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His face stays calm but his scent spikes. He looks at me, then covers my ankle with his hand. “I’m good.”

Pepper’s gaze moves from the rubbing to my phone. “Now we have to talk about Sawyer.”

Theo looks as if he would rather crawl under the dock and fight a water snake. He sits on the floor by the coffee table anyway.

I hand Pepper the phone. Her expression changes as she reads, ebbing between excitement and fear. I can feel both in the way her fingers tighten around the case.

Theo watches her face. “That bad?”

“That good,” she says.

He frowns. “That doesn’t help me.”

“Her treatment calms a bond system that has started overreacting. Think of microphone feedback. If the sound is screaming, turning down the volume helps.”

“That sounds like what we want.”

“It might be.” Pepper scrolls, then turns the phone so he can see the table even though he won’t understand the data. She knows him well enough to offer anyway. “Bond response involves more than pain. It’s scent recognition, attachment, memory association, safety cues, body awareness. If the treatment turns the volume down too far, the screaming may stop, but you could lose other bond signals too.”

Theo’s thumb presses once against my ankle.

“It could make him steadier and make his bond sometimes feel different or muted,” she says.

“The paper calls it a temporary adjustment,” Theo reads.

I snort. “The paper sounds like it has never woken up unsure whether it owns hands.”

Pepper’s scent sharpens.

I tap her knee. “I’m here.”

“I hate this.”

“I noticed.”

Theo’s voice stays low. “What are the odds it helps?”

Pepper looks back at the study. “High for reducing acute distress markers. Decent for improving recognition continuity. Lower for full restoration. The study is small, but the results are strong.”

“And the cost?”

“They have a grant program that can cover expenses. But in terms of side effects, it’s possible Ezra may have emotional flattening. Lower scent response. Confusion around attachment signals during treatment.”

Theo looks at me. “It’s your call.”

Just like that. It’s the right answer, and it still makes my throat tight.

I look at the dock rubbing. Then the lily sketch. Then the name Lucy Sawyer glowing at the top of the email like a miracle. The route questions and the medical ones are starting to overlap. The dock tells us where this old system ran. Maybe talking with Sawyer can help explain what my damaged bond is doing while all of this happens.

“I don’t want to be made easier to manage,” I say. “But I want the consult. I want to hear what she says when Pepper asks the hard, ugly questions. I want to find out if there’s a version of this where I get better without losing the parts of me that belong to you.”

Theo’s hand tightens around my ankle. “Then that’s what we do.”

“First step,” Pepper says.

“First step,” I agree. “We do a remote consult. We ask questions before we give her my records. Samples and protocols stay off the table.”

Theo nods.