Metamorphosis Read online

  “I’m not sure what you’re getting at, Cameron.”

  “First of all, call me Cam. Secondly, I’ll just tell you what I thought when I first met him. Beyond just looking like a bad boy, a really, really good looking one, he was a delivery driver for a package company; he had an attitude a mile high; and thought he was God’s gift to women. I assumed his lack of education but generous gift in the body department probably got him everything he wanted with little regard for anyone else.”

  “That’s a lot to gather from a first meeting.”

  “No, that wasn’t the first meeting, that was the culmination of several brief encounters where he refused to do as I asked him to with regard to packages being delivered on my floor. Anyway, the last time I saw him before the…incident…he came into my office and told me I would have dinner with him that night. He told me where to meet him and what time. He didn’t ask, he didn’t suggest, he told. Needless to say, I didn’t show up. I figured if I stood him up he would get the hint and leave me alone at work, which presumably he did.”

  “I’m assuming somewhere along the way your opinion has changed?” She isn’t really asking a question; she is simply leading my story to ensure I know she is still following me.

  “The whole time I was in a coma, I had these beautiful, vivid dreams. They weren’t really about anything that I can recall other than color. The colors changed with the music creating the most radiant kaleidoscope I had ever seen. Although I can’t be sure, I think I have always dreamed in black and white prior. Maybe it was the drugs; hell, I don’t know. What I do know is I had an angel with me in my subconscious – one guiding me through the cascade of hues, through the rhythm of the music, and the lyrics – wow. That voice was heavenly. That voice provided calm, serenity, a peace I’ve never known. When I woke up, that voice was still sitting beside my bed, tatted up both arms, the arrogance gone, the hardness normally in his eyes dissipated. What remained was this stunning man, with the softest green eyes, who had a gentle touch. One who never left my side. I still don’t know the why behind that question. But he didn’t. We became surprisingly close over the next several days in the hospital, but it wasn’t until he took me to his house that my entire image of him was shattered.”

  “How so?”

  “That man sitting out there is Dr. Dax Cooper. He graduated with honors from Julliard. He completely renovated a hundred year old farmhouse he owns out right. His best friend died ten years ago, and he checks on his friend’s little sister every single day as if she were his own. He’s protective, kind, and loyal. Nothing like the original package he presented to me.”

  “Does that bother you?”

  “Do you mean does it bother me he isn’t what I thought he was?” She nods in answer. “No, not at all. I’m not usually surprised by people, but he surprised me.”

  “Then what about it bothers you?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Are you being honest with yourself?”

  I hesitate, knowing this is going to prolong getting out of her care, but it does bother me. I might as well let a professional tell me how to fix it. “Nothing about the revelation that Dax is completely different than I assumed him to be bothers me. What bothers me is my desire for him.” I swallow hard before continuing. “I was raped two weeks ago. Violently raped. How on Earth can I have feelings for a man I really didn’t know prior to that? Isn’t it off kilter to be drawn to a man after one has so painfully marked you? Damaged you?”

  “Well, I think there is a lot tied up in those questions. I’m glad to hear you can acknowledge what happened to you. That is a huge step in the right direction. It’s possible Dax has played a part in your healing process. It’s also possible he is allowing you to become dependent upon him. The mind reacts to rape in very different ways for different women but almost always leaves them feeling just as you described – off kilter, marked, and damaged. Our time today is almost up, but I’d like to see you back this week. In the meantime, I’m a big believer in journaling. I want you to get a journal and start writing every day about anything that happens to you – good, bad, indifferent. If something sticks out in your day, try to think about why it stuck out to you. Bring it back with you on Thursday, and we will talk about what you wrote. We will also continue to explore your relationship with Dax and eventually your trauma.”

  That’s it? This was painless. It doesn’t seem like I told her anything, and I couldn’t have been in there for an hour. I join Dax in the waiting room. He stands, taking my hand, and utters a goodbye to my shrink. “Bye, Shelly. It was good to see you.”

