Chapter Twenty-two
Edwina
Snow had been falling since morning, thick enough to soften the city and cover the pavements by the time we left for Helena’s favorite burger place. London looked gentler under it, wrapped in winter light, almost innocent.
Helena was already smiling before we reached the café, but the moment she saw him outside with snow caught on his dark coat and his hands tucked into his pockets against the cold, her whole face lit up.
“Uncle Hayden!”
She ran toward him before I could warn her about the pavement, and he bent down at once, catching her in his arms as if his body had been waiting to know how. Life had given him fatherhood late, yet somehow he held her as though the instinct had always been there.
“There’s my girl,” he said, his voice rough as ever, though Helena pulled a tenderness from him no one else could reach so easily.
Helena wrapped her arms around his neck, then pulled back just enough to look at him with sudden seriousness. Her little brows drew together, and for the first time that day, the happiness on her face made room for something hurt.
“You didn’t come,” she said.
Hayden went still.
I saw the words hit him. His hand tightened gently against her back, and his face changed in a way that made my chest ache despite everything.
“I know, sweetheart,” he said.
Helena’s mouth turned down. “I waited.”
His throat moved. “I’m sorry.”
She studied him with the sharp, honest disappointment only a child could give. “Didn’t you miss me?”
Hayden closed his eyes for half a second, then opened them and looked straight at her. “I missed you every day, little star.”
“Then why didn’t you come?”
His jaw tightened. He looked at me once, guilt cutting across his face, then turned back to Helena. “Because something very sad happened, and I had to go far away for a little while. I should have told you. I should have called.” His voice roughened. “I’m sorry I made you wait.”
Helena did not forgive him at once. She only kept looking at him, still hurt, still thinking. Then she touched one small hand to the front of his coat and said, “You have to say next time.”
“I will,” he said at once. “I promise.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Real promise?”
“Real promise.”
For a moment, she remained solemn, as if weighing the worth of his word. Then she leaned back into him and rested her cheek against his shoulder. “Okay. But I was mad.”
Hayden’s arms closed around her carefully. “You can be mad at me.”
“I was very mad.”
“I deserved that.”
She nodded against his coat, satisfied with this answer, and he kissed her hair with a tenderness that looked almost painful on him.
I watched them for one suspended second before looking away. Some sights were too beautiful and painful to hold for long.
Inside, the café was warm, its windows fogged from the cold outside, the smell of grilled bread and fries filling the air.
We slid into a red booth near the back. Helena sat between us at first, then decided she wanted to sit across from us “like a grown-up.” Hayden, who had once made entire lecture halls go silent with one look, obeyed her as if she were the only authority in the world worth listening to.
We ordered our burgers. Helena chose exactly what she always chose, cheeseburger, fries, and a chocolate milkshake.
Hayden ordered the same as me, only for Helena to frown and tell him that was “copying.” A rare smile tugged at his mouth, reluctant and real enough to stay with me longer than it should have.
Underneath all of it, though, beneath the lights, the chatter, and the comfort of familiar food, tension kept working through me.
Today, we were telling her.
I looked at Hayden while Helena was busy arranging the ketchup bottles in an order only she understood, and the sight of him startled me more than I wanted to admit.
He was fucking nervous.
This was not some harmless awkwardness. The fear had settled into his body, into the restless movement of his hand near his glass, the tight pull of his jaw, the way his eyes kept finding Helena and leaving her again as if too much hope might gut him.
When Helena became distracted by her milkshake, Hayden leaned slightly toward me and spoke for me alone.
“What happens if she can’t accept me?”
The question hit harder than I expected.
I turned to him. “Hayden—”
“No. Tell me the truth.” His voice had gone rougher, carrying fear he could not hide. “What happens if she hears father and only understands absence? If she looks at me and sees all the years I wasn’t there? If I came back too late for her to want me that way?”
For a second, all I could do was look at him.
This was the same man who could kiss me like a storm and turn possessiveness into prayer, the same man whose darkness seemed to enter a room before he did. Yet here he was, nearly undone by the thought that one little girl might not want him enough.
“She won’t reject you,” I said.
He let out a short, humorless breath. “You can’t know that.”
“I know Helena.”
