"Um . . ." she said, deciding on how to answer that. G.o.d, she didn"t want to be having this conversation. "You"ve, um . . . met."
He reached out and grabbed both of her shoulders in his hands. She stared up into those eyes and saw a wildness she had never seen before. "Look, I"m not going to confront him. I just need to know. Don"t you understand? I"m going crazy here. I love you so f.u.c.king much. You"re my whole world, Lizzie. You"re everything to me. I was the idiot who pushed you away, and I swore I was never going to make you feel like that again. If I don"t know who the guy is, you"re going to make me feel like this forever."
Liz cringed away from the accusation. She didn"t want to make him feel like this. It had been eating at her for long enough. She didn"t want to hurt him too, but she couldn"t tell him. She shook her head, breaking eye contact.
"Really? You won"t tell me?"
When she didn"t answer, he shook his head and then seemed to consider another option.
"You said I met the guy. Where?" he said, his tone going back to commanding.
"It doesn"t matter."
"Lizzie, where did I meet him?" he said, shaking her lightly until she looked up at him. "Where?"
"The colloquium last spring," she finally whispered out of guilt. Hayden dropped his hands and just stared at her. Oh no. Please don"t figure it out. She could see that his brain was ticking away, putting the pieces together, fitting things into place. He was seeing the solution in front of him but not really believing it. He was a d.a.m.n good reporter, and he hadn"t gotten that way without being able to see the big picture from a lot of smaller clues.
"But I was late," he mused aloud. "I didn"t meet anyone at the colloquium."
Liz swallowed and remained frozen. If he wasn"t seeing it, then she wasn"t going to help him out. She couldn"t tell him. G.o.d, she felt sick to her stomach. Whatever alcohol was inside of her was slowly churning away, eating away at her insides, pushing bile up her throat. She covered her mouth and tried to push down the acidic taste.
"Who did I meet there?" he asked, racking his brain.
Liz shook her head. She couldn"t tell him.
Hayden stopped and pointed at her, but he was looking off in the distance. She froze in place with his finger near her face.
"Brady Maxwell. I met Brady Maxwell. But he"s a congressman," Hayden said softly. "He"s a sitting congressman."
His eyes found hers and she stopped breathing. She was trapped in that look. He was commanding her attention, and all she wanted to do was run away and hide. She had brought this down on herself.
"Two summers ago, he would have just been running for Congress. He was your first reporting job. I was with you. He"s our politician," he said, the hurt seeping deeper and deeper into every syllable. "Tell me it"s not him, Lizzie. Tell me it"s not him."
Liz just stood there. What could she say? She couldn"t corroborate the story, and she couldn"t lie anymore.
"Brady Maxwell," Hayden said as if he still couldn"t believe it. "You hated him. You disagreed with everything that he said. You wrote some brilliant articles practically calling for his job and still you f.u.c.ked him?"
"Hayden . . ."
"Tell me how this happened," Hayden said. "I just don"t see how you could go from interviewing him, writing those articles, to ending up in his bed."
Liz bit her lip and glanced away. "I met him at the club we went to after his press conference."
"You met him, f.u.c.ked him, and then wrote those articles?" he asked in disbelief.
"No, no, no. I went back with you that night. But after that, I kept running into him while he was on campaign that summer. We just kind of tumbled into it."
"You did this all summer and no one caught you?"
"His press secretary and attorney caught us, but otherwise no. I went by a fake name, Sandy Carmichael, so it wouldn"t be traced back to me," she whispered. When she said it like that it sounded so much worse than what it had been in reality.
"A fake name? Do you realize how insane that sounds?" Hayden spat. "Christ, isn"t he like thirty? You weren"t even legal to drink when you were together." He fisted his hand into his hair.
"Twenty-seven," she whispered. "He was twenty-seven."
"Don"t f.u.c.king defend him!" Hayden cried. "The guy manipulated a twenty-year-old college student who wrote a bad article about him to get her on his f.u.c.king side."
"He didn"t manipulate me," she said, unable to stop herself.
"You"re so deep in that you didn"t even see it. A d.i.c.k with a little bit of power sees a young girl with a little bit of backbone and takes that away from her in a few easy f.u.c.ks." He shook his head. "He used you."
Liz fisted her hands at her sides. She couldn"t even think that. No. That wasn"t what happened. Brady had loved her . . . at one point. He hadn"t used her. She had to remind herself of that. Things had been different. It was easy to see it from an outsider"s perspective, to break their relationship down into one line and show her as the victim. But she had never felt like a victim with Brady. Not once.
"No," she breathed.
