Chapter Eight #2
“Don’t do that,” she said, anger cutting through her voice. “Don’t stand there and pretend you didn’t know exactly what you were doing.”
My gaze dropped to her mouth before returning to her eyes. “I knew.”
“Hayden,” she warned.
I stepped closer, slowly, giving her time to move while making sure she knew I wanted her to stay. “You left the table because of me.”
“I left because you were being an arrogant asshole.”
A faint smile touched my mouth.
“You shouldn’t be here,” she said after a second. “People will see.”
“Let them.”
“That’s not funny.”
“I’m not joking.”
She crossed her arms in front of her chest, a gesture I recognized too well to mistake for anything else.
“You’re causing attention again,” she said. “You could have stayed at the table.”
“I didn’t want to stay at the table.”
“Why?”
“Because I was two seconds away from breaking Whitmore’s fucking hand for touching your back.”
Her lips parted, anger flashing across her face. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me.”
“What the hell is wrong with you?”
“He’s too close to you,” I said, my voice dropping. “Far too comfortable. Damn familiar for a man who has no idea what he’s standing next to.”
She let out a sharp breath. “So? That is not your fucking business.”
“The hell it isn’t.”
“You have no say in who stands near me.”
“No,” I said, stepping closer. “But I sure as hell get to hate every second of watching another man put his hands where mine used to be.”
She stepped to the side, trying to move past me, but I caught her wrist before she could leave. The second my fingers closed around her skin, the air between us changed.
She froze. “Hayden!”
“Relax,” I said, keeping my grip firm to stop her from walking away. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
“That’s not the point.”
“Then what is the point?”
“That you have no right to grab me whenever you feel like it.”
Her voice cut sharp, but the tension in her arm told a different story.
“You’re shaking again,” I murmured.
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
Her jaw tightened. “Let go.”
Instead, I stepped closer, and the hallway seemed to shrink around us. The noise from the reception faded behind the closed doors, leaving only her breath, my hand around her wrist, and the heat of everything neither of us wanted to name.
“You came here with him,” I said.
“So?”
“So what exactly is he to you?”
Her face hardened. “A colleague.”
“That’s it?”
“Yes.”
“Bullshit.”
Her eyes widened, and fuck, I liked that reaction too much.
“I’ve been watching the two of you all evening,” I continued, lowering my voice. “That didn’t look like colleagues.”
I looked down at my hand still holding her wrist. Then back at her. “I remember what it felt like when you used to look at me the way you look at him now.”
Her lips parted, and for a second the hallway seemed to hold its breath around us. Then footsteps sounded from the reception area behind her, faint enough to miss if we had not both been so aware of everything outside this charged little space.
Edwina heard them too, and her eyes cut toward the sound. “Hayden,” she whispered, anger tight in her voice, “someone could come out here.”
I glanced toward the corner of the hallway and made the decision before reason could interfere. My grip tightened around her hand, and I pulled her with me down the corridor.
“What the hell are you doing?” she demanded under her breath. “Where are you taking me?”
“Somewhere quieter.”
“Let go of me.”
“Not yet.”
“Hayden, I swear to God,” she hissed, trying to pull her hand free. “You have no claim to drag me around as if I belong to you.”
I looked back at her, jaw tight, jealousy still burning too hot under my skin. “You do belong to me.”
Her breath caught. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me,” I said. “And stop letting Whitmore fucking touch you.”
Her eyes flashed. “That is your problem, not mine.”
“It became my problem the second his hand touched you.”
We turned another corner, leaving the reception farther behind until the music faded into the walls and the voices became nothing more than a low hum. I stopped near a narrow alcove and released her hand before she could curse me again.
She pulled her arm back at once, breathing hard, furious to the point of looking untouchable and flushed in a way that ruined the lie.
“Are you insane?” she snapped.
“Probably.”
“This is not normal.”
“No,” I said, stepping closer. “Nothing about you has ever made me normal.”
Her throat moved, and she hated that I noticed. The hallway was empty now, silent around every breath between us, and the look in her eyes told me she understood exactly why being alone with me was dangerous.
Edwina
It was not right, and still, for a few moments, neither of us spoke.
The silence between us carried too much to be harmless, all the words we had swallowed, all the memories pressing beneath the present until the air felt harder to breathe.
