Crossing Lines: A gripping psychological thriller (Behind Closed Doors Book 3)
Read Crossing Lines: A gripping psychological thriller (Behind Closed Doors Book 3) Online
Authors: Erin Cawood
Crossing Lines (Behind Closed Doors Book Three)
Praise for the Behind Closed Doors series
A Sneak Peek at Careless Whispers
Domestic Violence Help and Advice
Crossing Lines
Behind Closed Doors (Book Three)
Erin Cawood
Find out more about Erin Cawood at
www.erincawood.com
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Kindle Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
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All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author or publisher except for the use of brief quotations in critical articles or reviews.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, places, businesses, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, actual events or locales is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2016 Carrie-Anne Wood
Cover art Copyright © 2016 Carrie-Anne Wood. All rights reserved.
Thank you to Annetta Ribken,
http://www.wordwebbing.com
for her editing expertise.
Crossing Lines
(Behind Closed Doors Book Three)
“For every life you can’t save, there are hundreds more you can.”
—Faith McKenzie
Seven years ago, psychiatrist Darryl Hawthorne ran out of time to save his sister, Faith McKenzie, from death at the hands of her ex-husband. Now, he’s running out of time to protect her children from the secrets still tearing them apart. With the family spiraling out of control, the last thing Darryl needs is multi award-winning actress, Ashleigh Jordan, begging for help. As a specialist in domestic abuse, Darryl knows pretending to be Ashleigh’s lover in order to counsel her best friend, Julia, is a line he should not cross. But it’s one he must bypass if he’’s to save Julia from her abusive husband.
Despite the walls he’s constructed around his heart, Julia reaches deeper into Darryl’s soul than anyone ever has. She views his life, his family, and his past with a clarity he’s never had before. In Julia, Darryl sees the light at the end of a very long, dark tunnel and delving into Julia’s relationship with her husband resonates deep with Darryl’s conscience. So deep, the lines between doctor and patient blur to something more akin to friend and lover. Too deep, in fact, for Darryl to ignore it when Julia becomes the key to saving his family and changing the very core of who he is.
Falling for a patient is not acceptable, falling for another man’s wife is just as wrong, but when faced with both, will Darryl do the right thing by Julia and her marriage? Or will he prove to Julia that in order to live, and love, and to be loved the way she deserves to be loved, that sometimes, you have to cross the line?
Praise for the
Behind Closed Doors
series
“So bone-chilling honest that it had me quite emotional.”
—
Tiffany Craig, Reading in Black & White.
“Tainted Love was the best fiction I read in 2012.”
—Deborah Nam-Krane, Author of the New Pioneers Series.
“A heart wrenching, powerful debut.”
—Patti Larsen, Author of the Hayle Coven Novels.
“Incredible, Erin Cawood’s book tore me apart.”
—Samantha Stroh-Bailey, Author of
Finding Lucas
.
Dedication
Crossing Lines
is dedicated to the person who inspired this poem.
You know who you are.
Your voice is one that runs and hides,
Your face shows no true for you deny,
Your eyes tell no one your secret cries,
Shame, blame, pain, even though you tried.
Each day you shrink further behind,
A wall of darkness in true love’s bind.
A well of loneliness not happiness you find,
Fear, terror, torture, truth even you denied.
Every time it’s the same old lies,
The same promises of heart surrendered ties.
You believe in all the tears you’ve cried.
Don’t ask, don’t tell, you’re beaten every time.
Weeks become months, yet you don’t see.
Months become years, please listen to me.
You ask inside ‘why do this to me?’
Can change! Will change! Because they love me!
One day your voice may no longer hide,
Your face won’t show truths, your eyes won’t cry.
One day you’ll step out from the lonely dark,
A star in heaven may be your only spark.
Chapter One
4
th
October 2012
NO!
I PROTEST SILENTLY.
A roaring voice batters my subconscious mind.
Please, not now.
I don’t need this in the middle of a session with a patient. But my subconscious doesn’t care.
Flashes of a terrified woman assault my inner-vision. I fight against her, but she’s as real as the patient sitting on the couch opposite me. She’s whimpering as she backs away. Her fear is overwhelming as the scene haunts me inside. I went too far. Much further than I’d realized.
The sound of shattering glass and the vision of blood spilling over white porcelain almost takes me away from my patient, Krystal, and back to the night I lost my wife. But it’s Krystal’s question that takes me there, and her continued chatter that saves me from full-on darkness now.
