Hayden
Helena’sbirthdayhadbeena few days ago and London had already put on its Christmas Eve face. Pale winter light stretched across the city while shop windows glowed with ornaments and strings of gold lights. People moved through the streets carrying bags and ribbons, wrapped up in holiday plans and the comfort of believing happiness could be simple.
Nothing inside me felt simple. There was darkness under my skin, old hurt that refused to stay buried, and memories I had spent years trying to leave alone.
Had I forgiven Edwina? Or had she forgiven me? I didn’t fucking know. Part of me wanted to forgive her. Another part wanted her to carry the weight of this for the rest of her life. What she had done still lived inside me. Finding out Helena was mine hadn't erased it. The fact that I still wanted her with anintensity savage enough to humiliate me had not changed that either.
She had hurt me in a way I was not sure I would ever fully recover from, but I had hurt her too. I had given her reasons to leave. I had handed her betrayal with my own goddamn hands, whether I had meant for it to destroy us or not. We were not clean victims standing opposite each other in neat lines of blame. We were two broken people who had reached for each other badly, loved each other badly, wounded each other so thoroughly that even now, standing among the ruins, neither of us knew how to touch the wreckage without bleeding anew.
Our story wasn't clean. Blame and pain had become too tangled for that. I broke things that should have been protected. She answered that wound with one of her own. We loved each other, and somewhere along the way we stopped knowing how to do it without causing damage.
Even now, standing in the aftermath, neither of us knew how to reach for the other without reopening old wounds.
I bought Helena a present on the way back. It was a small toy, carefully chosen and tucked into a gift bag with tissue paper and ribbon. The thing looked ridiculous in my hand, all bright paper and soft edges, innocent in a way that had no business sitting beside the mess under my skin.
But I carried it anyway.
At every red light, my eyes dropped to the bag on the passenger seat. It felt heavier than it should have, as if the weight of it had nothing to do with the toy inside and everything to do with the right I had not earned yet.
Either way, I was done standing still.
I was going back to spend Christmas Eve with them, and this time, I would introduce myself to Helena properly. Before the night was over, Edwina was going to answer my questions too, starting with the surname she had taken while I was gone.
Rhodes.
I still did not know where the fuck it had come from. The name sat wrong in my head every time I thought it. Edwina Carter belonged to the past I knew, the memories I could not cut out of myself, and the girl I had ruined, lost, and never stopped wanting.
Edwina Rhodes belonged to a life built without me.
Who gave her that name? Why did she take it? Was it chosen, inherited, borrowed, or used for protection? Every possibility pissed me off, but one of them made my blood turn meaner than the rest.
Another man.
I fucking hated that I had to ask.
There were years of her life I knew nothing about. Names I did not recognize, records I had never seen, choices she had made while I was buried somewhere outside her world. The thought of another man standing close enough to give her a name, to mark a life that should have had my place in it, made something ugly settle in my chest.
Rhodes kept turning in my head, sharp and wrong.
I was going to find out where it came from, who helped her disappear, and what kind of life she had built with a name I did not recognize. If some bastard had given it to her, then God help him.
Because I was done being patient. I was done standing outside. And I was done letting Edwina decide which pieces of the truth I was allowed to touch.
When I knocked, I realized my hand was wrapped too tightly around the gift bag. Edwina opened the door a second later, and the sight of her hit me in a place that still had not healed.
Christ, she was fucking beautiful.
She wore a cream knit dress that fell to her knees, soft enough for home but fitted in a way that made my thoughts turn filthy before I could stop them. The sleeves covered most of her hands, her hair was loose around her face, and a thin gold chain rested at her throat. On her feet were ridiculous puffy slippers that should have made the whole thing harmless.
They didn’t.
For a moment, I only looked at her. The silence shifted. Her fingers tightened against the edge of the door, and her breath changed before she could hide it.
I heard it. That had always been the problem with Edwina. Her mouth could lie, but her body never knew how. I knew the pauses she tried to swallow, the breaths that gave her away, and the way she looked at me when she wanted to run and stay at the same time.
I stepped closer, just a little, and the air between us changed. Warmth rose into her face. She understood what I wanted before she found the strength to move away.
I leaned in.