Graham’s footsteps on the stairs startle me and I nearly drop the water. He’s coming downstairs. Now. What am I going to do?
I can’t think of anything else to do, so I toss the contents of the water glass into a nearby plant. I’ll tell him I drank it all. Hopefully, the plant will be okay, but that’s the least of my concerns.
“Tess?” Graham is at the entrance to the dining room, now dressed in a T-shirt and jeans. He looks handsome in his casual attire, but there’s something in his eyes that makes me uneasy. “What are you doing?”
I force a smile. “I was just thirsty and gulped down all my water while I was waiting for you. I’ll just grab some more water from the kitchen.”
Graham narrows his eyes at me. He takes a step closer to me and I instinctively take a step back.
“No,” he says. “You’re lying.”
Chapter 26
I hold onto the edge of the table because my legs have turned to jello. Graham’s blue eyes look almost black as he glares at me.
“You’re lying,” he says.
“What… what do you mean?” I plaster an innocent expression on my face. It’s hard to believe it looks even remotely realistic.
“You didn’t drink that water,” he hisses at me.
“Yes, I did.”
“No, you didn’t. You poured the water into the plant. I saw you do it.”
Crap.
I think back to the conversation I had with Harry at the dog park. You have said those exact words to me multiple times now. You knew he was drugging you. You tried to avoid it. And the next day, nothing has changed. You’ve still lost your memory.
Is this what happened all those other nights? I tried to get rid of the tainted water and Graham caught me? And now what will he do?
“Why did you do that?” he presses me. “Why did you dump out your water?”
I tug on the sleeve of my sweater. “It… it looked cloudy. I don’t know… like, maybe something was floating in it…”
He narrows his eyes. “Did somebody tell you I was putting something in your water?”
“No,” I say quickly. Maybe too quickly.
Graham is looking down at something. I follow his gaze and realize he’s staring at my arm. I was fiddling with the sleeve of my sweater, and I had inadvertently tugged it up several inches. And now Graham can see the last several digits of a phone number.
Oh no.
He crosses the distance between us and seizes my left arm in his hand hard enough to leave behind bruises. He wrenches up my sleeve, revealing the digits Harry scribbled on my arm. Graham’s eyes widen behind his spectacles. “Really? Are you kidding me with this, Tess?”
I open my mouth to say something, but no words come out. I’m starting to see why Camila was only allowed to set the table with butter knives.
He releases my arm and glares at me. “Whose number is that? Who have you been talking to?” Before I can answer, he says, “Is it Harry?”
I shake my head as vigorously as I can, but it’s clear Graham doesn’t believe me. He marches into the living room, and after a second, I can see what he’s going for. My phone. He picks it up and unlocks it with his thumb. I hold my breath as he scrolls through my messages and phone calls. Thank God I deleted those text messages from Harry. He was right when he instructed me to do that.
Graham shakes the phone at me. “Did you delete the messages from him?”
“No!” I cry. “I didn’t.”
He grunts. “Yeah, right.”
Holding the phone in one hand, he grabs my left arm again to look at Harry’s number. I squirm, trying to get loose, but his grip is like a vise. With his thumb, he types the number into the phone then hits the button to make the call. I watch him, my heart pounding. He waits long enough that I’m certain the call has gone to voicemail.
“Hey, Harry?” Graham shoots me a look as he says my ex-fiancé’s name. “I found your phone number written on Tess’s arm. I’d really appreciate it if you would leave her the fuck alone from now on. Or else. We don’t need you in our lives. And I swear to God, if you bother her again, you are going to live to regret it. You get me?”
He ends the call, his eyes still locked with mine. At first, it looks like he’s going to toss my phone back on the table, but instead, he puts it in his pocket. “You’re not getting this back. Ever. I’m sick of this shit.”
“Okay,” I say in a small voice.
His shoulders rise and fall as he takes a breath. “I’m sorry I yelled at you. I shouldn’t have lost my temper.”
I don’t know what to say to that. Losing his temper isn’t the worst thing he has done tonight. He tried to drug me, for God’s sake.
“Listen.” His voice is calmer now. He pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “I have no clue what Harry has been saying to you. I can only imagine. But whatever it is, it’s not true. He doesn’t know what’s going on.”
“Right,” I mumble. All I can think of is that I escaped drinking that water. By tomorrow, I’ll remember everything. And I can work on getting free from this monster.
“Tess, look at me.”
I lift my eyes to meet his. All the anger from a moment ago has vanished. “What?”
“I’m not trying to drug you. You have to believe me. I would never do anything to hurt you.”
I shake my head. “So what was in that drink? I saw something.”
He rubs at the back of his neck. “You’re right. There was something dissolved in that drink. But it wasn’t anything bad. It was your medications, Tess. Prescribed by the doctor you see for your head injury.”
“What medications?”
“For your seizures.” He tugs at the hem of his T-shirt. “You were getting horrible seizures after your accident. Your whole body would shake, and you hit your head twice when it happened. One of the times you hit your head, the bleeding in your brain got worse. You need to be on your seizure medications.” He frowns. “But lately, you’ve been refusing to take them because you think I’m drugging you for some reason. So I started putting them in your drink. I’m sorry. I didn’t do it to upset you. I just thought it would be easier this way.”
I think of the ominous message I found scribbled on my thigh this morning. “I don’t believe you.”