Unfiltered & Unraveled

by Payge Galvin

“Honey, you better watch out,” Cynda sing-songed. “Nurse Ratchett has had the hots for Cameron since forever. She does not respond well to Cam giving attention to other girls. Flirting with the good counselor is not a bright idea.”

  “I wasn’t flirting with Cameron,” I protested, flopping onto my bed. “I was just…”

  Cynda smirked at me. “Literally, feeding him out of the palm of your hand?”

  “It was more like my fingertips.”

  Cynda snickered and threw a bottle of alpha-hydroxy hand crème at my head. “I’m just saying, be careful. Nurse Sarah once put a girl on kitchen duty for her full thirty-day stay because Cam laughed at a joke she made at dinner.”

  “Wow. Cynda, how long have you been here?”

  Cynda thought about that for a moment. “What month is it?”

  Chapter 5

  Cam was very angry with me.

  He was sitting in his desk chair, hands steepled over the grey vest and tie he was wearing. He peered over his little silver half-moon glasses, his jade eyes practically pinning me to the desk blotter, where I appeared to be sitting. And judging from the way the stapler was jabbing my ass, I didn’t seem to be wearing any panties.

  He placed his hands on either side of my thighs, his thumbs trailing along the hem of my jean skirt and just barely brushing against the sensitive skin. “Is there anything you want to tell me, Violet?”

  I shook my head, my eyes wide and innocent. “No.”

  “Are you sure there isn’t something you want to tell me about?” he asked, his voice lilting and teasing as his fingers trailed up my thighs, pushing up my skirt. I glanced toward the unlocked door, biting my lip and giving him a naughty, knowing little grin.

  “Have you been a good girl or a bad girl?”

  “A bad girl. But I can be good,” I promised, placing my feet on his chair, on either side of his hips. I leaned closer, teasing his earlobe with my blunt teeth. “I can be very good.”

  “But ‘good’ isn’t a lot of fun, is it?” he asked.

  In a few startling movements, he stood up from the desk, knocking me back on his blotter, and leaned over me. His smile was predatory, the Big Bad Wolf anticipating his favorite meal. I grabbed his tie, wrapping it around my fist and yanking him closer. “Would you rather be bad?”

  I bit my lip, as if I was considering this and not calculating exactly how many seconds it would take me to strip out of my clothes and get horizontal on Cam’s desk. He groaned, “Don’t bite your lips like that. Let me do it.”

  His ducked his head, claiming my mouth in a hot crushing kiss. His hands slid up my thighs, cradling my hips and pulling me closer so my ass rested on the edge of the desk. I wrapped my legs around his waist, grinding against the hard ridge under his zipper.

  I moaned, tilting my head back to let him glide his tongue along my throat. His fingers slipped around my hips, rubbing deep circles before teasing along the seam of my wet, warm sex.

  “Please,” I groaned, chasing his fingertips with my hips as he teased me open. He kissed me, smiling against my mouth as I reached for his belt buckle. His free hand reached for the knot of his tie, but I stopped him. “Leave it on.” I bit gently on the curve of his chin. “Leave it all on.”

  “All?” he asked glancing down.

  “Not everything.” I laughed, yanking the button of his jeans open and palming the heavy weight of his dick before it could spring free. He gasped, pressing his face into my neck as he rocked against my palm. I ran my thumb along the velvety, firm curve of him, then along the veins leading to the head.

  Cam licked his lips as he guided my free hand over my thigh and ghosted it over my bare mound. He spread my legs wide and pinned my knees against his hips. “You know what I want to see.”

  I nodded, mouth open and wet as I rimmed two fingers around my dripping wet heat. I circled my thumb around my clit, barely touching it as I slid my fingers inside.

  “That’s my girl,” Cam breathed. “That looks so pretty from here. Does it feel good?”

  “Yes.” I pumped my fingers into my pussy, slow and steady, nudging against my sweet spot. I stroked my thumb in firm, deliberate circles, making my thighs quake and my toes curl. I felt him get hotter and heavier against my palm and gave his dick a long stroke. He moaned, pitching forward and catching himself against the desk with his hands. I twisted my wrist, squeezing the head and relishing the warm, slick fluid that leaked onto my palm. It was enough to make me clench around my fingers.

