Chapter Seventeen
Hayden
Helena’s birthday had been a few days ago and London had already put on its Christmas Eve face.
Pale winter light stretched across the city while shop windows glowed with ornaments and strings of gold lights.
People moved through the streets carrying bags and ribbons, wrapped up in holiday plans and the comfort of believing happiness could be simple.
Nothing inside me felt simple. There was darkness under my skin, old hurt that refused to stay buried, and memories I had spent years trying to leave alone.
Had I forgiven Edwina? Or had she forgiven me?
I didn’t fucking know. Part of me wanted to forgive her.
Another part wanted her to carry the weight of this for the rest of her life.
What she had done still lived inside me.
Finding out Helena was mine hadn't erased it.
The fact that I still wanted her with an intensity savage enough to humiliate me had not changed that either.
She had hurt me in a way I was not sure I would ever fully recover from, but I had hurt her too.
I had given her reasons to leave. I had handed her betrayal with my own goddamn hands, whether I had meant for it to destroy us or not.
We were not clean victims standing opposite each other in neat lines of blame.
We were two broken people who had reached for each other badly, loved each other badly, wounded each other so thoroughly that even now, standing among the ruins, neither of us knew how to touch the wreckage without bleeding anew.
Our story wasn't clean. Blame and pain had become too tangled for that. I broke things that should have been protected. She answered that wound with one of her own. We loved each other, and somewhere along the way we stopped knowing how to do it without causing damage.
Even now, standing in the aftermath, neither of us knew how to reach for the other without reopening old wounds.
I bought Helena a present on the way back. It was a small toy, carefully chosen and tucked into a gift bag with tissue paper and ribbon. The thing looked ridiculous in my hand, all bright paper and soft edges, innocent in a way that had no business sitting beside the mess under my skin.
But I carried it anyway.
At every red light, my eyes dropped to the bag on the passenger seat. It felt heavier than it should have, as if the weight of it had nothing to do with the toy inside and everything to do with the right I had not earned yet.
Either way, I was done standing still.
I was going back to spend Christmas Eve with them, and this time, I would introduce myself to Helena properly. Before the night was over, Edwina was going to answer my questions too, starting with the surname she had taken while I was gone.
Rhodes.
I still did not know where the fuck it had come from. The name sat wrong in my head every time I thought it. Edwina Carter belonged to the past I knew, the memories I could not cut out of myself, and the girl I had ruined, lost, and never stopped wanting.
Edwina Rhodes belonged to a life built without me.
Who gave her that name? Why did she take it? Was it chosen, inherited, borrowed, or used for protection? Every possibility pissed me off, but one of them made my blood turn meaner than the rest.
Another man.
I fucking hated that I had to ask.
There were years of her life I knew nothing about.
Names I did not recognize, records I had never seen, choices she had made while I was buried somewhere outside her world.
The thought of another man standing close enough to give her a name, to mark a life that should have had my place in it, made something ugly settle in my chest.
Rhodes kept turning in my head, sharp and wrong.
I was going to find out where it came from, who helped her disappear, and what kind of life she had built with a name I did not recognize. If some bastard had given it to her, then God help him.
Because I was done being patient. I was done standing outside. And I was done letting Edwina decide which pieces of the truth I was allowed to touch.
When I knocked, I realized my hand was wrapped too tightly around the gift bag. Edwina opened the door a second later, and the sight of her hit me in a place that still had not healed.
Christ, she was fucking beautiful.
She wore a cream knit dress that fell to her knees, soft enough for home but fitted in a way that made my thoughts turn filthy before I could stop them.
The sleeves covered most of her hands, her hair was loose around her face, and a thin gold chain rested at her throat.
On her feet were ridiculous puffy slippers that should have made the whole thing harmless.
They didn’t.
For a moment, I only looked at her. The silence shifted. Her fingers tightened against the edge of the door, and her breath changed before she could hide it.
I heard it. That had always been the problem with Edwina. Her mouth could lie, but her body never knew how. I knew the pauses she tried to swallow, the breaths that gave her away, and the way she looked at me when she wanted to run and stay at the same time.
