Metamorphosis Read online

  “What do you mean punished you?” Fisher asks calmly. “Can you give me details?”

  “He bound my hands with something behind my back. He kept my mouth covered using it as leverage when he grabbed my hair to slam my head into the brick wall. He punched me in the face so many times, as if he were fighting with another man. He ripped off my bra and blouse. He had discarded my skirt. The only thing I still had on was my heels and my…my panties.” I look at Fisher to see anger flooding his face. It frightens me, but I don’t know why. He is here to help me, but I start to step backward toward the bathroom door. He steps toward me like he is going to help me, to keep me from falling, and my back hits the door, like that brick wall. My mind goes to the last thing I remember happening that night, the rip of the lace. I squeeze my eyes closed as tightly as possible as a scream rips from my throat. All of the pain from that night comes out as I shriek, “Dax!” I fall to the floor, curling into a ball, crying hysterically, shaking, repeating his name under my breath, calling to him as if he could have been my savior that night, “Dax, Dax, Dax, please help me. Please, Dax. Please help me.”

  Suddenly, I am off the ground surrounded by his arms, one under my knees the other around my back pushing my head into his neck. His scent is so comforting, and I don’t have to open my eyes to know it is him – his smell has become part of me over the last two weeks in this room.

  His voice booms, “What the fuck did you say to her, Fisher? You were supposed to be gentle. She hasn’t been like this since she woke up!” His anger should make me fear him, but it calms me to know he is on the verge of kicking his friend’s ass in my defense even as I continue to shake in his arms as he sits down.

  Fisher comes back at him much calmer than I anticipated he would. “Dax, calm down. Your being hysterical isn’t going to help. She’s been through a traumatic situation, and she’s not going to come out of it unscathed.”

  “Goddammit, Fisher, what did you say to her that triggered this?” He is just rocking me slowly in his lap on the bed, as if I can’t hear them talking.

  “I have to ask what happened, and she has to attempt to give us her side. I can’t keep him forever without her statement. You know this. We have talked about it repeatedly over the last two weeks.”

  “I knew I shouldn’t have left the fucking room. Fuck, Fisher…. ”

  I interrupt him, looking at Dax, “You…you know who did this to me?”

  Dax looks to Fisher as if seeking permission to tell me something he knows. Fisher nods in agreement. “The bartender was going to his car in the parking lot and found him on top of you. He ripped the guy off and started pummeling his face. He screamed for help to another worker coming out the same door. They called 9-1-1 while the bartender beat the guy enough that he wasn’t going to move. The waitress who called 9-1-1 brought towels out from the bar to cover you up until the police arrived. She stayed with you until I got there. I never saw the guy who attacked you, Kitten. I still haven’t seen him. He would be dead if I had reached him.” There is no doubt in my mind that Dax would have killed the man with his bear hands, not just for me, but for any woman who endured what I went through. That’s just the man he is.

  I had calmed in his arms listening to him when Fisher asks me, “Cameron, did you try to hurt him?”

  “Of course. I kicked, punched, anything I could do.”

  “Did you use your teeth?” He is hesitant in his question, and Dax looks thoroughly confused. It hit me like a ton of bricks.

  “Oprah,” I say more to myself than anyone listening.

  “Excuse me?” Fisher asks.

  “Yes. I used my teeth. His neck. I bit down on his neck…the left side.”

  “Bingo,” Fisher smiles.

  “What are you grinning for?” Dax asks in a pissed off alpha tone.

  “She bit the shit out of him, Dax. When I say bit him, she took an enormous chunk of flesh from the left side of his neck. Like she bit down on him until her teeth met.” Fisher looks toward me, “You’ve got fight, girl. You’re gonna make it through this. Let Dax help you.” He asks me a few more questions before telling me that I will need to come to the police department to identify the guy. I tell him that I never really saw his face, but Fisher assures me that it will be easy enough to pick out the guy who has a large bandage on the side of his neck. Most of his face isn’t all that recognizable anyhow; the bartender did a number on him, breaking several bones in his cheeks, including his jaw. “Don’t worry, Cameron. Between what you are able to tell us, your saliva around the wound connecting you via DNA, and his sperm that was recovered from you in the ER, he’s not going to see freedom for a long time.”

