“Do you want me to drive?” he asked. “I know a place we can park your car near my sister’s place. Then you don’t have to try to navigate D.C. traffic.”

“Um, yes!” she said immediately. “Please drive me back through that madness.” She tossed him the keys and walked to the passenger side.

He laughed as he popped the door and sat down. “Geez, how short are you?” he asked as he adjusted the seat back for his long legs.

“You’re just tall,” Liz said with a shrug.

Hayden pulled out of the parking lot and started driving them away from the capital area. There was a surprising amount of traffic. Not that she was unfamiliar with traffic, but D.C. rush hour pretty much took the cake. Nearly forty-five minutes later, Hayden had the car parked in a street spot.

“This is as close as we’re going to get. Is this okay with you?” he asked, putting the car into park.

“Absolutely not. I want to go back out in that terrible mess for another hour, please,” Liz said with a laugh as she pushed her door open. “Get me out of here!”

“At least you weren’t driving,” Hayden said.

“A silver lining!” Liz opened the trunk, and Hayden reached in before she got a chance and pulled her suitcase out. He set it on the ground and rolled it behind him the whole way to the apartment, ignoring her objections.

They stopped in front of a brick building that looked like all of the other brick buildings it was attached to, but Hayden seemed to know where he was going. He pulled a key out of his pocket and let them in.

“Top floor,” he told her, motioning up the stairs.

She walked up five exhaustingly long flights of stairs as Hayden walked behind her carrying her suitcase. She did not envy him. Huffing, Liz finally landed at the top floor. She dropped her hands to her knees and caught her breath. Hayden appeared next to her with his ever-present smile, not even breathing hard.

“How are you not dying? I feel ridiculous,” she said, looking up at him.

“I run marathons,” Hayden said with a shrug.

“I play tennis and I’m dying.”

“Do you run up stairs while playing tennis?” he asked.

“Do you run up stairs in your marathons?” Liz straightened and looked up into his hazel eyes.

“Fair point. However, I do run over twenty-six miles.”

“Shoot me,” she said.

He tilted his head and smiled at her as if he was trying to hold back from saying something. She wasn’t sure what it was, but his eyes were assessing her. Had she done something wrong?

“My place is down here,” he said, pointing down the hall.

They reached the end of the hall and entered the apartment. It was homey, with a clear feminine touch. Paintings of various mediums—oil, acrylic, and watercolor—covered much of the wall space, nearly all of them unbelievably perfect depictions of landscapes with the occasional portrait and abstract thrown into the collection. The furniture was in all earth tones, and candles were on every table as well as the mantel of the fireplace. Liz instantly felt comfortable in the apartment.

“Is she here?” Liz heard a voice call from off in the other direction.

“Yeah, Jamie, come out of the studio,” Hayden called back, placing Liz’s suitcase off to the side and closing the door.

“Oh my God, hi!” Jamie said, rounding the corner draped in a paint-splattered apron. She looked nothing like Hayden, with a chin-length black bob with red highlights and long bangs that swept across her forehead and tucked behind her ear. She was shorter than Liz, with a naturally tiny frame. The one quality it seemed she and Hayden shared was her charismatic smile.

“Hey,” Liz said as Jamie walked right up to her.

“I would totally hug you, but I can’t guarantee you wouldn’t get paint all over you!”

Liz laughed. “That’s all right.”

“I’m so glad you’re here.”

That was a common sentiment, it seemed. Topher and Phillip had said something similar, and now his sister was reiterating the same thing. How much had Hayden talked about her?

It was nice, though. As daunting as it was to come up to D.C., she liked at least getting the opportunity to meet people. She had hidden all summer and had forgotten how much she liked to spend time with other people.

“Hayden wasn’t sure what you wanted for dinner, but he said he already knew that you liked Italian. I happen to make some kick-ass lasagna,” Jamie said, bubbly and friendly. Liz couldn’t have kept a smile from her face if she tried. “I hope you don’t mind staying in to eat. We can go out if you want. I’m cool with that. Whatever y’all want! I just get super exhausted after driving for a long time and prefer to nap instead of going out. You might not be like that…”

“Jamie,” Hayden said, shaking his head, “breathe.”

Jamie rolled her eyes at him. “Sorry. So, what do you want to do?” she asked, bouncing up and down on the balls of her toes.

“Ignore her. I swear she gets hopped up on caffeine when she’s in her studio,” he said, nudging Liz.

“Whatever, Hayden. I’m being accommodating, and you’re being an ass.”

“Lasagna sounds great,” Liz cut in, knowing a family brawl when she saw it. “Thank you.”

“Great! I’ll get started on that then,” Jamie said, bounding back into her studio.

“I’m going to go change,” Hayden told Liz. “You can bring your stuff into my room. We don’t have a guest room, so I’m taking the couch.”

“Oh no, I can take the couch. I don’t mind,” she told him quickly.

Hayden leveled a look at her that she had seen time and time again at the paper. She wasn’t getting out of this. He reached forward and picked up her suitcase and started walking it back to his bedroom.

“You are not sleeping on the couch,” he said. “You’re a guest.”

Liz shrugged and walked with him down the hallway. She glanced off to the right and saw Jamie’s studio. It was a small bedroom covered in easels, canvas, and paint. The floor had a sheet of plastic over the carpet, and the walls were a strange array of colors from where paint had splashed. Jamie removed her apron as they passed.

