Hearts in Harmony (12 page)

“You're wrong. I think our friendship will be spoiled if you keep avoiding me.”

“I'm not avoiding you. I'm here with you now, aren't I? We're going to the library tomorrow, aren't we?”

Adrian sighed. Again, they were back to the library. Where all couples went to spend a romantic, fun-filled Friday night. He gave his head a small shake at the concept. “That's not what I meant. Why don't you want to try being more than just friends with me?”

“Because it's not meant to happen. It would never work between us. So let's just keep things as they are, okay?”

He sucked his lower lip between his teeth. He wanted to tell Celeste that he loved her, and it could work, but he held his tongue. For now, if she was convinced it couldn't work, anything he said or did would only strengthen her resolve and make the situation worse. Instead, all he could do was move slowly. He would prove to her that he could be trusted, and that he would be there for her. Always, and for everything.

“Okay, I won't argue with you. Are we still on for ice cream? If you don't want any more coffee, I can make that tea you like.”

Her eyes brightened, and strange things happened to his stomach, even though he knew he was far from hungry. “Yes. I'd like that. Let's go.”

C
eleste rolled onto her back and stared up at the dark ceiling. The only things keeping the room from total blackness were the green glow of the numbers on the clock radio, and what little light seeped through the heavy curtains from the streetlamps two houses down.

She should have been sleeping, but as tired as she was, she couldn't.

When she'd finally got home, there was a message from Bob on her answering machine. The car was ready, and he quoted a ridiculously cheap price on the parts he'd used. Bob said to come and get it any time, which would be no problem, because she still had his car.

If the inability to adequately repay a debt wasn't bad enough, Adrian had heard the message, and had offered to loan her the money if she didn't have it.

Adrian.

Celeste squeezed her eyes shut, even though in the dark there was nothing to blank out.

In stark contrast to everything that made Adrian the
man he was, there was Zac, the personification of everything bad she'd ever done, returning to haunt her. He had refused to accept how much she'd changed, so she'd agreed to meet Zac one more time, which she'd done earlier that day at the taco restaurant downtown during her lunch break. This time, Zac had been on time, and, even though he still always had a cigarette burning, he was coherent. However, his one day of good behavior didn't change her mind. Again, she'd told him that everything was over and that she never wanted to see him again. Ever. This time, he'd been strangely silent and not argued with her. When he'd left, she could tell he was mad, but he did go away, and this time, he didn't threaten her. She could only take that to mean he'd finally accepted that nothing he could do or say would change her mind. It really was over between them. For good.

Even after all their years together, Celeste had no regrets about leaving Zac. Yet, the fact of him being gone didn't erase that part of her life and everything going with it that Zac represented. Nothing in her life during those years had been good or pleasing to God. Even before she accepted Jesus into her heart, she knew she wasn't living a good life. She couldn't even use love as an excuse. Now that she knew what real love was like, she knew she never had loved Zac. She'd stayed with him and gone along with his decadent lifestyle because it was the easiest thing to do.

She rolled over and buried her face in her pillow. She loved Adrian, who did live a life that was good and pleasing to God, but she wasn't pleasing enough to God to have him.

Outside, the neighbor's dog barked. She listened for her landlord's dog to start barking from the other side of
the duplex, then remembered that Hank had asked her to take in the newspaper, meaning he and his family, including the dog, had gone away for the weekend.

She rolled over again, and pulled the blanket up to her chin. Without the sound of Hank's children playing their loud computer games from the other side of the wall, she could sleep in for once on a Saturday morning.

If she could get to sleep. Tomorrow, she was going to the library with Adrian. She knew he didn't understand why she enjoyed going to the library so much, and she doubted he ever would. No one in their right mind could call weekly trips to the library a date, but in going, she spent hours with the man she truly loved, with no strings attached. Neither of them put on airs, no one had to pretend to be something they were not. The library was quiet, relaxed and anonymous, and therefore, perfect.

The neighbor's dog barked again, louder this time. The woman yelled at the dog to get inside, and once again, all was silent.

Then the doorbell rang.

Celeste sat up in bed with a start. The glow from the clock radio read 2:49 a.m.

The doorbell rang a second time.

