34. Aurora
AURORA
Istop at the bottom of the stairs and tighten my grip on the strap of my bag.
My heart is beating way too fast. I feel it everywhere—in my throat, in my wrists, behind my eyes—and I hate that I’m standing here this close and still feel like I might turn around and leave.
I’ve been thinking about this moment for years.
Back when I didn’t even know who my dad was, I used to imagine what it would be like to finally stand in front of him and tell him I was his daughter.
I imagined relief flashing across his face, him telling me he’d been looking for me too, that there was a very reasonable explanation for why he never visited me.
That he was happy I found him and he wanted me in his life.
But I also wondered if my mom was right. What if he didn’t want anything to do with us? With me?
Whenever those thoughts came up, I always found a way to shove them down. But after I walk through that door, I can’t take it back. Can’t pretend it never happened.
I could still back out.
I could turn around, walk away, and pretend I don’t know that the man on the other side of those doors is half of where I came from.
No.
I didn’t spend all this time digging up information on him, applying to Colton U, and sitting through his class just to lose my nerve now.
I stare at the door for one more second.
Then I knock before I can chicken out.
“Come in,” he calls.
I draw in a breath that doesn’t do a thing to help and push the door open.
He’s sitting behind his desk with his glasses low on his nose, and when he looks up and sees me standing there, he pauses. “Aurora,” he says, setting the pen down. “I wasn’t expecting you. Do you need something?”
He smiles at me and my chest tightens. He already knows me. Knows my name. Knows my face. Knows the sound of my voice in class. Just… not in the way I need him to.
I step farther into the room and shut the door behind me. “Yeah,” I say. “I mean—yes. Um…” I blow out a breath. Jesus, this is going wrong already.
His smile slips a little. “Is everything all right?”
I sit, mostly because I don’t trust my legs right now, and the absolute last thing I need is to collapse in front of the man I crossed an entire state to find. My eyes go back to his face, searching for any resemblance we may have.
I’ve spent every class half listening and half watching him, picking apart every little thing and trying to find something that feels familiar.
The shape of his mouth. The line of his nose.
The way his brows pull together when he’s concentrating.
Anything that feels like it could have been passed on to me.
I drag in a breath. “This isn’t about class.”
His brows shift slightly. “Okay.”
My mouth feels dry, even when I swallow and lick my lips. “This is going to sound crazy, but…” I grip my bag tighter. “I just…”
I had this planned. I knew what I wanted to say. Now I’m sitting here looking at him, and my mind has gone completely blank.
“My mom is Elena Prescott,” I say, searching his eyes for any hint of recognition. “You knew her, years ago.” He sits straighter, and I just let years of bottling it up, of thinking about this moment, go and say, “I’m your daughter.”
He doesn’t move. For a second, I think maybe he didn’t hear me. But then his jaw tightens, just a fraction, and he leans back in his chair slowly, taking his glasses off and setting them on the desk.
“How did you find me?”
Of all the things he could say, I didn’t think this would be it, and certainly not the first thing. I don’t know what I was expecting, really. I didn’t think much further than telling him, but… I thought he’d be happy? Or apologetic for leaving all those years ago. Or… something.
“I… What?”
“What do you want?” he asks, the cold tone in his voice making my stomach drop. “Do you want money?”
“No.” My brows pull together. “I don’t want anything. I just...” My throat tightens. “I wanted to meet you.”
He shifts back in his chair. “This is highly inappropriate,” he says, and the words cut straight through me. “I don’t know what your mother told you, but—”
“She didn’t tell me anything,” I cut in. “That’s why I’m here. I’ve wondered about you my whole life, and for some reason she refused to tell me anything about you.”
I’m hit with the strange, dizzy feeling of looking at my father and knowing that this is the person I spent years wondering about, years building up in my head, wishing I could meet.
But the feeling barely has time to settle before it’s gone again, swallowed up by the look on his face.
The disappointment.
The anger.
“I found a picture of the two of you when she was pregnant,” I continue, forcing the words out past the hurt lodged in my throat. “I spent months trying to find you.” He shakes his head, and whatever hope I came in here with starts falling apart. “I just want to know my dad.”
He looks out toward the window, then back at me, his lips pursed into a thin line. “I have a family,” he says, his voice clipped. “A wife. A son. A life I’ve built for myself.”
“I’m not trying to blow up your life,” I tell him, and I can hear the crack in my own voice even though I’m trying so hard to keep it steady.
“I didn’t come here because I expect to be invited to Sunday dinners.
I just…” I swallow, because it feels like my throat is burning with every word that slips out.
“I just wanted to know you. That’s all.”
He shakes his head again, and my stomach sinks. “Your mother and I had an agreement, Aurora. I’m sorry, but I made my feelings clear back then. I didn’t want to be a father.”
“But that was years ago. You’re a father now.” My voice tightens. “You love your son, don’t you?”
His expression hardens. “I think it would be best if you didn’t come back,” he says. “And you should withdraw from my class.”
My throat burns when I push to my feet. I need to get out of here right now, because there is no way I’m crying in front of him. Not after spending all this time looking for him just to stand here and find out I meant that little.
I swing my bag over my shoulder and turn toward the door, gripping the strap so hard my hand aches. My eyes are already stinging. I can feel the tears building, and the thought of him seeing them makes something twist in my stomach.
