Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty
Hayden
The apartment was wrong the second I stepped through the door, the silence too sharp, the air too damn heavy, the shadows stretching long across the walls, as though they were holding their breath, waiting for something to break.
I tossed my keys onto the counter, the sound cutting through the quiet and bouncing back at me, hollow and mocking, then just stood there with my coat still on, caught between moving forward and standing still, because either choice felt as though it would tear me apart.
I should’ve crashed. My body was wrecked, every muscle screaming for rest, my clothes still soaked with the cold of the mountain, but my mind wouldn’t fucking stop.
It kept running that same reel, her face on that hospital pillow, her eyes locking onto mine even when she could barely keep them open, the kiss that tore through the last of my self-control.
Jesus, that kiss, it wasn’t supposed to happen, but it did, and it burned its way into me until it was all I could taste.
I told myself it was relief, that I just needed to know she was alive, but that was bullshit.
I wanted her. I still fucking wanted her.
Every thought dragged itself back to her, Edwina, breathing but too pale, fragile but stubborn enough to haunt me anyway.
She’d been in my arms, cold and limp, and the weight of that moment hadn’t left me.
I dropped into the chair at the table, dragging my hands down my face hard enough to sting, as if pain might scrub her out of my head.
But she stayed, under my skin, behind my eyelids, in every goddamn breath.
Her voice still clung to the air, her taste still sat on my mouth.
The phone cut through the silence, loud and sudden, slicing straight through the noise in my head.
I froze, staring at it, pulse pounding hard enough to feel in my jaw.
No one called me at this hour unless it mattered, unless it was something I couldn’t ignore.
The number flashing on the screen twisted my gut into something tight and ugly.
Once. Twice. By the third ring, I already knew I wasn’t getting out of this. I snatched it up, jaw clenched, breath caught somewhere between dread and rage.
Then came the voice, soft, feminine, familiar in a way that didn’t belong in my home, in this silence, in the life I was still fucking trying to keep from falling apart.
“Hayden.”
The sound of my name in her mouth was enough to make every muscle in my body tighten.
I shut my eyes, pressing my thumb hard into the bridge of my nose, already knowing this was the last goddamn voice I needed tonight, the last reminder of a life I’d spent years trying to bury.
I let the silence drag out, hoping she’d hang up first, but of course she didn’t.
“What the fuck do you want, Alessia?” I finally said.
There was a pause, the faint sound of her breath pulling through the line, steady and practiced—the kind of silence she used when she wanted to sound calm while she picked her next weapon.
“How long are you going to hide from me?” she asked, the softness of her tone edged with something bitter. “You can’t run from this engagement forever.”
I leaned back on the couch, grinding my knuckles against my temple, a humorless laugh slipping out. “Watch me.”
“This isn’t a game,” she snapped, her voice rising, brittle and perfectly trained to sound in control. “Our families—”
“Our families,” I interrupted, cutting through her words before she could finish, “made a deal I never agreed to. Don’t mistake that for consent.”
She let out a sharp breath, something between disbelief and mockery. “You think you can just walk away? That you can ignore what’s expected of you? You’ve been dodging my calls for months, Hayden. I deserve better than silence.”
My jaw locked, teeth grinding hard enough to ache. I stared at the window across the room, the city lights bleeding through the glass, and even though she wasn’t here, her presence still filled the air like a stench I couldn’t get rid of.
“I don’t want this, Alessia,” I said, my voice measured and cutting through the silence with intent. “Not the arrangement. Not the marriage. Not you.”
For a moment, she didn’t say a fucking thing. Just silence. Then, with that same infuriating calm that made me want to throw the phone across the room, she said, “You think you get a say in this?”
My grip on the phone tightened until the plastic creaked. “I don’t think,” I said, each word coming out harder, meaner. “I know.”
“You’re a Stone,” she hissed. “That name comes with obligations—”
“That name,” I snapped, cutting her off again, “has already taken enough from me. I won’t let it steal the rest of my fucking life too.”
She gave a short, cold laugh. “You’re being dramatic.”
“No,” I said, leaning forward, elbows digging into my knees, voice dropping low.
