His expression darkened.
“Don’t,” he said.
The word sounded raw. Half plea, half warning, and I could not decide which one hurt more.
My fingers were still twisted in his shirt. I noticed them too late, shame arriving after the damage had already been done. My pulse raced. My lips burned. Everything inside me felt shaken loose.
“This should not have happened,” I said, though even I heard how weak the words sounded.
His gaze dropped to my mouth for one brutal second before returning to my eyes.
“No,” he said. “What should not have happened is you keeping my daughter from me.”
The words stayed between us long after he spoke them, heavy enough to make breathing feel impossible. They lodged in my throat, spread through the ache in my chest, and burned behind my eyes. His hand still rested against my face, warm and faintly unsteady, and somehow that frightened me more than his anger. Hayden had always been most dangerous when his control started to crack, when I could feel everything he was holding back before it finally tore free.
My lips still burned from his kiss.
So did his.
I could read it from the tight line of his mouth, the uneven rise and fall of his breathing, and the ruined way he looked at me. He hated me for standing there in front of him. He wanted me anyway. Both truths had become so tangled inside him that even he seemed unable to tell which one was breaking him more.
It was unbearable.
“Say something,” he murmured.
His voice had lost its earlier sharpness, though nothing gentle had replaced it. It sounded rough instead, worn down by anger, exhaustion, and something too intimate for either of us to touch tonight.
I swallowed, but my throat stayed painfully tight. “I don’t know what to say.”
A humorless smile touched his mouth and vanished so fast I might have imagined it, if not for the bitterness it left behind.
“That has never stopped you from looking at me as if you’re carrying a hundred things you won’t let me hear.”
The words reached a place inside me that was raw and split open. I dropped my gaze for a second, not to escape him becausethat had become impossible, but because looking at him for too long had turned dangerous in its own right. The apartment had gone quiet enough to sharpen every small sound, the hum of the heating, the faint ticking of the kitchen clock, our uneven breathing in a room still holding the remains of my daughter’s birthday.
Then his fingers shifted. Only slightly. His thumb brushed beneath my eye, catching the dampness there, and the tenderness of that small instinctive gesture nearly undid me more than his fury had.
“Don’t,” I whispered.
His jaw tightened. “Don’t what?”
“Don’t touch me like that.”
His eyes darkened instantly.
“Like what?” he asked, and the question cut because he knew exactly what I meant. He only wanted to hear me say it.
I forced myself to meet his gaze.
“As if you still…” My voice failed, and I hated the weakness of it when everything inside me felt swollen with grief, shame, and want. “As if you still want me.”
A bitter breath left him, almost a laugh, though there was no amusement in it.
“Still?” he repeated softly. “You think that’s the word for this?”
Sense told me to move away. To put distance between us. To remember every reason I had fought so hard to keep my life separate from his. My back stayed near the wall, and Hayden stayed in front of me, all dark eyes, frayed restraint, and heat I could feel without touching him. Some broken, shameful part of me wanted to hear whatever came next, even if it split me open beyond repair.
“You stood there today,” he said, his voice rough, “with my daughter in this room, tears in your eyes, and my name in your mouth, and you still think the problem is that I want you?”