Across from us, Helena had dipped one fry far too deeply into ketchup and was studying the damage with grave concentration, entirely unaware that her whole life was waiting at the table for the right sentence.
I reached beneath the table and touched Hayden’s hand once. The tension in him shifted under my fingers.
“She already loves you,” I murmured. “You make her happy. She looks for you when you aren’t there, and when you walk into a room, she lights up before she even thinks about it.” I held his gaze. “That matters more than you realize.”
For a moment, the fear in his face loosened.
Then Helena looked up and said, “Why are you both being weird?”
That nearly made me laugh.
“We’re not being weird,” I said.
“You are.” She pointed a fry at us. “You both got quiet.”
Hayden cleared his throat. “We were talking.”
“About me?”
Children were terrifyingly direct.
“Yes,” I said.
Helena seemed pleased rather than alarmed. “Good.”
Then she took another sip of her milkshake and waited, which somehow made everything worse.
I looked at Hayden once more. He looked back.
If I waited any longer, the moment would only become harder, so I turned to Helena, folded my hands together in my lap, and said, “Baby, do you remember when you used to ask me about your father?”
Her expression changed at once. Fear did not enter it, only that serious, listening focus children had when they understood something important was happening.
“Yes,” she said.
“And do you remember what I told you?”
Helena nodded slowly. “You said he had work. And he was far away from us.”
My throat tightened. “Yes. I did say that.”
She watched me carefully. Then her eyes moved to Hayden before returning to me, some instinct already telling her the room had changed.
I leaned a little closer. “He isn’t far away anymore.”
Helena blinked. Her eyes widened. At once, she looked around the café, first toward the front, then beside her, then over her shoulder, as though some hidden man might appear from nowhere.
“Where is he?” she asked, surprised and almost breathless.
The innocence of it nearly broke me.
I smiled, though my eyes were already burning. “You don’t need to look anywhere, sweetheart.”
She turned back to me. Then to Hayden. Back to me again. The whole world seemed to narrow to that little booth while snow fell beyond the fogged windows and the food cooled untouched on the table.
“He’s here,” I said.
Helena’s gaze moved to Hayden’s face. I heard my own heartbeat. Beside me, Hayden stopped breathing.
I swallowed once and forced the next words out gently enough for her to hold.
“Your Uncle Hayden is your dad.”
The silence that followed felt enormous.
Helena stared at him. Shock came first. Confusion followed. Then something brighter began to rise through both, quick and pure and too wide for anything except wonder.
“My dad?” she whispered.
Hayden had gone completely still. I had never seen him stripped down to nothing that way. No anger. Just a man waiting for his daughter’s answer as if one small word from her could save or destroy him.
“Yes,” I said.
Helena looked at him again, those dark eyes moving over his face with fierce concentration.
She seemed to be gathering all the pieces of him she already knew, She seemed to be gathering all the pieces of him she already knew, Snowy in his hands, his obedience when she bossed him around, the arms that carried her when she was tired, the affection she had given him before she knew the right name for it.
Then, in a voice so soft it almost broke apart, she asked him, “You’re my daddy?”
Beside me, Hayden looked as if the whole world had stopped moving.
The answer did not come right away. Doubt was not what held him silent, the question had reached somewhere too deep, somewhere language could not follow quickly.
I watched it happen across his face, the last of his restraint giving way beneath the warm café lights until all that remained was awe, terror, and a rawness that made my own eyes burn.
Helena looked from me to him, then back again, her little brows drawn together in concentration as she tried to hold too many beautiful, confusing pieces at once.
“Really?” she whispered.
Her breath caught around the next question, hope already rising through the shock. “Really, truly?”
Hayden’s mouth parted, though no sound came out at first.
I had never seen him that way. The anger was gone from him, the guard, the darkness he carried so easily.
Even the familiar wound in him seemed different now.
This was something tender breaking through every defense he had left, and he looked terrified by the force of it.
His eyes stayed fixed on her face, as if one blink might cost him the moment.
“Yes,” he said at last. His voice nearly broke on the word. “Yes, sweetheart.”
Helena stared at him. Her little mouth opened and closed again while she tried to fit this new truth around the Hayden she already knew.
“You’re my dad?” she asked again.
This time, Hayden nodded with a care that made my chest ache. “I am,” he said. “I’m your dad.”