His gaze stayed on me with the same force that had once undone every defense I owned, and the longer I stood beneath it, the harder it became to hold on to the composure I had spent years building.
Then he moved, slower than I expected, with a restraint that made the space between us feel even more dangerous.
His hand lifted, and for a second I thought he might stop himself before the moment crossed into something neither of us could take back.
He didn’t. The back of his knuckles brushed along my cheek, soft and almost uncertain, as if he were touching a memory he knew too well and no longer knew whether he had the right to reach for.
The warmth of his skin sent a tremor through me.
I should have stepped away. I knew that with every rational part of myself, knew I needed distance before the control I had rebuilt slipped through my fingers again.
Still, my body stayed where it was, caught between anger and memory, between the woman I had become and the girl who had once leaned into his touch without fear.
His fingers followed the curve of my cheek before drifting toward a loose strand of hair near my temple.
He twisted the soft wave between them in a gesture so familiar it hurt, and the years between us seemed to fold in on themselves.
The hallway around us fell quiet, the world beyond the alcove fading until all I could feel was his hand near my face and the dangerous memory of what his touch had once meant to me.
My eyes closed before I could stop them.
I had not meant to give him that reaction, yet my body answered the warmth of his touch before my mind could pull me back.
For one brief moment, I let myself feel it, the familiarity of his hand near my face, the tenderness that had once made me believe there was no safer place than the space between us.
Then reality returned.
I opened my eyes, and the way he was looking at me made my chest tighten. There was too much memory in his gaze, too much of everything we had failed to leave behind. I swallowed, trying to find something solid inside myself before his name slipped from my mouth.
“Hayden…”
It came out barely above a whisper. The strand of hair fell from his fingers as our eyes met again, and the fragile moment between us shifted into something I no longer knew how to control. I searched his face, hating the part of me that must have looked close to pleading.
“What, Edwina?” he asked.
The sound of my name in his voice tightened something in my chest. I forced myself to step back, only enough to put a thin layer of distance between us, though even that felt fragile.
“You shouldn’t be doing this,” I said, trying to hold my voice together while the ache beneath it refused to leave. “You’re probably married now.”
The words came out sharper than I meant them to, carried by the memory of that café, of the moment everything I believed about us had fallen apart.
“And I’m not going to make the same mistake twice.”
His brows drew together.
“What mistake?”
The anger I had spent years swallowing finally tore loose. “This,” I said, gesturing between us. “This sick, twisted thing you keep trying to drag me back into.”
His gaze stayed on mine. “You’re talking in riddles.”
“No,” I snapped. “I’m talking about the reality you keep pretending doesn’t exist.”
The silence between us tightened before the words I had carried for years came out with all the force I had tried to bury. “I will not be the other woman in whatever fucked-up relationship you still have with your fiancée.”
The word fiancée landed between us, and I watched him, waiting for guilt, for shame, for one crack in that controlled face that would prove I had not spent years hating him for nothing. Instead, he looked confused, and that made me angrier.
“You think I’m married?” he asked.
“I don’t know what the hell you are,” I snapped. “And I don’t care anymore.”
My hands curled at my sides. “Just leave.”
His expression hardened. “Leave?”
“Yes,” I said, my voice cutting through the hallway now. “Leave this city. Leave my university. Leave my life. Leave me.”
Hayden stepped toward me, and I moved back at once.
“Leave me the fuck alone.”
“Edwina—”
“No,” I cut him off, anger burning too hot to contain. “Stop saying my name. Don’t touch me. Don’t corner me in hallways and act as if you can walk back into my life and claim something you threw away years ago.” His jaw tightened.
“Just go,” I said, my voice rising. “Return to whatever life you built with your fiancée. Leave for Washington. Crawl back into whatever lie you came from and stop dragging me into your mess again.”
“I’m not married.”
His words cut through mine, and for a second, I couldn’t breathe.
For a moment, the hallway seemed to stop around us. “What?” I whispered.
Hayden’s voice lowered, though nothing in it wavered. “I said I’m not married.”
I stared at him, trying to make the words fit into everything I had believed for years. “How is that possible?”
“It is.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head as anger and disbelief rose together. “No, you’re lying again.”
His jaw tightened.
“I’m not.”
“But…”