“Um . . . I’ve been meaning to tell you this for a long time,” she began carefully. “I just didn’t know how to say it.”

“Didn’t know how to say what?” Hayden asked. There wasn’t any caution in his voice at all. He had no clue. She hated herself for what she was about to do to him in that moment.

“I know you might be mad with me, but please just let me explain.”

That sure captured his attention. He sat up straighter and his hazel eyes narrowed. She could see that he was trying to figure out where this was going, and that he hadn’t expected that at all. There was no going back now.

“So . . . two summers ago, I was dating someone else,” Liz began.

“You were?” he asked clearly confused.

“Yeah. I met this guy, and we had this secret relationship the summer before my junior year. I was still seeing him when I visited you in D.C.”

Hayden’s eyebrows rose sharply at that comment. She hated telling him the whole story, but she knew that she needed to. He wouldn’t understand if she didn’t start from the beginning.

“It was a strange relationship. One that’s kind of hard to explain. One that up until last week, I’d never told anyone else about. We weren’t exactly exclusive, but . . .” Liz cringed. She wished there were an easier way to explain this. “Anyway, I was with you in D.C. and then sometime shortly after school started, he and I broke it off. Well, I left him.”

“Why are you telling me all of this?” Hayden asked, unable to keep the slight tone of anger out of his voice.

She didn’t blame him.

“Because I saw him again in October.”

Hayden stopped moving. He had only been slightly fidgeting with his suit coat and tapping his foot, but when she said that he stopped everything and just stared at her.

“When in October?”

She could tell that he already knew the answer. Her heart pounded away in her chest. This was going to be even more difficult than she thought.

“When we had our argument,” she whispered.

Hayden stood at the statement. He walked to the end of the bed and rested his hand on the footboard, facing away from her. His chest was rising and falling with barely concealed anger and pain . . . betrayal.

“I’ve been meaning to tell you this whole time, but I never found a way. There was always something else.”

“What happened?” he asked, his voice cold.

“He picked me up from the paper. We kissed. That’s it,” she said earnestly.

Hayden sagged against the footboard. He brought his hand to his head and she saw his shoulders shake. There. She had broken him. And it hurt so fucking bad. She couldn’t even see his face, but she knew, she just knew that she had hurt him beyond compare. She could imagine his face crumpled and the hollowness in his eyes at her words.

“I swear it will never happen again. We agreed to never see each other after that,” she told him. It hadn’t gone exactly that way, but it wasn’t as if it wasn’t the truth. “I felt so terrible, and I wanted to tell you, Hayden. I really did.”

“Then why didn’t you?” he asked, his voice the same cold calculation.

“I don’t know.”

He turned around sharply. “I was a total prick to you that day. I was completely a hundred percent in the wrong. And I owned up to that. I told you exactly everything that I did, and you let me sit there and grovel. I might have pushed you back to him that day, but you had your opportunity to tell me what happened and you chose not to.”

“I know,” Liz whispered, tears welling in her eyes. She could have told him what had happened. She could have been honest, but she hadn’t.

“I felt like absolute shit for months. I tried to do everything I could to be better. Calleigh has been breathing down my fucking throat since I started working there. Why don’t I just go back to Charlotte and kiss her?”

Liz gasped. Her hands flew to her face and tears fell from her eyes. “No.”

“It wouldn’t be any different, would it?”

“No,” she whispered, shaking her head. She didn’t know if she answered him or if she was just horrified at the thought.

“Did he try anything else?” Hayden demanded, the fire still in his eyes.

Liz shook her head.

“Don’t fucking lie to me!” he yelled.

Liz took a step back, startled by the outburst. It so wasn’t Hayden. “Yes! Okay! Does it make you feel better?” she cried. “He wanted to fuck me. But I didn’t let him. I made him take me back home. All right?”

“Jesus Christ, Liz,” Hayden spat. “You had another guy’s hands on you, another guy’s lips on you, another guy’s body against yours . . .”

“I didn’t say . . .”

“Who is it?” he demanded.

“Hayden, I can’t.”

He walked slowly toward her until he was standing directly in front of her. She cowered slightly at the feel of him hovering over her. “Liz, who is it?” he asked, his voice low and deliberate.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It fucking matters,” he growled.

Liz bit her lip and stared down. She couldn’t tell him. No fucking way.

“Is he at the paper?”

She glanced back up into his eyes and shook her head. “No.”

“It’s not Justin?”

Liz laughed and then quickly cleared her throat. So not appropriate.

Hayden glared at her. “Are you actually laughing? Do you find something about this funny?”

“No. No, it wasn’t Justin,” she squeaked.

“Do I know the guy?”

“Um . . .” she said, deciding on how to answer that. God, 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 fucking 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 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.