Chapter Fifteen
Hayden
Helena.
The name stayed lodged deep in my skull, moving through me with the same brutal force it had carried the moment it left her small mouth.
Light. Brightness. A name that meant something close to shining, and fuck, that nearly ruined me all over again.
I had called Edwina my Flare because she had been the only light I ever found in the middle of my own darkness.
She had burned through the worst parts of me without even trying.
She had lit up places I had never let anyone touch.
And then she had named our daughter Helena, as if that little girl had become her own light after I was gone. Her light in the dark.
Christ. I could still hear Helena saying her name in that soft, careful voice, polite and bright enough to make the darkness inside me feel even uglier.
She had looked at me with no fear in her eyes, no suspicion in her expression, completely unaware of what she had just done to me by standing there with my eyes in her face and my blood written into every tiny part of her.
I saw it the second I looked at her.
No. That was too weak. I knew. The truth hit too hard to mistake for hope. Grief was not playing tricks on me, and this sure as hell was not some pathetic fantasy my mind had dragged out of the wreckage. Her eyes gave it away first.
Fuck.
Her eyes. The moment I really looked into them, something inside me went still in the most dangerous way.
I was looking at myself. There was nothing sentimental or vague about it, none of that watered-down bullshit people used when they wanted resemblance to mean more than it did.
I looked at that child and saw my own goddamn eyes staring back at me from a smaller, brighter face.
No one could deny it. Not me. Not any stranger in that room.
And sure as hell not Edwina.
She had seen it too. I knew she had. Her face gave her away before she could stop it.
Fear moved through her too fast, and her eyes filled with tears she fought like hell to hold back.
She knew exactly what I had noticed. She knew what was happening inside my head the second I looked at that little girl and the truth drove itself between my ribs.
Helena was mine. My daughter. I was fucking sure of it.
The years vanished into nothing. All I could see was Edwina’s panic. The life she had hidden. The daughter she had kept from me so completely that I had been reduced to a stranger asking my own child her name while she looked at me with innocent curiosity and called me sir.
Sir.
The memory of it made something black twist inside me. I was the stranger. Me.
The man standing at the edge of my daughter’s life. The outsider. She looked at me with caution because my face meant nothing to her, my voice carried no memory, and every instinct in her little body told her I was someone unknown.
And Daniel?
That bastard was familiar.
He had her smile, her trust, and her little arms around his neck as if he had earned a place in a life that should have had my name carved into it from the beginning.
He took cake from her hand with ease, standing inside the shape of her day while I watched like some fucking intruder at my own daughter’s birthday.
That truth hit hard enough to make violence feel reasonable. I should have been the face she knew. The voice that meant safety. The man she ran to without thinking. I should have been there for the birthdays, the small ordinary shit that makes a father real in a child’s life.
Instead, I was sir.
And Daniel was here.
I could still feel that room on my skin. Children laughing. Music playing. Balloons brushing the ceiling while I stood there trying not to rip the truth out of Edwina with my bare hands. I should have dragged her out the second I understood.
A part of me wanted to. The worst part of me was already starving for answers, blood, and anything that could make the last five years hurt less than they did in that moment.
But Helena was here.
Jesus fucking Christ.
My daughter was standing right in front of me with birthday frosting on her fingers, looking up at me with those bright, careful eyes.
Rage was carving through me, yet I could not let it touch her day.
I would not turn that little girl’s birthday into a battlefield.
Edwina deserved answers torn out of her, maybe worse, but Helena deserved one clean memory from the man she did not know yet.
So I swallowed the fury until it burned. I reached into my coat pocket and pulled out the small velvet box I had bought on the way. Now my hand almost shook around it.
Helena looked at the box, then up at me. “Is that for me?”
I crouched in front of her, forcing my voice not to break. “Yeah, little star. It’s for you.”
Her eyes widened. “Mommy, can I?”
Edwina did not answer at first. Her stare burned into me, panic and pain stretching between us like a live wire. Then she gave a small nod.
Helena took the box with both hands and opened it carefully. Inside was a tiny silver bracelet with a little star charm hanging from it.
