by K. A. Linde
“It was great. Free food. Cheap drinks. About what you can expect,” Hayden told them.
“I like your outfit, Liz,” Lightsey said with a wink. He was the youngest of the bunch and a known flirt, but with little success.
“Thanks. If you’ll all excuse me, I’m going to go find the restroom,” Liz said. The guys parted to allow her to pass and pointed down the dark hallway nearly right behind them. She darted away from them and found the women’s restroom at the end of the hall.
After relieving herself, Liz pried the Christmas bows out of her hair and finger-combed the waves into submission. She didn’t think it really did the trick, but she didn’t have another option. At least Massey had taken her jingle bell necklace, and Liz had switched off the lights on her sweater. There was nothing she could do about the tennis shoes. Why hadn’t she thought of a change of clothes?
Deciding that was as good as it was going to get, Liz walked out of the restroom and back down the hallway. She stopped short of the exit when she heard her name from one of the guys.
“No, seriously, she’s really fucking hot,” Hannity said.
Liz peered around the corner and saw all of the guys nodding, agreeing. Hayden just shrugged. They hadn’t seen her, and while it felt wrong to eavesdrop, she was curious.
“Are you telling me you still haven’t slept with her?” Bynum asked, gesturing with his hands.
“It’s not a big deal,” Hayden told them.
Liz’s cheeks burned even as Hayden defended her. She knew guys talked about this shit. She and Victoria were ten times as vulgar, but somehow it embarrassed her in this context. They didn’t know that she was merely steps from them, but how long did they think she took in the bathroom?
“I mean, we thought you were gay when you claimed you were hung up on this girl all year,” Lightsey said with a shrug.
“You’re one to talk, Lightsey,” Cush yelled, punching him in the arm.
“Back the fuck off, Cush.”
“Fucking make me!”
“Christ,” Hannity cried, knocking Cush back. “You sprinters need to get off the juice.”
The guys all laughed. Steroids were banned even for the club team, but everyone joked that the sprinters used it to take seconds off of their time.
“Is she a virgin or something? What’s the hang-up?” Hannity asked. “You guys have been hanging out for weeks and you haven’t even tried anything? She doesn’t seem like a prude to me. So, what’s wrong with her?”
“There’s nothing wrong with her, you asshole,” Hayden said, shaking his head. Whatever else he said was lost to her as she took a few steps back toward the bathroom and leaned her head against the wall.
It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter.
It had only been a month. Why were guys such dicks about that shit? She and Hayden didn’t have to sleep together in the first month. It was a perfectly reasonable amount of time. Hayden wouldn’t push. He respected her and her decisions. Plus, he had defended her to his friends.
They were just being dudes. They never would have said that shit if they knew she had been listening. She just needed to calm down, laugh it off. There was nothing wrong with her.
Liz took a deep breath and walked out into the bar with her head held high.
“Lizzie,” Hayden said, reaching out for her. She let him draw her into him. “You took out your bows.”
“I figured I didn’t need to look as much like a Christmas bomb away from the party.”
“I thought you looked cute.”
“Thanks,” she murmured, unsuccessfully stifling a yawn. She hadn’t even thought that she was tired, but all of the energy had drained right out of her at those comments.
“Hey, do you want to get out of here?” Hayden asked.
Liz nodded. She really did want to get far, far away from this moment. “Are you okay to drive?” She hadn’t paid attention to how much he had been drinking, but after her friend Justin’s DUI, she wasn’t going to make the mistake of getting in the car with someone who had been drinking ever again.
“Yeah. I only had one at the other party,” he told her as he placed his mostly full beer back on the bar.
“Y’all aren’t leaving, are you?” Bynum asked.
“Yeah, man, we’re going to head out. Liz has class early on Fridays.”
“All right. Y’all take care.”
Hayden shook hands with all of the guys. A glint of mischief was evident in Hannity’s eyes as he stared between them. He gave her another hug that she tried to escape, making him laugh. And then they were free and walking back toward Hayden’s car, getting inside, then driving to her house.
