Chapter Sixteen

When Cameron outlined the plan, Dax wasn’t sure he could believe his ears. But it seemed the therapist wasn’t joking at all.

“I suggest that you let the plane fly tonight,” he said. “Let it go as arranged, and on that plane, there’ll be Grant, your assistant, and everyone else attached to your career. Only, you won’t be on it.”

“And where do you suggest I go?” Dax asked.

“With me,” said Cameron, shortly. “I have a place up in Scotland. In Invergordon. It’s twenty-three miles north of Inverness.”

Dax was confused. “Why on earth would I want to go up there?” he asked. “I don’t get it.”

“Because it’ll mean a total break from the world. The whole world. Your physical heath is good enough that you don’t need to be linked up to any machines. You’re eating and drinking, going to the bathroom, all by yourself. The only thing we need to fix is your strength. And like I was just saying, you can’t fix what’s down there until you’ve fixed what’s up here.”

He tapped his head. Dax’s head was abuzz with possibilities. A total break from the world. He hadn’t realized until now that was exactly what he wanted. It was simultaneously thrilling and terrifying, but a slow smile began to creep on his face, then it disappeared again. “I can’t,” he said, looking down. “It sounds great, but there’s no way I can go anywhere else but on that plane to New York tonight.”

Cameron perched on the edge of his bed and looked at Dax with his piercing green eyes. Dax tried hard to ignore how beautiful the man was, and how he’d suddenly become even more beautiful because of the way he seemed so genuinely interested in Dax’s welfare. Perhaps it was the way he entrusted his entire body weight to the man who promised not to let him fall when he was doing his exercises, or perhaps it was simply the way he spoke to Dax with more honesty than he was used to. Whatever the reason, Dax knew only that he trusted him.

“This isn’t just about your injury,” Cameron said. “It’s about choosing what you really want from life. And you can’t evaluate things when your head is crazy with everyone wanting a piece of you. I’m talking about silence. Quiet. Green hills and no traffic. Nobody wanting your autograph, or asking you to pose for a picture. Just healthy exercise. Concentration on getting well, and healing your head as well as your back.”

“But how will I move around?” Dax asked. “I mean, even if I thought about it as a possibility, which it isn’t, then how would I even live up there on my own?”

With that, Cameron gave a nervous smile and ran a hand through his hair. “Well, I wasn’t planning on you being on your own,” he said. “I’m talking about taking you up there and staying with you. Giving you one-on-one exclusive therapy. I can take a break from work here, and we can call Doctor Pravenda and see what she says, but I can’t see how she’d think it was a bad idea.”

“Doesn’t this cross some kind of patient and therapist boundary?” Dax asked, only half-teasingly.

“I guess it might,” Cameron admitted, “but you’re being discharged tonight, aren’t you? Once you leave this place you’re no longer under the hospital and you’re not in the care of any of its employees. That’s the official line. And we can go down an official line, with solicitors, and courts, and all that kind of thing, or you can simply say you’re taking some time off with a friend, and we leave it at that.”

He grinned again. “It’s a little like bending the rules, but don’t you like doing that?”

Dax took a deep breath. It all seemed too good to be true, but the more he thought about it, the more it made perfect sense. “I’m not saying yes,” he said, slowly, “but let’s call Doctor Pravenda and ask her what she thinks.”

From her seminar in Cardiff, the doctor Dax had trusted to take care of him for the past two months was silent for a few moments. Cameron stayed perched on the end of Dax’s bed, holding the cell phone out in front of him with the doctor on speaker. “I can’t believe this is happening while I’m hundreds of miles away,” Doctor Pravenda said. “Why couldn’t they have had this conversation in a few days’ time, when I’m back at work?”

“I think you’ve just answered your own question, Manju,” Cameron replied, and it was the first time that Dax had heard her first name being used. “They’ve seized the opportunity because they knew that you’d be able to talk Dax out of it. I don’t think the title of “physiotherapist” holds the same weight that “doctor” does.”

With one hand holding the phone, Cameron punctuated the air with quotation marks with the other. Doctor Pravenda was agonizingly silent for several moments, but Dax knew from the faint noise in the background that she was still there. “I don’t know that Mister Monroe has a choice in the matter, really,” she said, finally. “It’s certainly unorthodox, and we haven’t even begun to discuss how it’s going to affect the rest of your patients here, Mister Wilson, but I made a promise that we’d have our young singer walking again and I don’t believe that we’d be giving him the best care that we can by releasing him to the wolves.”

To hear the doctor refer to his team as wolves made Dax realize that to those on the outside looking in, it was clear that he was being held captive by a situation that he needed emancipating from, and there were two people who desperately wanted to be the ones to free him.

“He’ll have to sign discharge papers,” Doctor Pravenda continued, but now the two men in London could almost hear the cogs of her brain turning as the plan was beginning to take shape. “He’ll have to have the correct transport, with all the medication he needs, and the understanding that if anything changes, or if there are any issues with his health, then he’ll immediately be brought back to the hospital.”

