Cleaning the aquarium glass was supposed to be harmless…until it shattered.
I’d lost the Charlton that day, along with a hundred grand. The wedding still went on at the Charlton since we had a contract and all, but the incident ruined my chances at doing any other weddings or events there in the future.
“Ding, ding, ding,” she gloats. “Smarter’n a tack, this’un.”
This bitch is wasting my time with her crazy talk. If I have to leave her here without my purse, I will. I’d prefer to chance getting a ticket than stay here with her any longer. I’ll deal with her and her sabotage some other time. Done with the conversation, I pivot, intending to leave, but Claire has other plans.
She sprints to the door and slams it with an admonishing tsk. “You can’t leave now, darlin’, not before the fun starts,” she purrs.
I back away from her, my skin prickling with the notion that this situation is dangerous. She has premeditation in her favor, smirking in triumph because she knows I had no clue. My eyes are defiant on her, though, because I’ll be damned if I let her know that she’s rattled me.
Fuck this bitch.
“Why?” This is the only question I’ll ask about this. If she’s going to kill me, the least she can do is tell me why.
“You came between us,” she retorts venomously.
I what?
She must see the confusion on my face. Sneering, she explains, “I always knew he was in love with you. I could never measure up. From the first day I met you, I knew you had his heart. I only had his cock.”
His cock. The word pierces my very soul, reminding me that Kyle has never truly been all mine.
She continues, totally unaware of my internal battle. “When we finally broke up, I vowed that I’d have my revenge. It’s taken me eight years, but I’m nothin’ if not patient. And like my daddy always said, you had to have the kinda patience to wait ’til the cows came home”.
I don’t know what in the name of God she’s rambling on about, but I don’t interrupt her. It gives me time to come up with a game plan. Taking her in, I see that she looks off-kilter, her eyes wild as if her sanity has finally abandoned her. A crazy woman was unhinged, but also clumsy. I’m counting on the latter.
“I hate you more’n the devil hates church,” she spews, eyes spitting fire. “I’ve been here, keeping tabs on y’all this whole time. I di’n’t care about you; after all, you were thousands of miles away, living it up in Florida. Then you had to come back here, I tried to chase you away, but here you are, still around. It was never enough that you ’n’ Kyle weren’t together. I knew that he’d eventually choose you, like he always does. Then I decided I needed to get rid of you in a way that wouldn’t trace back to me.”
I swallow, a sick kind of fear slithering its way around my neck and squeezing tightly. Does she mean…?
“I’d given up show jumpin’ and pursued medicine.” She releases a cunning smile. “I’m a surgical nurse right here in good ole North Carolina.”
I chase my memories. How is it that I’ve never seen her around?
“I kept outta y’all’s circles,” she says as if she heard my silent question. “But I kept a close watch. There were times I thought you saw me or figured out it was me you saw ’neath a disguise or two, but the fact that y’all di’n’t even pay me a passin’ thought after Kyle ’n’ I broke up, worked to my advantage.”
It strikes me then, like a lightning bolt summoned by a lightning rod: that night at the bar. I’d thought the transvestite looked like her and I shelved it as an impossibility. What would Claire be doing here? I’d wondered to myself at the time. How wrong I was. Now, I know…it really was her.
Fuck.
Dread drips in my stomach like a slow leaking faucet and I feel almost lightheaded. I breathe deeply, getting enough oxygen in my head so I don’t pass out. If she thought I’d make it easy on her…just keep talking, bitch.
“Yo’ assistant’s a great lay by the way. A mouth like a hoover, that one,” Claire adds with an evil smirk.
Marla? What does Marla have to do with any of this?
“She gave up all yer secrets when I had my face ’tween her legs,” she tells me, and my face tightens as Marla’s betrayal washes over me.
“Don’t worry, she don’t know what all’s goin’ on,” she dismisses with a wave of her hand. “Not that it matters anyway. You ain’t getting’ out of this apartment alive.”
She takes a threatening step toward me, producing a scalpel.
