Chapter Sixty-Four Aurora
Chapter Sixty-Four
Aurora
My phone buzzed again.
Joshua: Practice is boring. I want to go home.
Joshua: You better be home by the time I’m back, Princess.
Me: Yes sir! *pink heart emoji*
Joshua: I’m dying.
Me: You’ll be fine, only a few hours.
Joshua: You being okay without me doesn’t mean I’ll be okay without you.
Me: Joshuaaaa.
Me: I’ll screenshot this and expose you if you don’t go practice. Coach will yell at you.
Joshua: Do it.
Joshua: Show the world Joshua Lockhart is on his knees for you, baby. I’ll confirm it.
Me: Go to practice!
Joshua: Fine, fine, I’ll see you at home.
Joshua: I miss you, though.
I bit back a smile I couldn’t help. He was dramatic. And clingy. And I loved it.
I was staring at the screen while walking, thumbs warm over his last message, thinking about what I’d say back, something soft, maybe something like miss you too even though I’d literally seen him this morning—
When I saw him.
A man sitting on the stone ledge by the front entrance of our building. Not a student. Not staff. Not security. Older. Suit. Dark coat. Gold watch. The kind of expensive that people don’t talk about out loud.
And his face.
Joshua’s face.
Older, sharper, tired.
I stopped without meaning to.
He lifted his head as if he’d been waiting. “Do you live here?”
His voice wasn’t rude. Just… worn. Like it hadn’t rested in a long time.
I swallowed and nodded. “Y-Yeah.”
His eyes flicked over me. Not in a creepy way. More like he was cataloguing information. Trying to solve something. “Do you,” he said after a beat, “know the boy who lives in the penthouse?”
Boy. As if Joshua wasn’t six-foot-three and built like a wall.
I nodded again. Slower. My throat tightened on instinct. “Yes.”
His jaw shifted, as if that answer landed somewhere heavy in him. “Joshua Lockhart,” he clarified. “Do you know him personally?”
Personally.
I hesitated.
Because no one knew about us except the girls, Alex, and Emily. And this was his dad. The dad he didn’t talk about in the best way. The dad whose name sat on the side of ships and warehouses. The dad whose name he said out loud with his teeth clenched.
I shouldn’t say it.
Joshua wouldn’t like this.
But the man in front of me wasn’t some cold CEO monster with cameras in his eyes. He just looked… tired. Sad, even. Like whatever he came here for mattered.
I shifted my bag up on my shoulder and forced the words out. “I’m his—”
I paused. Felt my face heat up.
Then, quieter: “I’m his girlfriend.”
Something flickered in his expression. Fast. Almost invisible. Not shock. Not anger. Just… relief, maybe. Relief with a crack down the middle.
“Girlfriend,” he repeated, like he was turning the word over. “I see.”
He paused for a second before continuing.
“Do you mind,” he asked, voice dipping lower, “if we talk?”
I blinked. “Um…”
“It won’t be quick,” he said honestly. “And I’d rather not—” His eyes flicked up toward the security camera above the lobby door. “Do this here.”
Oh.
So this wasn’t casual.
I looked at him again. Really looked. His shoulders were set like a businessman, but his hands weren’t. His hands were restless. Clenched, then flexing, as if he were holding onto something that wouldn’t stay.
Whatever this was, it wasn’t some power game.
It felt more like…desperation.
For Joshua.
My chest pulled tight.
“I can have you back tonight,” he added. “He’s still at practice. Yes?”
I nodded. “L-Late practice.”
“So he won’t be home for a while.”
He knew his schedule.
Of course he did.
I shouldn’t. I really, really shouldn’t.
Joshua would hate this.
But for some reason, all I could think was… this was his dad. The man he refused to look at. The man he talked about like a wound. And that man was here. Waiting outside his building like a kid who didn’t have a key to his own house.
“I’ll come back right after,” I said quietly.
His shoulders dropped the tiniest bit. “Thank you.”
He turned, lifted a hand, and the black car at the kerb pulled forward as if it had been waiting the whole time. Sleek. Polished. The driver was already out of the front seat, opening the back door before the tyres had even fully stopped.
This was… not normal life. Not mine, anyway.
I slid in first, hands in my lap, trying not to look nervous. The leather was soft in a way that nothing should be. John—Mr Lockhart—settled in beside me a second later. The door shut with a heavy, expensive click.
It was quiet.
The city moved outside. Headlights. The smear of sunset on the glass. My heart was in my throat. I could feel him looking sometimes. Then looking away. Then looking again.
He didn’t say a word.
Neither did I.
We just drove, in silence, through LA. Away from my building, away from campus, toward the kind of neighbourhoods where houses stopped being houses and started being proof. And slowly, like the sun dropping, the skyline thinned. The streets grew wider. Quieter.
