“Well, it’s not too warm out here, is it? Take care of yourself, dear.”
I turn to watch her go as she heads in the direction of Jonas’ building. That’s when I see him. The sun shines in through the windshield of the car and our eyes meet.
Hayden.
Watching me.
Shit.
The driver pulls out onto the street heading toward me. They stop. The cars behind them honk their horns as the driver gets out and wordlessly opens the back door for me.
I stand there for a minute looking at it, unable to see Hayden sitting on the far end.
Someone lays on their horn.
“Get in,” Hayden says from inside.
I turn to the driver. “I have a car—”
Hayden opens his door and steps out, his expression hard, like he’s not pleased. Not at all.
More cars honk, someone yells a curse. I don’t think he cares, not even a little bit.
“I said get in.”
Without a word, I get in. He climbs in on his side and both doors close simultaneously. Strangely, even in a time like this, my first thought is how good he smells. The aftershave he wears the same one he’s always worn. His own scent just beneath it. One I’m attuned to no matter how subtle.
“I can explain,” I start.
He holds up his hand.
“Club, sir?” the driver asks.
“No. Take us to the Abbot house.”
“I took Celia’s car. She needs it back.”
He studies me. I guess he’s trying to make sense of why I’m here. We drive in heavy silence to the house. Only then does he finally speak.
“Give me the keys to Celia’s car,” he says.
I reach into my purse and take them out, dropping them into his gloved hand.
“Make and model.”
I tell him.
“Where is it?”
“Down the street from where you were parked.”
He nods.
“My sister—”
“She’ll be brought back to the club when she’s ready to leave.”
“I was just…”
I trail off when he turns to the driver, handing him the keys and telling him to get someone to drive Celia’s car to the hospital. He then gestures for me to go ahead of him up the stairs to the front door. He reaches around me to unlock the door and allows me to enter first when he opens it.
We hang our coats by the door and he walks ahead of me toward my father’s study. I slip my hand into my coat pocket and take the photo. I tuck it into my purse.
When he reaches the study, he opens the door and looks toward me.
I walk to the study and enter, feeling like a prisoner entering an interrogation room. I notice how Anna has cleaned up my plate from last night. The bottle of vodka and the glass are gone too.
I also notice the book on its velvet wrapping left open to the page where Nora had tucked the photograph.
Hayden looks at it, turns it over to read the title, touches the damaged corner.
Blood. Does he realize it’s blood?
Did my father take it from the chapel and hide it before anyone else found her? Is that how he got hold of it? Is that why there’s blood on the corner?
I remember the words written on the back of the photo in her perfect, pretty script. When she took the time, she had the prettiest handwriting.
I can’t.
And I understand something. Understand this last piece of the puzzle. And I want to cry because I realize how alone she must have felt. How damaged she was. My best friend was hurting and I didn’t have the first clue.
Hayden leans against the desk and folds his arms across his chest. He looks down at me sitting there and I can feel the raw emotion radiating from him. The barely contained rage. Because what could he have thought to see me coming out of Jonas’ apartment building? About the fact that I snuck away to see his stepbrother, a man I was once engaged to. A man he despises.
“Talk,” he finally says.
I swallow, feel suddenly chilled. I can’t hold his gaze.
“You don’t want me to.”
He reaches down suddenly, gripping the collar of my shirt and hauling me to my feet so quickly that I’m too shocked to react.
“You don’t know what I want,” he says, the words seething, the rage behind them bubbling. If he knows…if I tell him, he will kill Jonas. I know it. I need to give Jonas time to get out. If he will get out. Not to protect Jonas but to save Hayden from doing something he can’t undo.
It takes Hayden a full minute to loosen his hold on me, another minute before he releases me, and I see the effort it takes.
I take a step away, then another.
He grips the desk, his knuckles turning white. “Are you fucking him?”
The question catches me by such surprise. “What?”
“Are you fucking Jonas?” he repeats more slowly.
“No. God, no.” I shake my head, look away. “It would be easier if I were.”
And that is the wrong thing to say because he loses the battle against that rage he’s barely been containing. His eyes go black and he stalks toward me and before I can turn to run, before I can take a single step, he’s got my back pressed against the wall.
“Don’t. Ever. Say. That.” It’s a roar, not a low, quiet threat, nothing remotely civilized about it. “Don’t ever fucking say that again. Do you hear me?”
I nod. “I didn’t mean—”
He cups my face with both hands, the pads of his fingers rough.
“You’re mine. Not his. Not anyone’s. And fuck any contracts. Mine. Only mine.”
I nod again, and I touch his cheek, brush back his hair and I think he knows that something’s about to change. That the thing he so desperately wants to know, I think he knows it’ll kill him. And there’s no way around it.
“I think there was a note,” I say.
34
Persephone
Hayden leans his forehead against mine as a tear slides down my cheek.
I touch him, just his shirt, my fingers are light as feathers, and I swallow as my breathing levels out. I’m caged in this corner, his big body trapping me, but I’m the one who will hurt him when I tell him.
He draws back, looks at me and I think he knows. He must. He’s guessed it, hasn’t he?
In his eyes, I see what I saw when I first met him out there on the street when I was a little girl and he was my Hades. My dark hero. I see that sadness that was there then, too. Something broken inside him. Broken long before Nora killed herself.
I remember the bruise on his face, and I reach up to touch the spot now and I feel my eyes fill with tears again.
“I think she did leave a note,” I say.
He doesn’t speak, just watches me, waits.
“I think my dad took it when he found her.” He was the first one at the chapel. I remember when he’d walked out there that icy morning, the frozen dew evaporating into mist in the sun creating a thick fog. How opposite the morning to the night before. It had rained for days that Halloween. Like something knew what she’d do. What she’d planned.
“I think I’ve had it all along,” I finish.
When I move to slip away, he lets me, still silent. A silent beast.
I pick up my purse which is on the floor. I don’t know when I dropped it. I open it, see that photo I wish I’d never seen.