He wrapped his arms around her and they lay there, sweat beading between them, waiting for their chests to stop heaving, and their breathing to even out.
“Oh, Brady,” Liz whispered, “I love you.”
She knew it was true. That against all odds, she had fallen for this man. The one man she couldn’t have.
“Baby,” he groaned, his voice strained, “I know you do.”
Liz remained on her back as Brady dropped his head to her shoulder and kissed a soft trail along her collarbone. She had said it. She had told him. She already knew he loved her, and he had sort of told her, but she would have liked to just hear it.
When their breathing evened out, Brady rolled over to his back, with a heavy sigh. His hand found hers and laced their fingers together once more. The moment was so peaceful. Maybe in the end, just knowing how he felt was good enough. And what really showed the way they felt was this…in this moment.
Liz turned back over and rested her head on his chest with a sigh, thinking about how easy it would be to fall asleep like this with him next to her.
“No sleeping yet,” he whispered, kissing the top of her head. “I got you something.”
“You didn’t have to get me anything. You already did all of this,” Liz said softly.
“Well, it’s not all that much…compared to this, I suppose. I still wanted you to have it.”
He adjusted her so that she was lying on the pillows instead of his chest before finding and sifting through his shorts. He returned a second later, looking a little…embarrassed. After everything that had happened between them, she didn’t know why he would be embarrassed. Actually, Liz had never seen him like that.
“Here you go,” Brady said, handing her a small box.
Liz sat up and took the box from him, narrowing her eyes. “What’s this?”
“Just open it.”
Liz bit her lip, wondering what she would find inside. She opened the box and stared down at the small necklace. Her heart sped up. Brady had gotten her jewelry. No one had ever bought her jewelry.
She pulled it out of the box, the long chain falling and pooling against the cabana sheets, and brought the face of the necklace closer to her.
“It’s, uh…called a memory locket,” he whispered, running his hand through his hair. “It made me think of you.”
Liz was stunned. The necklace itself was a small, circular, see-through locket with a silver border that could be opened, and even smaller charms were placed inside. Her stomach twisted when she saw what charms were in her necklace—an airplane, a key, the number four, and a yellow gemstone.
“I love it,” she whispered. How could he be so completely sweet like this…knock her right off her feet?
“Good. I was worried…well, I don’t know if you wear stuff like that,” he said with a shrug.
“No, I do,” she told him, staring up into his deep dark eyes. “But why the number and the gemstone?”
The other two were obvious.
“I got the four for the Fourth of July, when I won your vote,” Brady said, his eyes showing what that day had meant to him. “And the yellow stone is the birthstone for November.”
“I don’t have a November birthday,” Liz said. It didn’t even matter to her that he had gotten her birthday wrong; she loved it.
“That’s when the election is over,” he said quietly.
Chapter 29
PROMISES WORTH KEEPING
Liz didn’t see Brady again before school started. The primary was now a week away, and he barely had time to breathe, let alone sneak away to see her. She expected nothing less, though she did find herself wishing more and more that she could be there for him.
The primary made it hard to concentrate on anything else…like school starting, or her new research job, or the paper. Knowing that so much was on the line for Brady made her nervous and irritable.
Liz had tried de-stressing by hanging out with Victoria, but by the end of the day Victoria had claimed to need a Xanax to deal with the stress rolling off of Liz in waves. Even though Liz wouldn’t tell Victoria what was going on, Victoria still loved her.
By the time the Friday before school got there, Liz had totally forgotten that she had agreed to help Hayden move. He had called her that morning and asked if she had still planned to help. Hoping that it would get her mind off of everything, Liz had agreed and headed over to his old place.
The moving process had certainly been a distraction, as it was physically demanding, but it did nothing to clear things up with Hayden. They had hung out and joked together along with his track friends. When they finished the move, the group got lunch and Hayden drove her back to her car.
“I really appreciated your help today,” Hayden said, hopping out of his car and walking with her over to where hers was parked.
“I don’t know how helpful I was,” Liz joked.
“You were great. Everyone thought so.” He smiled his charming smile and moved closer to her.
“Well, I’m glad I could help. Thankfully I don’t have to move or else I’d be calling up you and all your friends to help me.”
“You know I’d help,” Hayden said.
He moved forward to wrap his arms around her, and Liz backed up quickly. “I’m in desperate need of a shower,” she said, embarrassed.
She just couldn’t have him touch her. She felt bad enough about D.C. She couldn’t lead him on to believe this was going anywhere as long as she was still trying to figure things out with Brady.
“Oh, me too,” Hayden said, as if he hadn’t been trying to get closer to her.
“I’ll, uh…see you around,” she said, unlocking the door. “We start on Monday?”
Hayden nodded. “I’ll be in Sunday to finalize the first run, but I’ll see you on Monday, unless you wanted to get together sometime this weekend.”
Damn he was good. He made it seem so offhand…almost as if he wasn’t asking her out. Almost.