Liz let Hayden open the door for her, and she trudged inside, exhaustion taking over. She grabbed a pair of yoga pants and a sweater from a drawer and walked into the bathroom to change out of her silly Christmas attire. She returned a minute later to find Hayden looking at the pictures on her dresser.
He turned around when she walked back into the room and shot her a dazzling smile. “Hey, gorgeous.”
She bit her lip and walked over to him. Hayden wound his finger through her hair and her eyes closed of their own accord. He ran his hands along her scalp and over the tense muscles in her neck. She couldn’t help it when a moan escaped her lips.
God, she just wanted to let herself get lost in this moment. She wanted to feel his lips against hers, have him press her back into the bed, to just give in to the emotions warring through her. But thoughts of Brady crept in, coupled with the words of Hayden’s friends, and it all just felt so wrong. She had never had this happen before. She usually just let romance run its own course, but every time it seemed to begin with Hayden, she felt a Brady stumbling block cross her path. Her body stiffened and she couldn’t continue.
Reading her body language, Hayden pulled back to look at her. “Are you all right?”
Liz nodded and then after a second shook her head. No point in keeping it from him. That wouldn’t help anything, and she wasn’t ever going to go further with him if she kept this feeling bottled up inside of her. And she liked Hayden.
“What’s going on?” he asked, drawing her toward her bed. It had a big comfy queen-size feather-top mattress that she sank into when she sat down. She scooted closer to the center.
“I heard what your friends were saying at the bar,” she said in a rush.
Color drained out of Hayden’s face. She had never seen him look so ashamed and uncomfortable.
“I don’t know what you think about . . . this relationship,” she said. “But I didn’t know that there was anything wrong with me for waiting.”
“Liz, there’s nothing wrong with you.”
“I know. And I feel stupid for even bringing this up or feeling bad about it . . .”
“Please don’t feel stupid,” he said, taking her hands in his. “The guys are the stupid ones. They don’t know anything about a real relationship, and they don’t know anything about our relationship.”
“They seemed to know quite a bit about our relationship.” Liz arched an eyebrow.
“I would never want you to feel bad for your choices, Liz.” He paused as if deciding what to say next, and then he moved closer to her on the bed and brought her hands to his lips and placed a kiss there. His hazel eyes, almost green in the dim light, stared back up at her then like he couldn’t ever convey enough with just words. “If you don’t want to have s . . . go further with our relationship, then we can wait. I’m not in a rush.”
“I’m not in a rush either,” she whispered, lost in his gaze, in his sincerity, in that smooth voice.
“Good. Because I don’t plan on letting you go.”
Chapter 3
ALL THAT MATTERS
Liz spent the long holiday lounging on the beach at her parents’ place in Tampa and catching up on reading. It was a nice break from reality. Normally she liked to stay in Chapel Hill for breaks, as she had over the summer. But by the end of winter break, sh
e was more than ready to come home to see Hayden, who had been in D.C. with his family. He called every day and they chatted for hours, long into the night, but the phone calls weren’t enough. Liz had gotten used to him coming over to her apartment, seeing his smiling face at work, and spending time with him late into the evening.
She missed him. A lot.
The realization hit her all at once one afternoon right before Christmas. She had been home for two weeks and Hayden had called her like normal to wish her good night, which always resulted in a marathon phone conversation.
“I miss you.” It was the first thing out of his mouth. Not hey, Liz or Lizzie, as he had grown accustomed to calling her. Simply I miss you.
Liz knew that she hadn’t given her relationship with Hayden a hundred percent from the beginning. It was her own fault. She had let her own problems hold her back. She had clung so fiercely to her previous relationship with Brady—the late-night rendezvous, the intense passion, the adrenaline of the secret affair, falling blindly in love—that she hadn’t been able to see what was right in front of her. But in that moment, it didn’t matter what had happened before. She knew that if she wanted this to work—and she did—she needed to actually try to put some emotional distance between her and Brady and concentrate on the person who was putting in the effort.