Yes
. I answer her questions silently. I know what it’s like to lose control. I know what it’s like when the overpowering rage wants to break free. It blinds your vision, steals the air from your lungs, and obliterates all sense of right and wrong, until it smothers the source of pain like it has a life-force of its own. The question is, does she?
Really?
I examine the flawless complexion of my patient. Her smoky grey eyes never break away from mine.
Is it possible she knows? Has she somehow reached inside my mind and extracted the confession I’ve never made?
I know I couldn't admit to the violence, even if I wanted to. Disgust at my own behavior wouldn’t allow it.
I, Darryl Hawthorne, the younger brother of the well-known victim of domestic abuse, Faith McKenzie, should know better. After all, the movie adaptation of my sister’s life has been critically acclaimed as one of the most important movies of the decade. But I hadn’t known better four years ago, and all I can do now, is embrace the pain of losing Isobel, my wife, and accept that the blame falls solely on my shoulders.
I look at Krystal again. If somehow she had the ability to read my mind, and she did know my deepest, darkest secrets, I would never know. With someone as skillful in the art of fabrication as Krystal Valentina it is impossible to detect even the slightest hint of whatever lies beneath her mask of perfection. I've tried for years.
I’ve been scrutinizing every detail of that perfect veneer with extra care for hours, even trying to connect her words with the direction of her eyes.
Does she look to the right side of truth or to the left side of make-believe?
I’ve watched for twitches in the corner of her mouth. I’ve counted each time she blinked.
How many is too many exactly?
But catching her out is almost impossible. Krystal is a very good actress. She is, after all, the same internationally acclaimed and multi-award-winning actress who has played my sister on the big screen.
When she speaks again, my full attention returns to her.
“I mean, I
really
lost it, Darryl!”
I find it hard to believe. She’s the epitome of Zen-like serenity. Sure, Krystal has spirit, and she doesn't take crap from anyone. But her instincts are lawyer-sharp and nine times out of ten she’s right. Of course, she is. She didn't get to be one of the world's most in-demand and highest-paid movie stars without knowing exactly what she wants and how to get it.
Well, that’s a sobering thought.
I land back in my air-conditioned office at the flagship Hawthorne Wellbeing Center with a thump.
Month in and month out, Krystal and I fight with our heavily clashed schedules, seeking to find no more than six afternoons a year where she can fly to New York from LA to see me, because she claims to be claustrophobic. We idly chat about nothing serious on these afternoons, as we have done for all these years—five, to be exact.
She doesn’t strike me as someone who needs a psychiatrist. She’s always poised, calm and collected. Even neck-deep in Jell-O for charity she’s the epitome of grace. So, if her state of mind is perfectly fine, then surely, she keeps me around for another reason?
Although for what, I am not certain. Our sessions have never gone deep enough for me to explore her psyche, and I’ve yet to find a fear of … well.
anything
.
Without a care in the world, Krystal comes across as pretty much fearless, but it’s a front. It must be. No one can live as detached from the real world as she does. I know she plays to her audience, because I’ve never seen any genuine emotion from her in these five years. Never. Not once, other than a single flinch when I accused her of being dead on the inside.
I mean, how can someone spend months with abuse victims, learning their secret lives, their fears, their wants and dreams? How can she read the correspondence my sister, Faith, and I shared for years, and then transform herself into my sister, so seamlessly that even I struggled to tell where Krystal ended and Faith began during filming—then flippantly dismiss it as 'just another role’ to her?
I know it wasn’t. I saw how much Faith’s story meant to her, five years ago. It flashed through her eyes when we argued. Just like I know it’s possible to chink the armor she hides behind, because I’ve done it. When I told her she was dead inside, I saw the pain my words had inflicted. I expected a reaction. I expected to see a flash of lightning and hear thunder roll, as she transformed from pleasant princess to vicious queen, the one she’s infamously known to become if one rubs her up the wrong way. Did she eat me alive and storm off set? No. She just shrugged and replied something that, to this day, I still don’t understand:
a girl can only live with so much heartache before that eventually happens.
It's because of that she fascinates me so.
She’s a true specimen of how complicated the human condition can be, and I psychoanalyze every second of our interactions, much more than I do with any other patient. I’ve watched her change over the years, maybe for the better: the work she does for the charity I've set up in Faith’s memory is incomparable to that of any other celebrity, and belies her outwards attitude to her role in
To Have and To Hold
. It was a role she neither wanted nor is grateful for its success.