by K. A. Linde
“You left before I had a chance to choose.”
“I didn’t want you to have to make that choice. I didn’t want you to break up with me,” she said, another tear leaving her eye.
“Why were you so sure I would?”
Liz shook her head softly in his grasp. “You wouldn’t let me love you. It was like walking into a brick wall over and over again. I was the liability that you couldn’t figure out how to deal with.”
“Liz . . .”
“And in the end, Brady . . . I let you have the campaign and Congress. I couldn’t let you jeopardize any of that for me.”
Brady released a stifled laugh. “You thought I was happy?”
“I . . .”
“Heather basically talked me off of a ledge for the next three months.”
Liz stood there as solid as stone. She couldn’t believe what he had just said. No way had it affected him that much. No way. She just couldn’t see that being the case. He was dating Erin . . . and had been so happy . . . and . . . Shit!
No. She couldn’t have walked away for nothing. He hadn’t come after her. He hadn’t tried to follow her. She couldn’t think about those months. She couldn’t think . . .
“I wish I’d had someone to talk me off of the ledge,” she whispered. She didn’t even know where it came from. But she’d had no one. She had been all alone with her misery.
Brady’s eyes darkened when she said that. “You mean you didn’t have the boring fill-in to keep you company?”
“We didn’t start dating until the election was over.”
Brady cursed under his breath. “How could you date him?”
“Me? How could you date her?”
“You left me, remember?”
“And you pushed me away,” she snapped.
“Well, I’m not pushing you away now.” He grabbed her by her shoulders and pulled her body against his. Her hands jerked up against his chest just as his lips dropped down to cover hers.
The world stopped. There was only Brady. Nothing else existed. Nothing else ever had. When their lips touched, it was like the fireworks on Fourth of July mixed with the ball dropping on New Year’s. She could feel her body wake up from head to toe. Her mind cleared until everything seemed perfectly crystallized. It was as if she had been wading through mud in a dense fog, and suddenly she walked onto solid ground and the sun was shining.
Chapter 17
REMEMBERING HISTORY
She was kissing Brady.
Her hands were gripping his suit coat. His were tangled in her hair. Their bodies were flush together. Somehow they had moved to where he was pressed back into the footboard of the bed. Their mouths were moving in time and tongues volleying for position. She could feel her heart practically leaping out of her throat and her chest rising and falling as the adrenaline coursed through her body.
It had been months . . . over a year since they had last been together. The built-up tension superheated the room until she felt as if she couldn’t breathe. It was too much all at once. And still she needed more. She wanted more. She could never get enough.
“Liz,” he groaned against her mouth. He moved his hands down her sides and clutched her hips tightly, jerking her into him.
And then her world came crashing down all around her.
“Oh, no,” she whispered, shaking her head.
“No. Don’t do that.” He brought her face back up to stare at him.
“No. Brady, no,” she said, pushing his chest and walking across the room. “Oh, no. No. No. No.”
“Liz,” he said breathlessly.
“Stop.” She put her hand up hoping to keep him from saying anything.
“Why are you pushing me away?”
“I walked away for a reason Brady, and you didn’t come after me. That door closed a year ago,” she whispered. Her chest ached just speaking the words.
“Are you serious? What did you expect me to do, run after a woman who didn’t want me? Who left me?”
“I don’t know what I would have wanted you to do, but the fact of the matter is, neither of us did anything. Anything at all. The ifs, ands, or buts don’t matter, because I left and you didn’t follow me. And we did nothing for the next year.”
Brady visibly straightened across the room. “So, I’m standing here a year later for nothing.”
“Just like you were a year before this,” she whispered.
She swallowed heavily and waited for him to contradict her, but he didn’t. How could he? They’d been at a standstill then, and they were driving backward currently. This was a terrible, terrible mistake. One that she had not intended to make. One that she had not considered the consequences of when she had called him in her bout of anger.
They stood there in the silence, each waiting for the other to make them stop slipping down this slope. But neither did.
Brady’s phone vibrated in his pocket and he broke eye contact with Liz. He pulled it out of his coat, checked the name, and then silenced it and replaced it.
“Not important?” she asked, even though she knew that she shouldn’t.
His eyes found hers again. “No.”
Liz hadn’t checked her phone since she had gotten into the car with Brady. She wondered how many messages she had from Hayden. She knew she shouldn’t ignore him. He was probably flipping out, and not responding wasn’t exactly the mature way to handle the situation. But she certainly wasn’t calling him back right now. Not while she was with Brady.
She hated the distance that stretched between them. She hated that she had to force the distance and that they couldn’t just fall into their easy rhythm. But a lot had happened in the time they had been apart. She had spent a year moving on.
“I think you’re just being stubborn,” he finally said, breaking the silence.
Liz tilted her head forward and looked at him incredulously. “I’m being stubborn? You, of all people, are telling me that I’m stubborn? Pot. Meet kettle,” she said, gesturing toward him.
