you'd never heard of? Intensive retreats that promised breakthroughs your traditional therapy couldn't provide?"
The question stole the air from my lungs. I stared at him, thinking of Mrs. Kim and the veteran who'd vanished after mentioning recruitment for an intensive program.
