“But you did.”
“Yes. He figured it out and I don’t even know how to explain what happened. He wasn’t himself. He turned scary.”
Brady’s eyes narrowed considerably and looked on edge. “Scary how?”
Liz shook her head. She couldn’t look him in the eye. She couldn’t relive what had happened. She didn’t want to tell him. She just wanted to get on with everything else.
“Liz, scary how?” he demanded.
“It doesn’t matter,” she peeped.
“I don’t like the sound of this,” he said gruffly. Standing and striding over to her, he grasped her chin softly in his hands and tilted her face up to him. “Look at me. What do you mean by that?”
Liz’s bottom lip trembled as she stared up into Brady’s concerned brown eyes. “He just freaked out and demanded details. When I gave them to him, he just . . .”
“Just what?”
“He made me feel even guiltier about what happened, had sex with me, and then left in the morning.”
Brady stood very still at her words. She couldn’t read all the emotions rolling through his body, but she could see underneath it all he was pissed. “Did you want to . . . ?”
Liz swallowed. She wanted to shake her head, but she just stared at him, the fear still reflected in her eyes.
“Fuck!” he cried, dropping his hand and storming across the room. “Fuck!”
“Brady . . .”
“I’ll kill him, Liz.”
“No,” she said, jumping up and rushing toward him. “You can’t do that.”
“Where are my car keys?” he asked, looking around the room.
“Brady,” she pleaded. She pressed her hands into his shoulders as he tried to walk toward the door. “Please.”
“You want me to stay here and just let him get away with raping you?” he demanded.
Liz shook her head. That word. She couldn’t hear that word. No. That wasn’t what it was. It wasn’t. It had been different. Just angry sex. Just hate sex. Just guilt sex. Anything but that. She could still hear Hayden shushing her as he pushed her into the mattress. A tear fell from her eyes even as she tried to hold them at bay.
“Oh, baby,” he said softly. He wiped the tear from under her eye and pulled her into his arms. “I’m not going to leave.”
“You can’t go after him,” Liz said, wrapping her arms around his waist.
“I want to kill him for ever touching you.”
“I know, but I don’t think murdering the reporter who is writing an ongoing story about you would get you reelected.”
He kissed the top of her head and held her close. “Good to know someone is thinking about my reelection chances.”
“Always,” she murmured.
Brady walked her back over to the couch, and after her tears dammed up, she started her story again. At least the hardest part was out of the way. Though she knew he wasn’t going to like what was coming after that.
“I told Hayden a week ago, and the story broke yesterday. He didn’t tell me that he was going to put it in the paper. Everything seemed normal . . . or as normal as it could be.” Brady tensed next to her, and she knew he wanted to make a remark about Hayden. “I saw the article in the paper and freaked out. I was actually with Savannah when it broke.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, so I guess at least I had someone to break down with,” Liz said with a sad shrug. “Anyway, I tried to call Hayden, but he never returned my call.”
“Pussy,” Brady growled under his breath.
“Yeah. Then I got a call from Heather.”
“What?” he demanded.
“I hadn’t been planning to call you in the first place, because you told me not to and I wanted to respect what you wanted. Then she called me and told me not to contact you.”
“I can’t believe she would go behind my back like that.”
“Really? After how she reacted when she found out about us, and then with her name ending up in Hayden’s article? I’m surprised you didn’t think of it yourself.”
Brady shook his head, trying to process all the new information. “I guess I should have thought that she would tie up everything she thought was a loose end.”
“That’s me,” Liz said bitterly. “A loose end.”
“You know what I mean . . .”
“Yeah. I do. But as you can imagine, after that conversation I decided to get drunk, which is when Clay called me.”
Brady looked at her in disbelief. “And how does Clay have your phone number?”
“I gave it to him at your gala event that summer we were together. He’d never used it before, but remember that same night he thought my name was Liz Carmichael.”
“So he put two and two together,” Brady said, inching away from her. He laced his fingers together and stared down at them as he tried to find words. “I know that Clay has a certain reputation. I’d hope that I don’t have to kill my brother too.”
“Um . . . no. You don’t. He kissed me, but that’s all.”
“You kissed him?”
“Um . . . yeah.”
“And he was satisfied with just a kiss?”
“Well, no, but it’s kind of complicated. I thought that I was never going to see you again, so when I went with Clay, I was in a really low place.”
“But you just kissed?” Brady asked to clarify.
“Yes. He told me that you and Erin broke up, and something in me snapped back into place. I realized what I should have known all along. You were it for me. Nothing else really mattered. I had to talk to you. I had to get you to see that this could be fixed. I wasn’t broken as long as I still had a sliver of hope. Which is how I ended up stealing Clay’s phone to call you. And now I guess we’re here.”
“That’s a lot to take in,” Brady admitted.
“It is. That’s why I wanted to talk to you in person. I never would have told Hayden in a million years if I had thought that he would write about it.”
“Didn’t you even think to clarify with him that this wasn’t on the record?”
Liz tucked her legs up underneath herself and sighed. “He was my boyfriend. We’d been together for almost a year and a half. I never thought that he would do that.”
“Goddamn reporters.”
Liz shrugged her shoulders helplessly. “I’ve never hated them more than in this moment.”