Page 9

Six

Past

“ C ooper, hello.”

He takes my hand in his again, and I don’t miss the way his thumb grazes quickly over the back of my hand before releasing it. “Take a seat. I’ll be right with you.”

At my desk, I watch from my peripheral as he adjusts his shirt before entering. He walks in, reads the room as if taking the temperature before adjusting his proverbial thermostat. An emotional contortionist, turning on and off the ability to care or have morals, perhaps.

I grab my notepad and a pen. He adjusts his jeans before crossing his legs. He’s pulled together. Neatly dressed and attractive. He’s watching me unabashedly as I sit across from him. My skin heats under his gaze.

“We ran out of time last week. I’d like to dive deeper into what you said.”

“What did I say, Doc?”

I shoot him a look that says ‘respect is appreciated.’ He casts his eyes down in acknowledgment. “You were saying that you do act on your desires. That you watch people.”

“Yes. That’s it.”

I shake my head. “No. That’s illegal. There are consequences to stalking and peeping on people’s intimate moments.”

He throws his hands up to stop me. “I don’t stalk.

And I watch regardless of sex. It’s not watching the act of sex that gives me the rush.

I don’t…not watch those…people.” He’s choosing his words carefully.

I make a note to bring up honesty. I need to suss out whether he knows the difference between right and wrong before I can devise an action plan for his therapy.

“I watch to watch. To be privy to private moments.” His gaze is so severe that I feel pinned to my seat.

“I watch it all. The fights, watching TV, yes, sometimes sex, but really, it’s just the act of watching a person, or people, alone in a space they think they’re safe. ”

“Safe?”

“Yes, alone. Do they change from work clothes to pajamas? Do they brush their teeth before bed? Little secrets I get to learn about them. The kind of secrets they don’t show publicly.”

My pen flies across the pad: words, little notes to help me talk to him.

“Sometimes I think deviant behavior is genetic. In my blood.”

I look up. His eyes sparkle. “Why do you say that? Did your Father teach you this behavior?”

He laughs too loudly and shakes his head. “No. My parents were…simple people. High school sweethearts destined to never amount to anything more than they did.”

He rubs his hands on his thighs. Slowly. Deliberately. When I move my gaze from that action to his face, he’s grinning. I draw a breath through my nostrils, slowly, to ward off the sudden feeling that I’m blushing.

Attraction is a tricky thing, bodies reacting without consent from the brain. I can find him arousing without needing to act on it, I remind myself.

“Then why say that?” I ask.

He takes a deep breath for a moment and closes his eyes tightly before opening them again. I use the moment to quell the new found fire in my veins from the way he looks at me.

“My uncle. My mother’s brother. He was arrested when I was a kid. I think he did things to a girl—at least, that was the town gossip. I don’t really know much. My parents didn’t talk about it.”

I nod. “And your brother.” I glance at my notes to double-check I got that right. “Is he also deviant in any way?”

Cooper shakes his head. “I was eight when he was born. I don’t really remember that time well. I don’t even remember my mother being pregnant. Just him as a fat baby. He’s as boring and vanilla as they come.”

Tilting my head, I jot down more notes. “That’s odd. Not remembering your mother being pregnant. At seven or eight, it’s typical to have distinct memories of big family changes, like a new sibling or divorce or death.”

His bottom lip is caught between his teeth, a devilish look in his eye as he shrugs. Heat creeps up my chest, fast as I tuck an errant curl behind my ear.

“Nope. I didn’t go to the hospital either. I just remember coming home from school one day, and there he was. Little, crying, and chubby.”

“Did your mother breastfeed him?”

“Why?” he asks. I wait, impatient for him to answer. His forehead wrinkles in thought. “No. I don’t remember her doing that. Just a bottle.”

“That seems rather in line with the repressed atmosphere in the house.”

“Are you trying to find something wrong with him?” he asks.

“Not at all. Just trying to get the big picture so we can work on you accurately.” I lean back, cross my legs, and rest my pad on my knee. Cooper licks his lips.

“Have you ever stopped to wonder about your actions? The price you’ll have to pay if your proclivities come to light?”

His eyes narrow slightly. “I didn’t, until you.”

“You mean until now,” I say.

“That’s what I said.” His head is cocked, eyes roaming my body.

Not in a lewd manner, more… genuinely curious, in a memorizing-me kind of way.

His posture relaxed, I’d say he’s even content.

After you gain someone’s trust and confidence, you have to then exhibit enormous patience with them.

I believe he’s hiding something. Leaving a piece of the story out on purpose.

I bookmark the thought, I just need to keep him talking.

I take a sip of water from the glass on my side table. It’s warm and does little to scare off the itch in my throat, the heat in my cheeks or the tightness coiling low in my belly.

“Let’s regroup. I’d like to talk more about your current situation. How do you watch people?”

The color drains from his face slightly, and I think, Ah-ha! Now we’re cooking. But he schools his expression quickly—like a pro.

“How I watch doesn’t matter.” His mouth barely moves as he grits the words out.

My pen hovers over the page. Making eye contact, I ask, “Then what does?”

He tilts his head backward, exposing his throat. His Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows. “When the people I watch are intimate…it’s…fascinating. A carnal dance of pleasure and pain.”

I lick my lips. “Cooper, are you a virgin?”

“No, are you?” His response is quick and flippant. A defense tactic. I clear my throat.

“Continue please.” I choose to keep the modicum of trust I’ve established and let that comment slide—for now.

“Have you ever watched anyone before?” I shake my head. “It’s not like pornography.”

“Do you watch a lot of that?”

“I did before I watched people. I thought maybe that’s all I wanted.

Was to see sex. But it’s so much more. A couple, for instance, just last week.

They didn’t do anything remarkable. They simply shared a room together.

Talked about their children. The man, the way he rubbed the woman’s arm so tenderly, while they talked.

It was an act of worship. He had nothing to prove to anyone but her, and in private he did just that.

But I saw them in public, and he was standoffish toward her, almost cruel.

To be privy to that tenderness it’s exhilarating.

Or even the woman who brought a stranger home, to watch the performance she put on, so calculated and practiced, to entice him into bed with her. Fascinating.”

“Do you masturbate while you watch?” I ask.

“Sometimes. Not always, and not all that often. There are some that I watch whose passion is so arresting that I can’t help myself. I want to participate but can’t, and that is the easiest way to achieve the desired effect.”

“You mean when you watch people have intercourse?”

He nods. He is not blushing. His shoulders are not slumped. He is not ashamed of admitting this.

“How often do you watch people? How do you pick them?”

“Almost nightly. Sometimes I’m busy and can’t watch, but on weeknights, almost nightly.”

“Did your old therapist discuss sexual addiction with you?”

“No.”

I make a mental note to reach out to his other therapist. Cooper is cunning and clever and she might have good insight for me. I use the capped end of my pen to itch my forearm.

“Take you, for instance,” he says.

My eyes snap to him instantly. I shift in my seat, ready to stand and have him leave if this escalates to a place I’m not comfortable.

“When you go home at night, in your house, do you do things that you wouldn’t do in public in the light of day?”

I let out a silent sigh of relief and nod. “Of course, we all do. That’s natural.”

“Yes, it is, but I like to see those little things people keep sectioned off. We’re not that different are we? You get to hear all about them, and I watch them.”

The clock on the wall is five minutes fast, but I’ve never been so happy to have it read four pm.

“We’ve got to stop for today. Next week at the same time?” I ask, nodding to the clock.

Cooper stands and stretches, exposing a sliver of skin between his jeans and shirt and I have to force myself to look away.

Following suit, I stand and give him my best professional smile.