She gasped. “It has a star.”
“It does,” I said, my throat tight as hell. “Thought it suited you.”
Her smile hit me so hard I almost forgot how to breathe.
“Thank you, sir.”
Sir.
Fuck.
The word went through me like a blade, but I made myself smile for her. “You’re welcome, Helena.”
She turned the bracelet in her hand, all soft wonder and birthday happiness, completely unaware that she had just ruined me with one polite word.
My eyes met Edwina’s.
Then I left.
I do not remember the exact moment I walked out, only the force it took to leave. Every instinct in me wanted to stay, tear the place apart, and rip answers from Edwina’s mouth until the screaming inside me finally stopped.
I got back to my car and shut the door. The silence that followed was not silence at all. My pulse was too loud. My thoughts were worse. Everything inside me had gone rabid.
It was late now. The street had quieted. Warm light glowed behind windows, and somewhere above me, the party had started to die down. The music was gone, replaced by muffled movement, doors opening and closing, laughter thinning as guests began to leave.
I sat behind the wheel with my hands locked around it hard enough to ache. My jaw clenched until the pressure reached my temples.
And I watched.
One by one, they came out. Parents carrying tired children.
Young people shrugging into coats. A few guests still laughing about shit that no longer mattered.
I studied every face, still on the outside while the violence in me sank deeper and turned colder.
I did not blink much. Movement felt pointless.
Tiredness had nothing to do with me anymore.
I was running on betrayal, certainty, and the sick knowledge that Edwina had known all along.
That was the part that kept tightening my grip.
She had looked me in the face tonight with tears in her eyes and fear written through her body because there was no denying what I had seen. Helena was mine. The truth had lived with Edwina for years while I tore myself apart in the dark, thinking I had lost only her.
All this time, she had carried my child, given birth to her, raised her, and buried me so deep outside that life I had to stand there as a stranger at my own daughter’s birthday.
What kind of fucking cruelty did that take?
What kind of coldness?
What kind of terror had possessed her to build a whole life around that silence and call it protection?
I did not know.That was why I stayed there, waiting in the dark with something inside me that no longer felt fully human.
There was no version of this night where I drove away, slept it off, and came back tomorrow pretending to be calmer or more civilized.
That shit was gone. The part of me still sitting in that car had teeth now.
It wanted the truth raw, ugly, and stripped of every lie she had used to survive me.
After the guests left, after the lights dimmed and the building settled, there would be nothing standing between us except the wreckage she had spent years hiding behind. Edwina was going to tell me everything.
Every fucking thing.
Because if Helena was mine, and she was, I would stake my goddamn life on it, then tonight was the last night Edwina Rhodes got to keep that truth from me.
Giselle came out first. Then Daniel. They were the last ones.
For a moment, I stayed inside the car, half-hidden by the dark, watching them step into the cold beneath the weak gold of the streetlamp. Giselle said something as she adjusted her coat. They lingered for a minute before going separate ways.
That was it. The witnesses were gone. The interruptions were over.
I got out of the car and crossed the distance with my whole body wound tight.
Rage burned too fast for what lived in me now.
This was colder, heavier, built for damage.
By the time I reached her door, I could hear movement inside.
Soft steps. The quiet sounds of cleaning up after a party.
The remains of a life I had been denied.
I stood there for only a second before the door opened.
Edwina must have thought the night had ended. That she had survived the worst of it. That once the guests were gone and Helena was asleep, she could finally breathe.
She saw me just as she started to close the door. Shock hit her face first. Then anger.
She moved fast, trying to shut me out, but I was faster. My hand slammed against the door before the lock could catch, stopping it hard enough to make her breath catch.
“What the hell are you doing?” she hissed, her voice sharp and furious. “What are you doing here at this hour?”
I stared at her through the narrow opening, every savage thing inside me going quiet.
“Me?” I said.
My voice came out rough, almost quiet, which only made it worse.
“Me?” I repeated, pushing the door wider when she tried to force it shut. “You want to stand there and ask me what the fuck I’m doing here?”
“Hayden—”