She stumbled into the condo and Brady flicked the lights on. It was a nice-looking place, clearly decorated by someone with taste, but from a corporate angle. No imagination. There were stairs right off of the entrance and a kitchen hidden off of the living room. That was all she got to see of first floor before Brady shut the door and started up the stairs without a word.

Here goes nothing.

Even though Liz knew she shouldn’t follow him, she did. She was drawn to him. No matter how much she tried to convince herself, she always had been.

There were two rooms, and Liz walked into the bigger of the two, where Brady was standing with his arms crossed, staring at the giant king-size bed that took up the majority of the room.

At the sight of it, Liz deflated. Her emotions were all over the place tonight. She was a wreck. The ups and downs had taken a toll on her, and she kind of wished that she could just go to sleep. She couldn’t add another roller coaster to the equation.

“Brady,” she whispered, her voice taking on an edge of desperation.

He didn’t move for a solid minute. Just stood there and stared at the bed. She had no clue what he was thinking at that point.

Finally, he turned around and stared at her. She could see that whatever mask he had been wearing before had completely dropped away. He looked like her Brady—in control, but somehow still vulnerable. She hadn’t really thought about it like that before, but when she looked at him now after all that time apart, she knew that that look of desire that so often crossed his face was a vulnerability to her. He still felt very strongly toward her. It was all over his face, and it made her heart melt.

“Come here,” he said, crooking his finger.

She licked her lips before walking over and standing in front of him. She didn’t even play around by standing at a distance. She knew that he was in control, and she knew what he wanted. She planted herself directly in front of him and tilted her chin up to look at him.

Brady’s strong hands threaded back through her hair. Her eyes fluttered closed at the softest of touches. He ran his hands backward and swept it off of her shoulders. She nearly groaned as his fingers brushed against her ears, neck, and collarbones. But she didn’t move or say anything until he cupped her face in his hands, and then she opened her eyes to stare up into his handsome face.

Her breathing was already ragged and irregular. How often had she fantasized about this moment—about him coming back for her?

“What happened, Liz?” he whispered.

His words seemed to break the floodgates again as they reminded her of her argument with Hayden tonight. Tears welled in her eyes as she started babbling. “Hayden surprised me at the newspaper. I’d been in New York for my internship and I hadn’t gotten through a lot of my work. He saw it and flipped his shit. He basically said I was irresponsible and should give up the paper because I was running it into the ground. Then I saw him smoking and . . .”

“Liz,” he said, cutting her off. A tear trickled down her cheek and he reached up and swiped it from her face. “No. What happened with us?”

Liz opened and closed her mouth a few times as she tried to come up with the answer to that question. “You were going to choose the campaign,” she murmured.

“You left before I had a chance to choose.”

“I didn’t want you to have to make that choice. I didn’t want you to break up with me,” she said, another tear leaving her eye.

“Why were you so sure I would?”

Liz shook her head softly in his grasp. “You wouldn’t let me love you. It was like walking into a brick wall over and over again. I was the liability that you couldn’t figure out how to deal with.”

“Liz . . .”

“And in the end, Brady . . . I let you have the campaign and Congress. I couldn’t let you jeopardize any of that for me.”

Brady released a stifled laugh. “You thought I was happy?”

“I . . .”

“Heather basically talked me off of a ledge for the next three months.”

Liz stood there as solid as stone. She couldn’t believe what he had just said. No way had it affected him that much. No way. She just couldn’t see that being the case. He was dating Erin . . . and had been so happy . . . and . . . Shit!

No. She couldn’t have walked away for nothing. He hadn’t come after her. He hadn’t tried to follow her. She couldn’t think about those months. She couldn’t think . . .

“I wish I’d had someone to talk me off of the ledge,” she whispered. She didn’t even know where it came from. But she’d had no one. She had been all alone with her misery.

Brady’s eyes darkened when she said that. “You mean you didn’t have the boring fill-in to keep you company?”

“We didn’t start dating until the election was over.”

Brady cursed under his breath. “How could you date him?”

“Me? How could you date her?”

“You left me, remember?”

“And you pushed me away,” she snapped.

“Well, I’m not pushing you away now.” He grabbed her by her shoulders and pulled her body against his. Her hands jerked up against his chest just as his lips dropped down to cover hers.

The world stopped. There was only Brady. Nothing else existed. Nothing else ever had. When their lips touched, it was like the fireworks on Fourth of July mixed with the ball dropping on New Year’s. She could feel her body wake up from head to toe. Her mind cleared until everything seemed perfectly crystallized. It was as if she had been wading through mud in a dense fog, and suddenly she walked onto solid ground and the sun was shining.

Chapter 17

REMEMBERING HISTORY

She was kissing Brady.

Her hands were gripping his suit coat. His were tangled in her hair. Their bodies were flush together. Somehow they had moved to where he was pressed back into the footboard of the bed. Their mouths were moving in time and tongues volleying for position. She could feel her heart practically leaping out of her throat and her chest rising and falling as the adrenaline coursed through her body.

It had been months . . . over a year since they had last been together. The built-up tension superheated the room until she felt as if she couldn’t breathe. It was too much all at once. And still she needed more. She wanted more. She could never get enough.

“Liz,” he groaned against her mouth. He moved his hands down her sides and clutched her hips tightly, jerking her into him.

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.