Down the Rabbit Hole (37 page)

“Who are you texting?” the bodyguard sneered at me, throwing me a suspicious look.

“No one,” I said as I pocketed my phone. “I'm just writing down some ideas.”

I
WAS DONE
. I had gone to bed finally ready to leave Criss. He had started another one of his one-sided arguments over nothing and I had had enough. I didn't even try to engage him, and instead quietly sat through the rant until he calmed down and I was finally able to go to sleep.

The next morning, his fit clearly wasn't over. He stormed out of the master bathroom, tearing up a Valentine's Day card I had given him featuring my pinup portrait by Olivia on the front. Criss was screaming about having just noticed that the rendering included a pair of curled-up pink bunny ears on top of my head, striking a deep nerve in him.

Criss finally said that he thought I should go back to my parents and that he would buy me a plane ticket.

“Okay,” I said, barely louder than a whisper. I was afraid to argue with him. I silently congratulated myself on this easy out he had just provided me.

He stormed out of the room and yelled loudly to one of his assistants to book me on a flight to Portland that afternoon.

I crept out of bed and began gathering what I needed. Luckily, I still had a perpetually packed suitcase at the ready for my back-and-forth-to-L.A. trips that had come to an immediate halt a few months earlier.

Criss asked me if I wanted to wear my jewelry, slyly eyeing the vintage Gucci watch I had purchased for myself, my small cross necklace, and the ring he had given me.

“Yes,” I replied without thinking. It never occurred to me that he would actually expect the gifts back. After all, I had bought him expensive things, too.

When I finally pulled my things—and myself—together, I walked out into the living room of the suite. Criss's bodyguard was standing by to drive me to the airport.

“Bye,” I said, giving Criss a cold, distant hug.

“Take care,” he said just as coolly, before planting a kiss on my head and asking me to let him know that I got in safe.

“I
DON
'
T KNOW WHAT
'
S
wrong with me,” I cried through a stream of tears. “It's like, I know he's an asshole and I know he's not good for me, but I'm still so sad. I don't get it.”

I was home in Oregon; the same place where I had decided to pack up my little red Celica nearly a decade earlier. In some ways, it was as if nothing had changed and I was back where I started. I had no job, no man, and no prospects lined up. Luckily my close friend Sara Underwood lived in Portland and spent an afternoon listening to me as I poured my heart out. She was an absolute angel and held my hand through my frequent sobs. I was so grateful to have her there. She listened and offered me the best advice she could, but the real problem wasn't obvious to either of us at that point.

Yes, I had just embarked on a high-profile romance that went wrong, quickly and dramatically, but that wasn't really where my emotional crash was coming from. I was suddenly having to deal with my transition from the twisted world of
Playboy
into the real world. It was the unavoidable emotional fallout that had been postponed by my whirlwind romance with Criss.

What was I going to do now?
I thought, feeling hopeless.

After a week in Oregon, my dad drove me to the airport and I boarded a flight to Los Angeles. I had no idea what was going to happen next, but I was determined to brave the storm, despite the heavy burden of sadness I carried onto the plane with me.

Criss's voice echoed in my mind, telling me I needed to go back to California. During a few of his tantrums, when he was mulling over a breakup out loud, he would always banish me to California, as if he owned Las Vegas.

Where I go and what I do isn't your prerogative,
I thought, as if I now had a chance to respond to one of his treacherous rants.

I felt like Hef was trying to sabotage me in Los Angeles by bad-mouthing me and leaving me out of
Girls Next Door
–related press, and now Criss was trying to banish me from Las Vegas.

Sorry, boys, it's not going to be that easy,
I thought, pulling my hoodie over my head. I felt the rumbling of the plane engines beneath my seat.
You haven't seen the last of me.

C
HAPTER
13

For, you see, so many out-of-the-way things had happened lately, that Alice had begun to think that very few things indeed were really impossible.

—Lewis Carroll,
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

A
fter my breakup with Criss, I returned to La-La Land absolutely lost. I knew that I wanted a successful career, but I didn't know how to go about achieving it. Since arriving back in Los Angeles, I was still reeling from the emotional fallout of my relationships with both Hef and Criss. For the first time in almost eight years, I was entirely on my own, but this time, I was carrying a whole load of emotional baggage behind me.
What am I going to do next?

God bless Mary O'Connor. After I had spent all those years at the mansion, Mary became more than a friend to me . . . she became like family. When she and her partner, “Captain Bob,” invited me to stay in their spare bedroom while I got my feet on the ground, I couldn't have been more grateful. While she remained Hef's loyal and loving secretary for more than 40 years, Mary was also a compassionate woman who knew I needed her (and knew damn well that Hef respected her too much to ever reprimand her for taking me in).

Of course I had my own apartment in Santa Monica, but I had become terrified of being by myself. I was desperately lonely and didn't feel at ease in my apartment. There was no security at my building and the neighborhood in Santa Monica where it was located didn't feel very safe after dark. Every night I noticed a truck parked across the street from my living room window with a man sitting in the driver's seat for hours. I have no idea why he was there, but I found it creepy. What I needed most was a comfortable, safe atmosphere surrounded by people I loved and who wanted the best for me. It was the only way I could be sure that my next decision would be a smart one. I was scared of making another bad choice because I was anxious, lonely, or desperate.

