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“Holly, we have so much to talk about,” I say, clutching her arms too tightly before she can sit down.
Her eyes grow big with worry. Undoubtedly she’d thought the other night’s spooky shenanigans were a thing of the fading past.
“Okay. Shall we sit and order first?” she asks with a smile, apparently hoping some normalcy will lighten my mood.
“Yes, of course.” I try my best to concentrate on the menu for a minute, but all I see is an incomprehensible jumble of letters before me. My brain is scrambled.
When a young lad comes by to take our orders, Holly requests chicken fajitas. “I’ll have the same,” I say, casting my useless menu aside.
Sensing my tension, Holly smiles and waits for me to begin.
“Okay, listen up girlfriend,” I say with my voice lowered. “Quade still has keys to my house, from the old days. He helped himself in Tuesday night and appeared in my bedroom at eleven thirty p.m., in the darkness.” Holly’s jaw drops. “I threw my lamp at him because I didn’t know who the hell was in my room.” Holly sharply inhales, slapping her hands over her mouth. “Yeah, creepy right? Well it gets worse. He grabbed my wrists in the dark, never turned a light on, and restrained me till I begged him to let me go…claiming it was self defense. I was stark naked, so I reached into my closet to pull on a robe and he stopped me and held the robe open. I pretended I wanted to get sexy on my bed and he fell for it and started pulling his pants down, which gave me enough time to bolt off the other side of the bed and run out of the house.” With her hands still over her mouth, Holly takes in huge, panicky gulps of air as her eyes begin to tear up. “In the end, I grabbed a towel and walked all the way to your house with it wrapped around me.”
“Oh my God Fiona!” Holly blurts out as the tears begin to fall.
“Please, please.” I begin looking around the restaurant frantically. “He has eyes and ears everywhere, important friends. He said some things…I can’t even describe how serious he was about this but something inside him has snapped. I don’t know this man at all. He’s physically bigger and stronger, and mentally…not like anything I ever imagined my husband would be in a thousand years.”
“Okay…okay.” Holly dries her eyes and drops her hands, sitting up straighter and trying to look normal. “So you couldn’t tell me anything the other night…” She’s putting two and two together now. “Oh my God, what if he’d come back while I was there?” She looks petrified, and maybe a little angry.
I glance at her self-consciously. “Well, I watched him drive home but…yeah. That’s why I protested the hot tub. I was so afraid that if I went to your place he’d track me down and stop me. I figured if he was hiding in my house, our conversations would only serve as proof I wasn’t gonna rat him out.”
“Oh my God…okay.” Holly shakes her head and stares at the table, assimilating what actually happened that night.
The waiter sets our steaming plates down and we both stare at them in a stupor, having no comprehension of how to eat at the moment. I abruptly pick up my fork, determined to have as normal a lunch as possible, and poor sweet Holly begins to break down again. “I…I just…I can’t…,” she says with a cracking voice.
“Me either,” I say with a heavy sigh, tossing my fork back down.
“What are you going to do?”
“Well, since Quade’s in bed with our local Police Chief, there isn’t much of anything I can do. He already threatened that if I report him he’ll tell Vernon I’m crazy.” Holly raises her hands to her mouth again. “Quade owns my house, owns my business, and has me fully by the balls. So I’m now living every moment of every night in fear that he’ll waltz in my front door and attack me. Maybe force me. Frankly that seemed to be the direction he was heading in the other night.”
“Oh God Fiona…you have to do something. You can’t live like that.”
“You’re right, I can’t. But if I pack my bags and move into your condo, Quade will know I told you everything.”
“Do it…who cares? As long as you don’t report anything, don’t try to make legal trouble…don’t you think he’ll leave you alone?”
I think about this hard for a couple minutes, even taking a bite of my food. “Well, now that you mention it, I don’t suppose he could freak out over what you know as long as I keep the law out of it. But Levi would have to swear on his life not to spread this anywhere. They have mutual friends you know. If this got out to anyone, I don’t know what Quade would do. Aside from pulling my home and business out from underneath me, I don’t trust him on any level. Holly, I can’t exaggerate how deranged he acted the other night. He was totally unrecognizable.”
Holly puts her hands over her face, and I carefully pull them away. “Remember, nothing happened,” I remind her.
We quietly pick at our plates for several minutes, then resign our meals to boxes before both of us have to go back to work.
“How about you spend tonight at my place, and then tomorrow you’ll be off to Florida and won’t have to think about things till next week,” Holly says, as we make our way to the parking lot. “Just assume that when you get back, you’ll be staying at the condo with me. Next time Quade comes around, it will send him a strong message that you’re not making yourself available to his abuse.”
“Holly.” I can’t think of what else to say as I crash into her welcoming arms. “Thank you for saving me.”
“Are you kidding?” she asks, holding me out where she can look me in the eye. “I cannot believe you’ve been sleeping in that house of horrors for the past three nights alone. In light of everything you just told me, I truly don’t know how you haven’t gone out of your mind.”
“I about have,” I admit, tears welling up again. “I’ve been sleeping in the living room so I could bolt out the back if he suddenly came in. I don’t think I’ve fallen into a deep sleep once. I’ve been napping through lunches out of desperation.”
“Fiona,” she says, clutching my shoulders, “never again. Don’t you ever go without telling me something like this again. You should have been with me all week.”
“I was afraid to tell you over the phone. It dawned on me that it could be tapped.” Holly looks stricken by my revelation. “I’m serious. I know that sounds paranoid, but after Tuesday night’s performance, I don’t think he would stop at anything. I know how obsessive he gets over projects and clients. He’s always been that way…it was just never projected onto me before.”
“God…I’m late,” Holly says, glancing at her phone. “I’m so sorry—”
“No, don’t be. I have to get to the store anyway. Your timing’s perfect,” I assure her as I reach for my car door.
