Then he leaned in. He did it slowly, with enough restraint to make the gesture worse. My breath caught before his mouth reached my cheek, close to the corner of my lips.
It lasted barely a second and ruined me anyway.
Heat moved through me from the place his mouth had touched, slow and merciless, slipping beneath my skin before I could command myself to stay unaffected. My knees weakened. My body remembered him in a way that felt almost cruel. The ache between my thighs deepened, humiliating in how quickly it answered him.
When he pulled back, his gaze moved over my face, catching every reaction I had failed to hide.
He knew.
He fucking knew.
Then Helena’s voice cut through the hallway.
“Uncle Hayden!”
She ran toward him with pure, unguarded joy, and the sight of her changed him instantly. The heat in his face eased into something softer. He crouched before she reached him, as if meeting her there had already become instinct.
Helena threw her arms around his neck, and Hayden hugged her back.
I stood there with roses in my arms and watched the man I had once loved, perhaps still loved in all the wrong ways, hold our daughter as if he had been waiting years to feel the weight of her against him.
“Hey, sweetheart,” he said, his voice rough with feeling. “That’s one hell of a welcome.”
Helena pulled back enough to grin at him. “You came.”
His eyes stayed on her face. “I told you I would.”
And there, in the doorway, with rain behind him and roses in my hands, I felt something dangerous settle inside me.
Hope.
Chapter Nineteen
Hayden
Bythetimetheclock slipped past ten, Helena had fallen asleep in my arms.
It happened slowly. One minute she was still fighting sleep with everything she had, talking in broken little pieces about Snowy, Christmas lights, and whether reindeer ever got tired of flying. Then her words thinned out, her lashes lowered, and her cheek settled against my chest as if she had done it a hundred times before.
I sat there longer than I needed to, holding her and trying to breathe through the weight of it.
My daughter was asleep in my arms. She was small, warm, trusting in a way that made my chest feel torn open. Her weight should have been nothing, yet it carried every absence I had only just begun to understand. Every night I had not been there.Every moment some other person had watched her grow while I knew nothing.
Edwina noticed when I shifted.
“She’s asleep,” she said softly.
I lifted my eyes to hers and nodded, because if I tried to speak too soon, something in me might break in a way I could not hide.
“Do you want me to—”
“No,” I said, too quickly. Then I forced my voice down, rougher now. “I’ve got her.”
As if she had heard me somewhere inside her sleep, Helena stirred against my chest. Her fingers curled weakly in my shirt, and then she murmured, barely there, “Uncle Hayden.”
Fuck.
That nearly finished me.
