I’m biding my time. And meanwhile, I’m weaning off of my own damn medication in secret. I refuse to be drugged any more.
I hide the pills inside the hollow knob that is used as a drawer pull in my bedside table. Just one pill a day at first. Then two. I probably should just flush them. I should have faith that Aaron’s coming for me, and that my Plan B will never be needed.
But he might just decide that I’m a crazy girl who tricked him, and that I should be locked away. And if he does think that, I can expect no other help from anyone. And that’s where my Plan B comes in.
I don’t want to end like this. I don’t want to be another sad suicide in a nut house, who no one will ever remember. But can I trust Aaron to get me out? As time keeps crawling on, the knob fills up with pills, and the turkey decorations get taken down, and I wonder if he’s forgotten about me.
One dark, despairing night, I lie in my bed in tears, staring up at the moon and wondering why I haven’t even heard from Aaron at all. I take the knob off the drawer and shake the pills out into my palm. There are a lot of them now. More than enough.
I stare at them for a very long time.
The doctor doesn’t want me dead. It will make him look bad. My mother doesn’t want me dead. My suicide will open the can of worms that will lead to an investigation.
Aaron doesn’t want me dead. But where is he? Why hasn’t he done anything?
After a long time of sitting still while a war goes on inside my heart, I pour the pills back into the knob and screw it back onto the drawer. There’s another way to get my revenge besides dying tragically and letting the press see the blood in the water. And that is to fight.
But I’ll need Aaron’s help to do that.
“Hurry up,” I murmur at the ceiling, still clinging to hope by my nails.
Chapter 13
Aaron
It takes two months of fighting before I come for Madelyne. Two months of phone calls to the medical board, talking to the hospital directors, pointing out the discrepancies between her diagnoses and the medications she is on, and requesting an examination for signs of abuse.
Two months of pulling together a legal team, leaning on the board, and talking to anyone who could help me make a case. Her pediatrician. Cops involved in the case. Even, in a moment of desperation, her mother—who slams the phone down as soon as I say what I am calling about.
The hospital Christmas tree is up and all the leaves have fallen off the maples on the day that I walk in the door of the psychiatric wing of Ravenwood with a team of three lawyers. Staff members see me coming and their eyes widen. One of them scurries to page Westridge.
“Dr. Stokes! What a pleasant surprise.” Westridge sweeps toward me down the hall after a few minutes ... only to slow, his smile fading, when he sees the lawyers and the sheaf of papers in my hand. “How may I be of assistance to you?”
“You can immediately prepare Madelyne Deacon for discharge,” I say coldly, handing over the first few papers. “Her care is by necessity being transferred to another facility.” Namely, an outpatient program at a very good clinic down the coast.
He pales so suddenly that it makes my skin crawl a little. Is he that desperate to keep controlling her? “By necessity? I’m sorry?”
One of the lawyers, Jamison, steps forward, coughing into his bony fist. “No police reports, incident statements, or witness statements exist to verify your claim that this client must be held in perpetuity against her will. We are obliged to inform you that an investigation into Miss Deacon’s care is ongoing, as is a general investigation of your fitness to remain director of this facility.”
Westridge turns from white to red. “How dare you imply—”
“No one is implying anything. The investigation is a matter of record.” I step forward and look him in the eye. “As is the emergency order of protection that bans you from being within one thousand feet of her until the conclusion of this investigation.”
His eyes widen in horror—it’s the most satisfying sight I have seen in a long time. A round, curly-haired brunette nurse approaches as he’s standing there spluttering. “Doctor?” she asks me tentatively.
“She’ll need some help filling out her discharge paperwork,” I say, and offer the nurse the shopping bag in my other hand. “I brought her some clothes and shoes.”
The smile the nurse shoots me is full of relief. But a moment later she flinches as Westridge goes rocketing over the edge.
His face has gone from red to purple. “No, you don’t do any such thing, missy, don’t you dare! I run this hospital, and I call the shots!” His hands and voice both shake. It’s like some kind of explosion is building up.
I calmly get between him and the reedy lawyer and startled nurse. “Not this time.”
The nurse goes to do her job, taking the bag with her. I stare down Westridge, who glares at me like an infant on the verge of a tantrum.
“You ... you ... you’re only doing this because you’ve had it in for me since the beginning! That girl is crazy! She needs my control to survive! She needs me!”
“You’re the last thing she needs,” I spit in disgust.
By the time that Madelyne comes walking down the hall in her new blue dress, her eyes lighting up as she sees me, Westridge has gone from yelling to trying to hit me with a medicine tray. I sidestep him, and several orderlies grab him.
Madelyne walks up beside me and watches as they drag a screeching, plum-faced Westridge to where one of the desk nurses is preparing a sedative. Her eyes search my face; I smile at her. She takes my hand with a look of relief, and we watch as a whining, mumbling Westridge is bundled into a wheelchair and wheeled away.
