Going to California?

Chapter 1 – Dr Winterbourne Session 9

"I've gotten a job offer since the last time I was here."

"Really?" Dr. Winterbourne shifted in her chair to take a closer look at me. "Is this something you were looking for?"

"No, it was a complete surprise to me. I haven't been—I doubt if John will let me leave my current position." Even though I felt sure my psychiatrist knew who I was, she didn't let on and I couldn't tell if she'd managed to piece together who the people in my stories were. Vought was Weyland-Yutani, Homelander was John, Starlight was Annie, Stan Edgar was Gus, and so on and so on. I made my appointments under the name Lily Roberts, claimed no insurance, and paid in cash at the end of each session so no paper trail back to Ashley Barrett would exist.

I didn't know what else to say after that, and Dr. Winterbourne let the silence stretch out before saying, "From what you've told me in previous sessions, I think you're afraid there's a chance that John will become violent if you try to leave."

Try a one hundred percent chance, but I settled for nodding. "I've seen him become violent over a lot less. I know too much for him to let me go."

At the first session, she consulted the intake notes she had. "I see you're reporting anxiety serious enough that you've hyperventilated until you lost consciousness on two occasions, trichotillomania as an attempt to de-stress, and mild paranoia, all of which you report as being a result of the job you currently hold. Is that correct?"

"Yes."

"I can prescribe Ativan for the anxiety, but could you tell me why you don't simply quit your current job and find another job with a lesser level of stress?"

I'd had to lay out some rules for the good doctor. "I work for an organization that isn't quite the Mafia, but a lot of illegal activity exists, some of which I'm involved in, both directly and indirectly. Because if I give you specifics for certain things, you'd have to report this activity, and elements in the organization I work for would kill you if they thought you could prove anything you knew, I'm going to elide certain things and misrepresent others. I'll do my best to stick as closely to the truth as I can, but for both our sakes, I can't tell you everything. If you don't want to treat me after this, I understand."

Dr. Winterbourne, a plump sixtyish woman with salt-and-pepper hair in a topknot, blinked at me like an owl and took a few moments before saying, "I'm going to trust that you're telling me the truth about this and, from what you're said, I do want to try treating you. With your lack of a familial and friendship network for support, you really do need someone to talk to. I'm surprised you've managed as well as you have up until this point."

I came out of the memory when she asked, "You've never mentioned this, but have you ever been romantically involved with John? His level of possessiveness seems a bit out of proportion to a strictly working relationship."

"No. He's a control freak with everyone." Dr. Winterbourne might not be a human like detector like Homelander, but nobody could miss the truth in what I said. "He goes for women who look like models and movie stars, so I'm lucky in that respect. I'm a talking lamp to him."

"Is there anything that he could have misinterpreted, like getting coffee or a business meeting at dinner that he might have thought of as a date but didn't make that clear to you?"

I started to say no, but then I remembered the Deep and Timothy and my mouth fell open. "Yes! But it wasn't presented to me as a date. There was an employee who left the company for a while and then came back to his job. John told me there was going to be a small get-together to welcome him back and I needed to be there in my position with Weyland-Yutani, so I thought a small party, maybe a dozen people, but when I got there it was just Kevin—the employee—and his wife, and John. I was the only other person there besides them. So I guess he may have intended that as a double date but he didn't want to give me a chance to say no?"

"Is that in keeping with the way he handles things?"

"Yes. But something horrible happened that makes me think he couldn't have intended it that way." How to phrase it? Homelander making the Deep eat Timothy was just too garish and sadistic. She might decide I was lying about everything. "Kevin is a vegetarian and John forced him to eat raw meat, very much against his will."

"Why do you think he did that?"

"Dominance and control, the only reasons he does anything. It tells everyone there that he's strong enough to get away with it and no one can stop him or say no. He wanted to remind Kevin of that, I think."

"Has he done anything like that with you?"

The wig incident rose up and choked me. "Yes. I didn't think he knew about my hair-pulling, but he…did. I wear a wig because it's so bad. He made me take off my wig in front of Kevin and another coworker. Kevin didn't know at all, but Reggie—he was the other person there—had seen me do that once, but I don't think he knew it was a consistent thing."

"How did he make you remove your wig?"

"He'd done something extremely violent to someone else and let us know he'd done it. He was not in a good headspace, to say the least. It was the kind of thing you can't stand up against. If he did something like that to his best friend, what will he do to people he despises? So the possibility of future violence."

"Has he said he despises you and Kevin and Reggie?"

"He said that none of us were as good as his friend, that we weren't his family, and he didn't need any of us. I don't believe he wants to keep me with the company for personal reasons. My only real job is to protect his image. I'm just a figurehead and he has all the power. He could find a new figurehead in no time. I'm dispensable to him. And that he has said, in so many words."