Despite Hef and the producers' incessant lobbying for my return to the mansion and the series (even though Crystal and the twins were already occupying our former spots), Mary encouraged me to make the best decision for me and to follow my heart.

“It's better for you to be on your own,” she told me. Mary had a wonderfully maternal nature—and I often looked to her for guidance. “You need to live your life. There's not much you can really do at the mansion.”

A few days after I arrived, I contacted Criss's assistant about shipping out everything I'd left behind in my hasty departure. When the boxes arrived on Mary's doorstep, I burst into tears. I knew I didn't want to be with Criss, but I was still broken. It's a humbling experience having a stack of cardboard boxes packed neatly with your belongings shipped back to you without even a single word.

I felt like I had been thrown out with the trash.

When news of Criss's and my breakup eventually leaked to TMZ, Criss began calling me and sending me nasty text messages accusing me of tipping off the press.

He angrily accused me of telling “them.” When I asked him who he meant, he said, “Playboy,” and went on to rant about how he knew this would happen and angrily said that I had better be saying he broke up with me.

There could have been no greater way of insulting Criss than if people assumed that I had been the one who actually wanted out of the relationship. I honestly didn't care what people thought—I was just happy to be a
safe
distance away from him.

We had barely spoken since I left him in Las Vegas that morning, so needless to say, we never really discussed how we were going to handle our very public breakup with the press. I didn't know who told TMZ about our dissolution (since I had only informed my family and a few friends), but it seemed Criss was irate because he had his own ideas about how he would announce our split. Since we still shared the same publicist, we both got an email from him asking what kind of “joint statement” we would like to make about the breakup.

Criss responded first, demanding that he tell them nothing.

Our publicist quickly replied:

We have to tell the press something. If you don't, no one will want to cover you the next time you date a celebrity.

Ouch,
I thought, hit him where it hurts.

Eventually, we agreed to make a statement saying we broke up amicably due to scheduling differences—regardless of the fact that I had nothing to schedule. I don't know if anyone bought the excuse, but I didn't really care. The media and the public had become so used to seeing Criss run through starlets for publicity that I doubt many people ever believed our relationship was genuine . . . I was possibly the only one who had!

Now that my relationship with Criss was behind me, I could finally focus on my future. Though I was tempted to waste away in Mary's spare room, I knew I had to take action. At the insistence of Criss, I had turned down most of the opportunities that had come my way shortly after I left the mansion—most of which Criss's jealousy didn't allow for. Besides Mary, no one associated with
Playboy
or
Girls Next Door
would have anything to do with me, unless I abandoned my own dignity and returned to the mansion, which was the last thing I would do.

No,
I thought.
I'm starting from scratch—and I'm doing it on my own.

I made a list of the things I still hoped to accomplish in my life and career. Being able to see my goals spelled out in front of me was an important part of the process.

For my career, my list was pretty specific:

1.
  Develop a reality series that showcases the
real
Holly—apart from
Girls Next Door
,
Playboy,
and Hef.

2.
  Star in a Las Vegas show.

3.
  Appear on
Dancing with the Stars
.

The list went on, but those were my main goals. Prior to leaving the mansion, I had interviewed for
Dancing with the Stars
and even met the producers. I had fallen in love with the series when its second season aired in 2006. The contestants looked like they were having so much fun and I couldn't take my eyes off contestant Stacy Keibler's flashy costumes. Although I wasn't a dancer, I was dying to be on the show—it looked like the contestants were having the time of their lives! But despite how popular
The Girls Next Door
was at the time, rumor had it that one of the show's producers didn't think Middle America could relate to a young woman who lived with an old man like Hugh Hefner. Determined to one day appear on the series, I tried revisiting the idea two months earlier during a meeting with Criss's managers (this was during the period he insisted on “shaping” my career).

“So I called
Dancing with the Stars,
” Criss's manager began, “since you told me you were interested in it, but they've already cast their upcoming season.”

Criss remarked snidely that
Dancing with the Stars
was a show for “has-beens” and the only person to have ever done it right was Marie Osmond, because she did it right before she opened her show in Vegas.

None of my career ideas were up to Criss's standard, so this one—like many others—was shot down.

After making my list, I decided that tomorrow would be the beginning of a fresh start. I knew what I
hoped
to achieve; now I charged myself with the task of going out there and making it happen. Deep down I knew that I would be okay. For the first time in weeks, I felt optimistic about my future. I knew I needed to gather my strength, so I decided to let myself sleep in before somehow starting a new life the next day.

When I crawled out of bed later the next morning, I noticed I had three missed calls and voice mails from the same number on my BlackBerry. Each was from a producer at
Dancing with the Stars
urgently looking to get ahold of me.

Holy shit,
I thought! Was I dreaming this? I listened to the voice mails again just to make sure I hadn't completely taken a dive off the deep end. The producer had hoped she had the right number, since she was calling the phone number they had listed on my file from the first time I interviewed.

It was such an uncanny coincidence that I had to believe that someone above was answering my prayers. Since they had just announced the season eight roster a few weeks earlier (and the series was actually premiering the following week), I figured that casting directors must be beginning their search for the following season's hopefuls.