The words caught me.
For a second, I could not answer. I knew too well how many things Hayden had ruined between us, how much damage still sat in the spaces we had not healed, but forgetting me had never been his way. He remembered. That was part of the problem.
“No,” I said quietly. “He wouldn’t forget me either.”
Helena seemed satisfied and went back to her burger, but I stayed still, my hand near my untouched fries, my heart moving in that old uneasy rhythm Hayden always dragged out of me.
Then the bell above the café door rang. I looked up too quickly. It was not him. Just a woman stepping in from the cold, shaking rain from her coat while someone behind the counter greeted her. I lowered my eyes before Helena could see too much on my face.
After that, I called him again.
Then again.
By the fourth call, my fingers hurt around the phone. The ringing became unbearable as every unanswered second stripped away another piece of pride I was trying to keep together in front of my daughter. Each time, his voicemail came on with the same cold, mechanical message, over and over, while the man who had promised to be here remained unreachable.
He did not come.
He fucking did not come.
The truth hit hard. It cut through me with humiliation sharp enough to turn the warmth of the café cruel. Across from me, Helena kept trying to act normal, picking at her fries with a seriousness that broke my heart. She knew something was wrong. She did not understand it yet, but she knew enough to hide her disappointment badly, and that was the part that made anger rise in me.
He had promised.
He had looked at me with those ruined eyes and spoken with that rough certainty of his, the sort of certainty that made dangerous words sound sacred. And I had believed him again.
God, I had actually believed him.
Stupid.
Foolish. Pathetic, perhaps.
Once again, I had looked at Hayden Stone and mistaken intensity for truth. His voice had cracked in the right places. His hands had known how to hold pain and tenderness together. Helena loved him, and he softened every time she said his name, so I let myself believe he had become safe.
Once a liar, always a liar.
This time, the betrayal cut deeper because I was not the only one left sitting with it. Had it been just me, alone with my pride peeling away through every unanswered call, I might have swallowed it. I might have folded it into the long private list of wounds Hayden had already given me and carried on the way I always did.
But Helena had been there.
Helena had asked for him in that hopeful little voice. She kept looking at the door every time it opened, asking when he was coming, how late he would be, and whether he had forgotten us. And I had sat across from her with my own hope turning sour in my mouth, forcing myself to smile while the truth became harder and uglier to ignore.
I had trusted him again.
Fuck, I had trusted him again.
After leaving Helena with Mrs. Graham, after kissing her forehead and giving her some soft excuse I hated the second it left my mouth, I drove straight to his apartment. I did not stop to think. I did not slow down long enough to decide whether anger or fear was behind the wheel. I only drove through wet, darkening streets while every thought inside me sharpened into something meaner.
The city looked beautiful in that distant, useless way cities sometimes did when your own life was coming apart. All reflection, rain, winter light. Inside me, there was nothing beautiful. Only the old, familiar rage of being made to wait for aman who had once already taught me how much damage silence could do.
When I got there, he was not home.
That nearly undid me. If he had been inside, even hiding behind a locked door, I could have aimed my anger at him.
I could have knocked. Shouted. Demanded answers. Instead, the apartment gave me nothing. The windows were dark. The stillness felt wrong.
The university was still on break. He was not at the café. He was not answering his phone. His apartment sat empty in front of me.
So where the hell was he?
