Save Me

Untitled Part 7

Roy had returned to her apartment that night and they had enjoyed a rom com while eating burgers and fries. Despite the subject matter and that it was one of Felicity's favorites the evening had been somber. Roy had left that evening wishing he could do more for her. He had tried to talk to her about Lyla and John but she had quickly shut him down and so he had left the topic alone.

Lyla ushered out the last few customers as their evening came to an end. It had been three days since they had come clean to Felicity and Lyla was growing more and more concerned about her. After Roy had returned to the diner and confronted them about their deception with Felicity and told them that she had quit, Lyla had been beside herself. She wanted to go talk to Felicity, to make her understand but she knew that would only make things worse. They had to wait for her to come to them, and then she did.

John and Lyla were almost done closing the diner when they heard the tinkle of the doorbell. Lyla had looked up from the table she was wiping down to see Felicity standing right inside the door and she had felt a pain in her chest. Felicity looked tired, hurt, scared and so vulnerable. It made Lyla's heart ache. John walked out from behind the counter and Felicity approached them slowly. They both could see the pain in her eyes and the anger that was still there, and it tugged at them both.

"Felicity." John looked at her and noted the bags underneath her eyes.

"John, Lyla. Please let me talk before you say anything." Her voice sounded raw like she had been crying recently and the thought that they had caused her to feel hurt was almost overwhelming. "When I married David, it was truly a happy day for me. I was marrying the person I loved, the person that I trusted more than anyone in the world. With my Mom being so far away and my father not in the picture David became the one person I could count on. Until he wasn't. The first time he hit me I was shocked. He had never been aggressive with me and so I just figured I had pushed him too far. I told him I would not tolerate it happening again and he assured me that it wouldn't. He said he was under a lot of stress and it had been a onetime thing. Until it wasn't. The next time he hit me was after he forced me to quit my job. We argued because I wanted to keep working. It gave me a sense of accomplishment and gave me a sense of pride. He took that away from me when he made me quit and when I confronted him that evening he punched me in the face and told me that he needed his wife at home. The look in his eyes and in his face at that moment terrified me. I could see him changing and there was nothing I could do. I wanted to leave him then, but I knew I had to be careful and make sure I had things in order or he would go after my Mother. He loved holding that over my head after that day."

Lyla's eyes teared up as Felicity continued, "I figured out pretty quickly that he was getting his sexual release somewhere else. He never approached me in that way. I thanked God every day for that. Because if he had forced me..." Her voice trailed off. "Towards the end when he locked me in my room and that last day when he beat me so severely and took the picture standing over me, a small part of me died. How could I have been so blind? I doubted myself because I had fallen in love with a monster. As soon as I got out of the hospital I waited until he went to work, and I left. I contacted my Mother and told her what had happened and even though I warned her that he might come after her she would not leave Vegas. I thought about going there, but I didn't want to lead him directly to her, so I left, and I came here. I made friends in you and John and I was starting to get my life back."

Tears were streaming down her cheeks by this point and then she said the thing that gutted them both, "Then I find out that the two people I have trusted more than anyone since I left him, the two people I thought I could count on were lying to me. They were using me to get to my husband. That pain was far worse than anything David ever inflicted."

Lyla and John both winced. "You two took me in and helped me get back on my feet and I will always be grateful for that. And I am going to help you bring down David because it is what he deserves, and I don't want him hurting another woman. But it is going to take some time for me to trust either of you again."