“And if I’m not?” she asked.
My gaze darkened.
“Then we start fixing the shit we broke years ago.”
She shook her head once, disbelief returning.
“You really think it’s that simple?”
“No,” I said. Another step closer. “I think it’s going to be messy as hell.”
The words settled between us with a weight that neither of us tried to move. For a moment the office felt too small to contain everything that had just surfaced. The air carried the tension of unfinished history, of questions that had waited five years to be asked and answers that neither of us seemed ready to give.
Edwina stood a few feet away from me, her posture rigid in that controlled way she had learned over the years, her arms folded tightly as if holding herself together required physical effort. She turned slightly toward the door.
“I have a lecture to finish.”
Of course she did. She had a life beyond me now, one that did not wait just because I had walked back into it. She reached for the door handle, then stopped with her hand resting there. When she looked back, the anger had faded, leaving a guarded pain in its place.
“You shouldn’t have come here,” she said.
“Too late for that.”
Her gaze held mine for a moment longer.
“Stay the fuck out of my life, Hayden,” she snapped. “I mean it.”
The request sounded more like a command. I didn’t answer. Because we both knew that wasn’t going to happen.
She opened the door and stepped into the hallway without looking back. The door closed softly behind her. For a few seconds I remained exactly where I was, staring at the empty space she had just occupied.
Edwina
The moment I stepped out of his office, the hallway felt altered. Muted university colors lined the corridor, student voices drifted from somewhere beyond the lecture rooms, and ordinary morning movement continued around me as if nothing had changed, while I walked through it with the uneasy sense that something inside me had shifted too deeply for familiar places to feel safe. My feet carried me forward while my thoughts stayed behind that closed door.
Seeing Hayden again yesterday had unsettled me enough. Facing him across a desk while he sat in the dean’s office at the university where I worked felt like a different kind of shock, one my mind could not make sense of quickly.
Hayden Stone was now my dean.
The thought circled through me again and again, sinking deeper each time until it became a panic I could barely contain. London had been safe because distance had made it feel separate from everything I left behind. An ocean had stood between this life and Washington, allowing me to believe the past could remain where I had buried it.
Now he was standing in the center of it.
I turned toward the faculty corridor, pressing my fingers to my temple as if the small pressure could hold back the chaos gathering inside my head. This city had become home.
Helena’s kindergarten was three streets away from our apartment. The park where she liked to chase pigeons on Saturday mornings sat at the end of the block. The university halls had become familiar I could navigate them half asleep. Every small routine I had built here rested on the assumption that the past would never reach this far.
But Hayden had already proven how fragile that assumption was. The fear that followed was not about seeing him again. It was about what he would eventually discover. He had noticed my name change already. The questions would come next. And sooner or later he would realize something else. I wasn’t married. There was no husband attached to the surname Rhodes. And eventually, in a city that was suddenly far too small, he would see her.
Helena.
What if he found out about her?
The thought tightened my chest with an instinct that had only grown stronger since the day she was born. I could keep parts of my life private, but I could not hide my daughter from the world forever. Children grow into photographs, school events, familiar streets, and small daily routines that no amount of caution can fully control. If Hayden stayed in London for any length of time, if our lives kept crossing through the same university halls and the same city, the truth would find its way to him. And once he knew, nothing between us would stay simple.
I reached the faculty lounge as the break between lectures began. Several colleagues stood near the coffee machine, their conversations blending into the usual rhythm of the department.
Giselle spotted me immediately.
