Chapter 1

ELECTION DAY

I can’t believe you dragged me to this party,” Victoria said.

Liz’s best friend was standing against the bar with a drink in her hot-pink-manicured hand. She looked as gorgeous as ever in a skintight black dress covering her voluptuous body, and bright red heels to match her cherry red lips.

“You’re the one who said that you wanted to go out with me tonight,” Liz reminded her.

“I didn’t know it was to a newspaper party . . . on election night.” Victoria tossed her dark brown hair off her shoulder and looked at Liz beneath thick black lashes coated in mascara.

“I’ve only been working toward this, oh, I don’t know, all year.”

Victoria shrugged. “Some things are important to you and some things are important to me. At least we both agree on alcohol,” she said, holding up her glass.

Liz giggled and took a sip of her drink. “Liking the effects of alcohol and liking alcohol are two different things.”

“That’s like saying liking the way Hayden kissed you and liking Hayden are two different things.”

“Coming from the girl who will kiss anyone!” Liz cried. Gah! Did Victoria have to bring this up again? How often had they had this conversation since she and her editor at the paper had shared that heated kiss over the summer?

Giving up Brady had been bad enough.

Her affair with the State Senator Brady Maxwell had lasted the length of the summer, and in that span of time she had fallen unequivocally in love with him. In love with a man whom she couldn’t be with because she was a reporter, a liability to the campaign, a liability to everything he had worked for. And then on the night of his primary victory Brady had given his acceptance speech, proclaiming her, in all but name, as the person who had made him believe completely in this journey he was on. It was in that moment of clarity that she had known what she had to do.

If she forced Brady to decide between her and the campaign, it would have hurt him; and if he chose her and lost the campaign, he would resent her. She hadn’t been okay with either of those scenarios. So Liz had taken the choice into her own hands and walked out on him, and she hadn’t heard from Brady in the two and half months since she had left. Two and a half agonizing months.

“I can kiss whoever I want, Liz,” Victoria said.

“Like the Duke Fan?” Liz chided, shuddering.

“Yes, I can’t believe you are so freaked out that I went on a date with someone who goes to Duke.” Liz just shrugged. “And anyway, you’re the one swooning over your Hayden Lane.”

Liz’s eyes shifted from Victoria to Hayden, standing only a few feet away lost in conversation. If he heard a whisper of this, Liz would kill Victoria.

She wasn’t ready for a relationship or really anything else with Hayden—or anyone. Victoria didn’t understand why, but then again, she didn’t know that the guy Liz had been seeing over the summer had been Brady Maxwell. No one did. Certainly not Hayden. He didn’t even know she’d been seeing someone.

That had made it difficult to explain why she wouldn’t go out with him. It wasn’t like she could just come out and say she was too emotionally bruised by a certain sitting State Senator and was stupidly hoping that he might come find her. She had tried sidestepping Hayden when he had asked her out, but then she’d had to tell him something, and none of her excuses seemed to be good enough. How long could she keep a guy at bay after kissing him the way she had in front of the Lincoln Memorial in D.C.?

“Swooning?” Liz shook her head, trying to keep her voice down. “Are you serious?”

“He’s been flirting with you all night, Lizzie.” Victoria batted her eyes at Liz.

“Oh, stop calling me that.”

“He won’t.”

That was the truth. Hayden hadn’t stopped calling her Lizzie since that night they’d kissed over the summer. Victoria found it hilarious and always poked fun at Hayden whenever she could.

“You’re insufferable. You know that, right?”

Victoria smiled in a way that said more than even her perfectly arched eyebrow. Liz didn’t know why she let her best friend get to her so easily. She wasn’t ready to move on. She wasn’t over Brady Maxwell . . . as much as she wanted to let go. Their relationship had been too important for her to just easily move on to someone else. Perhaps that was silly.

“Well, if you won’t make a move, then maybe I should,” Victoria suggested, like she had just thought of it.

“Hayden’s not even your type.”

“Type?” Victoria asked. “What is this thing you speak of?”

“He’s not currently working toward or already has a PhD.”

“Well, yeah, he’s not smart enough for me. That’s obvious,” Victoria said.

Liz rolled her eyes.

“But I think I wouldn’t mind a piece of a tall, fit runner for a change,” Victoria said, taking a step forward.

“Victoria!” Liz snapped, blocking her path. “Cut it out.”

“Oh, come on, Liz. Have some fun.”

“Not that kind of fun.” The last thing she wanted was for Victoria to embarrass her in front of all of her colleagues. And, well, even if she wasn’t sure she was ready to move past what had happened with Brady, that certainly didn’t mean she wanted Victoria to make a pass at Hayden.

“Why not? Just go home with him. Have a good f**k and move on from the summer. The summer is over. You can’t change anything that happened, but you don’t have to let it make your decisions for you.”

“I’m not,” Liz said, but there was no conviction in her voice. How could she ever explain? Letting Brady go felt like a bigger loss than just walking out of the primary party. But she had walked out. She had made her own decision, and it didn’t sit well with her that Victoria implied that she was still allowing Brady to control her.

Tristan, one of her freshman helpers at the college paper, came running into the room and broke through her thoughts. He craned his neck around, and Liz waved her hand in the air to signal him. He darted over and stood before her in perfectly pressed khaki pants, a navy polo, and a black jacket. The only thing giving away that he had been in a rush was the wave at the crest of his typically flawless hair, and the bead of sweat forming at his temple.

“Dougherty,” Tristan said to Liz in greeting. She had been able to break him of the formal Miss that had gone before that for the first month or more of his working for her. But now, even when they were just out with friends, she couldn’t break him of the habit of addressing her simply by her last name.