Camille, Claimed

by Ginger Talbot

  I have a gallery show coming up, and I usually sell several thousand dollars’ worth of paintings, but that’s not enough to live off for long. I have rent, utilities, car payments, student loans, groceries, art supplies…

  And for some reason that I can’t identify, I’m especially uneasy this morning. I feel the hair prickling on the back of my neck. I felt like this the other day in my house, and ignored it, and look what happened. I should have trusted my intuition, just as I tell my patients to do.

  But what am I afraid of, here in broad daylight, in a crowded café?

  Whatever it is, everything is building up inside me until I’m ready to explode. And I’ve lost my tolerance for my mother’s sharp tongue.

  “You repeatedly attempt to sabotage me during every conversation we have,” I tell her.

  “That’s the kind of thing they teach you to say in therapy school.” She sniffs disdainfully. Therapy school? “You should have attended an institute for faith-based counseling, not one of those…radical liberal brainwashing schools. They try to break up families.”

  I went to a Catholic university, and she knows it, but there’s no point in trying to muddle the argument with actual facts. My stomach curdles, and I stand up. “I’m not going to sit here while you attack me, Mother.”

  “Very well,” she says with a tight, angry smile. “What would you like to talk about?”

  “Bastien.” I choke on the word.

  She stares at me in astonishment.

  “What? Are you making some kind of sick joke?”

  But I’m staring across the room. He’s looking at me.

  His face is completely different. It’s clear that he’s had major plastic surgery to disguise his appearance, and his hair is clipped short. The only thing that’s the same is the eyes. Intense, piercing blue eyes that seize control of my breath and burn into my soul. I clench my fists and fight the impulse to sink to my knees, to crawl to him the way the way he taught me.

  He’s taller. He’s filled out considerably from when he was a rangy teenage boy; he has broad shoulders and biceps that his crisply tailored gray suit can’t hide. And his lips are quirking up in the faintest hint of a smile.

  “He’s here.” I point at him with a trembling finger.

  She starts with alarm and leaps to her feet, then looks at where I’m pointing. She doesn’t recognize him. “That man does not resemble Bastien in the slightest. My God. You’re truly having a breakdown.”

  I want to cry, to scream. I feel as if someone has yanked a rug out from underneath me and I’m falling and falling. Her and Landon, never believing me, always trying to control me with veiled threats about my mental health…

  Bastien is walking toward us.

  My heart stutters in my chest. Part of me wants to run, and I would, but my feet are somehow bolted to the floor. “Bastien.” I spit the word at him like a curse.

  He looks down at me. “Excuse me, have we met?” he says in perfectly accented American English. “I saw you were looking at me.”

  It takes all my strength to speak without stammering. I stare straight at him, trying not to let him see how intimidated I am. “What are you trying to pull here? I don’t care how much plastic surgery you’ve had; I recognize you. You’re Bastien Durand.”

  He shakes his head, smiling politely. “I’m sorry, no. My name is James Miller. I have one of those faces—people always seem to think they know me. Plastic surgery? That’s a good one.” At that, he wrinkles his forehead in a concerned frown, glances at my mother, and inclines his head at her as if in sympathy.

  He turns and leaves, and I stare after him in shock. This can’t be happening... When he’s standing outside, he looks at me through the window, raises his hand, and makes the hand gesture he used to make for me, that meant he wanted me on my knees. And then he vanishes around a corner.

  “Did you see that?” I choke out.

  My mother grabs her phone. “I am calling 9-1-1 and I’m having you committed,” she says, her voice rising to a high, unnatural tone. But there’s an ugly spark of triumph in her eyes. It’s like this is the moment she’s been waiting for, the moment when she can regain complete control of her wayward daughter, and she’s so happy it’s finally here.

  I’m panicking, but I force myself not to give in to hysteria. It won’t help. “Go ahead,” I tell her, my voice steady. “Waste their time by telling them I need to be committed because of a case of mistaken identity. I’ll be perfectly calm and will answer all their questions correctly, and you’ll look like a fool.”