Which was how she ended up convincing her parents to move her plane ticket to D.C. so she could spend New Year’s with Hayden. Better yet, the very next day his sister, Jamie, had the grand opening of her new art collection. After selling out of every single painting in her fall show, she had been commissioned for another, more prestigious exhibition.
Hayden picked her up at baggage claim at Reagan National Airport on New Year’s Eve. Liz dropped her heavy carry-on bag on the ground at his feet when she reached him and threw her arms around his neck.
“Hey, gorgeous.” He pulled her tight against him and she stood like that for a minute, just breathing him in.
“You smell so good,” she whispered.
Hayden chuckled. “Thanks. It’s good to have you back. Don’t go so far away again, okay?”
“Okay,” Liz murmured, surprised at how easily she agreed with him.
They picked up her oversize suitcase from baggage claim and Hayden wheeled it out to his car. They drove the short distance into the city, and Liz smiled as she started recognizing the familiar brownstones near where Jamie lived. It seemed so long ago that she had come up to D.C. for a weekend to see Hayden practically on a whim. And yet . . . so much of what had happened last summer always seemed to be fresh in her mind.
The last time she had been here, Brady had just confessed to loving her. Not to her, of course. He could never let himself slip like that. He had told his press secretary, Heather, and his attorney, Elliott. Liz shook her head. She didn’t really want to think about it, but memories of Brady never seemed to care. They just cropped up unbidden.
Maybe it would be okay to remember them once they didn’t do so much damage to her heart. Until then she would continue to wrestle them down.
Once they were parked, inside the brownstone, and up the three impossibly steep flights of stairs, the door practically burst open. Jamie grabbed Liz and yanked her into the apartment with way more force than someone with such a small frame should possess. Jamie immediately launched into a full-on excited question-and-answer session about Liz’s trip, flight, ride over, and more.
Hayden walked into the back and deposited her bag in the spare bedroom, leaving her alone to Jamie’s barrage. Liz tried to keep up with all of the questions, but Jamie was so enthusiastic, her black bob bouncing as she seemed to dance in place, that sometimes she would start asking another question before even letting Liz answer the previous one.
“Geez, Jamie, lay off,” Hayden said, appearing in the doorway again. “She just got here. Take a breath.”
Jamie shot him a death glare, but when she looked back at Liz, her giddy smile was back. “It’s so good to have you here again. I was so happy when Hayden told me you would be here for the opening of my exhibition!”
“I’m glad it worked out too,” Liz told her.
Liz greeted Jamie’s boyfriend, James, who was never too far away from the brilliant artist, and her roommate, Meredith, who was a Pilates instructor and had a killer body because of it. Apparently James had moved into Jamie’s room during the fall, so they wouldn’t have to fill the spare bedroom with another unfamiliar body. Liz was sure that Jamie just liked having James close all the time. Liz had had the same feeling at the airport when she saw Hayden.
Her flight had gotten in relatively late, and they didn’t have much time to get ready. Jamie had scored them some comped tickets from one of her art buyers to a private party downtown. Her paintings were picking up steam among high-end clientele and politicians, and these perks seemed to keep dropping into her lap. The event was a black-and-white affair, but not black tie, which meant that the guys didn’t have to wear tuxes and the girls didn’t have to go for formal wear. That was lucky for Liz, who certainly hadn’t packed a floor-length dress.
Instead, she changed into a long-sleeved black sequined dress, thick black patterned tights, and shiny black heels. She wrapped a white infinity scarf around her neck and paired it with matching white gloves and her trusty black peacoat. The temperature difference was stark compared to the balmy seventy-five degrees she had been relaxing in in Tampa.
The five of them piled into James’s Expedition and drove into town. They normally would have taken the Metro, but Jamie had been given a parking pass too.