Dr. Winterbourne took a long time to answer that. "He may not care about Lily as an individual with her own hopes and dreams and needs, but—is he a stupid man?"

"No. On some subjects he has blinders on due to the way he was raised, but he's not stupid at all."

"Then he would definitely care about the person whose job it is to protect him, whether that's you or someone else, even if it's only for selfish reasons."

"It's more convenient for him to keep me in my position because it would annoy him to have to break someone else to the point where I am now. That's why he'll never let me leave."

"Can you tell me about the job offer itself? Is it something you'd be open to if the situation with John didn't exist?"

Oh boy. I took a deep breath. "It involves a man I'm having sort of an on-again off-again relationship with. Let's call him Zach. We met each other when he was working on a project for Weyland-Yutani. We had some common interests and hit it off, started having those kind of dinner meetings that gradually turn into dates, and the relationship eventually turned physical. When the project ended, he had another project lined up immediately afterward on the other side of the world, so I put it down to a fling and moved on. We reconnected when he came back to the East Coast for some additional work on our project, but there's been way too much drama at work for me to concentrate on a relationship, so I've been flying out to the West Coast every couple of months to see him. He wants that to be—something more."

Before she could say anything, I hurried on. "I know you're about to say it isn't a good idea to be in a business relationship with someone you have a romantic relationship with, but it's not quite that simple. Zach has this—kink, I guess you'd say. He's into being humiliated during sex, and I found out later there's some overlap into the BDSM sphere. He wants me to accept a job as his full-time, live-in domme."

Dr. Winterbourne must have been familiar with the terminology as she didn't ask for an explanation. "Have you ever engaged in this activity on a professional basis before?"

"No, and I've only dommed occasionally. I don't remember if I told you that I don't enjoy sex—" I looked at her questioningly.

"No. Your sexuality didn't seem like a priority compared to the anxiety and trichotillomania."

"OK. I spent a lot of time looking around for something that might click with me. Domming, subbing, men, women, I never really found anything that suited me, but I think I could manage as a domme. He likes the humiliation better than the sex anyway, so I could put up with it when he wants it."

"Have you dominated him before?"

"No, which is why I'd be iffy on this if John didn't exist. I did some humiliating and apparently, as far as it went, I was all that."

"I have some concerns that you may not understand what you're getting into with a live-in relationship that's also a job, since this isn't something you've done before. Perhaps you should have some scenes with Zach so you can make sure that the two of you mesh before you make a decision."

"That's a good idea, but it's all academic since I can't take the offer because of my current situation."

"So if John finds out about this job offer than Zach has made you, and he has misinterpreted your relationship with him, this could set off some responses on a personal level."

"That would be violent, yes. I'm trying to protect Zach as well as myself here. And I'm not sure I'd take the job offer anyway. I've been under John's thumb for years now. It might be nice not to be under another man's thumb."

"If you're open to this, I think we should deal with your sexuality more than we have, since this job offer involves it directly and you've admitted to having issues with it in the past."

I didn't disagree, and the session ended shortly after this, freeing me to hit the vending machines in the lobby of the office building for lunch. A Hershey's chocolate bar with almonds and a can of Coca-Cola wasn't what I'd call a healthy lunch, but it would tide me over until I got on the train to go home after work.

My cell rang as I was getting into a cab to return to Vought Tower. Everyone on my phone has a personalized ringtone, so when I heard "Sex and Candy" I knew it was Adam. "Have you thought about my offer?"

"Yes, but I haven't decided yet. It's complicated with the situation at work. I'm not sure it would be the best time for me to go."

"Is any time going to be a good time to leave?" I heard the impatience in his voice. When he'd worked with Homelander on Dawn of the Seven, the supe had been on his best behavior-at least on set-so Adam might have no idea about his dark side, the side that might well kill the both of us if I made a move to escape Vought. Maybe I should do some explaining?

"There are some things going on that you should know about since we're talking about this arrangement. I'm going to have to ask you to keep a lot of this quiet, but it would help if you knew certain things. I'm not just thinking about the offer to draw things out or put you off."

He sighed. "All right. Are you coming out this weekend?"

"Just like we planned. I'll let you in on everything, but I don't think you'll be happy with what you find out."

"At least I'll know what's going on. I'll have a driver for you at the airport on Friday and we can have dinner before we get into any long talks."

I smiled. With all the problems in our little affair, Adam tried to be considerate of my stress level. I hadn't come clean about the trichotillomania, but he'd figured it out from our bathroom encounter at the Dawn of the Seven premiere. "That would be great. I'm looking forward to it."

"Me too."

I had the phone stowed in my purse before the cab pulled up in front of Vought Tower and the old, familiar despair washed over me at the sight of its façade. It was a prison that I got a weekend pass for, but the bars were there even if they were invisible. Getting out of the cab, I took a deep breath, squared my shoulders, and went back into the building.