Chapter Ten #2
The university was not enough either. Too many people. Too many interruptions. Every conversation cut short before it could become something real, before it could force her to stop hiding behind professional boundaries.
She was good at that. Keeping space where there should not have been any. Looking at me as though I was only a problem she intended to manage.
But I had already seen the truth. I saw it when I said her name. I felt it when I touched her. I tasted it when she kissed me back and lost herself for one second before dragging that composed version of herself back into place.
That was enough. Whatever lie she was feeding herself, I knew it was cracking.
I leaned forward, resting my forearms against the steering wheel as the idea took shape. If she would not come to me, then I would create a reason she could not avoid. Something that did not depend on whether she wanted to cooperate.
A humorless smile touched my mouth as I looked toward the dark windows of the apartment, imagining her somewhere inside, thinking she still controlled how close I could get.
“You can’t hide anymore,” I murmured. Not after I found you.
The decision settled fully then. I would not chase her the way I had before, and I would not wait for her to open the door. I would step into her life in a way she could not shut out.
Because if Edwina Rhodes thought she could keep me at arm’s length while standing this close, she was about to learn how fucking wrong she was.
***
The next morning came with a sharpness that made sleep feel useless.
I was not calm, and I sure as hell was not at peace.
Something had been building under my skin since the moment I saw her again, and by the time I parked in the university lot, I knew I was done pretending patience had ever been part of my nature. I was waiting for her.
The parking lot was almost empty, with only a few cars scattered across the spaces and the cold morning air carrying the sound of footsteps from somewhere near the main entrance.
It was quiet enough to work in my favor, far from the crowded halls, open office doors, and polite interruptions that kept cutting through every conversation we tried to have inside that damn building.
I saw her the moment she arrived.
Her car door opened, and she stepped out with that calm little armor she loved wearing, posture straight, face unreadable, acting as though last night had not followed her into morning.
As though a few hours of sleep could erase the way she had melted in my hands before pulling herself back together.
She did not notice me at first, which made it easier. By the time her gaze lifted and found me, I was already moving toward her, crossing the parking lot with every ounce of restraint I had left burning out beneath my skin.
My hand closed around her wrist before she could step away.
She startled, her body jerking back as anger flashed across her face. “Hayden, what the hell?”
“Come with me.”
“No.”
The refusal came fast, and she dug her heels into the pavement, pushing at my arm with her free hand as she tried to pull away. “Let go of me.”
“Not happening.”
I started toward my car, taking her with me despite the fight she put into every step.
Her resistance only sharpened the anger already moving through me, because after last night, with her mouth on mine, that name still in my head, her apartment found, and so much of her life kept from me, I was done standing around waiting for her to hand me half-truths.
“Have you lost your mind?” she snapped, trying to wrench her wrist free. “You can’t just drag me around like this.”
“Watch me.”
Her anger broke loose then. “Hayden, I swear to God.”
She tried to hit me. I caught her other wrist before her hand could land, stopping her mid-motion and pulling her closer at the same time. Her breath caught, only for a second, but I felt it.
“You’re hitting me now?” I asked, my voice rough with a humor I did not feel.
“Let. Me. Go.”
Her eyes burned into mine as she struggled again, her arms tense beneath my hands.
“Say please.”
Her expression darkened. “Fuck you.”
A humorless smile touched my mouth. “There she is.”
She pulled harder this time, her whole body resisting me, anger breaking through the composure she wore so carefully in public.
Here, in the quiet of the parking lot, the university felt far away, and there was nothing left between us except anger, history, and the truth neither of us wanted to say. “Hayden, stop this right now.”
“Not until you stop running.”
“I’m not running.”
“Bullshit.”
The word cut between us, and I saw it hit deeper than her anger before her expression hardened again.
I opened the passenger door with one hand, keeping my hold on her wrist with the other.
“Get in.”
“No.”
I stepped closer, letting the space between us shrink until her anger had nowhere to go except straight into me.
“You can either get in the car willingly, and cooperate,” I whispered with a calm tone that emphasized the underlying danger, “or you can keep struggling and make this a public spectacle in front of the whole university.