“I’m gon’ slice your skin from your body, you purple-haired freak,” she vows in a sadistic tone. “And when Kyle ’n’ I reignite our love, you’ll be a distant memory.”
I don’t know why, but I laugh – a deranged cackle that has her brows knitting in bewilderment. I can’t believe how off she is. For all the tabs she has kept on us, how could she miss one huge detail?
“Well, if you kill me, I can’t wait to see what you do to his future wife,” I grumble with an exaggerated eye roll.
It’s her turn to laugh, a high-pitched sound that makes my ears bleed. How Kyle put up with her for as long as he did was a feat in itself. He deserves some kind of medal.
No, I’m not rewarding him for his bad behavior. Bad Kyle. And Bad Psycho Barbie!
“You don’t know…do ya?” she asks rhetorically, still chuckling. “Well, this oughta be fun.”
She advances on me and I stumble back. Not that I’m scared. No. At this point, I’m pissed. I stumble back to throw her off. She gets off on my fear and I have no problem giving it to her for her to get drunk on.
“Please, think about this, Claire,” I beg in a tremulous voice. Ugh.
“I have,” she replies. “It’s all I’ve thought about for years.”
“I’ll disappear!” I suggest desperately.
It makes her pause. She eyes me curiously before closing her eyes and shaking her head. “No, I won’t risk you showin’ up years later to fuck with my plans.”
Her momentary lapse in judgment – closing her eyes – gives me the window I need. Grabbing the gothic candlestick holder that her girlfriend gave me for my birthday, I wait until she opens her eyes. I want her to see the moment all her plans go to shit.
Her green eyes – fitting for her jealous ass – open and widen comically. Unlike her, I won’t waste a second talking. I’m a doer, always have been.
I whip the blunt implement across her face, and she falls like a sack of potatoes with a wordless scream on her lips. A big part of being an event planner, especially one as good as I am, is not being phased when faced with crisis. As soon as I had shaken off the prickling sensation of fear I was feeling initially, I had taken a mental stock of what was around my living room.
Remembering the gift from Marla, I had begun to inch toward it, trying not to draw any attention to my plan, and counting on her being too consumed with hate to realize until it was far too late.
My plan worked.
Taking a shuddering breath, I remember that my cell phone is in my car. I need to call the police. Stepping around the crazy blonde heap on my floor, I go to open the door, but don’t reach it.
Claire kicks her leg out with a scream, and I trip and fall to the ground. I should’ve known that the psychotic villain would not die as easily; like a not-so-cliché plot twist. She flips me over then jumps on top of me, fists raining down blows. My hands come up in protection, but she still manages to land a blow that splits my bottom lip. The coppery taste of blood seeps into my mouth and I spit it at her.
She wipes her face and I use her distraction to my advantage. Slapping her, I shove her off me and grab a handful of her hair as I get up. Slamming her head into the wall, I scream at her in anger. The boy I had denied myself all these years just had to come with all this fucking baggage, didn’t he?
I reach for her again, but she hits me first, momentarily dazing me. She uses that moment to ram her knee into my stomach, my breath leaving me in a rush. She then slams my head into the s
ame wall I’d only just slammed hers and the dizzying impact makes me stagger before falling, my head nearly hitting the end table.
I try to raise myself up and fail, my body going lax. I topple down, exhausted. I just need a few seconds to catch my breath. Maybe if I close my eyes…
I jerk awake at the feel of someone pulling one of my legs. That was a fucking nightmare. I haven’t had one of those in a while. At this point in my life, I don’t even know why I would dream about someone I haven’t even thought of in years. I feel another tug on my leg and try to shake off the person’s hold. My body must still be in deep sleep because my legs can barely move.
What the fuck?
I blink down at my feet, noticing that they are bound; manicured hands trying – and failing – to drag me. My vision clears and I realize it hadn’t been a dream. A laugh bubbles up out of nowhere and I tamp it down. Of course, as I am about to get the guy, something has to go wrong. It wouldn’t be me if everything that could possibly go wrong, doesn’t.