  “Wait, no, Fisher, I don’t want to press charges!” I become hysterical again.

  “What are you talking about, Cam?” Dax, bless his heart, he just doesn’t know the me outside of these walls.

  “If I press charges, there will be a court case, and it will make the media. My reputation in the business world will be destroyed. I’ll lose my job, the confidence my colleagues have in me, the respect of my employees. Absolutely not. No charges.”

  “You have got to be shitting me, Cameron!” Dax’s voice booms in my ear.

  Pulling myself out of his lap, I retreat away from the three men. “No! No charges.”

  Fisher steps up, but I hold my hand up telling him not to come closer. He stops moving but starts talking. “Cameron, I urge you not do to this. This man will do this to another woman.”

  “Cam! You. Will. Press. Charges.” He enunciates each word, making them individual sentences to emphasize he isn’t playing with me. This is not a request – this is a demand. Dax is going Dom on me, or so he thinks.

  “No, Dax, I will not. Fisher, if there’s anything else you need from me, I will get a new phone today, and you should be able to reach me at the number I gave you. Now, if you all will excuse me, I would like to get my stuff together, call my friends, and go home.” Fisher and Jackson say goodbye after telling me that if they don’t hear from me in twenty-four hours, they will have to release my attacker. They both walk out. Dax, however, does not.

  “You are not calling your friends. They are not taking you home. You are coming home with me.”

  I laugh. I can’t control it. I clutch my stomach, doubled over. I fall to my knees laughing until I am crying. The crying from tears turns into sobbing. The emotional roller coaster doesn’t seem to want to pull back into the corral and let me off.

  Once again, Dax scoops me off the floor. “This is why you are not going home.” He holds me to his massive chest stroking my head, careful to avoid the land mines of injuries. When I have let all of the emotion out that I can possibly release in one sitting, he looks down at me. “You ready to get out of here?” I just nod at him. He is the only person I feel safe with right now, and I don’t have the strength to argue about this.

  With the discharge instructions and paperwork from the nurse on duty, Dax takes my hand and leads me out the hospital doors. The sun is blinding, but I have never seen something as beautiful in my life. The sky is a crystalline blue dotted with a few white whiffs of clouds, and the sunshine a powerful white, taunting me to look at it but forcing me to turn my eyes away from its agonizing beauty. Dax lets me enjoy the sting of the light for a moment before capturing my face in his hands, kissing me, a slow and unobtrusive kiss – just Dax being Dax. It lasts just long enough for me to realize there is an attraction for him that now frightens me, where as before, it simply irritated me.

  Chapter five

  Dax lives in an old farmhouse on fifty acres of land in Fountain Inn. I didn’t realize you could find this sort of solitude less than ten miles from my own house. It is nothing like I would have expected from him. Scarlett O’Hara, yes, Dax Cooper, nope. It’s a huge two-story, white house, with a dream porch wrapping around the entire perimeter of the lower floor. Rocking chairs are on the porch, along with huge fans in the shapes of leaves. The landscaping in front of the house is pai
nstakingly cared for. He has a circular driveway, and on the side closest to the house are gobs and gobs of gorgeous flowers in every color, shape, and size imaginable, their smell permeating the air in a sweet way that you can only find in the South. There is lush green grass on the other side of the driveway with a fountain in the middle of the circle. The fountain is a male angel standing in a pool of water holding the hand of a little girl in a dress. There are little brown birds flitting in the water. Dax catches me staring, taking it in. “It reminded me of Jeremy and Julie.” My heart breaks for him. I turn to him, locking my arms around his waist, squeezing him, knowing the loss of his friend, his surrogate brother, would have been life altering. “It was a long time ago, baby,” all he says before prying me off his mid-section to pull me inside.

