Chapter Sixteen
Edwina
I had not imagined the day ending this way.
The thought moved through me in broken pieces, useless beneath the pressure of Hayden standing too close to steal the air from my lungs.
Every breath felt caught in the furious space between us, tangled with his rage, my fear, and all the truths I had spent years keeping buried.
Only hours ago, this apartment had been filled with music, laughter, candlelight, Helena’s bright voice, and the fragile sweetness of a day I had wanted to protect with both hands.
I had spent the morning hanging banners, smoothing ribbons, and pretending joy could remain untouched if I loved it carefully enough.
Now the room felt smaller. Darker. Every bright thing left behind by the party had become a cruel reminder of how quickly life could split open.
Hayden stood in front of me with a rage held so tightly it frightened me more than shouting would have.
My back was nearly against the wall, and he was near enough for me to feel the heat of him, near enough for his breath to disturb mine.
If I lowered my eyes for even a second, I would see the hard rise and fall of his chest and remember everything I had spent years trying to bury beneath silence, duty, and fear.
He wanted answers. I could see it across his face, through the brutal set of his body, and in the way his eyes refused to release mine.
Letting me look away would have meant losing the last shred of control he had left.
He was furious, yes, but fury was only the surface.
Beneath it lived a hurt so deep I could almost feel its shape before he gave it words, torn raw by five years of absence.
My own eyes still burned. I had cried too much already tonight, yet none of it felt enough for the damage standing in front of me.
My throat ached from everything I had swallowed, all the truth I had buried, and the versions of the past that sounded impossible the moment I tried to drag them into the air.
“Say something,” he said. “Say something, goddamn it.”
His voice was rough and quiet enough to make every word cut. It forced me to hear the strain beneath it, the anger, the wound, the terrifying restraint. Somehow, it sounded worse than shouting.
I swallowed, but my mouth had gone dry. “Hay...Hayden—”
“No.” His jaw flexed. “I’m done with the careful shit. The silence ends tonight. And you don’t get to stand there with those eyes and give me nothing.”
My breath caught.
He stepped closer, and though there was barely any room left, the space around me seemed to shrink anyway. His presence filled everything now, dark and relentless. Pushing him away would have done nothing. Hayden in this mood was not a man who could be moved by force. He was the storm itself.
“I was trying to get you back,” he said.
The words hit me so hard I looked at him before I could stop myself.
His face had changed. The restraint was still there, thinner now, stretched over something savage enough to break through at any second.
“I was trying to figure out how to make you forgive me,” he went on, his voice roughening with every word. “I kept asking myself how the fuck I could stand in front of you and make you believe I was sorry. That I had changed. That I had broken enough inside for any of it to mean a damn thing.”
The ache in my chest deepened. He exhaled, bitter and uneven, caught between a laugh and pain.
“But I was a goddamn fool.”
My lips parted, but I could not speak. I could only look at him.
For years, I had pictured this night in pieces.
His anger. His distance. The hatred I thought would come the moment he learned the truth.
I had prepared myself for him to walk away from me, maybe even curse my name and never look back.
What I had not prepared for was this. The devastation beside the rage.
The sight of a man who looked ready to destroy me and hold me in the same breath.
His eyes dropped to my mouth, then lifted back to mine, and my pulse faltered.
“I want to fucking kill you now,” he said.
The words should have frightened me. Instead, they landed with grief.
His voice turned rougher. “I want to punish you for this. The years. The birthdays. Every goddamn second she was kept from me. I stood there tonight and watched my own daughter look at me as if I was nobody.”
My vision blurred again. Tears gathered before I could stop them. Hayden noticed, and the look on his face tightened, as if my tears only made the wound in him worse.
“You know what the worst part is?” he asked, quieter now. “Years were stolen from me. My daughter was kept out of my life. Tonight gave me every reason to hate you, but all I fucking want is to kiss you.”
The room stopped. My body went still beneath the force of his words, my heart catching hard enough to hurt. I did not have time to answer.
He kissed me.