  Once we reach the elevator and I am sure no one is within earshot I ask him, “How do you know her? I thought Fisher recommended her.”

  “He did recommend her. I also happen to know her.”

  “How?”

  “That’s Jeremy’s mom, sweetheart.”

  I clamp my mouth shut. This has to be some sort of conflict of interest. My God, I just told that woman how shallow my thoughts of Dax were when I met him, then how wonderful he was, while admitting that I am having racy thoughts about him two weeks after I have been raped. Fucking kill me now.

  chapter nine

  “Kitten, I know you don’t want to talk about this, but we are quickly running out of time. Since we are downtown, it would make more sense to handle it now than to go back home and come back.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I want you to go by the PD and press charges.”

  “No.” My position on this is firm. It will destroy who I am.

  “Cameron,” he draws my name out like my father used to do when I was in trouble. Ugh, I hated that then and just as much now.

  “No, Dax. Absolutely not. I need to go back to work, not be defending myself in public, or pushing away unwanted sympathy or accusing glances.”

  “Well you aren’t going back to work any time soon, so you won’t be defending yourself in public or shaking anything off – accusatory or sympathetic.”

  “I’m going back to work tomorrow. I have been out for over two weeks. I have a job to do.” This is another point I won’t budge on.

  “I’ll let you go back to work tomorrow if you press charges.” He gives me a smug look.

  “I’m not bargaining with you. I’m not pressing charges, and I’m still going back to work tomorrow.”

  “Okay, let me make a deal with you that meets both of our needs.”

  I sigh. He obviously didn’t hear my last sentence where I said I’m not bargaining.

  “I’ll take you to the PD. Fisher is there and can arrange the line up. If you can go in and identify the man and not want to charge him, I’ll let it go. If you can do that and come back out without breaking down, I’ll drive you to work myself tomorrow morning.”

  “Really? That’s all it takes to appease you? Just walk in, identify him, and walk back out?” This is too easy.

  “Without breaking down. Yes, that’s it.”

  “Deal.”

  “Don’t be so quick to sell your soul, Cameron. If you break down, you press charges while we are there, and you don’t go back to work until I think you’re ready.” His eyes have turned a steely green, his resolve showing through them. He is serious.

  “Dax, you haven’t met Board Room Cameron. I can put on a show for anyone. All you said I had to do was get out without breaking down. You didn’t say I couldn’t do it in the truck.”

  “Fair enough. Let the show begin.” That smug smile is back on his face, but I am determined to get my way in this.

  Fisher meets us at the front of the police department before taking us back to an interrogation room. He indicates that they are lining men up across the hall and I will view them through one-way glass. There is a knock on the door causing Fisher to lean back in his chair to turn the knob while he keeps shooting the shit with Dax. When the door opens, his chair hit four legs again. “They’re ready. Come on, guys.”

  Once again, I stand, and Dax sits in his seat. “Come on, Dax.”

  “I’ll wait here for you, Kitten. It’s just right across the hall.”

  “You’re not coming with me?”

  “No. You said you could handle it.”

  “I didn’t know you weren’t going to be with me!” I am hollering at him, but his face never changes.

  “I told you not to sell your soul too quickly, Cam. You didn’t ask any questions, just told me you were good – that you could put on any act. If you truly don’t want to press charges, you will need to be comfortable walking the streets without me because I can’t be with you every second of the day. If you want to go back to work, you will have to defend yourself from eight to five while you’re there. I’m not trying to be mean baby, but this is what you said you want. I need you to prove it to me.”

  “Fine. Once I do, I want to go home.”

  “That, my dear, was not part of the negotiations. Let’s get past this, then we will talk about your living arrangements.”