  The house is in perfect condition inside. Everything has been painstakingly restored to what it would have been a hundred years ago, but modernized with running water, plumbing, electricity. The house is warm and inviting. He shows me the front room where a grand piano sits on display, and there are several guitars lining the wall, but we don’t stop long enough for me to ask questions. We continue the tour through the dining room, kitchen, breakfast room, formal living room, bathroom, a large family room, the laundry room, and what he refers to as the mudroom before he takes me upstairs. There are four spacious bedrooms, two of which have their own bathrooms, while two share a bathroom, and then the master bedroom. The master bedroom has a library off of it stuffed with books, a comfortable looking couch, and a desk. The master has a huge wooden bed in it, a matching dresser, two nightstands, and a tall chest of drawers. The walls are a golden color, and there is a blue plaid comforter on the bed. There is a large dark blue rug on the floor covering the majority of the hardwood in the room. It dawns on me there is no carpet in the entire house, all hardwoods. Every room is perfectly decorated in a masculine, country, but also modern, chic look – if that even exists. I love every inch of this house, but none of it, not one room, is what I would have picked out for Dax. He is obviously proud of it.

  “Your house is beautiful,” I say as I admire the high ceilings and what appears to be hand carved moldings.

  “Thank you. It took me years to restore. Jeremy helped me with a lot of it; we had pretty much finished the downstairs when he died. Since then, I’ve done most everything myself. It’s taken a lot longer but been worth it. I got the house for a steal and paid it off in a few years, and I forced myself to pay for all of the renovations in cash as I went along, so I don’t have a mortgage payment. Jeremy thought I was crazy when I bought this place at age nineteen.”

  “You bought this house at nineteen?” I am incredulous. He’s a delivery driver, for the love of God.

  “When my grandfather passed away, he left all of the grandkids large sums of money. I paid for college and bought this house. I invested in my future.” He is succinct in his answer.

  I, on the other hand, now only have more questions. “Where did you go to college?”

  He is making his way toward the kitchen. “Juilliard,” he calls casually over his shoulder.

  “You went to Juilliard? Like the Juilliard in New York?”

  “Yes. Are you surprised?” I can’t tell if he is playing with me or hurt by my shock.

  “A little. Did you graduate?” I ask as I take a sip of the drink he hands me.

  “Cameron, I’m starting to think you believe I’m an idiot. Yes, I graduated with a B.A. and a Ph.D.”

  Spitting my tea all over his chest, I wipe my mouth. “You graduated from Juilliard in New York, with a Ph.D.? In what?” I sound like an idiot, even to myself.

  He just laughs at me. “A Doctorate in Musical Arts.”

  “The guitar.”

  “No baby, the guitar is something I play with. I went to Juilliard for piano on full scholarship. I paid for my living expenses in New York while I was there.”

  “So why do you deliver packages now?”

  “Actually, I don’t anymore.” He walks off leaving me with that answer hanging in the air.

  I take off after him. “What do you mean you don’t deliver packages anymore?” I grab his arm to try to force him to turn around and look at me.

  “It’s not a big deal, Cam.”

  “It is to me. Tell me why,” demanding answers but my tone tells him I am weak.

  “I was let go. It really doesn’t matter.”

  “Because of me?” It’s rhetorical really.

  “I ran out of vacation time. I took a leave of absence, but when they found out you weren’t an immediate family member, the Union encouraged me to resume my route or risk being replaced by a driver who was working splits while waiting to get one. I didn’t go back on the route, so I lost it.”

  “Why didn’t you go back?” My brow furrows looking up at him in utter confusion.

  “I told you I would be there. For days, I told you if you would wake up I wouldn’t leave your side. I promised you I would take care of you; never let anyone else hurt you. When I make a promise, I keep it.”

  I am talking to myself when I mutter, “He did the same with Julie.”

  “What? I didn’t hear you.”

  “Nothing. I was just thinking that you did the same thing for Julie.”

  “Julie’s like a sister to me and has been since the day she was born. I will always look after her because that’s what Jeremy did.”

