Down the Rabbit Hole - Holly Madison

something you’d like to talk to me about.”
“Yes,” I said, feeling instantly small and incredibly nervous. I took a determined breath and
continued, “I’ve decided I can’t stay any longer. My feelings aren’t there anymore and I don’t want to
fake it. I need to make a life for myself and have a family.”
It felt like a full minute had passed before Hef spoke.
“Are you sure?” he finally asked, continuing to dangle the bait that E! had ordered a sixth season
of the show.
If I wouldn’t stay for him, he assumed that I would at least stay for the show. It seemed as if he
thought all a woman could possibly want was fame and money.
I didn’t say anything. My mind was made up.
He pleaded with me to stay, to not tell anyone we broke up, to try and work it out.
“I need my freedom,” I tried to explain. “I want to be able to actually hang out with my
girlfriends and have fun like a normal person.”
“Ha!” he exclaimed, through a sarcastic cackle. “What makes you think any of those girls will
want to hang out with you if you aren’t my girlfriend?”
After years of being conditioned to believe that I wasn’t anything without Playboy attached to
my name, I had actually started to believe it. But I knew better now. His frantic attempts to keep me
chained to the mansion seemed transparent, desperate, and just made me angry.
“I’m sorry,” I said softly but firmly. I wouldn’t be manipulated. Not this time.
And since I clearly wasn’t responding to his spiteful attempts to cripple my self-confidence, he
tried playing the guilt card, asking me if I wanted him to have another stroke and saying that if he died
it would be my fault.
He wasn’t above using his age and health as a tactic to get his way. Over the years, in a few of
our more heated disagreements, he regularly made dramatic statements along these lines to get me to
drop an argument. It was ridiculous considering that our disagreements, up to this point, had always
been about things that should have been trivial to him.
But for him it was all about winning. He didn’t care if I stayed out of fear or out of pity, as long
as I stayed, but I wasn’t going to budge.
I sat silently on the other end of the phone line, patiently waiting for this episode to pass. After
gaining some self-confidence and a bit of perspective, I saw just how tired his routine had become.
It’s like I was seeing him with new eyes. He was no longer this infallible icon I created in my mind.
He was just a spoiled child in an old man’s body.
“I have to go,” I said. “That’s final.”
Silence.
“Okay, darlin’,” he managed, his voice choking up (sincerely, for a change). “But I hope you
will reconsider.”
Hef was in denial about our breakup for a long time. He chalked it up to some kind of phase I
was going through. After giving him the “worst night of his life,” he began pursuing me like never
before. All of a sudden, I mattered. The entire concept for season six of Girls Next Door was to
follow Hef and me as we trotted off into forever land . . . just the two of us. To everyone on the