  Her eyebrows jump with comical dismay. “You just said that it was him,” she splutters.

  “I was wrong.”

  “I won’t have this. No daughter of mine is going to…going to—”

  “Going to what? Embarrass you?” I grab my purse, clenching my hands on the strap extra tight so they won’t shake.

  Bastien is back.

  I have to get the hell out of here.

  Furious, frustrated, my mother shakes her phone at me. “I will call them. I will. Unless you voluntarily check yourself into a mental health facility immediately.”

  “Do it. And know this, Mother—you just crossed a line you can’t come back from.” I hurry from the restaurant without looking back. I know she won’t make the call. I’m not acting crazy, and if EMS showed up, I would just lie to them.

  I’m numb with fright and confusion. Bastien showing up at the café means he knows where I work and he’s deliberately messing with me. And he’s changed his appearance so much that nobody would recognize him—and he’s using a false name.

  How can he still be so obsessed with me after all these years? Why come back now?

  The wedding.

  That must be it. He must have somehow found out I’m getting married. Maybe he’s been stalking me all along, and this has pushed him over the edge.

  In the lobby of the building where I work, I dial a familiar number in France, the phone number of his parents, a number I still have memorized. I get a voice mail, in French, so I leave a message, also speaking in French. “This is Camille. I just saw Bastien here, and he looks completely different, because he’s had plastic surgery, but it’s him. I think he’s been breaking into my house. I just… I wanted to talk…”

  I hear the click of someone picking up the phone and I feel a momentary relief. Then I hear Emilie’s voice and my blood turns to ice.

  “Camille. You fucking bitch,” she says in English. Her voice summons up a wave of nausea and fear, dark memories of high school torments swarming through my mind and blackening my vision. “As if you haven’t done enough to my brother with your lies. Don’t ever call here again, or I will hunt you down and destroy you and your family. I will finish what I started. In fact, I may do it anyway, just for fun.”

  I quickly hang up, tears springing to my eyes. Everyone thinks that Emilie is so sweet. Once upon a time, I thought she was one of my best friends. Then her crazy brother killed my dog, and Emilie proceeded to ruin my life at school. Emilie has a cold, scary, single-minded side to her that she hides from most people quite brilliantly.

  Just like Bastien.

  I hate to do it, but I call into work and tell them there’s been a family emergency and I can’t come back in today. I wouldn’t be any good to my patients in the state I’m in. The office manager does not sound happy and she hangs up abruptly.

  The weird events that have happened ever since I announced my wedding…he’s been behind all of them. I’m sure of it. It was his footsteps I heard that night. He broke into my house and walked around downstairs, then messed with my computer security cameras to hide the fact that he’d been there. He was a computer genius back in school. That would be child’s play for him.

  And he must have been the man who broke into my house the first time, causing me to get the security system put in.

  The useless security system.

  He slashed my tires. He moved things around in my house. He must have hack
ed my bank account so I wasn’t sending payments to the utility company, then erased the email notices they sent me.

  I’m so panicked I can hardly breathe. I’m the target of a brilliant psychopath. The man I’ve been sexually obsessed with for the last ten years has followed me to America and wants to destroy me.

  Trying not to cry, I call a hotel and reserve a room for the night. Then I walk twenty minutes to the garage where they’ve fixed my flat tire, and I pay for the tire and drive to the hotel. I hold it together, just barely, until I walk into the room and shut the door. Then I drop my purse on a chair and burst into tears. “Oh, God,” I sob out loud. “What the hell? Why?”

  “Having a bad day, are we?” Bastien bursts out of the bathroom, nearly making my heart stop. He looms over me, larger than life, his blue eyes glittering with hate. He seems to grow bigger and bigger, reaching the ceiling, filling the room, sucking all the oxygen from it.

  I gasp for air for several seconds, like a beached whale, before I finally remember how my lungs work. Then I run for the door. He’s on me in a flash, pinning me up against the wall.