  With that I walk across the hall, minus Dax, determined to get through this and back to work tomorrow. Fisher is here with me. I will be fine. He closes the door, and I sit in darkness near a pane of glass that shows an illuminated, dingy room, with measurements painted on the wall to illustrate each prisoner’s height. I don’t know what the man looked like. I never had enough light to see his face. I think I could identify him by smell though, but I doubt they would allow me to positively ID someone by scent. There is still no one in the light, but that pungent scent hits my nostrils with a force I don’t recognize. Blackness starts to encroach my vision. I look into the light trying to keep the demons at bay. I am choking on the aroma that is permeating my nostrils, mouth, and lungs. The men file in, standing in a row, not facing me, instead with their righ
t shoulders to me. The second from the right, I can see the damage I did to his neck, and suddenly I am there again, nuzzling into his neck, waiting for my opportunity to present itself. I start to choke on every breath I take. The air is rancid, but I can’t retreat from the scene playing in my mind. As I bite down in memory, my head slams against the brick wall, and I am pleading for my life again. “Please… God, please don’t hurt me. Dax, Dax, don’t let him…”

  “Dax!” Fisher is screaming, opening the door at the same time, “Daxxxx!”

  “Dax. Dax. Please Dax. Please keep him off of me.” I am still standing, but my head is beating against the glass behind me.

  “Geezus, Fisher!” Dax screams. Turning his attention toward me, he pulls me from the window, grabbing my face with both hands, but I keep trying to fight him off. Kicking. Punching. Begging him to let me go. Calling for Dax to save me. “Cameron. Open your eyes.” I know someone is talking to me, but I can’t get to the voice. I give in to the blackness that drowns out the memory.

  “Cameron. Open your eyes and look at me.” Dax’s controlling voice is out in full force, but I don’t know why he is using it with me. “Cameron, baby, open your eyes and talk to me.” I open my eyes in a dark room wondering why the hell I am lying on the floor with Dax looming over me. “It’s just me. Can I pick you up?” Still marred by confusion, I simply nod. When he lifts me from the floor, Fisher’s face looks like he has seen a ghost. I have no idea what happened in this room, but for a police officer, Fisher doesn’t seem to be able to handle much. Dax makes his way to a plastic chair, sitting down with me in his lap. Stroking my hair, “Cam, baby, what happened?”

  “What do you mean? I thought you wanted me to identify that guy.”

  Fisher speaks this time, presumably because Dax wasn’t in the room when we started this. “Cameron, you were complaining about the stench in the room, the moment the men walked in you locked eyes on the one who hurt you and started gagging and choking, then screaming. When the screaming started, you were pounding your head against the glass wall. You begged for Dax to make it stop, pleaded for him. When I got him in the room, he tried to get you to come back from where ever you went, but you blacked out.”

  I look up at Dax to find an unsettled look on his beautiful face, but those grassy green eyes always comfort me. “I could smell him. As soon as they walked in the room, the odor was overwhelming, suffocating. I was choking on him. When I saw him, my mind went back to that smell, where I knew it from; it was all over his neck. I waited for him to get close enough to my mouth to bite him, the entire time, wanting to throw up from that scent. I smelled it again. It was the second guy from the end on the right.” Looking back through the glass to the lighted room, I glance at the numbers, “Number six.”

  Dax doesn’t give me a ration of shit. He doesn’t say I told you so. He doesn’t gloat at all. I can’t be sure, but I’d be willing to bet he knew something would trigger an episode, reminding me I need to be with him. He just holds me, tracing circles on my back while my pulse returns to normal and my breathing slows. I love how he is able to calm me like this but hate it in the same regard. I’ve always been my own calming presence. I feel like a fish out of water at this point; my entire life seems to be up in the air. Dax is right. If I can’t do this without going into hysteria, how will I go back to work where I’m on my own for eight plus hours a day? Pushing those thoughts aside, I decide to deal with one situation at a time. Right now, I needed to give Fisher a statement. Then I will need to contact an attorney and try to get a meeting with the Executive Committee at the bank to discuss my immediate future. My dad used to tell me that when faced with consuming an elephant, you do it one bite at a time. My statement to the police was the first bite in a multi-course meal.