Gentleness had no place in it. Neither did hesitation or forgiveness.
His hand caught my face, and his mouth came down on mine with fury.
The kiss felt close to punishment, full of rage and hurt, as if he meant to pull every buried truth out of me by force.
For one second, I could not breathe. My body jolted from the impact.
The back of my head brushed the wall, and my fingers clenched around his wrists before sliding to his shirt because I did not know whether I wanted to shove him away or hold on.
He kissed me with the anger he had carried into the room, the hatred he had turned on himself.
I tasted his anger first. Hurt followed beneath it, sharp and deep, carrying the truth of a man who had loved beyond reason, lost more than he could bear, and been denied the one thing he had every right to know.
And God help me, I kissed him back.
Only for a second. Maybe less. Maybe long enough to hate myself for it.
But I did.
Because beneath the rage was Hayden. Beneath the violence of the moment was the person I had loved in the worst and softest ways, whose absence had hollowed out parts of me I never showed anyone.
His face had lived in my daughter for years, and every glimpse of it had taught my heart to break quietly.
A rough sound tore from him when I responded, broken and far too intimate for the fury between us. It undid me more than the kiss itself. His grip tightened a fraction, careful enough not to hurt, firm enough to keep me trapped inside the terrible unraveling neither of us knew how to stop.
My eyes stung.
A tear slipped down my cheek.
I do not know whether he felt it or saw it, only that the kiss changed for one fractured second.
It did not become gentle. Hayden had nothing gentle left in him then.
It turned deeper, more desperate, ruined in a way that made my chest ache, as if the taste of my tears had reached the place his anger came from.
When he finally pulled back, he did not go far. His forehead nearly touched mine. His breath was rough. Mine was worse.
I could barely see him through the blur in my eyes, yet I did not need a clear view to know what he looked like. The damage lived in his breathing and the tension running through his body, while his hand stayed at my face as if letting go would cost him the last piece of control he had left.
I closed my eyes for one second, then opened them again.
“Hayden,” I whispered, and my voice broke on his name.
His expression darkened.
“Don’t,” he said.
The word sounded raw. Half plea, half warning, and I could not decide which one hurt more.
My fingers were still twisted in his shirt. I noticed them too late, shame arriving after the damage had already been done. My pulse raced. My lips burned. Everything inside me felt shaken loose.
“This should not have happened,” I said, though even I heard how weak the words sounded.
His gaze dropped to my mouth for one brutal second before returning to my eyes.
“No,” he said. “What should not have happened is you keeping my daughter from me.”
The words stayed between us long after he spoke them, heavy enough to make breathing feel impossible.
They lodged in my throat, spread through the ache in my chest, and burned behind my eyes.
His hand still rested against my face, warm and faintly unsteady, and somehow that frightened me more than his anger.
Hayden had always been most dangerous when his control started to crack, when I could feel everything he was holding back before it finally tore free.
My lips still burned from his kiss.
So did his.
I could read it from the tight line of his mouth, the uneven rise and fall of his breathing, and the ruined way he looked at me.
He hated me for standing there in front of him.
He wanted me anyway. Both truths had become so tangled inside him that even he seemed unable to tell which one was breaking him more.
It was unbearable.
“Say something,” he murmured.
His voice had lost its earlier sharpness, though nothing gentle had replaced it. It sounded rough instead, worn down by anger, exhaustion, and something too intimate for either of us to touch tonight.
I swallowed, but my throat stayed painfully tight. “I don’t know what to say.”
A humorless smile touched his mouth and vanished so fast I might have imagined it, if not for the bitterness it left behind.
“That has never stopped you from looking at me as if you’re carrying a hundred things you won’t let me hear.”
The words reached a place inside me that was raw and split open.
I dropped my gaze for a second, not to escape him because that had become impossible, but because looking at him for too long had turned dangerous in its own right.
The apartment had gone quiet enough to sharpen every small sound, the hum of the heating, the faint ticking of the kitchen clock, our uneven breathing in a room still holding the remains of my daughter’s birthday.