“Do you have any idea what you did to me tonight?” I asked, and my voice changed then, rougher, more broken, dangerous because of how close I was to losing control. “Do you know what it felt like to stand there while she looked at me as if I was nobody? Some stranger at her birthday party? Do you know what hearing her call mesirdid to me?”
She closed her eyes for one second. When she opened them again, tears clung to her lashes. I wasn’t finished.
“I was a stranger to my own daughter,” I said. “A stranger, Edwina. You let that happen. You let me lose her birthdays, her first words, her first steps, the small ordinary shit that should have been mine to know.” My jaw tightened until it hurt. “Tell me the truth. Did you ever plan to let me know her, or were you going to take this secret to your grave?”
“Stop,” she whispered.
“No.”
“Please.”
“No.” My voice dropped into something almost feral. “You do not get to beg for mercy now. Not after this.”
Her shoulders shook with one fractured breath, and her tears slipped free. Still, I kept going, because by then I was bleeding too badly to stop.
“My daughter,” I said, quieter now, and somehow that made it worse. “Our daughter.” The words scraped something raw inside me. “You kept our daughter from me.”
“Hayden—”
“How long?” I demanded. “Another year? Five? Forever?” I took one last step until there was almost no space left between us. “Were you ever going to let me be her father, or was I supposed to stay dead to both of you while you built a whole life without me?”
She broke at that. I saw it.
The lie strained against her mouth. Grief moved through her face. The truth pressed so hard against her silence it looked ready to tear out of her.
When I spoke again, my voice came out raw, shaking with the force of everything inside me.
“She’s mine.”
Chapter Sixteen
Edwina
Ihadnotimaginedthe day ending this way.
The thought moved through me in broken pieces, useless beneath the pressure of Hayden standing too close to steal the air from my lungs. Every breath felt caught in the furious space between us, tangled with his rage, my fear, and all the truths I had spent years keeping buried. Only hours ago, this apartment had been filled with music, laughter, candlelight, Helena’s bright voice, and the fragile sweetness of a day I had wanted to protect with both hands. I had spent the morning hanging banners, smoothing ribbons, and pretending joy could remain untouched if I loved it carefully enough.
Now the room felt smaller. Darker. Every bright thing left behind by the party had become a cruel reminder of how quickly life could split open.
Hayden stood in front of me with a rage held so tightly it frightened me more than shouting would have. My back was nearly against the wall, and he was near enough for me to feel the heat of him, near enough for his breath to disturb mine. If I lowered my eyes for even a second, I would see the hard rise and fall of his chest and remember everything I had spent years trying to bury beneath silence, duty, and fear.
He wanted answers. I could see it across his face, through the brutal set of his body, and in the way his eyes refused to release mine. Letting me look away would have meant losing the last shred of control he had left. He was furious, yes, but fury was only the surface. Beneath it lived a hurt so deep I could almost feel its shape before he gave it words, torn raw by five years of absence.
My own eyes still burned. I had cried too much already tonight, yet none of it felt enough for the damage standing in front of me. My throat ached from everything I had swallowed, all the truth I had buried, and the versions of the past that sounded impossible the moment I tried to drag them into the air.
“Say something,” he said. “Say something, goddamn it.”
His voice was rough and quiet enough to make every word cut. It forced me to hear the strain beneath it, the anger, the wound, the terrifying restraint. Somehow, it sounded worse than shouting.
I swallowed, but my mouth had gone dry. “Hay...Hayden—”
“No.” His jaw flexed. “I’m done with the careful shit. The silence ends tonight. And you don’t get to stand there with those eyes and give me nothing.”
My breath caught.
He stepped closer, and though there was barely any room left, the space around me seemed to shrink anyway. His presence filled everything now, dark and relentless. Pushing him awaywould have done nothing. Hayden in this mood was not a man who could be moved by force. He was the storm itself.
“I was trying to get you back,” he said.
