For the Record (Record #3)(85)

“Thank you,” she said. Her voice was always thick with emotion whenever she spoke with Brady’s parents.

Marilyn pulled back to look at Liz with her hands still on Liz’s shoulders. “Don’t be a stranger when you start school. We’ve enjoyed having you around this summer.”

“I’ll be back on the campaign every chance I get.”

“We know you will,” she said with an easy smile. “Good night.”

Jeff said good night as well and then they departed. Clay and Savannah had never made it to this event and Chris had retired about an hour ago. The numbers were dwindling and only a few older drunk couples remained dancing in the center of the room.

Brady returned to her side after escorting his parents out. “Are you about ready?”

“Dying to get out of these heels,” she admitted.

“I’ll have someone pull the car around.”

Brady said a final farewell to the remaining guests and then they exited the party. It was just past three o’clock in the morning when they finally sat down in the back of the town car. Liz sighed heavily and leaned into Brady’s arm that he had wrapped around her shoulder.

“This was an amazing night,” she breathed.

“I loved sharing it with you.” He kissed her temple and she just sighed louder.

Liz had a feeling that she was going to fall asleep on the drive back to Raleigh. Her mind was exhausted as much as her body was. She couldn’t wait to sink into the soft mattress and wake up to five full days with Brady lounging around the house.

A second later, Brady was shaking her awake and she realized that she must have passed out. She fluttered her eyes open and yawned wide as she came to. “Are we home already?”

“No, baby, just a short detour,” he said. The door opened and Brady helped Liz out of the car.

She glanced around her, trying to figure out where they were. It was pitch-black. The car headlights and the light of the moon offered the only illumination of where she was. There were no buildings and it appeared that they were at the end of a paved road. Everything before them was gravel.

“You brought me to the woods?” she asked, confused.

Brady didn’t have a chance to respond before the driver handed him a few things and then with a nod returned to the car. Brady passed her a jacket, which she took, though she was utterly confused. Next he handed her a flashlight.

“Ready?”

She stared down at her heels. “What is going on? And do you expect me to walk through the woods in these?”

Brady laughed. “It’s a short walk, and not through the woods. There’s a path.”

“Okay,” she said apprehensively.

Liz slid the jacket on over her party dress. It was mid-August so it wasn’t exactly cold outside, but the wind whipped up around her, causing her to shiver. She flicked the flashlight on and walked with Brady across the street to the concrete path that led down the dirt road.

She felt a bit as if she were at the beginning of a horror movie. Walking around in high heels at night in the middle of the woods with nothing to defend herself and only a flashlight that was probably going to break in a matter of seconds. She had so many questions, but Brady didn’t seem as if he was going to answer any of them, so she just kept pace next to him and listened to the crickets chirping in the woods surrounding them.

True to his word, they stopped after only a few minutes when they reached the end of the sidewalk. Before them stretched nothing but a cleared grassy knoll that led down to a glistening uninhabited lake.

He kissed her softly before she could say anything and then gestured for her to walk a short distance down the hill. Brady unrolled the bundle that the driver had handed him. It appeared to be a relatively large quilt, which he spread out before her.

“Take a seat,” he said, and then took his own advice.

Liz gratefully kicked off her high heels and then sank down onto the quilt. She was terribly confused, but too tired to fight him. Plus she was curious as to what they were doing here.

“Are you going to explain yourself?” she finally asked when he remained silent for another moment.

“I took a girl out to dinner once,” he said. “She had been uncertain about the election for longer than she had been uncertain about me. We’d been apart for a long time, and I wanted to prove to her that my feelings were genuine.”

Liz smiled. “Me? I’m that girl.”

“You are. I took her out to dinner. I wanted to be seen with her. I wanted to claim her. I wanted to claim you.”

“Well, I’m yours.”

“And that night you said that the most romantic thing was sitting in an open field looking up at the stars.” He gestured around him. “I give you the stars. I already have mine.”

Liz’s mouth fell open. The stars. He was giving her the stars. She glanced up and realized exactly what was going on. They had driven out of town to a secluded park with no lights for distraction simply to stare up into the night sky, as she had said six months earlier to him on a whim while they were out to dinner.

“I love you,” she whispered. “You . . . you seem to understand me unlike anyone else.”

“I feel the same way. We’re a matched set.”

“Brady, you gave me the stars.”

“I’d like to give you a lot more than that,” he said.