I close my eyes, feigning unconsciousness, waiting for a moment. I can’t run, so I’ll have to be smart if I want to get out of this alive. She has lost it. I won’t provoke any more of her hatred and anger unless I’ve got a plan. And a solid one, too.
Claire finally gets a good hold on me and starts pulling me. I chance a peek at what she’s doing and notice that she is dragging me toward my bathroom. She is serial killer level crazy. How did we even miss this about her? If I were not about to die, I’d commend the way that she has meticulously planned this revenge. She was definitely in it for the long haul.
Her determination to have Kyle makes me jealous, though. I wish I’d had her fight all those years ago. Where would we be now? Definitely not about to get the skin sliced off my bones, that’s for sure.
Inch by harrowing inch, Claire pulls me. The window to save my own life gets smaller and smaller and my heart thuds painfully against my chest, panic setting in. This is not how I saw myself dying. Of a broken heart when Kyle finally walks down the aisle with someone else, maybe, but not at the hands of a pint-sized Southern belle.
My head bumps lightly against my end table as I move slightly away from it. Wait. The end table. The end table I’d set the spur on when I came home a couple nights ago.
Call it poetic justice. I make a sudden jerk and my legs slip out of her hold. Reaching onto the table, I grab and throw the spur she taunted me with in her direction, but it misses, barely grazing her. Fuck. I’d never been very good at throwing things, not even fits.
Claire laughs maniacally, eyes crazed. “Time to die, slut,” she threatens, bending to pick up the scalpel.
For a nefarious villain, she sure makes a lot of mistakes.
When her face is near my feet, I smash her mug in with a kick. Her head whips back as she collapses into my glass coffee table. Getting up slowly, painfully and with my feet still tied, I hop over to her, staring. I need to make sure this bitch won’t resurrect like some kind of horror flick. Although I am hoping that I didn’t kill her.
A knock on my door has me startling. I gape at my door as if more surprises will emerge through it.
“Savannah?” It’s my neighbor Zondra. She’s not usually home during the days, but boy am I glad that she is today!
I totter toward it and throw my door open, meeting the frightened eyes of my dark-skinned savior.
“Zondra, thank God. I need you to call the police,” I instruct her.
“Girl, you okay?” she worries, hurriedly helping me out of my binds.
She sticks her head into my living room and sees the damage and the body on the floor. “She break into your house?” she asks, nodding to Claire who is still passed out.
“Yeah, she broke in and tried to kill me.”
“She dead?” she inquires, her tone flat.
I shake my head in response. “What a shame,” she mutters before pulling her phone out and dialing.
I grab my purse that fell to the ground in the chaos and make Zondra promise to not let Claire escape if she woke up.
“Oh, don’t worry, man,” she promises. “If she tries to get away, she will have to go through me.”
Now, Zondra is a tall, heavy-set woman. If I were Claire, I would continue pretending to be dead rather than trying to escape.
I tell Zondra that I need to go. “Sure you don’t want to go to the hospital?” she inquires, eyes running over me in concern.
“I’m fine, I promise,” I tell her.
She cocks her head to the side and appraises me. I don’t know what she sees but, seemingly satisfied, she nods to the open door. “Go on ahead, girl,” she resigns. “She not goin’ anywhere.” And I believe her.
Thanking her with a gingerly hug, I amble toward my car. After my near-death experience, I am pumping with adrenaline. I laugh like a crazy woman when I check my reflection in the tinted windows of the Hagerty’s apartment. Claire tried; I’ll give her that. I can’t imagine how this would’ve turned out if she wasn’t such a chatty Cathy.
I swipe at the blood on my lip and try to fluff my hair into something presentable. I give up when I wince with each effort to look like I’m okay, and blow myself a kiss in the window. This is the best it’s going to get.
Bruised, bloodied and in pain, I hobble to my car, determined to get to the Cape.
I’m going to get my man.