“I think Monday is probably best. I have to get ready for school and my new job, but thanks…”
“Well, Monday then,” Hayden said, tucking a lock of her hair behind her ear, with a smile before walking to his car.
Liz opened her door and sank into the car with a huff. She had just turned down Hayden Lane.
She had never guessed she would be in this position. And she had the strange realization that he probably would ask her out again. Maybe he even thought she was playing hard to get or something after D.C. She needed to figure out what she was going to do about that, because she couldn’t keep obsessing so much over what she would do if he came on to her again.
The weekend rolled by undeterred by any other mishaps, and soon Liz was back on campus, walking among the familiar brick buildings with Victoria. She had missed the madness of the beginning of the school year. Students were wandering all over campus. Freshmen were holding out maps, trying to find where their classrooms were, and looking winded from walking up the massive hill on Stadium Drive from the dorms. Upperclassmen milled around the Pit, handing out fliers and trying to cajole freshmen into joining their student organization. It was a madhouse, but with an energy and brilliance that few other places rivaled.
Still, she found that what she had missed most of all was walking over to a newspaper bin, picking up a fresh paper, and seeing all of the hard work her friends had put into the first issue. Liz had written her article for that first week a long time ago…the same paper she had received an A+ on from Professor Mires…the same article Brady had given her the idea for. Hayden had said that he was going to run it the first day, since that had the most traffic, and Liz was eager to see her name in print once more.
“You are much too happy that school has started again,” Victoria said as they walked through the crowd in the Pit.
Liz shrugged. It was probably true. She’d had too much time to herself recently to think, and she was glad to have something to do to get her mind off Brady.
“Aren’t you glad to be in the lab?” Liz asked. “Plus, there are so many more TAs now.”
“That’s a fair point, but not good enough. I’d rather be out at the pool than in a classroom.”
Liz rolled her eyes. “Says the woman who is taking eighteen hours, and four of those classes are sciences.”
“I like science. Nothing wrong with that, Miss Journalism,” Victoria said in a high snooty voice.
“Vic, you’re brilliant,” Liz said, throwing her arm over Victoria’s shoulders.
“Of course I am,” she responded, raising her eyebrows.
Liz shook her head, laughing lightly. It felt good to be carefree…to feel as if she was in college again.
Victoria snagged them an empty table while Liz fetched the first paper of the semester. She stuffed it under her arm and zigzagged back to her friend. Sinking into a chair, Liz pushed her blond hair off of her neck and laid the paper flat in front of her.
She froze when she saw the front page. Her vision blurred and she felt her body sway.
There on the front page was a picture of her and Hayden in D.C. It was the one that they had gotten a stranger to take for them so they could both be in the shot. She remembered vaguely an email going out asking about what people had done over the summer. Liz had brushed it off, since she couldn’t tell anyone about her summer. She hadn’t thought twice about it.
She couldn’t believe this was happening. Brady had told her to be anonymous. He had told her not to get her picture in the paper. And now here she was with a job lined up to work with reporters all over the country, and her picture with another guy front and center. Liz knew she was probably overreacting, but she hadn’t told Brady whom she had visited in D.C., and she certainly hadn’t expected for that picture to surface.
“Earth to Liz,” Victoria said, waving her hand in front of her face.
“What?” she asked, coming out of her trance.
“Is something wrong? You’re white as a ghost.”
“I, uh…made the front page,” Liz said, turning to face the paper to Victoria.
“That’s fucking awesome. So cool.” She bent over the picture and read the little caption. “You and Hayden look great together.”
Victoria glanced back up at Liz with a big smile still on her face. She dropped her smile and narrowed her eyes.
“Is this bad?” Victoria asked.
Liz nodded. “Not good.”
“Can you tell me why, at least?”
“I’ve been trying to stay anonymous…”
Liz knew as soon as it was out of her mouth how weird that would sound to someone like Victoria, who always craved the spotlight.
“Are you fucking serious? This guy doesn’t want you to be known? Does he even know you’re a reporter? Does he know that reporters are in the paper? I would come over there and shake some sense into you, if there weren’t so many people around!” Victoria cried heatedly.
“Victoria, back off!” Liz snapped, unable to hold her anger in. “He knows who I am. He knows what I do. He knows practically everything about me! There are reasons for the things he’s asked me to do, and I would do them a hundred times over.”
Silence stretched between them. Liz always had a cool temperament. Victoria was the firecracker who would explode at the drop of a hat.
“Fine,” Victoria said after a couple minutes. She didn’t look too happy about it. “What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know,” Liz answered truthfully. She should call him and talk to him about it before he found out some other way. She probably should have told him she had visited Hayden a long time ago. After everything, she couldn’t seem to find the courage.
Liz fingered the long chain locket at her neck and sighed. She had taken to wearing the necklace Brady had given her every day. She always argued with herself that it went with every outfit…that it didn’t have anything to do with him…that it was just pretty. But she couldn’t lie to herself, and she couldn’t keep from remembering that she had told Brady that she loved him. Now that the haze of that weekend had gone by, she realized more and more that he had never actually told her…