Chapter Twenty-three
Edwina
Four months later
Spring came quietly to London after months of rain, snow, and gray skies.
The city softened almost without warning, trees blooming along the streets, cafés spilling flowers onto the pavements, the air warmer each morning.
Some days, walking to the university beside Hayden with his hand wrapped around mine, I would catch our reflection in a window and feel startled by it.
We looked like a life I had once been too afraid to believe could belong to me.
We were living together now. His clothes had found space beside mine.
His books had settled onto my shelves. Helena’s little traces were everywhere, ribbons left on the sofa, pencils scattered across the coffee table.
Our mornings had become their own small chaos.
Hayden made coffee too strong. Helena treated breakfast as if hunger were a national emergency.
I moved through it all with a gratitude I did not know how to name, grateful for a happiness I had almost stopped expecting and terrified of loving it too much.
Everyone knew about us by then. We had never made some grand announcement, we had simply become too real to hide. We arrived at the university together, held hands in public, and let people stare if they needed to. After everything we had survived, whispers felt too small to matter.
One afternoon, Daniel waited outside my office and joked that he was grateful he had never confessed any feelings for me, because Hayden looked at every other man as though they were personally insulting him.
It made me laugh, and for once, there was no sadness in it.
Daniel and I understood each other clearly now.
He was my friend, a good one, and that was the shape of us that had always been meant to last.
Giselle was happy for me too, though her own life had grown heavier. Her marriage had become something she could no longer hide behind elegance and silence. One evening, over tea, she admitted she still had not decided whether to divorce her husband.
“What do you want?” I asked her.
She said she wanted peace, as though that were an impossible thing to ask for.
I told her she was allowed to want a life that did not hurt her. Saying it to her made me realize how long it had taken me to believe the same thing for myself.
When I finally told Gwen and Aster about seeing Hayden again, neither of them reacted with the easy excitement people expected from old love returning.
They were happy for me, I could see it in their faces, in the way Gwen reached for my hand and Aster’s expression softened before she could hide it.
Still, caution sat with them too. They knew what he had cost me, and they remembered the girl I had been when I left Washington.
Their happiness came with questions, worry, and with a care that did not rush to celebrate before making sure I would survive whatever came next.
Later that evening, Hayden and I left the university together, his hand finding mine as naturally as breath. When we reached the corner, he lifted my hand and kissed my knuckles. It was a small gesture, almost ordinary, yet it settled somewhere deep in me.
I looked at him then and thought of everything we had survived to stand there openly in the spring light.
Next week was Gwen and Zayn’s wedding, which meant we would be going back to Washington.
The thought unsettled me more than I wanted to admit.
Washington held too much of my past, the girl I had been, the love that had begun there, and the ruin that followed.
But this time, I would not be returning as Edwina Carter, or even as the woman who had rebuilt herself by running.
I would go back with Hayden beside me and Helena’s hand in mine.
I had also started thinking about New York.
I wanted to see my family, especially my dad.
I missed him, and I wanted him to see that I was happy.
He already knew about Hayden, but I wanted him to meet the life I had chosen, not just hear about it from a distance.
Things with my mother were still broken, but Elliot and I were better now, and I wanted him to see Helena too.
There was Hayden’s mother as well. The thought of meeting her made me nervous, because I did not know what she would see when she looked at me, the woman who had hurt her son, the woman he loved, or the mother of her granddaughter. Maybe all of it.
When I told Hayden I was thinking about Washington and maybe New York afterward, he went quiet.
“You’d do that?” he asked.
I knew he was asking about more than travel.
“Yes,” I said. “I miss my family. My dad especially. I need him to see that I’m happy. Things are better with Elliot now, and Helena should know him too. And your mother… I think it’s time I met her properly.” Something in him softened.
I leaned into him and let my forehead rest against his shoulder. “It won’t be easy,” I said. “But I still want to go.”
His mouth brushed the top of my head.
“Washington first,” he murmured.
