The apartment was dim now, stripped of the warmth it had carried earlier. A few balloons had sunk toward the floor. Wrapping paper sat abandoned on the coffee table beside half-cleared plates and cups. My daughter’s birthday was stillscattered everywhere, and the sight of it made the ache in my chest rot into something uglier.
I had stood outside my own life, looking in through an open fucking door.
Edwina saw where my eyes went. Her expression shifted. Pain. Guilt. Fear. Maybe all of them at once.
“Hayden,” she said, and my name sounded thin on her tongue, “please.”
That word nearly snapped what little control I had left.
“Please?” I stared at her, disbelief twisting into something harsher. “You want to beg now?” My chest felt too tight, my pulse too heavy, each word scraping its way out of me. “Tell me the truth. Were you ever going to tell me?”
Her lips parted, but no sound came out.
“Answer me.” I took another step closer. “Did you plan to keep this buried forever? Let me spend the rest of my life not knowing I had a daughter?”
“Hayden—”
“No.” The word cut out of me sharp and final. “Don’t say my name with tears in your eyes and think it changes a goddamn thing. Tell me.” My voice roughened until it barely sounded like mine. “Were you really going to keep my daughter—our daughter—from me for the rest of my life?”
Tears rose in her eyes at once. It should have softened me. It didn’t. It only made the hurt turn uglier.
“She is not yours,” she said.
The room went dead. Every muscle in my body locked so hard it hurt.
“What?”
Her breath shook, but she forced the words out again.
“I said she is not yours.”
For a second, I thought I might laugh from the sheer violence of disbelief moving through me. Instead, I stepped into her space so fast she had no choice except to retreat.
“Don’t,” I said. The word came out quiet, which made it worse. “Do I look like a stupid man to you?” I asked, my voice roughening. “Do not stand there and feed me that bullshit.”
Her back nearly touched the wall. “It is the truth.”
“No.” I shook my head once, slow and furious. “The fuck it isn’t.”
“Hayden—”
“I saw her.”
“That does not mean—”
“I looked at her,” I cut in, sharper now. “I looked into her eyes and saw myself staring back. So don’t insult me. Don’t you fucking dare pretend I imagined what I saw.”
Her eyes blurred, tears gathering fast, though she kept shaking her head as if denial could hold the night together.
“You don’t understand.”
“Then make me understand.”
“I can’t.”
“You can.” I moved closer, forcing her to stay with me instead of slipping behind that careful silence she always ran to when the truth became unbearable. “And you will, because I am done standing outside a life that should have been mine too.”
Her mouth trembled.
