“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 damn 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. God, 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 fucked 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, fucked 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 fucking 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 fucking 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 dick 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 fucks.” 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 fuck you, you said no, and then you agreed not to see each other again, which I assume means he told you to fuck 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? Fuck, is that why we didn’t even have sex 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 glassy 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 fucked 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.”