Celeste's heart pounded. She didn't know if she should ignore it and hope the person went away, or if she should answer, in case it was someone who was in trouble and needed help.

But she was alone. She wasn't going to open the door, not for any person, not for any reason.

For an irrational second, she considered barking like a
dog, except that if she really did have a dog, the dog would have barked long ago.

She sucked in a deep breath, crept out of bed, and tiptoed out of the bedroom until she was at the top of the stairs. Up until recently, she had considered the layout of the duplex a nuisance, with the kitchen, living room and bathroom downstairs, and the two bedrooms upstairs. Now, she was grateful for the distance from the door.

Visible through the colored glass beside the door, a dark figure moved outside. The person's height put them close to the top of the window, which meant it probably was a man.

The doorknob rattled as the man tested it to see if it was locked.

Celeste's heart stopped briefly. She quickly praised God that every night the last thing she did before going to bed was check the front door to make sure it was securely locked.

She had started to turn around to go back to the bedroom to call the police when a deep voice, muffled through the glass, sounded from outside. “I know you're there. Let me in, Celeste. We need to talk.”

Celeste froze midstep.

Zac.

He'd discovered where she lived. She thought she'd been careful.

The doorknob rattled again, only this time more violently.

“I said, let me in!”

“Go away or I'll call the police!” she called out, walking to the very edge of the first step.

Zac pounded his fist on the door three times. “Do that, and you'll be sorry.”

Celeste forced herself to breathe. Zac had been in many
altercations where the police were called. Not long before she'd left him, he'd been involved in a fight that was so bad she'd had to bail him out when she sobered up enough to drive. The other man had been taken to the hospital. She had no doubt that in Zac's present state, he would do the same, if not worse, to her.

“I said go away!” she forced herself to yell back.

“Are you trying to hide that other guy? The one who answered the phone? He can't protect you.” The door shook, banging so violently she didn't know how the doorknob didn't come off. A long string of very nasty words followed.

She began to tremble from head to foot. In Zac's present state, Adrian was no match for Zac. Once when Zac had flipped out, she'd seen him take down three men, all larger than himself.

“I'm not opening the door! Go away!”

“You'd better open up, Celeste! We have to straighten some things out. You owe me!”

Celeste's stomach rolled. She owed him nothing. He owed
her,
in wages and the possessions she'd had to leave behind, to say nothing of her savings that he'd stolen. But she knew Zac didn't see it that way, or he wouldn't have been pounding on her door in the middle of the night.

“Go away! I said I'll call the police!”

Instead of a reply, something hard hit the glass.

Celeste turned and ran back into the bedroom. At the same second as her fingers hit the last digit of 911, the crash of breaking glass echoed through the otherwise silent house.

She dropped the phone receiver on the floor. By the time someone answered, Zac would be upstairs. By the
time the police actually arrived, it would be too late. He would have her.

Celeste ran to the bedroom door and closed it, but realized it had no lock.

She'd seen in movies where people braced a chair under the doorknob to keep someone out. Not only did she not know exactly what to do, she didn't have a chair in the bedroom. But even if she did, in his present state, Zac would break through a hollow-framed interior door in seconds.

The front door creaked.

Footsteps crunched through the broken glass.

“No…” she whimpered.

Hank wasn't home. It would do no good to scream.

She had nowhere to go. She couldn't run down the stairs to go outside. Zac would already be on his way up. She couldn't take the chance that he would search for her downstairs first. The bedrooms were always upstairs. Besides, the closed door was a dead giveaway to where she was.
Dead
being the key word. If he didn't merely rape her, in Zac's current state of rage, Zac just might kill her, too.

She backed up. With the door closed, the room was darker than ever. The green glow from the clock radio suddenly became eerie. Even the filtered light from the window felt ominous.

The window…

Celeste ran to the window. She couldn't jump from the second story without breaking any bones, but Hank's apple tree was right outside the window, Hank's
sturdy tall
apple tree.

It should hold the weight of a full-grown person.

Celeste fumbled with the latch, hiked the window open, and stuck one leg out. The cool night air assaulted her bare
toes, but the cold was a far lesser evil than what awaited her if she stayed.