I make myself look back anyway.
He’s watching me from behind the desk, and I force myself to hold his gaze. “Did you ever think of me?” The question slips out before I can stop it. My throat tightens, but I keep going. “When you left. All these years… did you ever think about me at all? Did you ever want to find me?”
The office is so quiet I can hear the clock on the wall and the sound of my own breathing as I wait for him to say something that doesn’t crush whatever hope I’ve got left.
But when he opens his mouth, all that comes out is, “No.”
A tear slides down my cheek before I can stop it, humiliation settling in my bones. After all this time, after months of searching, after everything it took to walk into this room, that’s all he has to say.
I nod because I don’t trust myself to do anything else, then turn and walk out of his office before I fall apart in front of him.
The hallway blurs almost as soon as I step into it. I keep my head down and walk fast, one hand locked around the strap of my bag, the other wiping uselessly at my face because the tears just keep coming anyway.
No.
No. No. No.
I hear the word on repeat with every step down the stairs, and when I push out into the cold, my chest hurts so badly it feels hard to breathe.
I came all this way to find him and he never once tried to find me.
He has a new family now. There’s no room for me in his life.
By the time I get to Cole’s building, the tears have dried on my face. I sniffle as I wrap my coat around myself and climb up the steps, knocking on his door, begging myself to just hold it together until I’m inside.
I just want to see him. I want him to wrap his arms around me and tell me that everything will be okay, even if I don’t believe it.
I wipe at my face and wait for him to open the door and pull me into his arms.
Lately, being with Cole is the only thing that makes anything feel even slightly bearable, which still feels insane enough to think. If someone had told me a few months ago that he’d become the person I ran to, I would’ve laughed in their face.
But when the door opens and he looks at me, all I see is the version of him I used to know. The hard jaw. The closed-off expression. The look that kept me at arm’s length for years.
“Hi.” I sniffle. “Can I come in?” I ask.
“No.”
I blink up at him, wondering if I heard him wrong, because… “What?”
His hand tightens on the door. “You need to go.”
I blink. “Cole—”
“I mean it, Aurora.”
I blink, trying to understand what the hell is going on, because none of this makes sense. Not with the way he looked at me this morning. Not after the last few days. Not after everything that’s happened.
“What are you talking about?” I ask him. “What’s going on?”
He exhales through his nose. “I’ve got more important shit to deal with. I don’t have time for whatever this is.”
I stare at him, my heart pounding against my chest. “What is that supposed to mean?”
When he looks at me, all the warmth I’ve gotten used to over the past few weeks is gone. “It means this is over.”
My stomach drops. My heart does too. Everything in me just… falls. “Over?” I repeat. “Cole, what are you—”
“This should’ve never gone this far.” He drags a hand through his hair and looks away. “It never should have happened.”
He’s lying. I know he is because I know him. I’ve spent months learning the small things, and one of them is that when Cole can’t look me in the eye, he’s lying. I just don’t understand why. I don’t understand what could have changed in less than an hour after I left his place.
“You kissed me this morning,” I remind him. “We were going to go on a date tonight.”
His gaze flicks back to mine. “I know.”
“So what?” I ask, my brows pulling together. “You just changed your mind in an hour?”
He shrugs, still not really looking at me, and for a second, I can’t even speak. The words get stuck somewhere between my chest and my throat until I can’t tell if I’m about to cry, scream, or throw up.
My chest tightens. “Did I do something?” I ask instead of asking the question I want to know.
Why don’t you want me anymore?
His jaw tightens, but he says nothing.
I swallow hard. “I thought—”
“What?” he snaps, his eyes flashing to mine. “What the fuck do you want from me?”
I blink at him, and for a second all I see is the version of him from months ago. Hate and anger mix in his expression as he looks at me like he can’t stand the sight of me.
What do I want? I want him to take one look at me and know I’m not okay. I want him to stop lying, because there is no version of the last week that fits the shit he’s saying now. I want him to tell me what happened. I want him to let me in.
I feel the tears coming and I’m so mad at myself that I came here hopeful and stupid enough to think he might be the one place that still felt safe today.
Clearly I was wrong.
So I lift my chin higher and I say the only thing left. “Nothing.” My voice shakes, but I keep going. “I don’t want anything from you.”
I turn around before the tears can fall.
I head down the stairs, wiping at my face, and don’t look back. I hear his door shut behind me just before I push out of the building, and the second I’m outside, the tears come harder, blurring everything in front of me.
I make it as far as the fence before I stop, pressing a hand over my mouth as a broken sound rips out of me and my heart breaks into a million pieces.
My dad wants nothing to do with me.
Chase hit me.
Cole is done with me.
Why is it so easy for people to leave me? What the hell is so wrong with me that nobody ever stays? Why am I so disposable?
Am I that impossible to love?
I wipe at my face and grab my phone, my hands shaking so badly I nearly drop it before I manage to hit call. The line rings, and for a second I think maybe she won’t answer, maybe I’ll have to sit here and keep falling apart by myself, but then I hear her voice.
“Aurora?” my mom says, already sounding panicked. “Are you okay?”
A sob catches in my throat. “You were right, Mom.”