“One of Jamie’s roommates moved out for the summer, so I took over her bedroom. Otherwise I would have had to live in the suburbs with my parents. Really lucky, I’d say,” Hayden told her as he opened his bedroom for her.

This was more what she expected from Hayden. The room was perfectly put together and sensible compared to his eccentric artist sister. A queen-sized bed sat in one corner with a green comforter and white pillows. A desk sat against one wall, and that was pretty much it as far as the room went. He clearly spent more time at the office than in his room. It looked more like a place you came home to to change and sleep.

Liz set her bag down in the corner as Hayden rummaged through his closet for clothes.

“I’ll go change in the bathroom,” he said, walking out. Liz had moved to his bed and taken a seat while she waited. It felt a bit strange to be sitting on Hayden’s bed, in Hayden’s apartment, hanging out with Hayden. She was sure this summer would be the most memorable she would ever experience. Brady…and now she was sitting on the bed of the guy she had liked for two years. Even if they were just friends, it was a bit bizarre.

He reappeared in the doorway in khaki shorts and a fitted T-shirt. “Thanks for coming out this weekend. I wasn’t sure you were going to be able to make it.”

“I wasn’t sure either…what with school and everything,” she said, not really wanting to get into the real reason. No, she was pretty sure she never wanted to tell him the real reason.

Hayden walked over and took a seat next to her, stretching back on the bed. “How is school going? You’re finished with the semester, right? Did you get your grades back already?”

Liz turned to face him on the bed. She stared down at his lean runner’s build all stretched out on display and tried not to blush. “This semester was surprisingly a challenge. Professor Mires really helped me do more with my project than I’d ever intended. Thank you so much for your good idea. I got an A on that article.”

“Awesome. It was a really good one!” He cradled his hands behind his head.

“Thanks. Couldn’t have done it without you.”

“You would have come up with something,” he said with an easy shrug, as if he’d never doubted it. “So, did you get an A in the class then?”

“I don’t find out until Monday. I turned in one last paper this week. I haven’t even published it to the paper yet. If I do well on it, then I might put it out there,” she told him.

What she hadn’t told him was that the paper she had turned in for her final assignment had been the idea given to her by Brady Maxwell. While she hadn’t used it originally, she still thought it was a good suggestion, and had written and rewritten it too many times to count since she had published the article off of Hayden’s idea. After spending that much time on it, she had decided to turn it in for her final paper to Professor Mires. She was proud of the work and thought it was the right move.

“Nice. You’ll have to let me know how you do. Has the paper been good this summer? I know it was pretty dead, since no one is on campus, but did you think it was useful having your own column anyway?” he asked.

It felt like forever since she had talked about her work with anyone in person. It was a bit like opening the floodgates. She told him all about the paper: the people who were still there, the projects she had worked on, the story of what had happened with Justin. Hayden seemed legitimately interested in every detail. It didn’t seem to be just because he missed the paper, which was obvious, but that he was interested in her more generally. And he couldn’t know the most important thing that had happened to her that summer.

“Hey, you two,” Jamie said, peeking her head into the doorway. “Meredith just got home, James is on his way over, and the lasagna is almost done. I’m opening a bottle of wine, if you guys want to venture out to the living room.”

Liz looked down at her watch in surprise. Had they really been talking for more than an hour? Where had the time gone? It had been so long since Liz had seen Hayden. She was surprised how easy it was to talk to him.

Twenty minutes later, all five of them were seated around the dining room table. Jamie had lit half of the candles in the room and filled their glasses with red wine. The lasagna was to die for, and by the end of the meal, Liz felt a bit sloshy from the wine, but she also felt wonderfully comfortable with the entire group.

Jamie and James were pretty much the cutest couple in existence, and both more than welcoming to her. Meredith, Jamie’s other roommate, worked as a yoga and Pilates instructor nearby and had a total mellow feel to her. Hayden seemed totally in his element, and they spent half of the dinner laughing at one another’s comments. Liz didn’t know whether it was the alcohol fueling it or the general good company, but she hadn’t laughed this much in a long time.

They spent the next couple hours camped out in the living room discussing everything from American politics to French painters to the newest fad diet. The night flew by and soon James was convincing Jamie it was time to go to bed. The two of them and Meredith finally retreated to their respective rooms, leaving Liz and Hayden alone.

“We should probably get to bed if we’re going to get up and walk around the city in the morning,” Hayden said, standing. He reached his hand out to her and she took it, helping her to her feet. She was happy to find out that she wasn’t that wobbly.

“Something is different about you,” he said softly as they stood together.

Liz shrugged and smiled sweetly. “Same old me.”

Hayden shook his head. “No. I can’t put my finger on it, but it’s different.”

“Good different or bad different?” Liz asked.

“Just different. You were always pretty great.”

“Well…thanks,” she said, stepping around him. “I don’t know what it is.”

“Me either,” Hayden said, his eyes following her.

“I’ll see you in the morning,” she said, trying to avoid his intense gaze.

“Good night, Liz.”

Liz walked back to Hayden’s bedroom and closed the door. She leaned her head back against it and let out a long breath.

She knew what had happened to her. Brady fucking Maxwell had happened to her.

Chapter 25

CRACKED OPEN