"Then explain to me what happened in October. He tried to f.u.c.k you, you said no, and then you agreed not to see each other again, which I a.s.sume means he told you to f.u.c.k off. Sounds like he came for what he wanted, but didn"t get it."
"Hayden, stop."
"I see it for what it is," Hayden said, grasping her shoulders and forcing her to look at him again. His grip tightened and she winced.
"Hayden, let go," she whimpered.
"Is that why we couldn"t be together before the election? Is that why you resisted me for so long? f.u.c.k, is that why we didn"t even have s.e.x for months?"
She tried to wiggle out of his grasp, but he held her tightly.
"Answer me. You owe me that. Is that the reason? Was it because of Brady?"
Liz cringed at the words. She"d hoped that he would never come to that conclusion. "Hayden, you"re hurting me!"
He pushed away from her and paced the room. He rested his hand on the nightstand and reached down. Liz swallowed hard. She wanted to say something, anything to make it better, but there was nothing to say.
"What is this?" Hayden asked. And then Liz saw what he was holding, the necklace she had left there when Victoria had called for her earlier this afternoon. "These aren"t my charms."
"I know," she managed to get out.
Hayden turned back to face her brandishing the necklace as an accusation. "Is this his too? Is this why you wore it up until the election and I never saw it again?"
Liz bit her lip and refused to answer, but her non-answer was enough. Hayden threw the necklace across the room where it hit the wall and fell to the carpet. Liz gasped and covered her mouth.
"All of this time I just thought you weren"t ready for a relationship and then you weren"t ready to be physical. But you were just holding on to him."
"I"m sorry," she whispered. There was nothing else for her to say. She had hurt him, crushed him. There was no coming back from that.
"What are you sorry for? Kissing him? Cheating with him? What about emotionally cheating on me for our entire relationship?"
"Yes. I don"t know," she stammered. She wasn"t sorry for Brady and yet she hated hurting Hayden. "All of it."
He turned back to her, grasped her chin firmly in his hand, and stared down into her gla.s.sy blue eyes. "You know what. I see it. I see what he did to you. And . . . I forgive you."
"What?" Her mouth hung open in surprise at the words.
"It"s not your fault for what he did to you."
"He didn"t do anything to me."
Hayden continued speaking as if she hadn"t. "He"s a skilled manipulator. He made you see what he wanted you to see."
He sighed heavily, as if the weight was off of his chest, and she just stood there, ramrod still. Hayden thought that Brady had manipulated her. But he hadn"t. She had never once thought about it like that. She knew what she was getting into from the start, right? He had set the terms in that diner, and she had agreed. That wasn"t manipulative. Right?
She felt all f.u.c.ked up from what Hayden was saying. On some level she understood the manipulation, but her heart was saying it wasn"t. And that made her feel even guiltier.
"Lizzie, I love you," Hayden said, pushing her hair off of her face. "I hate that this happened to you. I hate that you cheated on me with someone who was only using you . . . that you cheated on me at all."
"I"m sorry," Liz cried. "I didn"t mean to cheat on you. I just got so angry and stupid. I"m never going to be like that again."
At her words, his lips crashed down on hers. She let him have her. What else could she do? She had lost her fight. And she deserved much worse than a hard kiss. She deserved his fury, and him leaving her.
But he wasn"t leaving her. He was kissing her pa.s.sionately, feverishly. His fingers were tangled in her long hair, pulling the life out of her. One of his hands found the zipper on her dress, and when he pulled it down, the material dropped to the ground in front of him. He snapped the clasp on her bra and she was left standing before him in nothing but her black thong.
"You"re mine," he growled against her lips. "All of you. Every inch. Make it like he never touched you."
Liz whimpered as he bit down on her bottom lip and sucked it back through his teeth. His hands were everywhere at once. Caressing, fondling, claiming, owning her body. She hardly even moved as he raked his hands down her skin. He had every right to his anger.
"Turn around," he ordered, directing her until she was facing her bed.
She didn"t dare move. She had never seen Hayden like this. A part of her was crazy turned on by it, and another part knew that she should stop it. She shouldn"t let him do it. But she couldn"t. She deserved it.
Liz heard the zipper of his pants and the swish as they dropped to his feet. Her heart rate skyrocketed in the seconds that she waited for him to act. She could feel her body tingling in antic.i.p.ation and fear, wondering what was coming next, what he would do to her.
Hayden bent Liz forward roughly at the waist, and she braced herself on her mattress.
"Hayden," she whispered. "Please . . ."
He didn"t respond, just knelt behind her before dragging her thong down her lean legs. She trembled at the feel of his hands along her thighs. He helped her step out of the clothing, and then roughly spread her legs apart before him.
