Four months into dating Luke Strauss, Adrienne Hale is settling into a relationship that feels unusually serious to her. Luke cooks for her regularly and spends several nights a week at her house, while Adrienne notices that she now misses him when he is gone. Although she resists admitting it aloud, Adrienne realizes she may be falling in love with him.

Adrienne reflects on why intimacy is difficult for her. She thinks about her emotional distance from her parents, their deaths during her college years, and her long habit of withholding declarations of love from past partners. She also compares her losses with Luke's grief over his first wife, noting that his reluctance to discuss the accident is almost a relief because Adrienne does not want to expose her own pain either.

While making dinner, Luke asks Adrienne to watch the stove so he can get clothes from his car. Adrienne immediately panics that he wants to move in, because living together would remove the distance and control that make the relationship feel safe to her. Luke quickly clarifies that he only wants a drawer for some belongings, and Adrienne calms down, agrees, and shares a lingering kiss with him as he jokes that he loves her craziness.

The evening is interrupted when the doorbell rings. Adrienne checks her phone camera and sees that the visitor is EJ. Afraid of what he might do, she stops Luke from answering the door and insists that ignoring EJ is the best way to handle him, even though Luke is disturbed that a patient has shown up at her home so late.

EJ then texts Adrienne, saying he knows she is home and demanding an appointment the next morning instead of the following afternoon. Adrienne knows he is testing how much control he has over her, and she fears that refusing him could provoke him into releasing the compromising video he holds over her. Because of that threat, Adrienne gives in and schedules the morning session, recognizing that EJ's manipulation is growing bolder and more dangerous.