I smiled.
A genuine smile, bright and soft, the kind I had practiced for years to hide every crack beneath my skin. It felt foreign on my face, trembling at the edges, but it held. I turned on my heel, my bag strap tight in my fist, and walked back toward the counter where Aster and Gwen waited, oblivious.
They looked up at me, laughing, Gwen already pointing to a tray of pastries. But I slipped the smile into place, my throat raw, and said evenly, “I think I’d like to go home.”
Aster blinked, her brow creasing. “Home? But—”
“Please.” My voice was quiet, almost too calm, but they heard the finality in it. I swallowed hard against the tears that burned at the edges of my eyes, unshed and furious, and forced the smile to linger just a little longer. “I just…I want to go home.”
It was Aster whose eyes sharpened first. She tilted her head, her gaze following mine, trailing across the café until it landed on the table by the window. On him. On Hayden.
“I hope this isn’t because of him,” she said quietly, her voice cutting through the warmth of the café as glass against skin.
My breath caught. For a moment, every excuse I could have given scattered before they even formed. I hesitated, my fingers tightening around the strap of my bag, my chest aching with the weight of what I couldn’t tell her, of what would never make sense if spoken aloud.
“Please,” I said, my voice fragile in a way I hated. “I just want to go home. And…stay a bit alone.”
Aster frowned, her suspicion plain, her eyes narrowing as though she wanted to press, to dig until she reached the truth, but Gwen laid a hand on her arm, glancing between us with concern.
“Are you sure?” Gwen asked softly. “You don’t look—”
“I’m sure,” I cut in, sharper than I intended, the smile trembling on my lips but refusing to break. I drew in a breath,steadied myself, and softened my tone. “I just need some air. Please.”
Aster’s eyes lingered on me for a long moment, then back on him, and the weight of her unspoken questions pressed against me so hard I thought I might suffocate. But neither of them stopped me.
The bell above the café door chimed as I pushed it open, the March drizzle greeting me with a damp chill that sank straight into my bones. My steps were sharp and quick, every one of them meant to put distance between myself and that place, from the glow of warm lights and clattering cups, from the woman who had smiled at me with the cruelty of a blade, from the man who had sat there and let her. My chest ached so violently I thought I might splinter in two, but I didn’t stop. I couldn’t stop.
Until a hand clamped around my wrist.
I gasped, my body jolting, stumbling to the side as his grip tightened, firm, unrelenting, pulling me backward with a force that refused to be denied.
“Hayden—”
He said nothing at first, his jaw locked, his face carved into stone, and before I could tear myself free, he dragged me toward the curb where his car waited, dark and still as a shadow. My bag slipped from my shoulder, thudding against my hip. I shoved at his chest, hard, but he didn’t move, he never did.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I snapped, my voice breaking through the drizzle, fury and disbelief clawing through my throat. I yanked against his grip, but his hold only burned tighter around my wrist. “Leave me the hell alone, Hayden!”
His head snapped toward me, his eyes wild, dark, unsteady in a way that made something inside me twist. “No.” His voice came rough, gravel scraping against steel. “You think you can just walk out, Edwina? You think you can look at me like that and turn your back as if none of this exists?”
“None of this—?” My chest heaved, my breath caught and painful. “You sat there with her. With your fiancée. You have a damn fiancée. Do you even fucking understand what that felt like? Do you understand what you just did to me?”
“Don’t you fucking say her name to me,” he snarled, his voice violent, his face a breath away from mine as the rain fell harder. “She’s nothing. Do you hear me? Nothing. That engagement is a corpse my family chained to me years ago, and I buried it the second I walked away from them. She doesn’t matter. She’s never mattered. But you—”
His words broke apart, rough and fierce, as his grip yanked me closer until his heartbeat slammed against mine. “You matter in ways I can’t rip out of me, in ways that make me fucking insane. And you think I’ll let you walk away now? Not after everything I’ve done. Not after everything you’ve become to me.”
The fury in him was alive, thrumming under his skin, tangled with something darker, something desperate I refused to believe in, not when the word fiancée still screamed through my head like a curse.
“Hayden, let me go,” I whispered, my voice shaking despite the defiance burning in me. “Please. You’re hurting me.”
For a second, just one, his grip faltered, his breath hitching unevenly, his jaw so tight I thought it might crack. But then his hand shifted again, not loosening, dragging me closer as if he could fuse me into himself and erase every inch of distance between us.
“No,” he said again, quieter this time, but colder, sharper, dangerous. “Not like that. Not when I know you’re already thinking about leaving me.”
The words hit hard, raw and unbearable, the rain hammering down like it wanted to drown us both. And that’s when I saw it, he wasn’t just holding me. He was breaking.
Rain poured over us in relentless sheets, cold water running down my face, soaking my coat until I could barely tell where the rain ended and my tears began. My fists hit his chest again, harder this time, each blow trembling, useless, but filled with the storm tearing me apart.
“You lied to me!” I shouted, my voice cracking wide open. “Not just about her, about everything! About your fucking job, your future…everything! When were you planning to say something, huh? When were you going to tell me you were leaving?”