“You came back,” she says in soft wonder, and I smile and slip an arm around her.
“I said I would. I’m just sorry that it took so long. But I hope this counts as a good apology—and a halfway decent Christmas present.” I wink at her, and her smile blooms again despite everything.
She leans her head against me. “It’s the best Christmas present.” She’s still in a bit of a drug-induced haze, but she doesn’t seem half as bad as that life-changing night I found her on the bridge.
We watch until Westridge is gone, and then go to the desk to sort out Maddy’s discharge. The rest of the staff seems relieved at the turn of events, and several wish her well as we go.
I shake hands with the lawyers. “The board will need copies of everything. Please see to it, and I’ll call you when I need to move forward on the permanent protection order.” Though after today, if I’m lucky, Westridge will be declared unfit.
Once Madelyne and I are standing alone outside the hospital, she turns to me and we hug each other tight. “Thank you,” she says softly.
“You’re welcome. So ... where do you want to go from here?” I brush my fingertips down her cheek. There’s a smell of rain in the chilly air, but I don’t mind. A cold ride will be warmer with her arms around me.
Her eyes light up. “Did you bring the motorcycle?”
“I did.” I gesture toward the Harley. “You ... want to head north again for the weekend? I could book us a suite in Portland.”
“Absolutely.” The light in her eyes is amazing, as if I’ve rekindled all her hopes at once. Once we reach the motorcycle, she kisses me, and then hops on the back. “Let’s ride.”
The End.
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Filthy Neighbor: A Bad Boy Next Door Romance
Filthy Neighbor
The little cutie next door is spying on me.
She watches me when I exercise. She watches me when I use my hot tub and when I take a lover into it. It’s clearly a crush—and I like it. Those bright, longing eyes of hers turn me on. They make me want to show her that some things are much more fun to do than watch.
There’s just one problem—if she’s been w
atching me, she may have seen too much. I’m a problem-solver for my uncle Ezio, the local mob boss. I leave at odd hours. I keep odd company. One day, she may figure it out. And if that happens, I have to make sure she’s already too attached to me to give me up to the cops.
But there’s a simple solution. The little lady has a crush. She wants me to show her what it’s all about in bed. And with my secrecy at stake, I have to ask: why not give her what she wants?
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Dr. Orgasm Extended Epilogue
I wake up in Aaron’s sprawling bedroom three days before the trial starts for the man who tried to own me. Dr. Westridge doesn’t haunt my nightmares like he used to, but I’m still going to feel safer once he is behind bars. First, though, I have to prepare myself mentally for an ordeal that may drag out for months.
I turn my head to see Aaron lying on his back, the blankets pushed down his bare, rippled belly to puddle over his groin. He’s hot-blooded, and even with the weather cooling down he always ends up tossing off most of his bedding. I would mind more if he didn’t always curl up against me whenever he sleeps, almost like the world’s sexiest furnace.
His bedroom is in the loft of the sprawling sixteen-room house atop a hill just outside Marin. One whole wall of the room has been replaced with three-layer, reinforced glass, giving an unobstructed view of the forest and the sea beyond. After years of having to stand on my bed to see out the single small window of my cell, the sight is almost overwhelming.
Every time I wake up like this I have to ride out a wave of mixed emotions that hits alongside the realization that I am no longer at the hospital. First comes the relief. Then comes the happiness, tentative and sweet, as I lay eyes on Aaron beside me. And then ... then comes the creeping, irrational fear.
I get scared that I’m going to look out that window and down at the circular drive, and see cop cars and an ambulance. I get scared that the police will come because someone lied about me again. Then I have to lie there talking myself down if Aaron isn’t awake yet. If he is, he’ll look after me himself, which is always lovely—but I can’t always rely on it.
I grab the white silk robe he got for me off the back of a nearby chair and wrap it around myself as I head for the bathroom. So much has changed in the last few months that sometimes, it’s almost as if the ten years before that were some kind of bad dream. Unfortunately, bad dreams don’t leave your life on hold for a decade.
Besides facing my captor in court, I now have to make up for that lost time in ways large and small. I’m studying for my GED, since I never had the chance to go to junior high or high school. After that, I plan to go to college, though I’m still not sure what my major will be.
After showering, doing my hair and makeup, and pulling on a soft alpaca sweater and skirt in pale blue, I clean up my mess from the bathroom and walk out. I hope that Aaron agrees to teach me to ride motorcycles as well as drive cars. He said he would think about it.
Every day that goes by, I feel a little safer, and a little more like I can move on with my life. I still check out the window on my way across the room; it’s become a habit. But no one has come up to bother us up here outside of the legal team and a few deliveries.
Aaron is a deep sleeper. He’s still snoozing away as I come out and doesn’t stir as I leave. I smile. The smell of coffee usually wakes him.