James pulled up in front of the Gaylord Hotel at Washington National Harbor about thirty minutes later. When Liz laid eyes on the building, she was blown away. It was a colossal structure that looked more like a compound than a hotel, with a glass greenhouse and full Bellagio-style water display inside the waterfront structure.
A valet handed James a ticket and then they were whisked away into the giant hotel. An attendant checked their tickets and directed them through the red-carpeted lobby to a massive ballroom. Hayden wrapped an arm around Liz's waist to hold her close to him as they stepped over the threshold together.
The room was already packed nearly wall-to-wall with people dancing to the DJ’s beats. She could see that the space had been divided into different areas depending on whether you wanted a DJ, live entertainment, or a slightly quieter environment. A set of stairs led up to a secluded VIP area that had her mind drifting off and away to a time when she had walked up similar stairs in Charlotte the very first time she had ever met Brady.
After depositing their jackets at the coat check, Jamie led the way through the crowd, bouncing along like no one was elbowing or running into one another. Finally they found a slightly quieter area and sent the guys to go get drinks.
Jamie spotted an available table near the corner and skipped over to grab it before someone else did; then she waved Liz and Meredith down as if they hadn’t been following her. Free spirit simply did not do Jamie justice. Sometimes Liz wondered how she and Hayden were related.
“Oh my God, Liz, I am so happy that you’re here. Aren’t we, Meredith?” Jamie asked without waiting for Meredith to respond. “I just knew that you and Hayden would start dating. He’s so much cooler when he’s with you. Do you think I could have dragged him to this without you? No way. He’s too uptight.”
Liz laughed softly and took a seat at the table. “Well, I’m glad I could oblige you.”
“Plus, I totally love you as a person. Doesn’t she have such a great presence, Mere?” she asked. Meredith opened her mouth to say something, but Jamie just kept right along. “I’m just so glad that he brought you for New Year’s this year. The snobby bitch he brought last year drove me nuts.”
“What?” Liz asked, before she could think better of it.
“I mean, we weren’t even going to the same party, and I was ready to ditch her before dinner ended. Do you remember her, Mere?”
“Wait, what girl?�
�
“I remember her,” Meredith said, getting a chance to speak up. “Redhead, right?”
“Yes! That’s her. I don’t remember her name, but I’m glad she’s gone. And I’m glad you’re here!” Jamie cried with a practically buoyant smile.
“Her name wouldn’t happen to be Calleigh, would it?” Liz asked. She heard her heartbeat in her ears when she asked the question. It had to be Calleigh. Who else was a redhead that Hayden had been involved with? But Liz hadn’t thought it was serious. Certainly not enough to bring Calleigh to D.C. with him for New Year’s Eve.
“Calleigh! Yeah, that was it. Do you know her?” Jamie asked.
“She was editor of the paper last year.”
“Oh, yeah, I remember her going on and on and on about that. When Hayden made editor, I was hard-pressed to be happy for him, because she was so annoying about it.”
Liz shrugged, trying for nonchalance. “I didn’t know they were serious.”
Jamie paused as if realizing for the first time what she had just walked into. “Oh, I don’t know if they were. And anyway, that was a long time ago. They broke up when she moved.”
“To Charlotte?” Liz offered.
“Yep. That sounds right. It’s been long, long, long over,” Jamie said with a reassuring squeeze to Liz’s arm.
Liz wasn’t sure why she even let this bother her. She was certain it had something to do with the fact that she just did not like Calleigh anymore. She had once idolized her, but now she realized how misguided that had been. Why had she thought it was ever genius that made the other woman turn down her job offer in New York for the paper in Charlotte? Maybe she had simply wanted to stay closer to Hayden.
The thought struck Liz so clearly that she almost knew it for a fact.
Hayden and James reappeared just then, drinks in hand. Liz couldn’t keep her brain from working overtime, and Hayden gave her a quizzical look. It was as if he could see the wheels turning.
Liz snatched her drink up and grabbed Hayden’s hand. “Come on. Let’s go dance,” she said, drawing him away from the group.