She reached forward as far as she could, leaned toward the tree, said a quick prayer for mercy, and launched herself at the large branch that only a month before, she had picked apples from, using a long-handled fishing net she'd borrowed from Randy.

Ignoring the painful scrapes from the branches, Celeste hung on tight for a few seconds while she gained some balance, then started to shimmy down the tree. A foul string of nasty words blasted the night air as Zac entered the bedroom to discover she wasn't there. Only halfway down the tree trunk, Celeste froze. She didn't know how stoned Zac was, but she only had a chance of escape if he didn't realize the window was open behind the curtains. If he did look, she had to remain still. Hopefully he wouldn't see her if she stayed melded into the tree, still only halfway to the ground. Most of all, if Zac was listening, if she moved he would hear the smaller branches snapping, even though she tried her best to be quiet.

When the swearing became quieter and it sounded as if he had left the bedroom and started looking through the rest of the house for her, Celeste continued downward. The second her bare feet touched the cold, wet grass, she broke into a full run.

She didn't think about where she was going. Instinct told her where she would be safe.

She ran with every ounce of strength she had.

Gasping so hard it hurt, Celeste banged on the door with the last bit of energy she had left. “Adrian! Let me in! Please! Let me in!”

Even though her hands stung from the slashes of the branches, after fifteen seconds had passed, she grabbed the doorknob with both hands and frantically started alternately pushing, pulling and turning it.

Tears burned her eyes as she gulped for air. “Adrian! Help me!”

The porchlight flashed on, the sudden light stinging her eyes. The doorknob turned beneath her hands. Celeste blinked in the bright light and released the doorknob as if it were on fire.

The door opened. Adrian stood in the doorway. He was barefoot, wearing only crumpled jeans with the button unfastened. His usually meticulously styled hair stood on end. For the first time since she'd known him, he wasn't wearing his glasses, so he was squinting rather badly.

He was the most beautiful thing she'd ever seen.

“Celeste?” His eyes narrowed even more as he focused on the brightness of pink flannel. “What are you doing here in your pajamas? Where's Bob's car?” He glanced over her shoulder to the empty street. Seeing nothing, he then looked down and stared at her bare toes. “You'd better come in.”

The second the door closed behind her, she extended one arm and pointed in the direction of her duplex. “It's Zac,” she gasped. She was trembling from head to toe, but she gulped for more air, and continued. “He found me. He's at my house. I had to run.”

“Who's Zac? Should I call the police?”

Celeste inhaled deeply a few times, finally gaining control of her breathing, and shook her head. “There's no point. He'll be gone by now. As soon as he realizes I'm not
there, he'll check the obvious places in the yard and then leave within three minutes.”

“Three minutes?”

“He always times everything to three minutes so the police won't catch him. Because he was looking for me first, I don't know if he had time to steal anything.” For a second, her heart stopped again. She didn't have much worth stealing. All she had besides some used furniture was her economy CD player, the television she'd got from the second-hand store and her reconditioned computer, none of which Zac would want. They weren't worth enough to bother stealing because they weren't name-brand items and they would be hard to sell because they were older.

The thing he would want would be her electric piano, because it was the only thing she owned of any value. Fortunately, the piano was still set up in Adrian's den, where she'd left it after practice on Wednesday.

Celeste's relief quickly changed to dread. With nothing to steal, and without her there for him to have his way with, Zac could trash the place.

Her home.

She hoped his three minutes would be up before he had time to vent his rage.

“I don't understand. Why would someone you know steal your things? If you knew he was going to steal something, why did you let him in?”

Celeste lowered her arm and turned her head so she could see Adrian's face. His obvious confusion told her that he had no experience with the dark side of people beyond what he saw on television or read in the paper. But she knew that kind of person well. Not long ago, she'd been one of them.

“I didn't let him in. He broke in. That's why I'm here.”

“But…” Adrian shook his head. “Just a minute. This is all wrong. I'll be right back.”

He returned wearing his glasses and a T-shirt. The button on his jeans was fastened, but he was still barefoot. Draped over his arm, he carried a large bathrobe, which he handed to her as soon as he was within reach. “Put this on and tell me what's going on.”

He glanced at the window, even though it wasn't possible to see anything, then back to her, waiting for an explanation.