Brady ground his teeth together and didn’t say anything. She knew that she was right. She needed to confront Hayden about what had happened. Brady didn’t. He would only take a bad situation and make it worse. She didn’t want anything to get worse than it already was.

“Will you just drop me off on the corner?” Liz asked, pointing up the street.

“Liz,” he pleaded.

“I’ll be okay, Brady. I’ll call you after he leaves,” she told him.

He sighed heavily and then pulled over at the end of the street. “You have the right number now?”

“Yeah,” she murmured, grabbing her purse off the floor. She found Clay’s phone in the bag and handed it to Brady. “Will you give this back to Clay? He’s probably wondering how he managed to lose it.”

“I can’t wait to give it back to him,” Brady said with a devilish smile on his face.

“Don’t be too hard on him, okay?”

“I don’t make promises I can’t keep, baby,” he said, grasping her chin in his hand and kissing her hard on the mouth.

“I know you don’t.”

“Promise you’ll be safe?”

Liz nodded softly. “Promise.”

“Good.”

They kissed again desperately, like a drowning person gasping for their last breath. Then Liz pulled away and exited the car.

With a heavy heart, she clutched her purse to her chest and started walking down the street to her house. She hadn’t checked her phone yet and at this point she was kind of afraid to. Had Hayden called? Did he have some kind of explanation? Not that it would change her mind at this point.

She slid her phone out into her palm. She checked her text messages and saw half a dozen from Victoria freaking out about her leaving with Clay and never returning, then another handful in all caps about Hayden showing up and asking what the hell she was supposed to tell him. Hayden had called and texted her even more than that. The messages started the morning after the article went live and ended only a couple minutes ago, when he had been trying to figure out where she was. She wished she had checked her phone so that she would have been more prepared for his appearance, but there was nothing she could do now.

As she walked up the driveway and to the front door, she steeled herself for what was about to happen. At least Victoria was there. Liz might have been confident when sending Brady away, but she didn’t really want to be alone with Hayden. She didn’t think he would do anything, but she had no guarantees.

Liz pushed the door open and walked into the living room, only to find Hayden and Victoria screaming at each other.

“I don’t fucking care why you’re here, Lane, but she’s not fucking here. So get out of our fucking house, you douchebag. Haven’t you done enough damage? Just thought you’d come over to inflict more pain on my best friend?” Victoria threw in his face.

“Vickie, just shut up,” he cried, spitting out her name as viciously as she had said his. “I’ve had enough of your shit. I don’t even want to talk to you. I’m here for Liz.”

“Well, I’m right here,” Liz said softly.

“Liz,” Hayden said, turning to face her.

“You’re back,” Victoria said. Her eyes bugged, asking a million questions at once. Where were you? Did you sleep with that guy? Were you with him this whole time? What’s going on? Can I kick Hayden out?

“I am.”

“Where were you?” he asked.

“Like you have a right to ask that!” Victoria yelled, slapping him on the back of the head and walking over to Liz. “You don’t have to talk to him, Liz. Just send him packing.”

“I had a pretty traumatic Friday. I needed to escape. So I did,” Liz said, answering Hayden’s question. “What are you doing here?”

“I needed to talk to you, to explain,” he said.

Now that she got a good look at him, she realized that he didn’t look like himself. He had stubble growing in on his jaw and his clothes were wrinkled, as if he hadn’t changed them recently. The only time she had seen him this disheveled was last October, when she had walked out on him after their argument.

“I’m not sure what you needed to explain. I think I understand completely what happened,” Liz said, completely cool and resolute. Any apprehensions about coming in here had faded. She felt a dose of Brady’s confidence fueling this conversation.

“Can we talk in private, please?” Hayden asked, glancing over at Victoria and then back.

“Oh what? Like the last time we talked in private?” Liz asked harshly.

Hayden winced. “I—”

“Don’t have a good enough excuse for anything. And you never did.”

Victoria smirked. “I feel like I need to go pop some popcorn for this.”

“Victoria, really not helpful,” Liz said, shaking her head.

“Fine. I’ll be in the kitchen. If I hear anything at all that is out of place, I will be in here to beat the shit out of you, Lane. Don’t think for a second that I’m lying.”

He just stared at her with stone-cold eyes as she walked away. She left the kitchen door open, so there was no mistaking that she would be back in a matter of seconds.

“What are you doing here? Just spit it out so we can get this over with.” Liz crossed her arms over her chest and waited.

“I . . . I came to apologize for what I did.”

Liz started laughing in his face. “Oh, you’re serious. How sad.”

“What’s wrong with you, Liz? Why are you acting like this?” he asked.

“Oh, I don’t know!” she said, raising her voice. “Maybe because when I confided in my boyfriend a secret I’d never told anyone but my best friend, he went and wrote about it in the newspaper so now the entire world knows!”

“I didn’t put your name out there. No one else knows that it’s you.”

“Right! Because that makes it better and suddenly absolves you from fault! Are you that stupid? Someone could figure it out, and even if they don’t, you still betrayed my trust in such a way that could never in a million years be repaired. How could I ever trust you again? You didn’t even have the decency to tell me you were doing it or fucking call me back that day to face what you had done!”

“Liz . . .”

“You’re the definition of a coward, Hayden.”

His jaw clenched and his hands balled into fists. She was pushing his buttons and feeding on his insecurities. He had to have known that this was going to happen. There was no coming back from what he had done. If he thought that she was going to let him walk all over her again, he was sadly mistaken. That Liz was never resurfacing.

“I came to explain. Are you at least going to let me explain?” he demanded.

“Sure. Go ahead and try to explain to me how this happened.”

“Look, I didn’t mean for it to all go this way. I was upset about everything and I ended up talking to Calleigh about you. She tried to comfort me. Told me to throw myself into work. That’s when I spilled about the story. I didn’t give her your name or anything . . .”

“Ugh! Digging the hole deeper,” she muttered under her breath.

“It wasn’t like that. You know I’m not interested in Calleigh!”

Brady’s words echoed in her mind about Hayden and Calleigh. “Sure seems that way to me.”

“Nothing happened, but when I told her about the story, she pitched it to the editor without telling me. Once it was approved, I didn’t have much choice but to run with it.”

“Right. Try to claim that you didn’t have a choice. Make it not about you. See if that works,” she said.

“I messed up. I’m sorry. I didn’t know how to tell you. I wanted to do it in person, but . . .”

“But what?” she snapped. “You lost your balls and had to go looking for them all weekend?”

Liz heard Victoria snort laughing from the other room. That only ticked off Hayden more.

“Are you serious right now?” he yelled into her face. “I’m trying to apologize to you. Can you take this seriously for a second?”

Liz raised her eyebrows. “If you yell at me one more time, Hayden Lane, I promise that you will never be welcome in my house again. And I don’t make promises I can’t keep,” she said menacingly. Brady sure had an effect on her.