  “You crazy bastard!” I shriek. He shoves his elbow against my throat and presses so I’m struggling to breathe. Then he lets up on the pressure, and I suck in gulps of air. I can feel his enormous, rigid length pressing into my stomach, and shamefully, I tingle between my legs.

  “Oh yes. I’m crazy all right. You made me that way.”

  Then, to my shock, he kisses my forehead. His lips are soft and gentle. I struggle a little, but he presses his elbow harder, and I have to hold still so he’ll let me breathe. When I stop fighting, he eases up the pressure.

  He’s so much stronger than me, holding me still, and I can’t do anything. I have to let him kiss me. He can do anything he wants to me. It’s not my fault I’m feeling pleasure. I have no choice. He can make me say dirty words, he can touch me anywhere, and there’s nothing I can do about it.

  Arousal floods my body. I’m so wet between my legs I’m afraid my juices will ooze out and soak my panties. This is what I loved most of all when I was with him. The surrender. The helplessness. Letting him take charge. The delicious fear, not knowing what was coming next.

  He licks my neck, then bites it. I can’t stifle my moan of arousal.

  “You like that, baby?” his voice is a rich, sexy growl.

  “Yes. Oh God.”

  He moves his hips, rubbing his thick length against me, and I arch my back, pressing into him shamelessly, because I have to. He’s making me.

  My nipples are swollen and aching with desire for him.

  A tiny, shrill voice in my head, a voice that sounds a lot like my mother’s, chastises me. Am I going to let him do this to me? I’m not going to fight him at all? I’m engaged. I’m going to be married soon.

  Landon never made me feel like this… The heat licking up my legs and melting my private parts, the curl of desire in my belly, the breathless anticipation…

  “I’m going to destroy you,” he whispers into my ear, and my heart freezes with terror.

  What?

  I pray that I heard him wrong. He steps back. When I look up into his eyes, I see the purest, darkest hate. I’ve worked with some scary patients, but Bastien’s expression is the most terrifying thing I’ve ever seen. Even more frightening is the fact that one moment he could nuzzle me and kiss me like a lover, and the next he could scorch the skin from my body with the heat of his rage.

  “Why?” I gasp.

  “You have to ask?” His lip curls in scorn. “You destroyed me with your lies. You told the police you saw me stabbing your dog.”

  Tears prick my eyes at the memory. “I did see you stabbing my dog!” I cry out.

  He slaps me so hard that I see stars, then grabs me by the throat, squeezing hard. “You lying bitch. You saw me standing next to the body of your dog with a knife in my hand. You did not see me in the act of stabbing him.”

  “What’s the difference?” I claw at his hands, struggling to breathe. The room swims in front of me, then he opens his hand a little. Oh God. He’s going to kill me. I’m going to die here. I don’t want to die. My heart pounds so hard I can’t believe it hasn’t leaped from my chest.

  “Because I did not stab your dog.” I stare up at him. His gaze is intense. He looks as if he’s telling the truth, but I know what I saw.

  “I was searching everywhere for Fido, and I started hearing rumors about a man who liked to torture and kill dogs. I found out who it was. I followed him, and I killed him. Gutted him like a fish and watched him die. Then I went back to the place where he took all his kills. I was going to give your dog a decent burial.”

  I stare at him as the breath dries up in my lungs. His eyes bore into me, drilling into my soul. Making it bleed.

  “Think about it,” he growls. “Your dog had been dead for days when it was found. You and your family had dinner with us and went home, and your dog was there. I know, because you told me. And then you went to school, and when you came home, he was gone. I was with my family at home, or at school, the entire time he was missing. I couldn’t have done it. But nobody even stopped to think about that, because you were all so eager to stamp me with the psychopath label and write me off forever.”

  I think back to the timeline, and the horrible realization hits me.