“Your sarcasm is a good defense mechanism,” he said casually. “It probably works on someone else.”
“Your politician confidence is a good defense mechanism,” she threw back. “It probably works on someone else.”
“It worked on you.”
Liz laughed and rolled her eyes to the ceiling. “You think I was taken in by your cocky asshole attitude? I’m pretty sure I saw through that a mile off. I didn’t even use your number that you gave to me at the club that first night we met.”
“Keep telling yourself that.”
“You’re insufferable,” she spat, pacing away from him.
“You liked every minute of it.”
She rounded on him. “What about the time that you left me at Hilton Head all by myself and never called? Or the time that you were pissed off that I wrote the article I wanted to and not yours? Or the time that you brought another girl to the gala you invited me to?”
“Liz . . .”
“Or just keeping me secret. Oh, look, we’re at a place without cameras in the middle of the night. How convenient,” she drawled, shaking her head.
Brady closed the distance between them and slowly walked her backward until she was pressed up against the wall. Her breath caught in her throat at his nearness. Her whole body woke up. Holy shit! How did he do that?
“You seem to remember history very differently than I do,” he said, guiding his hand down the curve of her neck and over her shoulder. His other hand was on the wall to the left of her head. She swallowed. “I seem to remember afternoons spent on the lake, stripping your clothes off in a cabana, holding you close all night when you drank too much, staying with you an extra night on the Fourth of July . . .”
His hand brushed against the side of her breast and her head thudded back into the wall. He smirked and moved his hand to her slim waist.
“Did you forget about those things?” he asked, his eyes boring into her.
Voice. She had a voice. It was there somewhere.<
br />
“No . . . no, I didn’t,” she finally whispered.
“I didn’t think so.”
Arrogant son of a bitch . . .
“If you tell me right now that you don’t want me, I’ll stop.” His fingers found the hem of her waistline and he slid the fabric across the sensitive skin from one side to the next. Her eyes fluttered as she struggled to find words.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t catch that,” he teased. His hand dipped inside her pants and played mischievously with the lace of her thong. His lips moved to her ear and he nipped at her earlobe before speaking seductively. “If you don’t say anything, I’m going to have to fuck you into tomorrow.”
Her body was screaming and moaning and crying out. It was demanding everything that Brady was offering. It was desperate for his perfect brand of ecstasy. But her brain was fighting with her body. It was whispering in the back of her mind, reminding her why she had left, reminding her there was someone else . . . in both of their lives.
In the time that it took for her brain to speak louder than her body, Brady had flicked the button open on her jeans and was sliding the zipper down.
“Stop,” she murmured, pulling her hands up. “Brady, you’re with someone else.”
“I believe you called her an uppity nuisance,” he offered with a sigh as he straightened.
“I can’t do this while we’re with other people. As long as we are, this door remains shut,” she whispered. Her body was such a hussy.
“Are you going to stay with that guy after he upset you enough that you called and came here with me?”
“I don’t even want to hear this from you.”
“Then why the fuck did you call me?” he demanded.
“I don’t know, okay!” she yelled, bringing her hands up to her head and grabbing her hair. “I just didn’t want to be . . . me.”
“I see,” he said softly.
Liz took a second to collect herself. While she straightened and smoothed her hair out, his phone beeped, indicating a text message. She watched him check the phone and then replace it into his pocket.
“That was probably your girlfriend anyway,” she said after a minute.
Brady just stood there staring at her. She could feel his eyes assessing her, but she didn’t want to look up at him. She didn’t want to know what he was thinking. He had wanted to fuck her. God! He probably still wanted to, and it would have been so easy to just give in, but she wasn’t that girl. How could she jump back into something with Brady without any guarantee that it wouldn’t all go to shit again?
How could she even think that he wanted to jump back into anything other than sex? The worst part of all was she just didn’t know. She never knew what she was going to get with Brady. There were no assurances. And while that had been sexy, exhilarating, and endearing over their summer together . . . it was flat-out terrifying to think about the future.
“It was,” he finally answered.
Liz nodded. She had figured as much. “What did she say?”
He shrugged. “Nothing.”
“Uh-huh,” she said disbelievingly. “I should go.”
“You’re not going anywhere.”
“Tell me what she said.”
“What does it even matter?”
Liz shrugged. She didn’t know why it mattered. It just did. “Fine. It doesn’t matter. Can I go home now?”
“No.”
Liz yanked the bedroom door open and started out into the hallway. Brady caught up to her easily and grabbed her wrist. “Don’t touch me,” she said, yanking it away from him. “Go talk to your girlfriend or something.”
“It was literally nothing,” he said, stopping her. “She was just saying good night.”
That made sense actually. It still made her stomach turn.
“Read it if you don’t believe me,” he said flippantly, tossing the phone into her hand.
The message was still lit up and she read it word for word.
Good night! I thought I’d already hear from you but I’m exhausted and going to sleep. I love you!!!
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.