by Linde, K. A.
Liz’s stomach dropped out. Erin loved him. Well, of course she did. Who didn’t love Brady Maxwell? He was entirely lovable under that asshole persona. Liz had fallen in love with him, after all . . . and in a much shorter time frame than Brady and Erin had been dating.
“She loves you.” It was all she could get out.
Brady didn’t say anything. His eyes just zeroed in on the phone she was holding in her hands. She didn’t know why she asked the next question. She was a masochist. She liked to torture herself. She never wanted to be happy again.
“Do you love her?”
Brady didn’t say anything at first, and it was all the answer she needed. Oh, God! She clutched her stomach and closed her eyes. This was not happening. She didn’t care how hypocritical it was to feel like this about Brady loving someone else. She had told Hayden she loved him over the summer, but this . . . this was somehow different.
It all came back to the fact that Brady had never told her that he loved her. And it was clear from just one text message that he had told Erin. That he loved Erin. It made her head throb thinking about it.
When Brady didn’t answer, Liz said the first thing that came to mind. “You know Savannah hates her, right?”
“What?” he asked, clearly caught off guard.
“It doesn’t matter,” Liz said, shaking her head. “You love her. It doesn’t matter.”
Liz glanced up at him one more time wistfully. Hayden might be giving her almost everything she wanted, but he wasn’t Brady Maxwell. And Brady Maxwell was giving everything she wanted to someone else.
Chapter 18
LOUD AND CLEAR
The ride back to Liz’s car was excruciating. She had sat through painful car rides with Brady before, but the silence was deafening. A year of built-up tension had been unleashed between them tonight, and to what end? They were still in the same place they were before. Sure, it had felt good to finally talk to Brady about why she had left, but it certainly hadn’t helped anything.
It had only made her more confused. Brady felt strongly enough about her to have nearly gone off the deep end on campaign, yet he’d never once reached out to her. He seduced her and yet loved another woman. How was she supposed to handle the number of paradoxes in their relationship?
Their nonexistent relationship.
That was how she would handle it: as if it didn’t exist. Because it didn’t. They were with other people. She may have had an argument with Hayden. She might feel hurt, betrayed, and confused about what had caused it, but it was the first . . . the only argument they had ever had. That didn’t mean they were over. That meant they had their first roadblock that they had to deal with.
The stuff she had to deal with with Brady was more like climbing mountains. With bare feet. While she was running out of oxygen.
They reached the parking deck and Brady stopped in front of it. Liz wrung her hands in her lap. She felt as if she should say something, but what could she say that hadn’t already been said?
That door was closed and it would continue to be closed. She was with Hayden and he was with Erin. She could practically hear the lock clicking into place and securing them on opposite sides. It made her heart constrict all over again.
“Thank you for picking me up,” she whispered.
She heard him sigh heavily and practically felt his annoyance at the whole situation. Or maybe just that the situation hadn’t gone as he had anticipated.
“I think this will be the last time,” he said solemnly.
She shifted her eyes to look at him. His were hard. They had lost all the warmth he had shown her at the condo. Not that they were particularly mean, but they were distant. At that point it basically equated to the same thing.
“I’m not doing this again. Next time he breaks your heart, I don’t want to hear about it. I don’t want you to call me. I don’t want you to think about me. I’m not part of your life. We might as well have never happened,” he said, turning to look at her finally.
She wasn’t going to cry. His words weren’t going to bring her to tears. No. She could control it. She could keep the pain away.
“I understand,” she whispered, her voice hoarse. A tear trickled down her cheek.
His hands reached up automatically and wiped it away with his thumb. “No tears for me, baby. Soon enough you’ll forget I ever existed . . . just like you wanted.”
Liz shook her head, wanting nothing more than to turn her cheek into his palm, to find the warmth and comfort in his touch that she so desperately craved. But instead she withdrew from him, pushed open the door, and walked out. She didn’t have a clever retort or a final word this time. Brady had made his point. Loud and clear.
Liz should have called Hayden straightaway. They had so much to talk about, but she couldn’t face him like this.
He might have been an ass, but her calling Brady and driving off with him had been worse. Kissing him and almost sleeping with him had been much worse. Hayden didn’t deserve that. She felt like a coward not facing him after what she had done, but it was the middle of the night, she had no idea where he had gone, and she just wanted to sleep off the depression that was crushing her heart.
Falling into the front seat of her car, she drove home in a blur. She didn’t really remember the drive, but she hadn’t gotten in an accident, so it didn’t matter. Lights were on in her house. Liz checked her watch. Half past midnight. She really thought it was later than that. It felt as if she had been out all night.
The last thing she wanted was to run into anyone looking like this. She just hoped that Hayden hadn’t come over here when she didn’t respond to him.
With a deep breath, she pushed the door open. Victoria was sitting on the couch in sweats and a low-cut T-shirt, eating popcorn, and watching reruns of some nineties television show. She jumped when she saw Liz walk through the door. She scrambled out of her seat and tossed the popcorn onto the coffee table.
“Where the fuck have you been? I’ve been calling you for hours!” Victoria shrieked.