  Finishing up at the police department, we climb in the truck. “Hey, Dax?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I have a few things I need to do. Do you want to go with me or take me to get my car?”

  “I’ll take you. Where do you need to go?”

  “I need to go by the bank to set up meeting with the Executive Committee to talk about my job. I need to call an attorney. Then I need to get a new cell phone and go to my house. Oh, and I’m supposed to get a journal to start writing about my days.”

  “Send the Executive Committee an email letting them know you are taking a leave of absence. I’ll arrange an attorney. We can get you a new phone and a journal and then stop by your house. You’re right, you need to get some of your things.”

  “Dax, I need to go in and talk to my colleagues.”

  “No, Cameron, you don’t. You have been through a traumatic ordeal, and you haven’t been released medically. If anything, you need to contact HR about taking a leave of absence.”

  “Ugh. You are so infuriating. This is my life. Do you get that? Do you understand how hard I worked to get where I am? This one incident could destroy everything I’ve accomplished until now.”

  “Or, it could close that door and open another. Don’t make life’s path such a narrow one. It’s a broad road with lots of side trails; enjoy walking off the path sometimes. You’ll be amazed at the beauty you might find.”

  I am gawking at him in utter disbelief. He sees the shock on my face at how flippantly he regards my livelihood.

  “Cam, you’re job doesn’t define you. The public opinion of you doesn’t either. What matters is how you feel about yourself and the people who love you. Your life has forever been changed in the last two weeks. I’m not downplaying the things that are important to you, but I’m trying to make you see that you are more important than those things.”

  He starts the truck without any further discussion. We go get a new phone, pick up a journal, which I admit I am less than interested in keeping, then to my house. I don’t see the point in arguing with Dax about staying at his house because in all honesty, after last night and today, I don’t want to be away from him, but I have certain stipulations. Before I get into them, I pull up my email on my laptop and compose an email to the EC at the bank, describing in as few details as possible what happened over the last two weeks, that I hadn’t been cleared to return to work (although I don’t think a broken arm and a few broken toes were reason to stay home from a desk job, but Dax thinks the head injury is). I ask for an undetermined leave of absence since I don’t know when I will be released to work, offering to work from home, etc. I copy HR on my email to ask them to send me whatever forms are necessary to file. I cringe when I hit send, knowing that an era of my life ended with the click of the mouse. I try to put the thoughts aside because in reality it doesn’t matter what their decision is; mentally I’m not ready to go back to work, and I just don’t want to admit that to myself.

  Dax is sitting on my bed petting Mr. Whiskers, one of my two Persians, the other being Sassy Sultenpuss, who is watching him from the corner of my desk. He looks up at me and smiles when he realizes I did what he asked me to do. The next task is determining what to bring with me.

  “How long are you making me stay at your house?” I ask him in a baiting tone.

  “Indefinitely.”

  “Dax, I’m not staying indefinitely. Be serious. How much do I need to pack?”

  “I’m being serious, Kitten. I’m not putting a timeframe on it.”

  “I don’t know why I bother talking to you sometimes,” I huff at him.

  “That makes two of us. Just do what you’re told, and things will go a lot smoother. Are you bringing the flea bags with you?”

  “If you are referring to Mr. Whiskers and Sassy Sultenpuss, then yes. I can’t keep expecting my friends to come take care of them. And you will find I don’t follow instructions well Mr. Cooper.”

  “That is not a new revelation, love. You fight even when you’re wrong just for the pleasure of arguing.” There is a smile in his eyes, he likes my spunk, even if it tends to drive him a little nuts. “Seriously, pack what you need for a while. I think you should bring your car with you too.”

  I throw my bags in my SUV and load my kitties and their supplies in the backseat after locking up my house. I proceed to follow Dax to what will be my new home for the time being. I am still not sure why I’m not fighting harder against this but I need him. I don’t want to be without him around.