The office buzzed with its usual rhythm—phones ringing, people chatting, the distant hum of the coffee machine—but Hayden barely noticed any of it.
She kept her head down, drowning herself in work, crunching numbers on her screen like her life depended on it.
It was easier this way.
Hayden’s POV
The one thing I had mastered over the years?
Leaving before I could be left.
Sareena and Silas had slipped into my life so effortlessly, and for a brief, stupid moment, I actually believed this time might be different. That maybe—just maybe—I could finally be part of something real.
But that was dangerous thinking.
Nothing ever lasted. I’d learned that lesson the hard way.
My parents had left this world too soon. Nate, the only boy I’d ever truly cared about as a child, had been adopted an
