Chapter Twenty #3
I moved closer before I could decide whether I wanted to slap him or ask if he was alive.
He looked awful. Ragged, thinner than the last time I had seen him, his face drawn so sharply it made his cheekbones stand out, his eyes dark and bloodshot beneath wet strands of hair.
The anger that had carried me through the past days flared hotter at the sight of him, because he had no right to look ruined after being the one who disappeared.
“Hayden.”
His hand stilled around the lighter.
He looked up, and the cigarette slipped slightly between his fingers. Neither of us moved for a moment. Rain ran down the side of his face, catching at his lashes, his collar, the tense line of his jaw. Then he dropped the cigarette to the ground and stepped toward me.
I should have backed away.
I didn’t.
He reached me too quickly, his hand coming to my waist as if the distance between us had been choking him. His forehead hovered close to mine, close enough for me to feel the heat of his breath against my skin. Uneven. Broken. Alive. His coat smelled of rain, cold air and him.
“Don’t,” he said before I could speak.
My body went rigid beneath his hand. “Don’t what?”
“Don’t ask me questions yet.” His voice was wrecked, scraped raw in a way that made my anger sharpen instead of soften. His fingers tightened once at my waist, a brief pressure that told me how badly he was holding himself together. “Not yet.”
I stared at him with fury burning in my throat. The unanswered calls, Helena’s disappointed face, the lies I had fed my daughter because of him, everything came rushing back at once.
“You disappear for days,” I said, my voice shaking with rage, “and the first thing you say to me is don’t? Where the hell have you been?”
His eyes closed for half a second, and when they opened again, whatever I saw there made my anger stumble. It did not leave. Fuck no. But for one dangerous moment, it lost its footing.
“Edwina,” he said.
“No.” I pushed at his chest, not to move him, just to remind both of us that I still could. “Do not say my name like that. You vanished, ignored every call and broke Helena’s heart, and now you’re standing here looking half-dead as if I’m supposed to understand without you giving me one damn word.”
His jaw tightened. Pain crossed his face, fast and ugly.
“I know,” he said.
The answer was quiet enough to hurt, ruined in a way I did not want to feel.
“Do you?” I snapped. “Because she asked if you stopped liking us. She asked if you were coming back or not.”
That hit him. I felt it in the way his body locked beneath my hand. His face changed, and for a second Hayden Stone disappeared behind someone gutted by his own guilt.
“Fuck,” he breathed.
“Yes. Fuck.” My voice broke, and I hated that too. “That’s what I’ve been living with while you were doing whatever the hell this is.”
He lowered his head until his forehead nearly touched mine again. “Please.”
The word shook something in me. I hated him for that.
Hayden did not plead easily. He usually turned need into something darker, something sharp enough to feel dangerous.
Now there was no performance in it. He sounded stripped bare, as if whatever had happened had taken the last of his pride with it.
“Don’t,” I whispered, because I did not know whether I was warning him or myself.
His gaze dropped to my mouth, then dragged back to my eyes. “I missed you so fucking much.”
My throat tightened.
“No,” I said, though I did not move away. “Missing me does not fix this.”
“I know.” His voice broke around the words. “I’m not trying to fix it. I just need one second before I have to tell you everything.”
The hallway seemed to close around us. Rain tapped against the glass behind him.
The cupcakes were slipping in my hand. His coat was cold against my fingers, but the space between us had gone unbearably warm.
He looked hollowed out, half-starved, barely standing, and still my body remembered him with humiliating speed.
“Just let me taste you,” he said, rough and strained.
I should have stepped back, shoved the cupcakes into his chest, and made him answer every question before his mouth came anywhere near mine. Instead, I stood there breathing too hard, furious and weak and sick of how much of me still reached for him.
His hand flexed at my waist. “Edwina.”
I hated the sound of my name in his mouth.
I hated that I missed it.
Then he kissed me.
His mouth met mine with the force of everything he had been holding back, and the moment I opened for him, something broke in both of us. He tasted of rain and exhaustion, with something darker underneath that I did not want to name.
He kissed me as if he had barely made it back from somewhere terrible.
I kissed him with all the rage of being left waiting.
My back hit the door, the box of cupcakes tilting dangerously in my grip.
His hand stayed at my waist as if letting go would finish whatever had already broken in him.
Rain from his hair brushed damp against my temple, and his breath came hard against my mouth.
The kiss slowed, deepened, changed shape until hunger gave way to grief trying to find a way out.
God help me, my anger betrayed me first. My body knew him too well. It remembered him before my pride could protect me, before my mind could gather every reason I should make him suffer before touching him again.
When he finally pulled back, he did not go far. His forehead rested near mine. His eyes were open now, and what I saw there scared me more than his silence had. He looked tired. Guilty. But beneath that was something torn open and still bleeding.
Whatever explanation he had brought with him had not come alone.
It carried damage.
It carried loss.