I smiled against him. “Washington first.”
Hayden
Washington still carried too many ghosts.
But this time, I walked through it with Helena’s hand in mine and Edwina beside me, and the city felt less like a wound.
We spent the day together, just living. Helena asked questions, dragged us from place to place, and fell asleep that night with Snowy tucked under her arm.
I stood by her bed for a while, watching my daughter sleep in the city where everything had once gone wrong. When I returned to the sitting room, Edwina was by the window, Washington glowing below her.
I opened the bottle of wine we had brought up and poured two glasses. When I held one out to her, she looked at it, then at me, and shook her head.
“No?”
She smiled faintly. “Not tonight.”
I had been watching her all day while pretending I was not.
Edwina always pulled that out of me, some darker instinct that noticed too much where she was concerned.
The small details had started gathering before I let myself understand them, the food she pushed aside, the faint tiredness around her eyes, the way her hand sometimes drifted to her stomach when she thought no one was looking, the way she had refused wine more than once with a smile too casual to be innocent.
I set the second glass down untouched. She turned from the window and came toward me.
By the time she reached the couch, the air between us had already changed.
No matter how much history stood between us, Edwina and I always found each other in that darker way.
Our bodies had built a language out of everything our mouths had once ruined.
She sat first. I followed. For a while, neither of us spoke. Washington glowed beyond the window. Helena slept in the next room. Spring air moved faintly at the curtains. Then Edwina turned toward me, and whatever patience I had left disappeared.
I kissed her.
It was slower than that, full of the restless hunger that had followed me all day while I watched her walk through the city where I first lost my mind over her. She kissed me back with intensity, her hands at my shoulders, her warmth leaning into me until the room narrowed around us.
Even then, I noticed.
The careful tension in her body when my hand moved lower. The catch in her breath before she broke the kiss and whispered, “Be gentle.”
I went still enough to feel my own pulse. My mouth brushed hers once more, my hand still at her waist, while every part of me sharpened around a thought I did not yet trust.
I drew back and looked at her. Her lips were flushed.
“Edwina,” I said. “Is there anything you want to tell me?”
For a second, she only stared at me with that tenderness that always ruined me faster than tears. Then her gaze dropped, and her hand moved to her stomach almost without thought. When she looked back at me, her eyes were softer than I had ever seen them.
“I didn’t know how to say it yet,” she whispered.
Every nerve in my body locked.
“How far?” I asked, and my voice sounded strange even to me.
She swallowed once.
“Eight weeks.”
For one suspended second, I could not move.
Eight weeks.
My hand tightened at her waist before I could stop it, just enough to ground myself in the reality of her sitting in front of me, telling me that the life I had only begun to hold together.
“Pregnant?” I said, stupidly, because the word was too big to come out any better than that.
A tear-bright smile touched her mouth. “Yes.”
That was when the truth hit me fully.
A breath left me, almost a laugh, almost something worse, and then I was reaching for her. I held her face in both hands and kissed her with the stunned, violent awe rushing through me too fast to survive sitting still.
Another child.
Ours.
I broke the kiss only enough to rest my forehead against hers. “Jesus fucking Christ,” I whispered, my voice wrecked with wonder. “My girl.”
Her fingers slid into my hair, trembling. “You’re not angry?”
I pulled back to look at her properly. The softness in her face, the vulnerability she had trusted me with in this city of all places, nearly finished me. Something dark and devoted moved through me with enough force to hurt.
“Angry?” I breathed. “I’m about to lose my mind.”
I kissed her again, and the second my mouth found hers, I knew nothing about my life would ever be small again.
When I drew back, the truth sat fully between us, beautiful and merciless.
Edwina was here, in the city where so much had once gone wrong, carrying my child again.
Only this time, she would never carry any of it alone.
I caught her face between my hands and kept her looking at me, because I needed her to hear me without hiding from a single word.
“You are not enduring a goddamn thing alone,” I said.
Her breath caught.