I stepped closer, just a little, and the air between us changed. Warmth rose into her face. She understood what I wanted before she found the strength to move away.
I leaned in.
My mouth was almost on hers when she whispered, “Hayden.”
My name sounded soft in her voice, and it did something brutal to me.
Then, with color deepening across her cheeks, she added, “Helena is inside.”
That should have stopped me. It should have dragged sense back into my head and reminded me that this home was not only hers anymore.
My daughter was inside. Christmas Eve was waiting behind her.
A gift bag hung from my hand, and I had come here to introduce myself properly, not to put my mouth on Edwina the second she opened the door.
But she stood there trembling under my gaze, cheeks flushed, lips parted around my name, and every decent thought in my head went straight to hell.
I did not kiss her mouth. Instead, I turned my head and brushed my lips against the edge of her cheek before lowering them near her ear. Her body trembled before I even spoke.
“Then don’t look at me that way,” I said.
The words came out rough, intimate, and far from innocent.
She drew in a breath. “I’m not—”
“Bullshit,” I whispered, close enough for my mouth to graze the skin beneath her ear. “You open the door trembling under my gaze, breathing like that, saying my name like it still belongs in your mouth, and you expect me to act like a decent man?”
“Hayden,” she said again, quieter this time. There was warning in it, but there was heat too, and that was the part that made me want to forget every reason I had come here angry.
Then she pulled herself together with visible effort and said, “Enough.”
The word came out breathless, and that made it worse.
I looked at her mouth first, then her eyes, and the little bit of control I had left nearly went to hell.
She kept one hand on the door, trying to look irritated, trying to pretend she was not still flushed from the way I had spoken against her skin.
Edwina had always been good at pretending.
Her body had always been shit at helping her.
“Did you come here to flirt with me,” she asked, “or to meet Helena?”
That almost made me smile.
Instead, I stayed where I was, close enough to make her remember I had not moved away because I wanted to.
She had left herself in reach. That was her mistake.
If Edwina was going to stand in front of me with that blush on her face and ask a question that stupid, I was going to make her regret it a little.
“Both,” I said.
Her eyes widened. “Hayden.”
“What?” I asked, letting my gaze drag over her face. “I came to meet my daughter. I also came here with half my sanity gone because you opened the door looking like sin wrapped in cream wool and tried to act innocent about it.”
Her blush deepened, and fuck, that sight did things to me I had no business letting it do.
My cock was rock hard, straining against my pants.
I wanted to bury it deep inside her sweet, tight pussy, feel her warmth envelop me as I thrust in and out.
I craved to taste her cunt, lick and suck her clit until she was writhing and moaning in ecstasy.
I tightened my grip on the gift bag because it was the only thing keeping my hands from going somewhere far less decent.
I bent closer, my mouth near her ear. “If Helena weren’t inside, and if you gave me one honest yes, I’d have you against this door with my mouth on every place that still remembers me. ”
She inhaled sharply. I felt it. Every sweet, guilty little tremor.When I straightened, she looked warmer than before, more flustered, and I let her sit inside it for a second. The blush. The breath. The way her body had answered me before her pride could catch up.
Then she narrowed her eyes, though the look would have worked better if she did not still look ready to fall apart under my gaze.
“Go inside,” she muttered.
I took my time answering. “You’re inviting me in now?”
Her stare flattened. “Do not test me.”
A dark smile touched my mouth. “Too fucking late.”
She made a small sound under her breath, somewhere between irritation and disbelief, before stepping aside to let me in. She gave me one last warning look as I passed, as if I had already said too much and she knew damn well I was nowhere near finished.
I brushed past her slowly, close enough for my shoulder to almost touch hers.
Her perfume caught under my skin, and the tension in her body told me she felt the same pull.
Because apparently I had no fucking mercy where Edwina was concerned, I dipped my head as I passed and murmured, “We’re not finished yet. ”
“Hayden,” she warned.
There was no real force in it now, only heat trying to disguise itself as anger.
Then I stepped fully into the apartment, and the heat of Edwina behind me gave way to the warmth of her home.