  I was stroking him in earnest now, long and slow movements that matched my own. I rolled my back against the desk, urging my hips closer to him.

  His face. Cam’s face as he was trying to fight off coming was a thing of beauty. Eyes closed, mouth relaxed, lips rosy and full from him biting down on them. I picked up speed, moving my fingers up and down his shaft to make it that much harder for him to look so damn serene.

  He stilled my hand, shaking his head and giving me a naughty grin. “Take care of yourself first, Violet.”

  I nodded, snaking my suddenly free hand up my ribs to my breasts, rolling and squeezing the nipples between my fingertips.

  “Are you close?”

  I nodded, my thumb working over-time now between my thighs, I could feel that pressure building now, the coiling sensation building deep inside and zipping up my spine.

  “That wasn’t an answer,” he said, his tone a bit sterner. “Now, are you close?”

  “Yes!” I cried, throwing my head back. But instead of rocking against the desk, my body kept falling back, through empty space and toppling onto the floor.

  I woke with a start.

  Cynda was bouncing on my bed. And she was naked again.

  “Cynda, we’ve talked about this.”

  “Hey, sweetie, I’m sorry to wake you up from what was very clearly a hot, filthy sex dream, but I just found this on the message board,” she said, handing me an envelope. And then she snatched it back and opened it.

  “The hell, Cynda?” I grumped.

  “I told you that flirting with Cam would have consequences. You’ve been removed from

  Genesis group and placed in Origins.”

  “Origins? The ‘stinky kids’ group?” I gasped, snagging the re-assignment letter from her. “I got thrown in with the rehab rejects?”

  Cynda smacked my arm. “Hey, jerk, that’s my group.”

  “You called them the stinky kids,” I noted.

  “Yeah, but it’s OK when I do it. I’m a member. But I guess you are, too, so…” She frowned. “Sorry about that.”

  I read over the schedule and found that I was on a different track entirely now. Half of my group therapy sessions had been replaced with one-on-one appointments with the Origins counselor, Dr. Mueller. And I was prescribed “equine therapy.”

  Was this because of movie night? Was this because I’d hand fed movie snacks to my counselor? Because Nurse Sarah told someone I was being inappropriate? Or was it because I was such a bitch during group therapy and Cam couldn’t deal with me anymore?

  “Cynda, I’ve got to get out of bed,” I said as she took the letter back.

  “Sure,” she said, rolling onto her back and reading over my schedule, without bothering to move off of my legs.

  “That would involve getting your naked ass off of my bed.”

  “Eh.”

  ‡

  It was not unusual for patients to come storming into Cameron’s office. It was unusual for Cameron not to know which of his “calm, experienced professional” expressions to use when he realized it was Violet storming into his office.

  “Uh, V-Violet, come in,” he said as the willowy blond moved to slam the door behind her, but he held up his hand to stop her. “Leave that open, thanks.”

  It was embarrassing to be a grown man, a professional addiction counselor with all of the diplomas to prove it, and be reduced to stammering when a pretty girl – a pretty patient¬ – walked through his door. He should be analyzing her demeanor, trying to
determine how to approach the situation based on her body language. But he was reduced to thinking, She’s so damn sexy with her hair all messy like that.

  In the words of that Spanish sword guy from Movie Night, “Humiliations, galore.”

  Violet Laswell was a riddle, wrapped in a conundrum, tucked inside the world’s vaguest fortune cookie. For most of her first week, he’d assumed that she was playing some sort of game, the same intentional innocence he’d seen with so many others. But he was starting to believe that she honestly didn’t have a drinking problem. She hadn’t gone through withdrawals. He hadn’t seen any signs of her trying to obtain liquor or sneak it in. She’d said that her parents forced her to come to New Beginnings, but had one alcohol-related mistake really pushed them into making that call?

  There was clearly something wrong with Violet. While the dark circles under her eyes were starting to fade, she was still jumpy and moody. Her attention drifted during conversation, and not just in an AHDH, “I’m bored and have spotted a shiny object” sort of way. And she was a master of talking around subjects she was uncomfortable discussing, namely the night that she was arrested for drunk driving.