“What?” she asked numbly.
“Hayden called me and he came by to try to talk to you, but obviously you weren’t here. He told me you guys got into an argument and thought I knew where you would be. What the fuck was I supposed to tell him?”
“That I wasn’t here?” Liz offered. What else was she supposed to say? “Sorry you had to deal with that.”
“Oh, Hayden, psh,” Victoria said, pushing her hands to the side. “I don’t care about him. I care about you, and the fact that I had to cover for your ass.”
“Cover for me?”
“Where the hell did you go after you guys had that fight if you weren’t with someone else?” Victoria demanded.
Liz blanched. No. No. No. No one could know about that. Brady was out of her life. Brady was gone. Whatever they’d had didn’t even exist anymore. She couldn’t tell anyone about it now.
“I was just driving around . . .”
“Bullshit! For over three hours?”
“What do you want me to say, Victoria? ‘Thank you for talking to Hayden for me because I’m not ready to’?”
Victoria shrugged and ran a hand back through her dark hair. “I don’t want you to say anything. I just don’t want to have to cover for you when you’re not even going to give me the juicy details of your sexcapade!”
“It’s too late for this,” Liz said, shaking her head and pushing past Victoria. “I’m not having sex with anyone but my boyfriend, and after our argument, I’m second-guessing that.”
“Wait . . . so are you like actually going to break up with Lane?”
“I think I should sleep on it.”
“Wow,” Victoria said, clearly stunned. “I never saw that one coming. I thought you two were getting married and having twelve babies on the farm and shit.”
Liz narrowed her
eyes. “On the farm, Vic?”
“You know what I mean. But what happened?” she asked, walking back and grabbing her popcorn. She stuffed some into her mouth and waited for Liz’s response as if she were watching a movie.
“We fought. He was an asshole. He said I was letting the paper turn to shit because I had other things going on. And then when I left I saw him smoking and he punched the door,” Liz summarized.
“Hayden smoking?” Victoria asked. “Hot!”
“What? No, it’s totally disgusting!”
“Come on! You don’t think that Mr. Stick Up His Ass getting a little rebellious and breaking some barriers is hot? Just a little?”
“No,” Liz told her flatly. That had been the farthest thing from her mind when she had seen Hayden smoking. She had been disgusted and she felt betrayed. How long had he been smoking? How long had he been keeping it from her? What else was he keeping from her?
“Okay. Well are you going to talk about it with him? I can come with and whip his ass into shape,” she said, her eyes lighting up. “Literally.”
“Thanks for the offer, but I guess I’ll talk to him tomorrow.”
“Hey,” Victoria said, reaching out and touching Liz’s jacket. She actually looked serious for a change. “I’m sorry about what happened. I know you really like Hayden. I wouldn’t have made fun of him so much if you didn’t. I hope it works out. You know . . . for your sake. I don’t want you as sad as you were last fall.”
Liz bit her lip. She couldn’t think about last fall. That was Brady territory, and Brady no longer existed.
“Thanks,” Liz said softly.
Victoria put her popcorn on the ground and pulled Liz into a hug. That broke her down. Tears fell from Liz’s eyes as she cried into her best friend’s shoulder. They didn’t have to say anything else. Victoria just let her cry as long as she needed.
The next morning she didn’t even bother sorting through the missed calls, messages, and voicemails. She just pulled her hair up into a messy bun on the top of her head and slid into a pair of yoga pants and a sweater. Then she called Hayden.
He answered on the first ring. Maybe before the first ring finished. He must have been holding it for him to answer that quickly.
“Lizzie . . .”
“Hey,” she murmured.
“I’m so glad you called.”
“Look, Hayden,” she said, burying her head in her hands, “I think we need to talk.”
She heard his sharp intake of breath on the other line.
“I’m at Hannity’s place. I can come see you if that works for you.”
He was still in Chapel Hill. Of course he would still be in Chapel Hill. That only made sense. He probably hadn’t wanted to leave until he got to see her again.
“Sure. Come on over.”
“I’ll be there in ten minutes,” he said. “Liz?”
“Mmm?”
He sighed heavily. “Please don’t do anything drastic.”
“Hayden, can we talk when you get here?” she whispered.
“Yeah. Yeah, I’ll see you soon.”
Hayden arrived no more than ten minutes later. Exactly prompt. Just as he had said he would be. She hadn’t expected anything less, but after last night everything was all out of whack. Normally Hayden was perfectly put together. Meticulous was the best word to describe him, but he wasn’t anything like that today.
He looked like a wreck. He looked as if he hadn’t slept all night. Or as if any sleep he had gotten had been restless. He wore the same clothes from yesterday, but rumpled, as if he had slept in them. His eyes were slightly bloodshot and he had stubble brushing across his cheeks and chin. She had never seen him anything but clean-shaven.
At the sight of him, her heart softened a bit. He was clearly fucked up over what had happened and realized how much of a mistake he had made. And she had made a mistake. A big fucking mistake. He wasn’t the only one to blame in this situation, but he didn’t know that, and he looked sheepish when he walked in.
