K. Linde - Off the Record

He latched on to her elbow and pulled her up short. “Are you really all right?”

“What do you think?” she asked, sneering at him.

“I’d say no.” He didn’t let go of her elbow. “I’m really sorry about…all that.”

“What was all that?” Liz asked.

“Calleigh and I were together last year before she took the job in Charlotte. It wasn’t anything serious.”

“She seems to think it’s still something,” Liz pointed out.

He shrugged. “I can’t control how she feels. It’s not whatever she thinks it is.”

“Well, maybe next time you shouldn’t go running off alone with her and then she won’t think it’s something,” Liz said calmly. She couldn’t believe that had come out of her mouth. It was what she was thinking, but never something she would normally say. Maybe Brady’s frankness had gotten into her system.

Hayden dipped his head in surrender. “You’re right. I didn’t mean for it to come off that way.”

“Intentions only go so far.”

“True,” he said, looking up into her eyes. She could see he wanted to say more, do more. But he didn’t. She wasn’t sure what was holding him back.

He was standing only inches away from her, and she knew she would give in to him if he made a move. Even with Brady’s words still ingrained in her head and Calleigh’s stinging words ringing in her ears. She was mad at him, but it didn’t hold back the crush that had been brewing inside of her for the past two years.

Hayden took a step in, and Liz’s breath caught, her heart fluttering at a rapid pace. He was so close. She took a small step forward until their clothes brushed against each other and tilted her head up to look at him. He smiled at her and she sighed softly, waiting for the kiss she knew was coming.

His mouth quirked up at the side and then he backed up. She was so confused. She had given him an open invitation, and he had backed down.

Liz quickly turned toward the car, her face burning.

Hayden cleared his throat awkwardly. “We should get back.”

She didn’t even have the strength to respond, just walked to the passenger-side door and waited for him to unlock it. She didn’t want to know what he was thinking. He had turned down Calleigh, only to reject Liz as well.

She would have been better off staying up in VIP. At least Brady had made his intentions clear. The hot and cold with Hayden was confusing at best.

Liz tossed her jacket inside and slid into the passenger seat of the Audi. The forty-minute drive back to Chapel Hill was quieter than the ride there had been. The radio was playing some hipster music that she wasn’t really into, but it was better than the silence.

He parked outside of the small run-down house she rented on the north side of campus. The neighborhood wasn’t all that great, but it was a short walk to the journalism school and was better than trying to find parking on campus. Luckily Victoria didn’t care about the decrepit nature of the building, because it was so close to the bars on Franklin Street.

“Thanks for the ride,” she murmured, grabbing her jacket and popping the door open. “I’ll start working on the article.”

She was all the way around the car when Hayden stepped out. “Liz,” he called, stopping her from walking up the grassy path to her house. “I’m sorry about earlier.”

Which part? she wanted to ask him. Was he sorry that he had run off with Calleigh? Was he sorry that Calleigh had been a bitch to her? Was he sorry for not kissing her when she had been expecting it?

Instead she just said, “It’s all right.” She didn’t even know what she was saying all right to.

“It’s not. Calleigh shouldn’t take out her anger about me on you,” he said.

Oh.

“Yeah, probably not,” Liz muttered. “Night, Hayden.”

“Liz,” he called again as she walked away. She turned around reluctantly. “I am sorry.”

She sighed and nodded. Please be over quicker. “I know you are. Don’t worry about what Calleigh said.”

“I just…don’t want this to affect our…erm…relationship.” Her ears perked up at that statement. “You’re a great reporter. I wouldn’t want you to think I’m using my authority or anything to come on to you. I would hate to lose you at the paper.”

Liz’s mouth dropped open. He didn’t want to lose her at the paper? Like that was even an option. The paper was all she wanted. Was that why he hadn’t kissed her? Was he afraid that starting something with her would be bad for the paper?

“Would you say you’re coming on to me?” She hadn’t thought that he was…not compared to Brady back at the club.

