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He's an architect who calculates load-bearing limits for a living—yet the weight of a woman's hand on his neck sends his heart racing to 140 beats per minute. She's a licensed surrogate partner who treats intimacy like structural engineering: precise protocols, explicit consent, and zero room for ambiguity. Together, they've signed a contract that turns healing into a syllabus—sixteen to twenty-four sessions, measurable objectives, and a safe word that stops everything instantly.
Julian Thorne has spent a decade frozen behind an invisible wall, watching relationships collapse before they begin. Elena Cross has built her career on the radical belief that the body can relearn safety, one controlled exposure at a time. No romance. No surprises. Just two people in a neutral room, three feet apart, learning how to exist in the same air without panic taking the wheel.
But structure has a way of cracking open what it's meant to contain. As the syllabus progresses from proximity to touch, from breathing exercises to skin contact, the clinical detachment they both rely on becomes the very thing they're fighting against. Some bridges are built to be crossed once—and never walked back.
Fiction
October 25, 2026
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