That hit him. I felt it in the way his body locked beneath my hand. His face changed, and for a second Hayden Stone disappeared behind someone gutted by his own guilt.
“Fuck,” he breathed.
“Yes. Fuck.” My voice broke, and I hated that too. “That’s what I’ve been living with while you were doing whatever the hell this is.”
He lowered his head until his forehead nearly touched mine again. “Please.”
The word shook something in me. I hated him for that. Hayden did not plead easily. He usually turned need into something darker, something sharp enough to feel dangerous. Now there was no performance in it. He sounded stripped bare, as if whatever had happened had taken the last of his pride with it.
“Don’t,” I whispered, because I did not know whether I was warning him or myself.
His gaze dropped to my mouth, then dragged back to my eyes. “I missed you so fucking much.”
My throat tightened.
“No,” I said, though I did not move away. “Missing me does not fix this.”
“I know.” His voice broke around the words. “I’m not trying to fix it. I just need one second before I have to tell you everything.”
The hallway seemed to close around us. Rain tapped against the glass behind him. The cupcakes were slipping in my hand. His coat was cold against my fingers, but the space between us had gone unbearably warm. He looked hollowed out, half-starved, barely standing, and still my body remembered him with humiliating speed.
“Just let me taste you,” he said, rough and strained.
I should have stepped back, shoved the cupcakes into his chest, and made him answer every question before his mouthcame anywhere near mine. Instead, I stood there breathing too hard, furious and weak and sick of how much of me still reached for him.
His hand flexed at my waist. “Edwina.”
I hated the sound of my name in his mouth.
I hated that I missed it.
Then he kissed me.
His mouth met mine with the force of everything he had been holding back, and the moment I opened for him, something broke in both of us. He tasted of rain and exhaustion, with something darker underneath that I did not want to name.
He kissed me as if he had barely made it back from somewhere terrible.
I kissed him with all the rage of being left waiting.
My back hit the door, the box of cupcakes tilting dangerously in my grip. His hand stayed at my waist as if letting go would finish whatever had already broken in him. Rain from his hair brushed damp against my temple, and his breath came hard against my mouth. The kiss slowed, deepened, changed shape until hunger gave way to grief trying to find a way out.
God help me, my anger betrayed me first. My body knew him too well. It remembered him before my pride could protect me, before my mind could gather every reason I should make him suffer before touching him again.
When he finally pulled back, he did not go far. His forehead rested near mine. His eyes were open now, and what I saw there scared me more than his silence had. He looked tired. Guilty. But beneath that was something torn open and still bleeding.
Whatever explanation he had brought with him had not come alone.
It carried damage.
It carried loss.
Chapter Twenty-one
Hayden
Forafewdangerousdays, I learned what happiness felt like.
It came late, long past the damage and the years I had spent convincing myself that wanting a life only gave the world another place to cut. Helena’s laugh carried part of it. So did the way she reached for me without thinking, the New Year evenings in Edwina’s apartment, the strange warmth of standing somewhere that had stopped feeling borrowed. Edwina carried the rest, the looks she gave me when she forgot to protect herself, the silence between us when it no longer came armed for war, the fragile peace trying to grow over all the shit we had ruined.