  “You’re telling the truth,” I whisper. Oh, no. What did I do? Tears flood my eyes. “I didn’t mean to… I thought…”

  “I got a look at the police report.” The hate in his eyes makes me want to die. “You told the police officer you saw me stabbing your dog, and that was the end of my life as I knew it. Ever since that day, my parents were genuinely afraid I was going to snap and kill somebody. They had me followed by a bodyguard every minute of every day, even when I was with my brothers and sisters. Like I would have hurt someone from my own family. There was a bodyguard outside my door at night. I was institutionalized. Pulled out of school permanently. Your lies destroyed me.”

  He lets go of my neck and steps back.

  I try to remember what I told the gendarme. Did I tell him that I actually saw Bastien doing it? I might have, I was in such a state. I think I did. I screamed something like, “I saw him kill my dog!”

  In a daze, instinctively, I start to sink to my knees before him. I am overwhelmed with guilt and sorrow. I ruined his life, I ruined us. But how could I have known? What would anyone have thought if they’d stumbled in on him in a damn basement with a knife in his hand like that?

  He grabs me by the hair and pulls me to my feet, and I cry out in pain. I claw at his hands, but he just slams my head back against the wall again. Hot pain flares from the back of my head. “No,” he snaps. “You don’t get to go down on your knees for me. You’ve lost that privilege.”

  I’m crying hysterically. “So you’re going to kill me now?”

  “Not now. Someday, when you least expect it. But first I’m going to ruin your fucking life.”

  Terror chokes me. No, no, no… The man I loved is going to kill me. He’s looking at me with murder in his eyes. “Bastien, I am so sorry! I’ll call your family and tell them I made a mistake! I’ll call the police in Lyon. I’ll get it expunged somehow…”

  He slaps me again, and my vision blurs and I taste my own blood. “You stupid bitch! You think anybody would believe you now? And what difference would it make if they did? The damage is done!”

  “I can call them up and tell them I lied,” I plead, terrified. “I won’t even say I made a mistake. I’ll say I lied.” I’m not just saying it because I want to save my own life. I’m heartbroken over what I did. I am so sorry. I ruined him, over a mistake. Even if he never forgives me, I need to make it right for him.

  “You won’t say a fucking thing, to anybody,” he snarls. “It’s much too late for that. I know where your mother lives. Where your fiancé lives. Where your friend Pandora lives, with her baby. If you call anybody, I will hunt them all down and kill them. Same goes for report
ing me to the police. This is between you and me, mon petit chaton.”

  My little kitten.

  The name he used to call me.

  Tears stream down my cheeks at the memory of his voice calling out those words. “I loved you. I didn’t mean to hurt you. Can’t you understand that I…” My voice trails off hopelessly as I see hate making his beautiful face ugly. No. He doesn’t want to understand.

  “I loved you too.” He spits out the words like poison.

  Then he begins tearing at my shirt, ripping it open. I try to fight, and suddenly there’s a knife at my neck. Where did it come from? He moves down to my skirt, shoving it down around my ankles.

  “Step out of it.”

  I obey, pleading for mercy with my eyes. I’m met with withering contempt.

  “Now pull down your panties and step out of them.”

  Numbly, I do it. My shirt hangs open in shreds in the front. He moves the knife quickly, slashing my bra. It springs open, exposing my breasts. Then he bends my arm behind my back and walks me over to the glass doors that lead to the balcony.

  When he kicks the door open with his foot, I realize he’s going to make me go naked out on the balcony.

  “No!” I cry out, struggling. I can’t, I won’t… People will see me. I don’t let Landon see me naked—how could I let strangers look at me?

  He twists my arm up further and presses the blade of the knife into my thigh. “Walk.” Agony shoots through my arm as he forces me outside, over to the railing of the balcony.

  We’re on the second floor. Down below us, there is a courtyard full of people eating dinner and drinking and listening to music.

  He kicks my legs apart, releases my arm and slides the knife between my legs. Any minute now people will see us. Please don’t look up, please don’t look up… I’m crying from humiliation, and hear him fumbling with his pants.

  “Oh yeah, baby!” he yells loudly, and suddenly all eyes are on us. I buck back against him, and the knife cuts into my thigh. The blade stings against my tender flesh.