Downstairs, a pair of hulking brown dogs and a fat black and white cat crowd toward me, the dogs wagging and the cat meowing like he hasn’t eaten in a century. It makes me giggle. They beg around my ankles as I scoop coffee grounds and pour water.
How strange it is to be walking around free as an adult, doing adult things like making coffee, feeding pets, or having a boyfriend. People don’t know how special these things are if they’ve never been deprived of them. But I do, and so I treasure every day that I’m doing that instead of staring at the walls of my hospital room.
I scoop kibble and fill water bowls as soon as I get the coffee brewing. The whole time, I’m looking around at everything as if to reassure myself that nothing has changed in the night. I know that my worries are irrational, and that the worst possible outcome for me right now is that Dr. Westridge won’t go to jail.
It will be all right. I’m not going to turn a corner, find myself back in the hospital, and realize that my taste of freedom was just a delusion. Police are not going to drag me away. And unlike my mother, Aaron will never betray me and throw me away. Ever.
Instead, I’m left to tackle my future as a free woman. If Aaron wasn’t by my side and offering me help at every turn, I would be lost right now. I hate having to depend on him so much, which is why I’m working to become more independent. But that’s only because I don’t want him to feel obliged to carry me, not because I worry about what he might do while he has power over me.
The pets are munching away and I’m putting English muffins in the toaster oven when Aaron pads in with his jogging shoes on. He used to run in the mornings, but now he spends mornings with me and gets his run in getting to work any day that’s warm and dry enough. The hospital is only two miles from here, which sometimes makes me feel vulnerable, but it means he’s close if anything should ever go wrong.
“Morning, sweetheart,” he says, and we kiss, my hands on his chest and his on my shoulders. I have to lean up pretty high to reach his mouth. The height difference sometimes has me making mountain-climbing jokes.
“So what’s on the agenda for today?” I ask, clinging to him a moment too long.
“A ton more paperwork, sweetheart, nothing serious.” I know he has to leave for work soon, with his suit and shoes tucked in his backpack, and that tonight is paperwork night again. Paperwork day means I won’t see him until midnight.
He explained about his predecessor’s paperwork backlog early on, so I know that every week I’ll be facing at least one night alone. It doesn’t make things much more comfortable. I hate being without him right now, even though I know I’m being clingy and unreasonable.
“So you’ll call me around dinnertime?” I query in a high voice. It’s the one concession I ask for besides his calling if he has to be there even past midnight.
He nods, and kisses me again before going to grab eggs out of the fridge and cook them up for us. I dart into the fridge after him and grab a cantaloupe and Tabasco for my eggs. Ever since I got out, I’ve been getting into spicy things, trying to get the bland taste of institutional food out of my mouth.
I’m very ginger when cutting the cantaloupe. I haven’t gotten comfortable around knives or open flames yet. I have already tapered down off of all my psych meds. But as it turns out, inexperience with almost every aspect of adulting does cause some anxiety on its own.
I’m willing to face that without any drugs, though. I’m getting better. I don’t get as depressed, the nightmares are starting to go away, and I’m no longer so damn jumpy.
My counselor at the outpatient center, Dr. Henway, says I’m making good progress too. On my request, she avoids recommending drugs except if she ever feels I absolutely need them. She’s the opposite of Westridge: small, chubby, sweet-faced, understated in appearance, and blunt in her words.
I’m down to three sessions a week from every day. She’s already discovered that the diagnoses Westridge put on my chart not only weren’t verified with proper tests and are completely inaccurate. In fact, it’s my time with him that’s done me the worse damage.
And she’s willing to testify to that in a court of law.
“You doing all right about me being gone today?” he asks me, and I nod.
“Just remember to call me. I’ll be okay if you check in with me.” It amazes me how that one small thing can ease things for me. But a few minutes of contact, and knowing he is all right, helps me weather the rest of the evening.
“Okay. What are you doing today?” He is busy scrambling up a nice big mess of eggs while I finish cutting cantalou
pe and turn to set the table, putting on butter and blackberry jam.
“Finishing writing the story of my captivity for the prosecutor, so I have the whole thing straight in my head. Then taking that money management tutorial we found. Maybe watching some of those movies you recommended.” I set slices of cantaloupe on the plates and watch him transfer the eggs into a serving bowl.
“Good girl. I’ll go over the story with you tomorrow. I’m taking off until noon tomorrow.” He brings over the eggs, then grabs the English muffins from the toaster oven and brings those over too. He settles in, we fill our plates, and I try not to think too hard about what I’m putting in my story.
“How much detail should I go into?” I ask between bites of egg.
“Everything you can remember. No matter how trivial. The more consistent and detailed your story is, the more credible you will sound to a jury and the harder it will be for the defense to rattle you.” Aaron eats quickly, talking to me between bites.
Dr. Orgasm (A Holiday Romance Collection Book 2) Page 6