“I’m being clear. I’m not marrying you. I don’t give a shit what our parents arranged, or what they think they can control.
I don’t care about the property, the money, or the fake alliances they want to build on our backs.
You could show up tomorrow in a fucking wedding dress, and I still wouldn’t walk to the altar. ”
There was a pause, longer this time. I could almost see her standing there, chin up, jaw set, mouth pressed into that poised little line that always meant she was already planning how to retaliate.
“You think you can hide behind your lectures and your little academic life forever,” she said finally, her voice quieter now, colder. “But I’ll find you, Hayden. Eventually.”
Then the line went dead.
“Fuck.”
I dropped the phone onto the table, the sound echoing in the still air, and the curse tore itself out of me again. “Fucking fuck.” Then again, lower, rougher, until it was nothing but breath and rage. “Fuuuuuuuck!”
I started pacing, each step hitting the floor harder than the last, jaw locked, chest burning, every nerve alive with the urge to put my fist through a wall.
I couldn’t stay still; I couldn’t breathe past the fury sitting in my throat.
Every thought came back to the same goddamn truth, I was trapped in a deal I never made, tied to a past I wanted to destroy, and the only thing keeping me from losing it completely was the memory of her, of Edwina, of the one thing in this fucked-up life that had ever felt real.
That call. That fucking call. Alessia’s voice still scraped through my skull, smug and venom-laced, every syllable soaked in the reminder that no matter how far I ran, she’d always find a way to drag herself back into my life.
It wasn’t just her words, it was the goddamn tone, the entitlement, the way she said my name as though it still belonged to her, as though I were some prize she’d already claimed.
I could still hear her asking how long I planned to keep hiding, how long I thought I could outrun her, outrun them, outrun the life I’d been born into.
And the worst part? She wasn’t wrong. I’d been running for years, crossing cities and countries, burning bridges before anyone had the chance to cross them, never staying long enough for anything—or anyone—to matter.
Six months here, a year there. Always one step ahead of the ghosts.
Always ready to vanish before anyone could sink their claws into me.
But now everything was fucked. Because Edwina was here.
And she wasn’t something I could run from.
She wasn’t a mistake I could bury. She was the one goddamn thing that made it impossible to keep pretending I was still in control.
Every time she looked at me, every word that came out of her mouth, she tore through the walls I’d built and left nothing but raw nerve behind.
I’d told myself I’d keep my distance, that I’d stay detached until it was time to disappear again, but distance didn’t mean shit anymore.
She was already inside every part of me I couldn’t guard.
I hadn’t thought I’d ever see her again after that night.
But then she’d been there, staring right at me with those eyes that saw too much, and I’d known, instantly and without question, that I wasn’t letting her go again.
Not now. Not ever. She was mine, and I’d burn the fucking world before I let anyone touch what was mine.
What I felt for her had started as obsession, a sharp, relentless thing I could shove down when I needed to.
But now? Now it wasn’t something I could control.
It was in my bloodstream, crawling through every vein, pulsing with every heartbeat.
I didn’t know if it was love, madness, or something darker and more fucked up than either, and I didn’t give a damn what name anyone wanted to give it.
All I knew was that she belonged to me in a way that went deeper than reason, deeper than blood or bone, and I couldn’t fucking breathe without her anymore.
She was there in my head when I tried to sleep, in my lungs when I tried to breathe, in the quiet moments that used to be mine.
Every thought led back to her. Every breath hurt without her in it.
I didn’t just want her. I needed her, in the brutal, all-consuming way that made everything else meaningless.
And I would tear down every barrier, crush every rule, destroy every life that dared to keep her from me if that’s what it took to have her.
Because she was mine. Not for a night. Not for a year.
Forever. And I refused to live in a world where she didn’t exist beside me.
I could still feel her, the freezing weight of her body in my arms, the tremor in her voice when she said my name, the way her lips had tasted of snow and salt and something that still burned through me hours later. That memory wouldn’t fade, it was carved too deep.
I wasn’t leaving. Not this time. Not for Alessia. Not for my family. Not for the fucked-up name I was born into.
And that truth, that I’d stopped running the second she looked at me, that scared the living shit out of me more than Alessia ever could.