She took a deep breath, and exhaled slowly, so it sounded like a loud gust of wind down the phone’s speaker. “It’s a hell of a risk,” she said. “It’s one of the strangest decisions of my career, but I certainly understand where you’re coming from, and I’m not sure that it’s a chance Mister Monroe is ever going to get again without a great deal of difficulty.”

Cameron looked at Dax with a see what I mean? expression on his face, and Dax shrugged in acquiescence. “I think if we get the paperwork sorted and you can push things with the hospital’s legal team, then we can get this done tonight,” Cameron said. “We need to move fast, and we need to keep it from his team until the last second.”

“Do it,” Doctor Pravenda said. “I’m going with my gut, and I’ll speak to the legal team now. They’ll come and visit you, Mister Monroe, so if at any point you’re not happy with the plan, tell them. You’re under no obligation whatsoever.”

“I know,” said Dax. “I’m not sure it’s the best idea, and to tell you the truth, Ma’am, I’m pretty fucking terrified, but I think Cameron’s right. I think I need to get away, and I can’t do it without his help.”

They ended the call, and after that, there was a flurry of activity. Unfortunately, they weren’t able to keep the plan from Grant for longer than five minutes, because Dax hit on a snag they knew they’d never get away with. “He’ll have called every available member of the press,” he said. “Both here and in America. They’ll be expecting Dax Monroe to get on the plane in London, and they’ll be expecting Dax Monroe to get off the plane in New York.”

“Right,” said Cameron, rubbing his chin. “While Doctor Pravenda deals with the legal team, we need to deal with your team. What usually happens when you want the press to think you’re someplace you’re not? Do you ever use a body double?”

“Yes,” Dax replied. “There have been plenty of times I’ve gone out in the back of a delivery truck to get ice-cream when my double lies by the pool so that the paparazzi we know are on the roof of the house half a mile away still see Dax Monroe in his house, getting a good tan.”

“Well, it’s either that, or we stick pillows on the bed and put a wig on a balloon,” Cameron laughed. “I think we need to face the music and talk to Kelly. She’ll tell Grant, but from what I’ve seen of the girl, she really likes you.”

While this was true, Dax’s long-suffering assistant was horrified by the idea. She threw up all manner of scenarios that may occur on the trip up to Scotland. They could crash the car. They could get stuck in snow and freeze to death. Dax could get an infection and it’d be too late before they got to a hospital. The press could find out where they were anyway and still make his life a misery. There could be a crazed stalker who discovered his idol’s location and set out on a trip of their own to Invergordon and without any kind of protection and no bodyguard, then how could he expect to survive?

Cameron answered each of Kelly’s questions calmly. There was only about as much chance of the car crashing as there was the plane or the helicopter from the airport to New York crashing, and as for the snow, it was the beginning of April, and there was every chance all the snow near Invergordon would have thawed enough for them to travel up there safely. And yes, Cameron admitted, there was always the risk of the press discovering where they were, but wasn’t that always the case?

“There are only a handful of people who’ll know where Dax is,” Cameron reminded her. “If the press find out, then the leak must have come from inside, which further reinforces the need for Dax to be away from people he can’t trust.”

Kelly glowered. “I think that’s pretty damn rude of you, Mister Wilson,” she said. “Dax can trust me. And he knows it. I’d never do anything to risk his welfare, and if the press ever finds out where he is, it’s never come from me. Never.”

“I’m sorry if you think I’m accusing you,” Cameron said, calmly. “I can see that you care for Dax. But Dax doesn’t care enough for himself to be able to make the decisions he needs to be happy.”

“And what makes you so sure that you know what’s best for him?” Kelly asked. “Sure, Grant’s a pain in the ass. He’s a control freak. But it looks to me that you’re trying to control Dax, too, at least from where I’m standing.”

From his bed, Dax reached out and touched Kelly’s arm. “It’s my decision,” he said, softly. “I trust you, Kelly, I really do. And I wish you were coming with me. But Cameron’s right. If I go back to New York, this is never going to end. I’m never going to make another decision for myself. Every step I’ve taken for the last fifteen years has been watched by someone. Decided by someone. I haven’t even been able to go to the grocery store without hundreds of cameras flashing in my face. I can’t take it anymore. I need solitude, and time to recover. It’s drastic, but it’s necessary.”

“I need to know exactly where you’re going,” Kelly said, and Dax was sure he caught the flash of a tear in her eye. I need to know the address of this house, and Rocky needs to come with you and stay as a bodyguard, at the very least.”

“No,” said Dax, firmly. “If you know, and Rocky knows, then it’ll only be a matter of time before Grant knows, and everyone else will find out, too. Then I might as well be in New York. I’ll call you in a couple of weeks, to let you know I’m safe. But anything other than that won’t work.”

“I need to go get Grant,” said Kelly. “I can’t do anything unless he gives me the go-ahead on the body double.”

When his manager appeared minutes later, Dax had never seen his face so red.