“I’ll be there,” I continued, my thumbs brushing beneath her eyes. “For the appointments. The bad mornings. The nights you can’t sleep. The fear. The changes. All of it. Me and Helena. We’re with you.”
“I know,” she whispered.
I leaned closer, close enough for her to feel the force of what I meant. “I need more than that, my little Flare. I need you to believe me.”
A tear slipped down her cheek, and it nearly ruined me. I kissed it away, then rested my forehead against hers.
“I know you’re not ready for marriage,” I said.
Her fingers tightened in my hair, and a shaky, disbelieving laugh left her. “You do?”
“I do.” My mouth brushed the corner of hers. “You’re cautious. You have every right to be after everything we’ve done to each other.” My hand settled at her waist, firm and possessive. “Listen to me anyway.”
She looked at me then, with all her strength and softness and fear caught in the same pair of eyes.
“Every day,” I murmured, “I’m going to ask you.”
Color rose in her face.
“I’ll ask until it stops scaring you. Until you’re tired of hearing it. Until no part of you believes I could leave you standing alone in this.” My hand tightened once at her waist. “Will you marry me? Will you honor me by letting me be your husband?”
Her lips parted, though no answer came yet. So I kissed her again, slow and deep, pouring every dark, devoted thing I could no longer hide into her mouth before I drew back just enough to let the question remain between us.
“Will you marry me, Edwina?”
She looked at me with tears in her eyes, wonder on her mouth, and all the love we had failed to kill still living between us.
“Yes,” she said.
My whole body forgot how to function.
“Yes?” I repeated, because no man as ruined as me should have been handed a word like that without needing one second to disbelieve it.
Her smile trembled. “Yes.”
That was it. Whatever restraint I had left died right there.
I pulled her into me so fast the breath left both of us, then crashed my mouth onto hers with the force of a man who had just been handed back his entire future.
She gasped against me and clung to my shoulders, and I kissed her harder because this was Edwina, my Edwina, saying yes to me in Washington with our daughter sleeping in the next room and another child growing inside her.
No power on earth could have made me take that calmly.
When I finally tore my mouth from hers, it was only far enough to speak against her lips.
“You have no fucking idea,” I said, breathless and half-lost beneath the weight of what she had just given me, “what you’ve done to me with one word.”
“My fiancée,” I murmured against her skin, tasting the word as if I had waited half my life for it. “Jesus Christ. Say it again.”
She shook her head, smiling through all that softness, and I loved her for that too. Edwina never gave me anything without making me work for it, even when she was already melting in my hands.
“Too much?” she whispered.
“No,” I said, my voice roughening because joy in me had always carried possession close behind it. “Nowhere near enough.”
I moved my mouth to her jaw, then to the place beneath her ear where her breathing always betrayed her. “You’re mine in every way that matters.” My hand spread over her stomach with careful awe. “My woman. My little Flare. My children. My whole fucking life.”
I lifted my head and made her look at me. “And before you start pretending otherwise, I’m not saying this sweetly. You already know I don’t love sweetly. I love you like a man who would burn the world for what’s his.”
A shiver moved through her.
I wanted my love under her skin. I wanted her to feel the truth of it so deeply she could never mistake it for anything less.
“And for the record,” I said, my mouth curving, “if you think I’m going to become civilized now that you said yes, you’ve learned nothing from me at all.”
That made her laugh again, and I swallowed the sound with another kiss, slower this time, deeper, full of wonder and hunger and raw gratitude I did not know how to speak cleanly.
When I pulled back, I pressed my mouth to her forehead and closed my eyes for one breath.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
Her fingers moved gently into my hair. When I opened my eyes, she was looking at me with a softness so deep every darker part of me went still.
“I love you,” she whispered.
For one second, I only stared at her.
“I love you too,” I murmured against her mouth, wrecked all over again.
And when she smiled through tears and leaned into me, I knew I would spend the rest of my life chasing those words from her lips and never tire of hearing them