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.
“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.”