If you choose the latter, I promise you, I'll fuck your tight, pretty pussy raw as everyone hears you moan at the moment you come on my cock.”
For a second, she only stared at me, as if she was trying to understand how the man she had once trusted with everything had become someone standing in front of her now, holding on to her as if letting go was no longer an option.
“Do you hear yourself?” she asked, her voice no longer raised, which somehow made it cut deeper. “Do you actually hear what you’re saying to me?”
“I do.”
“That’s kidnapping, Hayden. “You don’t get to take me somewhere I don’t want to go because you don’t like my answers.”
A humorless breath left me. “Then stop giving me answers that sound like lies.”
Her expression shifted for a second, not enough for anyone else to catch, but enough for me.
“I’m not lying,” she said, though the words lost some of their force before they reached me. “I’m trying to live my life without you tearing it apart again.”
Again. The word stayed between us.
My grip tightened before I could stop it. “You left.”
“And you lied,” she shot back, anger breaking through whatever control she had left. “You lied to me about everything that mattered.”
“I told you—”
“You told me after,” she cut in, her voice rising. “After I had already seen it with my own eyes. After I had already stood there feeling stupid for believing I was the only one who mattered to you.”
The words hit harder than anything she had said so far, because they were not only anger. They were the truth.
Her breathing was uneven now, her wrist still trapped in my hand while the space between us filled with everything we had never said.
“I trusted you,” she continued. “Do you understand that? I gave you everything. I believed you. I handed you the parts of me I was supposed to protect, and I didn’t stop to think what it would cost if you turned out to be exactly who you were.”
My jaw tightened. “And who was I?”
Her eyes didn’t soften. “A man who had another life I didn’t belong to.”
The silence pressed between us.
“And now you think you can just show up,” she went on, her voice trembling despite the control she was trying to keep, “drag me into your car after everything, treat my refusal like it means nothing, and act entitled to a place in my life after what you did to me?”
Her words hit harder than her attempts to pull away, because this was what she had been holding back: the hurt beneath the anger.
“You can’t do this, Hayden,” she whispered, and this time there was no sharpness left, only a rawness that made my chest ache. “You can’t come back and decide I still belong to you.”
For the first time since I grabbed her, something inside me shifted. It was not enough to make me let go, but enough to make me understand. She wasn’t fighting to win. She was fighting to survive what I had already done to her once.
My grip didn’t loosen, but my voice changed when I spoke again.
“Then why are you still shaking?”
Her breath caught, just slightly.
“You think this doesn’t affect me?” I asked, my voice rough now, the last of my restraint burning through. “You think I spent all this time looking for you just so I could stand here and watch you walk away from me again?”
“I didn’t ask you to look for me.”
“No,” I said. “You disappeared and expected me to accept it.”
“I expected you to understand it.”
“I understood one thing,” I bit out. “You were gone, and I was nowhere near done with you.”
The air between us felt too close, charged with everything we had buried and everything she kept trying to deny.
“You can’t decide that alone,” she said, though her voice had weakened.
“Maybe not.” I held her gaze. “But you sure as hell can’t decide it without me either.”
Her lips parted, but nothing came out. That small silence, that crack in the wall she kept putting between us, was enough.
“Get in the car, Edwina.”
The words came quieter this time, which somehow made them worse. I was finished standing outside the parts of her life she kept locked away, finished pretending I could accept distance when every inch of her still reacted to me.
She kept pulling against me, fury sharpening when she realized I was not bluffing. “Hayden, stop. This is insane,” she snapped, twisting her wrist again. “I’m serious. Let me go right now.”
“Get in.”
“No.”
The refusal came fast, but something strained lived beneath it, something that made my grip tighten for half a second.
I did not argue. I guided her toward the passenger side, firm enough to keep her moving but careful not to hurt her, because she was still the one thing I had no intention of breaking.
She stepped inside with anger written across her face, and the moment she was in the seat, I shut the door.
Then I walked around the car, slid behind the wheel, and locked the doors.
The sound made her turn toward me at once.