Chapter Thirteen #3
Banners stretched across the walls in bright colors.
Balloons clustered near the windows and chairs, streamers hung from shelves and doorframes, and the table was crowded with gifts, ribbons, paper plates, and a birthday cake glowing with candles.
Children ran through the room, laughing and shouting, filling the apartment with wild, careless joy that made me feel suddenly, violently out of place.
Around them, people stood in small groups with drinks in their hands, talking as if they belonged there.
I did not.
Then I saw Edwina.
She stood near the center of the room beside the little girl, both of them dressed in matching pink.
Edwina wore a long-sleeved dress that fell beautifully over her body, soft and feminine in a way that made my chest tighten before I could stop it.
The child’s dress matched hers, smaller and brighter, making them look like two pieces of the same life I had never been allowed to touch.
The second my eyes found them, everything else faded.
Candlelight moved over the child’s face, catching on bright eyes, flushed cheeks, and a smile so open it hit me harder than any fucking accusation could have.
Edwina leaned toward her with one hand near her shoulder, and the softness on her face tore through me with brutal precision.
I had never seen that look on her before. It belonged to her so naturally it made me sick.
Daniel and Giselle stood beside them, folded into the moment with an ease that made my blood turn hot. They looked as if they belonged in her life, in her apartment, in a place I had been locked out of for years.
Something black shifted under my ribs.
The room began counting down. Voices rose together, laughter spilling between them as the little girl drew in a breath and blew out the candles.
Edwina stayed beside her, caught in that small circle of light and joy, looking as though this was where the missing years had taken her.
Not into emptiness. Into this. Into warmth, birthdays, children’s laughter, a home.
A life.
The kid reached for the cake and handed the first piece to Edwina.
The next went to Giselle, followed by one for Daniel.
She smiled at him with easy trust, then wrapped her arms around him in a small hug.
He bent toward her without hesitation, familiar with her in a way that made my stomach twist into something mean.
What the fuck was this?
Daniel looked too comfortable in her home. Standing beside Edwina and that child, accepting that little girl’s hug as if he had earned a place there. As if he had been part of the days I had missed.
The questions came fast, ugly enough to choke on.
Was that little girl mine? His? Some other bastard’s child?
Had Edwina really built this whole life while I was left with silence and a memory that refused to die?
Had she let another man into her apartment, into her little world, into all the places I had once been stupid enough to believe would never belong to anyone else? Had she really moved on?
My hands curled at my sides.
Marriage records had shown nothing. No father listed. No name. Only a child with Edwina’s last name and a birthday that sat too close to the years she had disappeared.
Helena Rhodes.
Four years old.
The facts dug into me, each one worse than the last.
I stared at the little girl again, trying to find answers in a face I had no right to study and still could not look away from. The longer I watched, the more something in my chest began to split open.
Because if she was mine, Edwina had stolen years from me. And if she wasn’t, then some other fucker had touched a life that should have been ours.
Fuck!
The word stayed trapped in my throat, hot and useless.
If Edwina had loved someone else, if another man had touched the parts of her that used to be mine, I had no fucking idea what to do with that.
The thought alone felt brutal enough to split something open in my chest. This beautiful life, this warm apartment, this child with cake on her hands and laughter around her, all of it could belong to some bastard who had been there while I was left with silence.
I did not know how to stand there and survive that.
Then Edwina lifted her head. Her eyes found mine, and the room seemed to lose its sound all at once. The music, the laughter, the voices, the movement around her, everything faded until there was only the pull between us, sharp enough to cut through the air.
I saw the second she recognized me. The color drained from her face. Her body went still, and panic flashed across her expression before she could bury it. Then her gaze shifted to the little girl beside her, fast and instinctive, before snapping back to me.
That look ruined me. Confusion had nothing to do with it. Neither did surprise.
It was fear.
Fear of two lives slamming into each other without warning. Fear of the truth she had buried suddenly standing in the doorway and looking straight back at her.
Edwina looked caught in the middle of it, with me on one side and that child beside her holding a plate of birthday cake. For one vicious second, I understood to feel the ground shift beneath me.
She was scared because I was there.
Because Helena was there.
Because those two facts should never have met.
Something cold settled deep inside my chest, darker than jealousy and meaner than shock. Whatever the fuck this was, it was bigger than I had imagined. And I was already too far inside it to turn back.