Liz felt her already fragile heart drop out of her chest and watched as Brady stomped on it. She knew it was ridiculous to feel like that, but she couldn’t help it. She had walked out. She was the one who had let him go. But she truthfully hadn’t believed their relationship would go anywhere past that summer. She hadn’t wanted him to have to choose between her and the campaign. He couldn’t give up his career for her, and she couldn’t let him be the one to choose his career instead.
But she hadn’t ever wanted to be in this position. To meet the new girlfriend.
Her throat was dry. Her fingers felt tingly. She wasn’t going to cry. No, this wasn’t that kind of moment. This moment wasn’t one to be mad or sad or pitch a fit. She couldn’t even muster those emotions. The only thing she felt was the one thing that she had never wanted to feeclass="underline" regret.
“Hey, y’all,” Savannah called, drawing everyone’s attention to her with a wave.
Here goes nothing.
“This is my friend Liz Dougherty. She works with me at the paper,” Savannah said as an introduction.
Brady turned around so slowly that if she didn’t know better she would have thought he was uninterested. But instead she could just tell he was struggling for control. His eyes met hers across the room and she managed a smile without thinking about it. He looked so fucking gorgeous. It seriously was heart-stopping . . . if she’d still had a heart.
He didn’t smile back. He looked at her as if he was asking, What the fuck are you doing here?
“Come on; you can sit by me,” Savannah said, taking a seat.
Liz followed behind her and sat down in the last open spot . . . directly across from Brady. The only positive to this entire thing was that Clay wasn’t here. Only good thing she could think of at the moment.
Besides the Maxwells and Erin, there were four people she didn’t recognize at all. Family friends, or maybe another politician or something if she had to guess.
“Liz, these are my parents,” Savannah said, pointing them out. “And I already introduced you to Brady earlier.” Liz didn’t even glance over at him. She couldn’t. “This is his girlfriend, Erin.”
She did assess his girlfriend, though. Judged her was more like it. Liz couldn’t tell how tall she was, but she guessed a bit taller than her by the pictures she had seen. She looked classy in a red dress with gold buttons up the front and a gold belt at her waist. Her hair looked like a freaking Disney princess—long, dark, curling at the ends, shiny, silky smooth, with all sorts of luscious body. She had almond-shaped dark brown eyes lined in onyx, and perfectly curled black eyelashes. Her lips were on the thin side, but whatever dark pink lipstick she was wearing didn’t make them stand out as much. Her skin was tan as if she lived at the beach, but Liz knew that she didn’t . . . so it must be fake. Unless Brady was taking her to the lake house . . . or the beach.
Whoa. She needed to stop that train of thought right now.
Liz tore her eyes away from Erin.
“These are the Atwoods. Close family friends,” Savannah explained, gesturing to the couple seated at the opposite end of the table. Liz couldn’t figure out why Atwood sounded familiar. “Matthew and Lisa.” Savannah pointed out the parents, then gestured at the brother and sister. “Lucas and Alice.”
Lucas was seated next to Savannah and looked about Savannah’s age. He was handsome in an unconventional way: tall with a kind of lanky frame and overgrown hair. He looked as if he would be more comfortable in athletic gear than the sport coat he was wearing. His sister, Alice, looked as if she was in middle school or at the oldest a freshman in high school. She seemed lost in her own world and twirled her honey-blond curls around her finger the whole time.
“I thought Chris was coming,” Savannah said, addressing Matthew and Lisa.
But Brady answered. “He’s still in New York. Couldn’t get away from work for the weekend.”
Click. Chris was Brady’s best friend. He was the only other person who knew that Liz and Brady had been together last summer. She had gone with him to one of Brady’s galas and he had engineered for her and Brady to be alone together afterward. These were Chris’s parents, his brother and sister. It made sense why they were best friends—the two men had grown up together.
“That sucks,” Savannah said sullenly. She really looked like the baby of the family in that moment. As if with her family she could ease into the person she always had been instead of the person she pretended to be in public. She clearly did trust Liz to see the real her if she had half as many of the precautions built up around herself that Brady had.
Personally, Liz was glad that Chris wasn’t there. She didn’t want to deal with his knowing looks any more than Clay’s.
The waitress appeared shortly after introductions. Liz ordered a glass of water. There was no way she was going to drink in front of Brady’s parents. She was sitting directly across from him and she couldn’t even look at him. She didn’t trust herself to drink.
Brady’s father ordered red wine for the table anyway. Liz almost groaned, but instead she just smiled like a gracious guest. One glass. No more than one glass.
“So, Liz,” Brady’s father addressed her, “Savannah says you work with her on the paper. How did you get into that?”
Now she wished that she had the wine in front of her so that she had something for her hands to do. Instead she put on an easy smile and tried to remain casual. “Well, I decided a long time ago I wanted to be a reporter. My mom works for the state of Florida and my father is a professor at South Florida, and they always had an interest in politics. So I guess I got that from them,” she said. She knew she was rambling about a simple question, but she didn’t know where to stop. “I joined the paper when I got to school.”
“Are you a senior?” Brady’s mother asked.
“Junior. I graduate next year,” she said softly. Her eyes drifted up to Brady’s for the first time since she started talking. Separated by another year of school.
“Don’t let Liz fool you into thinking she’s just someone at the paper. She ran the campaign division and is going to be editor next year,” Savannah explained. “She organized the colloquium y’all were at this afternoon.”
“Really?” Brady asked. Neither of them had pulled their eyes from each other, and Liz knew it was dangerous to address him directly.
“Yeah . . . I did.”
“That’s a major accomplishment,” Erin said cheerfully. Liz glanced over at her to see if there was any malice on her face, but of course there wasn’t. Erin didn’t know who she was.
“Thank you.”
“How did you get a job like that?” Erin asked.
Liz cleared her throat. “Last summer when I was following the campaign, I worked with my major professor to improve my writing. She liked the transformation I made over the summer so much that she offered me the job.”
A muscle in Brady’s jaw tensed at the mention of last summer. She didn’t blame him. She hadn’t even meant to bring it up, but it had just slipped out.
“What do you do, Erin?” Liz asked quickly as the rest of the table broke into their own side conversations. She would do anything not to directly address Brady again.
“I’m a morning anchor for Baltimore Mornings on channel 11,” Erin said with a smile that showed exactly why she was an anchor at such a young age.
Broadcast news. Not something Liz had ever been interested in. Of course, Baltimore Mornings sounded more like a morning talk show than a news program.
“That’s how we met, actually,” Erin said, placing her hand on top of Brady’s and lacing their fingers together.