I stop in my tracks, however, when I see him. He looks like a tall drink of water on a hot as shit day. A sigh escapes me as all my emotions collide. Tears spring to my eyes and I start moving again, resolve powering my wounded strides.
My man has come to get me.
Chapter Thirty – Better Late Than Never
Kyle – Present
MY HEART SINKS as Savi tells us the abridged version of what happened. Jules, her mother, gasps next to me, her tears falling uncontrollably. Wes is staring at his daughter, unconcealed rage making his features harden. Claire tried to kill her. It’s a harrowing story, one my girl survives, yet I can’t help but think that this is somehow my fault.
Savi lays her hand on my cheek and whispers, “It’s not your fault.”
A sound between a groan and a sob reverberates in the back of my throat. I could have lost her. It’s almost as if I’m always on the verge of losing her. Jesus. She keeps coming back to me, so I take it for the sign that it is, but it doesn’t stop me from blaming myself and my dumb taste in women.
“It’s not your fault,” she reiterates more firmly. I don’t feel absolution in her words, but I’ll spend the rest of my life seeking it from her.
“I need to get you to a hospital, Crazy Hair,” I speak around a lump in my throat.
“No,” she declines, shaking her head. “I needed to find you, Kyle. I’ve got something to tell you.”
“Listen to me, Crazy Hair,” I hold resolutely. “If something else happens to you while we delay, I’ll never forgive myself.”
“But–” she protests.
“No,” I respond in a voice that brooks no argument. “Hospital first.”
Savi’s eyes widen at my tone of voice, but for the first time since I’ve known her, she doesn’t put up a fight.
“Okay,” she whispers.
Gently, I lift her, placing her in the back of my car with her mother fussing over her tearfully. Just as we’re about to drive away, we hear sirens blaring as they turn onto her street. Two police cars pull up to the curb, officers alighting from it and running toward the building.
“Officers!” Mr. Carpenter calls out.
They come over to us and we tell them what’s happening. Two of them head toward the complex in search of Claire while the other two remain to secure the area. An ambulance arrives moments later and the EMT checks Savi out, dressing her wounds and bandaging her up.
Shining a light in her eyes, he asks her if she’s feeling nauseous or light-headed, to which she responds that she isn’t. Police cart Claire away in handcuffs moments later, stuffing her in the back of the cruiser
. Her eyes find mine and I see desperation in them as if she’s begging me to come to her rescue.
There was a time when I’d been in love with her, to the point I would have done anything she asked. I was her fool – giving up my best friends because she said so. I never understood it back then, but her love for me was obsession. I stare back at her in a new light. How did I ever waste love on her?
I hug Savannah tightly and Claire’s gaze hardens. I’m sure if she could, she would come finish what she started. I turn away from the image of her seething in the back of a police car, not giving Claire a second thought. I feel no sorrow for her. She will get what she deserves.
One by one, our family and friends arrive; Mrs. Carpenter making the rounds. The police take preliminary statements from us and I shiver with unease when Savi recounts what could have easily been her final day on Earth. Her mother cries, the second time around just as terrifying as the first time we heard it. She grabs hold of Savi in a gentle hug and her dad and grandmother follow suit.
We are all aware of how close we came to losing her. I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself if anything had happened. The years we spent apart and the fact that she was no longer around for me to love and spend my life with would have surely taunted me into an early grave.
“I want to go to the Cape,” she requests long after the officers and ambulance leaves.
Her mother starts shaking her head, echoing what we’re all thinking: she’s already had enough for the day.
“Please, Kyle,” she begs. “I need to be somewhere good.”
Tears shine in her eyes, the close call she encountered fraying her nerves. I can’t deny her request. I sigh, resigned; my forehead meeting hers in capitulation. She’s not going to give this up. If she wants to go to the Cape, she’ll go with or without me; I know how stubborn she can be. I stretch my hand out to her, waiting for her to take it, holding my breath as I do. After a few short seconds, she takes it and I exhale heavily. My heart does this weird little pang at feeling her hand in mine. It’s simple, but it speaks so loudly.
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