  Cam was used to people being hostile toward the process, to the center and the staff, and toward him. And though Violet was angry, that emotion was turned inward, like she’d been fooled and she was pissed at herself over it. Her acid tongue was too sharp and bright to be anything but new. But then, there were times like Movie Night, when she was so damned adorable.

  He found he liked the mix of sour with the sweet. He wouldn’t have liked one side without the other. He liked her humor. He liked to see how she looked at problems, even when she was the problem. He liked that she wasn’t cowed into silence when his group lectured her on sobriety. He liked that she enjoyed weird combinations of movie snack foods.

  Then again, it was all that sweet and sour humor that got him into this cluster-fuck in the first place. Cam had known that he was in trouble, sitting next to her on the couch in the media room, watching the way her eyes lit up during the funny scenes. Or even more devastating, the way her lips wrapped around those damn Swedish Fish, which brought all sorts of more dangerous thoughts screaming into his brain. It was really difficult to will an erection away while wrapped in a luxurious fleece blanket and surrounded by Violet’s citrusy-floral scent.

  Cam knew he crossing a line, even if it was just in his head. He was thinking about Violet as a woman, instead of a patient. Hell, she was seven years younger than him, which somehow made it so much worse. Every employee at the center had been through training sessions on why more-than-professional interest in a patient was wrong on multiple levels. But none of that seemed to matter with Violet standing in front of his desk, her cheeks flushed and her brown eyes practically glowing… with anger.

  Yeah, she was even sexier when she was mad. He was doomed.

  Cam cleared his throat and stared at the chair in front of his desk, trying to calculate exactly how rude it would be not to ask her to sit down. Finally, he gestured toward the seat. “Please, sit. What can I do for you?”

  Violet slid the re-assignment papers across his desk. “You could explain why I’ve been assigned to a new group,” she said. “The misfit group?”

  Cam snorted, but managed to cover it with a cough. It was unfair of the other patients to label Dr. Mueller’s group like that. It wasn’t their fault that Dr. Mueller was particularly gifted at dealing with the “complex” cases. But, sequestered away from the trappings and social hierarchy of everyday adult life for prolonged periods of time, the New Beginners basically turned into overgrown high school students after a couple of weeks. They just wanted to feel better than somebody at rehab, and the Origins group usually provided an example that fit the bill.

  “Dr. Mueller and I thought you would be a better fit for that group,” Cam said. “I don’t think Genesis group is the right place for you, Violet. There’s trauma in your history that you’re not talking about, and I don’t know if it’s because of the group, or because you don’t want to talk to me, but you need to talk to someone about it.”

  Violet scowled. “Is this because I skipped freaking yoga to take a nap? You don’t have to kick me out of the group, Cam. Damn, all you have to do is tell me to go to yoga, and I’ll go.”

  Cam’s brow furrowed. She was completely misunderstanding the situation, and that was the least of his worries. While he might enjoy occasional flashes of her temper, this “petulant teenage Dr. Phil” thing she was doing was getting pretty damned old. He needed her to stop wallowing, to stop lashing out and start working on whatever was making her so ill. To kick-start that process, he was going to have to do something he was not going to enjoy. And it started like this, “Normally, I would say that this isn’t about punishment or rejection. It’s not you, it’s me, that sort of thing, but honestly, Violet, you’re better than this.”

  Violet’s golden head snapped up and she glared at him. “What do you mean?”

  “You’re better than this brittle, sarcastic person you’re presenting to us. This isn’t you.”

  Cam was pretty sure he saw flames leap in Violet’s dark eyes, which was not a good sign for him personally. But it did mean he was edging closer to his goal – a highly motivated Violet, who would participate in therapy just to spite him. Spite was an integral part of the therapy process for some patients.

  “You don’t know me,” she spat. “You don’t know what sort of person I was before – You don’t know who I am. You’re just pissed because I haven’t glugged down the fricking New Beginnings Kool-Aid. Pardon the hell out of me for holding on to my brain cells when I walked through the door.”

