She wore the pink dress she had chosen at least three times during the week, proud of it because it matched mine. She kept smoothing the skirt with both hands, smiling at everyone as if the whole day had been made for her.
And it had.
When it was time for the cake, everyone gathered around the table. The candles flickered in front of her, light moving across her face as I stood beside her with one hand near her back. Giselle and Daniel took their places on the other side, and the room began to sing.
Helena’s eyes shone so brightly that, for one aching second, I thought if life gave me nothing else after this, it would still have been enough.
She took a breath and blew out the candles. Everyone clapped. The children cheered, and Helena grinned so wide I felt it in my own chest. When she began handing out the first pieces of cake, she gave one to me with the serious importance only a four-year-old could manage.
“This one is for Mommy.”
I bent down and kissed her hair. “Thank you, my sweet girl.”
The next piece went to Giselle, who pressed a hand to her heart. “For me? I’m honored.”
Helena giggled. “You have to eat all of it.”
Then Helena turned to Daniel and offered him a piece too. The moment he took it, she smiled and wrapped her arms around him, trusting and easy, the way children do when they feel safe. Daniel bent down at once, accepting the plate and the hug with a gentleness that would have made me smile on any other day.
Before I could smile, the air changed.
At first, nothing obvious explained it. The room kept moving, voices still rising around the table, children laughing over the music, yet some sudden shift cut through all of it and reached me before anyone else noticed. My fingers froze around the plate. My breath caught high in my chest, and a cold instinct moved through me with such force that my heart gave one hard, painful beat.
I looked up.
Hayden stood at the door.
For a second, the world broke apart around me.
The music faded. Laughter slipped into the distance. Children kept moving through the room, bright and unaware, while I stood there with my breath trapped in my chest, staring at the man who should never have been standing inside this apartment.
He was here. Actually here.
Shock hit me so hard my body went cold from the inside out. My hand tightened around the plate until the edge pressed into my palm, but I barely felt it. My mind struggled to catch up, to turn what I was seeing into something that made sense, and failed.
This was impossible.
He did not know this address. He was not supposed to know it. The one on my university forms belonged to the version of my life I let people see, not this place. Yet there he was, framed by the doorway, looking as if he had stepped straight out of every fear I had spent years trying to outrun.
He had searched for me, followed whatever thread he could find, and forced his way to the one place I had never wanted him to reach.
The realization went through me like ice.
He stalked me.
There was only one explanation, and it made my stomach turn. Hayden Stone had not wandered into my daughter’s birthday by accident. He had found the address I had tried to keep hidden and come straight to my door, into the middle of balloons, cake, children’s laughter, and the life I had built without him.
My worst fear was no longer waiting somewhere in the future.
It was standing in my apartment.
Now.
My eyes locked with his, and the force of it nearly shattered what little control I had left. His expression was dark, shaken, and unreadable in a way that made the warmth drain from the room. I could not tell how long he had been there, what he had seen, or which pieces had already fallen into place inside his head.
Then my gaze moved before I could stop it.
To Helena.