Then I saw it.
Not a house.
A mansion that looked like someone had torn out a castle and placed it on a hill. Stone and glass and too many windows. Arches. Balconies. Lights warmed from the inside like something out of a movie.
My mouth parted without a sound.
The car curved up the private drive and stopped in front of tall double doors. The driver got out. Opened our door. John gestured for me to go first.
“Come in,” he said softly. “Please.”
The doors opened, and I forgot how to breathe.
Marble floors that glowed. High ceilings that went up forever. Quiet air that felt expensive. Everything was so clean it almost didn’t feel real. No clutter. No mess. Just cold, grand, and echoing.
And right there, the first thing you saw when you stepped in was her.
A portrait that took up almost the entire entrance wall.
I stopped walking.
The frame alone looked like it cost more than my entire flat. Gold, carved, polished. And inside it, frozen in time, a bride and a groom.
The bride wore white. Not soft white. The kind of white that glowed.
The dress was fitted, elegant, off-the-shoulder, with pearls at the collarbone.
Dark hair swept up. Diamond earrings. Green eyes bright.
Smile even brighter. She was laughing… not posed, actually laughing, like someone had just said something she loved.
And the groom.
Younger. Black hair, no grey. A hand around her waist. One at her back like he’d fight God if he had to. He wasn’t smiling with his mouth. He was smiling with everything else. His eyes, his stance, the way he leaned into her instead of her leaning into him.
They looked happy.
Not rich-happy.
In-love happy.
My chest hurt a little.
Behind me, John had gone silent, too. It wasn’t an awkward silence. It was a memory silence. The kind that hung in the air and made the whole room feel like you shouldn’t talk loudly.
I didn’t realise I was staring until he spoke.
“That’s Sofia.”
I turned to him.
His voice was softer than it had been outside the building. Softer than it’d been in the car. It wasn’t the CEO’s voice. It was something else that sounded cracked and reverent.
“Joshua’s mother,” he added.
Oh… he—
He never remarried…
My gaze flicked back up to the woman in white.
Up close, I could see it. Her mouth. Her cheekbones. The shape of her eyes.
Joshua had her eyes.
“She’s gorgeous,” I whispered.
It just fell out of me. Honest.
He let out a quiet breath, a ghost of a laugh, almost, but it wasn’t amused. It was sad. Soft.
“She was,” he said. Then, after a beat, “She is. Still. To me.”
I looked at him.
He didn’t take his eyes off the portrait. “The most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen,” he said, calm. Matter-of-factly, like it wasn’t up for debate. “But her face wasn’t why I married her.”
I swallowed. “No?”
“No.” His mouth pulled, not quite a smile. “Sofia had a good heart. The kind that didn’t bend for anybody with money. Including me.”
And he said it as if it were his favourite thing about her.
I felt something twist in my throat.
He finally turned to look at me. And it was weird because for a second, with that expression, with his jaw tight and his eyes softer, I could see Joshua.
“I know,” he said quietly, “my son might have told you… a different version of me.”
Might have. That made my chest feel tight, too.
“But I did love her,” he said. Steady. Heavy. “I loved her then. I love her now.”
I nodded. Small.
“I can tell,” I said.
His eyes flickered.
It was so tiny, that reaction, but I saw it. The way something in him unclenched like I’d just… let him off a hook he’d been strangling himself with.
“Come,” he said then, clearing his throat. “Sit. Stay for dinner.”
Oh. Dinner.
“I—I don’t want to—”
“You’re not intruding,” he said immediately, as if he’d been waiting for that. “You’re doing me a favour. It’s quiet here.”
That last part was almost under his breath.
Quiet here.
Joshua’s penthouse was quiet too, before me. He once told me that.
I nodded.
He lifted a hand, and a woman, maybe late fifties, in black slacks and a neat blouse, appeared from down the hall like she’d just been waiting out of sight. “Dinner for two,” he said. “Something light. And tea.”
“Yes, sir,” she said, and disappeared again.
He gestured toward a sitting room just off the foyer. It wasn’t a ‘living room’. Living room sounded too normal. This one had two long white sofas, a marble table, and floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over the city.
He didn’t sit next to me.
He sat across from me, as if this were a meeting.
He rested his forearms on his knees, hands clasped and leaned forward a little.
“Thank you for coming,” he said, and it wasn’t polite. It was real.
I nodded, hands pressed together in my lap. “It’s o-okay.”
“I’ll get to the point,” he said.
I blinked.
Right. Of course. Businessman.
“I built something,” he said. “You know that.”
I frowned a little. “Lockhart Global.”
He watched my face when I said it.