  “We’re not asking you to give up your personality, Violet. We’re asking you to find who you are without substances in your system.”

  “Says the guy who lives in substance-free Disneyland!” she scoffed. “You know why you’re still here, Cam? It’s not because you believe in the program so very much that you just couldn’t bear to leave any of your drug-addled brothers behind. It’s because you’re afraid of life. You can’t hack it out in the real world like the rest of us, so you hide out here with the private chefs and spa huts.”

  Wow. That was a lot more spite than he’d expected. And she just kept going. It seemed that once Violet got started, she was a veritable fountain of succinct, incredibly effective vitriol.

  “It’s easy to look down on the rest of us, when we’re all huge messes and you get to be ‘perfect rehab counselor Cam.’ You’re like a Ken doll with less personality.”

  His eyes flicked toward the framed photo on his bookshelf. Cam knew she couldn’t possibly know his full history. Patient rarely pictured him as he once was, sitting on their side of the desk, sick and pissed off and wondering how he got there. And she couldn’t know the price he’d paid for sobriety. Of course, that didn’t keep it from hitting a nerve.

  His voice went quiet and cold, void of all humor. “You don’t know anything about me.”

  “Right back at you,” Violet retorted, jumping to her feet and jamming a finger in his face. “You think you know me because you have a file on your desk with my name on it. My mom gave you a bunch of bullshit history, which is kind of fucking laughable because she barely knows me. Oh, and you sat in on a couple of therapy sessions with me where I refused to answer the questions because they don’t fucking apply to me. I’ve been trying to fucking tell you that since I got here, but instead of listening to me, you’re just passing me off to somebody else – You know what? Nevermind, I’m this other doctor’s problem now.”

  His jaw clenched so hard, he thought he heard something crack. Violet had managed to touch on a couple of nerves with her little outburst, without knowing anything personal about him. It was like she was an insult clairvoyant, and he was having a hard time not lashing back at her. He could at least cling to that one shred of professionalism. “You can leave now.”

  “Fine,” she growled, stalking out of his office
and slamming the door behind her.

  Cam flopped back into his chair and scrubbed his hand over his face, sparing a glance at the framed photo of Justin.

  That did not go as he’d hoped.

  Chapter 6

  Despite their stinky kid status, I found I liked the people in Origins group. Cynda, I knew, of course, and I was happy to see her wearing clothes to group therapy. James, an older man who wore a shirt and tie every day, was a lawyer in Phoenix who was still stuck on admitting that his drinking was anything more than blowing off the steam built every day in his busy law office. He’d been there almost three weeks and was still stuck at stage one. But he was sort of sweet in an uptight, repressed way that reminded me of my grandpa. But Grandpa was sort of a jerk, so it wasn’t really a compliment.

  Lulu was a housewife and mother of three, with elaborately styled espresso-colored hair and a three-carat wedding ring set that should have slowed her down when she walked. Lulu’s rock bottom involved doing donuts in her Mercedes SUV on the lawn of her daughter’s Girl Scout leader, yelling at “that bitch” to come out and give her the cookie badges Lulu’s daughter earned fair and square. Unfortunately, Lulu’s daughter hadn’t been a Girl Scout in a few years, and the cops found three empty bottles of Merlot on the passenger seat.

  Danny’s grandmother was a housekeeper for one of the staff members and had managed to use her life savings to fund his discounted stay. A teenage fan of cocaine and vodka-by-the-liter, he mostly sat quietly in his chair, sketching the rest of us in ballpoint pen on Post-It notes.

  I didn’t feel instantly judged in this group. I didn’t feel like the “problem child,” because frankly, my one drunk driving arrest was barely a blip on the radar compared to Lulu’s four. Everybody was in different stages of their recovery here, so I wasn’t the remedial case. And better yet, Cameron wasn’t my counselor anymore.

  I had mixed feelings about that morning’s “meeting.” The first feeling was a return to overwhelming nausea that made me throw up my morning omelet in the nearest potted plant. Unfortunately, Nurse Sarah took this as a sign of my finally hitting the detox stage and put me on consommé and tea for the next two days.