Hayden looked flustered, and she was glad. She had liked him for a long time and then after one evening together he was crushing it all. “I worry about how you took Calleigh’s comment. I don’t…”

“Just leave it, Hayden,” she said wearily. “It’s too late for this conversation. I’m tired.”

“Right. Sorry. I thought I was clarifying, but it seems like I’m only more jumbled. I’ll see you at the paper tomorrow.” He stepped forward and grasped her hand unexpectedly. Despite everything, she was still glad that he was touching her. She was angry about the way he was acting this evening, but she couldn’t hold back her feelings for him.

She saw him swallow as he stepped toward her again. She wasn’t expecting a kiss, not after the incident in the parking lot. In fact, she didn’t know why he was touching her at all, but she wasn’t stopping him. And she didn’t stop him when he pulled her into his arms.

They were strong arms, not particularly big but definitely not small. They fit well around her waist, and she could feel their definition as they circled her. Liz automatically wrapped her arms around his neck as he drew her into his chest. The hug was brief, but still, it was Hayden.

He broke away and looked as calm as before. She wished she knew what he was thinking, but unlike Brady, who broadcast his feelings all too clearly, Hayden was too much of a mystery. Maybe she wasn’t supposed to know.

But she damn well wanted to.

The article hadn’t been as easy to write as Liz had thought. Each time she put pen to paper, the words got all jumbled. She wasn’t saying quite what she wanted to say, and at first she couldn’t figure out why. She had never had this problem before. Her writing was natural, flowing out of her like a river running downstream. But this one article had left her stuck.

She had dug in her blazer pocket and retrieved the business card Brady had given her. She flipped it over between her fingers, examining the high-quality card for an answer as to why she couldn’t write about its owner. But that was reason enough. She was having a hard time being objective, extracting the Brady she had researched and interviewed from the man who had seduced her in the club.

You want to see me. I want to see you. Call me. If you don’t, you’ll regret it.

The words rang in her ears on repeat, tantalizing her, enticing her, commanding her. Thinking about him in that scenario—his hand trailing her jawline, his body so near, his charming air—clouded everything she was trying to do.

Liz couldn’t write an article about that Brady, and yet that Brady kept creeping into her thoughts. He was morphing in her mind somehow from the man whom she disagreed with politically to a welcome invitation. She had tossed the card aside, hoping it would land somewhere she could forget about it so she could write the damn article.

It took her longer than she wanted to disentangle the two faces of Brady in her mind and write a clear and coherent article about the press conference. State Senator Brady Maxwell III was running for Congress. He wanted to represent her district to the House of Representatives. Yet he had given tax incentives to his big donors, which could be the reason he was slashing through the education budget. While she might agree with him on some other broader issues, the idea that he had done this just to line his pockets without forethought as to how it would affect thousands of people across the state left a bad taste in her mouth. She couldn’t support someone who wouldn’t even vote to help fund his alma mater, the place where his mother had previously worked as a professor, when he consistently ran on improving the quality of education. There. That would do.

The article ran Monday morning on the front cover of the school newspaper. It was the week before classes let out for the summer, and students were looking for any excuse not to study for their finals. Everywhere she looked her classmates had the paper in hand—passing hands between classes, perusing it over lunch, sprawled out with it in the Pit at the center of campus. It was literally everywhere.

Liz knew the paper was popular, but it was usually the kvetching column that drew them, where students basically complained all day. But when she glanced around now, everyone was staring at the front cover…at her article. She couldn’t believe it.

She wondered how much of it had to do with Brady’s picture covering the front page—there certainly were more girls looking at the article—but she liked to think that it was because of her writing.

Seeing her name next to Hayden’s in the byline made her giddy. It was what she had always dreamed about. She finally felt as if she was living up to her own expectations.

“Hey, I thought you might be studying,” Victoria said, plopping down across from Liz on the hard white-topped bench on the outskirts of the Pit.

Liz broke out of her daydream and stared up at her best friend and roommate. “I-I was…” she stammered, though she hadn’t glanced at the homework piled in front of her for some time.