  I let it go. I don’t want to think that he thought of me like a sister and did this out of obligation. I don’t have any business thinking about any kind of relationship with a man after what I have just endured.

  “So why on Earth did you ever come back to Greenville after graduating from Juilliard?”

  “This is my home, Cameron. My family is here. My friends are here. My entire life resides in this county. Everything I love is here. I never had any intention of staying in New York, but I wanted the best education I could get. That was at Juilliard.”

  “What did you do when you came home?”

  “You mean after college?” I nod my head yes. “I taught music at Furman.”

  How could I not have known this, how could it never have come up in all the time we spent talking in the hospital?

  “Will you play for me?”

  “Maybe later. I need to go get the bags out of the truck. Make yourself at home.” I am hurt by his rejection. For whatever reason, he made it obvious this part of his life is off limits to me. When he comes back in, I ask him which room he prefers I use. He said any of them were fine. I take my bag from him telling him I am going to take a nap and make my way to the top of the stairs to the first room on the right.

  chapter six

  Stepping in, I realize this room is as masculine as Dax’s, but it has a lot more personal touches to it. There are pictures of Dax at a much younger age with another guy. As I get to the end of the dresser, there is one larger picture with Dax and another guy, who must be Jeremy, because this is a picture of both families at what appears to be a backyard cookout. I even recognize a little bitty Julie being held by Jeremy with a huge smile on his face. When I open the closet door, there is lots of male activity equipment, like rollerblades, body board, water skis, life jackets, etc. I reach out to touch the life jacket, but something pulls me back. Dax’s hand is securely attached to my elbow. “Don’t touch it.”

  I keep waiting for him to say something else, but he just picks my bag up off the bed with his free hand and escorts me out of the room by my arm like I am a child who’s been caught with her hand in the cookie jar. The force in his grasp scares me, and I need to get away from him. He continues to pull me across the hall where he drops my bag on another bed. He lets me go without saying a single word, walks out of the room, closing the door behind him. I don’t know what the hell I have done, but obviously I screwed up. I want to go home, home to the comfort of my things surrounding me, my bed, my music, my life. I still don’t have a damn cell phone, but I had made all of my girls write down their numbers for me
in case I needed them, which I had tucked neatly in my bag at the hospital. I had seen a landline in Dax’s bedroom when we toured the house, so I sneak out of the room as quietly as possible to get to it. When I reach Dax’s room, I hear the sound of his shower running. He can’t have been in there long, so I figure it is safe to call Sutton. She is the best bet – uber protective and would die trying to kick Dax’s ass if she thinks he is hurting me in anyway.

  Thank God, she answers when I call. “Sutton, I don’t have time to talk, get a piece of paper and listen to me.”

  “Geez, okay Cam. What’s going on?”

  “I’m at Dax’s house, I have no idea where my car is, I don’t have a cell phone, and I want to go home. Will you please come pick me up?”

  “Yeah, sure. What’s the address?”

  “Fuck, I don’t know Sutton.”

  “How the hell am I supposed to pick you up if you don’t tell me where you are, Cam?”

  I give her directions the best I can remember. Luckily, I’ve lived in this area my entire life, so I can give round about directions to just about anywhere. Sutton knows where I am talking about and says she’ll be here in twenty minutes. I hang up and scurry out of his room right as the shower turns off.

  The room he placed me in is on the front of the house. I told Sutton not to pull into the driveway and not to honk but that I would watch for her and would come out as soon as I saw her. She thought I was acting strange but didn’t say anything. When she pulls up, I creep down the stairs and hear the TV in the family room. When I open the front door, all of a sudden I hear, “Front door ajar” in an electronic voice. Fucking hell, why hadn’t I noticed that when we came in the damn house? I close the door quickly behind me and run like hell for Sutton’s car.

  I hear the door open behind me when I am close to the fountain. I don’t have to look back to know who it is. Then I hear the hammering of his footsteps behind me, calling my name, “Cameron! Fucking wait!”