Hayden bent forward over her, and Liz turned her head to look up at him. "Shhh," he whispered, collecting her hair in one hand and tugging on it lightly.
Where was this coming from? Nearly her entire body was telling her to stand up . . . to stop him. But she hadn"t up until this point, and she wasn"t going to now.
Then his d.i.c.k was spreading her lips and sliding easily up inside of her. Liz gasped with the pressure of him filling her, unable to move with the way he had her pinned down. He gripped her hip with one hand and began to work himself in and out of her. His momentum picked up quickly. Soon he was driving into her hard enough to push her entire body forward into the bed.
She didn"t want to enjoy this. She didn"t want to derive pleasure from it. She didn"t want to feel anything at all. But her traitorous body refused to listen. He was f.u.c.king her with vengeance. Not just owning her, but staking his claim . . . a.s.serting his right. He f.u.c.ked her as if he didn"t want anyone else to even think about coming close to this.
And even when she tried to hold it off, her body cracked open for him. She saw black as her o.r.g.a.s.m tore through her body. She tightened all around him and screamed her lungs out, until he drove into her for the last time, and emptied himself buried deep within her.
Chapter 21.
HE HAD IT COMING.
Hayden left the next morning without much more than a good-bye. Liz stayed in bed until well past the time that he walked out. He hadn"t left her. That was as much as she could say about their relationship at this point. He hadn"t left her, but things were far from okay.
Her brain and her body felt numb. What had happened last night? She had thought the worst thing would be for Hayden to leave her. But here she was lying in bed, feeling worse than she had before. Telling Hayden hadn"t gotten rid of her guilt; in fact, maybe she felt worse. He had proven that her guilt was warranted. She had been in the wrong and then lied to him about it for months. It made her stomach turn.
She finally forced herself out of bed, fumbling for a light on the nightstand. She stood and that"s when she saw it. The necklace. It was resting on the nightstand as if Hayden had never hurled it across the room. It mocked her from its position as if he wanted to say Here, take your necklace back, wh.o.r.e.
She felt her chest sliced open again and it took everything in her to reach for the necklace. She checked it to make sure that it wasn"t damaged. Another wave of guilt hit her that she should even care if it was broken. She hastily put it back into her jewelry box and stumbled into the shower. She turned the handle to the hottest setting and stepped into the hot spray.
She was most surprised by the fact that she didn"t cry. She didn"t shed one tear. It was as if she hurt all over and still she couldn"t feel anything.
Victoria had ended up staying at Daniel"s house, so Liz had the place to herself. After her shower she shut all the lights back off, crawled into bed, and slept the afternoon away. She couldn"t think about her neglected responsibilities when her body and mind weren"t functioning. Maybe tomorrow . . .
Valentine"s Day was coming up that next weekend. Liz had a hard time focusing on what she was going to do when she next saw Hayden. Their conversations were almost exclusively one-sided over the next couple days. Liz gave her input when necessary, but she had too much else on her mind to really be into it.
All she was doing was making Hayden more frustrated with her. Liz didn"t know how to stop it. She felt as if she was self-destructing.
Friday rolled around soon enough. It was the day Hayden was supposed to come back to Chapel Hill for Valentine"s Day. Liz had finally forced herself to start acting like a human again. She ate a full breakfast, went to all of her cla.s.ses, ninety percent of which she had skipped earlier in the week, and made it into the paper. She had never lied to get out of work a day in her life before this week. She had left Ma.s.sey in charge of editorial work while Savannah took over the Washington division.
The smell and feel of the office kicked her back into high gear. This was where she belonged. This made her blood flow and reminded her what she was doing with her life.
Savannah stopped her before she reached her office. "Hey, are you feeling any better?"
Liz smiled at Savannah and nodded. "A bit."
She wished Savannah didn"t remind her so much of her brother. Brady was the last person she wanted to think about today. He was part of the reason she was in this whole mess to begin with.
"Good. We were worried about you. Can"t have a functional paper without the editor, and Ma.s.sey is no editor," Savannah said with an easy laugh. They started toward Liz"s office.
"I"m sure she held down the fort."
"That"s one word for it."
Liz laughed softly. It felt good to laugh. "Well, I"m back. So, no worries."
They reached her office, and Savannah nodded her farewell. Liz stepped inside and shut the door. She wanted peace and quiet and the feel of being in control of something. She booted up her computer and plopped down in her chair.
As the screen came to life in front of her, her phone started vibrating. Liz fished it out of her pocket and stared down at the screen. The New York Times.
"h.e.l.lo?" Liz asked. Normally when Nancy called, it was from her personal line. Liz had programmed the main line of the New York Times into her phone along with several other numbers Nancy had given her at the start of last semester, but Nancy had never used them.