“Hey,” he said, closing the door behind him.
“Hi.” She crossed her arms over her chest uncomfortably. This was going to be painful.
He glanced over at Victoria’s closed bedroom door and then back at Liz. “Can we go talk in your room?”
Liz nodded. “Sure.”
They retreated back to the bedroom and Liz took a seat on her bed. She crossed her feet pretzel style and stared down at her hands. She knew that she should start, but she didn’t even know where to begin.
“Look, Liz,” Hayden said, combing through his hair with his fingers. “I know you said that we need to talk, but I’d really like to go first, if that’s all right.”
“Um . . . sure.”
“I’m really sorry about what I said. It was uncalled for, and irresponsible of me to accuse you of hurting the paper based on a few unread emails. I know you have a lot on your plate, and I just took my frustration with my new job out on you. And it was irresponsible of me as your boyfriend,” he said, looking up into her eyes, “to dismiss your feelings so easily.”
“Hayden,” she murmured.
“No, Liz, please. I don’t know what was wrong with me last night. I shouldn’t have said the things I said. And I damn well shouldn’t have let you walk out of the door angry. That’s not the kind of person I am. I should have run after you. I should have stopped you.”
“Yeah, you should have,” she said softly. Guilt tugged at her even as the words fell from her mouth.
He nodded slowly. “I was stupid to not follow you. I was stupid about a lot of things. But in the year that we’ve been dating, we’ve never had an argument like this before. Discussions about our differences, but nothing like this. I think that really says something about us. I can’t promise you it will always be perfect, Liz, because it won’t. And I can’t promise I’ll always be the perfect guy for you.”
Liz tried to breathe easy . . . normal. All of these things he couldn’t promise sounded so familiar . . .
Hayden continued, “I can’t promise you that we won’t argue or fight or disagree like we did last night. I can’t promise you any of these things, but I can promise you, on the record,” he said, with that beautiful Hayden smile, “that I’ll always be here and I’ll never let go. I am not a perfect man, but I’ll always be yours, imperfections and all, if you’ll have me.”
Oh the sincerity. Liz put her hand on her head and tried to process it. She had thought he would apologize, but all of this. It was so much.
He was right: they had never had an argument before this. This was a doozy of an argument. Not to mention the bullshit with him smoking. She didn’t even know what to make of it, but how could she ask him if she didn’t tell him that she had been spying on him and that she hadn’t left right away? How was she supposed to explain that away logically?
She knew how to do it. She needed to tell him about Brady, but when she opened her mouth to speak, the words stuck in her throat. She had been holding on to it so long that she couldn’t even form the words.
“Do you know what it feels like for someone to take everything they have ever worked for and have someone else tear it all down? You of all people know how much work I put in to become editor, to get this internship, to be on the Morehead scholarship. You know the work I’ve put into this relationship. And then you took all of that, Hayden, and stomped on it,” she whispered, looking up into his hazel eyes, almost brown in the darkness.
“I know I did. It was wrong of me to do that to you. Wrong and selfish. I’m not sure what happened, but something snapped inside of me. I worked so hard in college to get where I was, and then somehow I was stuck in an average reporting position in Charlotte. I was overwhelmed and did the worst thing I could,” he said, walking toward her, pleading. He sat heavily on the bed and stared into her eyes. She let him take one of her hands an
d he stroked her palm with his thumb. “I never should have taken this out on you.”
She nodded, but didn’t pull back. She was angry with Hayden, but angrier with herself. She had called Brady in her desperation instead of working through her problems with Hayden. Hayden was the one who deserved a second chance . . . not her.
“I love you, Liz. I was an idiot. I’ll say it a million times over to prove to you I was wrong,” he whispered, staring straight into her eyes. “Just don’t leave me. I need you. You’re my world.”
Liz bit her lip. She knew she should give him an answer. She knew that she should tell him everything she was feeling. But exhaustion nipped at her from all sides. She had made up her mind already anyway.
“Okay,” she murmured.
“Yeah?” he asked, his eyes lighting up.
“But, Hayden, if you ever make me feel like that again, it’s over,” she told him point-blank.
Chapter 19
THE BOUTIQUE
Hayden left for Charlotte that evening. Liz tried to act normal throughout the remainder of his visit, but she was emotionally exhausted.
She knew that Brady was out of her life. She had known it every day since she had walked out on him, but still in the back of her mind she had always secretly hoped that it would work out. Now that hope was gone.
Before that night, she hadn’t realized how hard she had clung to that feeling. It hadn’t even been a realistic or rational expectation. She had known that, but it was Brady Maxwell. She would have clung to his memory forever. She was sure of it. But he had erased that too. She was supposed to act as if he had never existed.
The guilt of her actions ate at her, though. When she saw Hayden the weight pressed down on her shoulders and tried to crush her. They spent their one-year anniversary over a fancy dinner. Hayden gave her small diamond earrings. She had stared at them in shock. She knew he had a real job now and that he could buy her things, but she hadn’t been expecting it. Part of it was him trying to make up for their argument and part of it was just how much he adored her. The itch to tell him about Brady grew a bit each day.
