Chapter Thirty-Eight Joshua
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Joshua
The whole term was over now. Christmas was coming up, and to me, it wasn’t that special. I always spent it alone. Better that way.
Next four weeks of peace and quiet.
My head was pounding from the noise, the routine, the pretending that everything was fine when it wasn’t.
I parked in the private garage, like always, killing the engine, just sitting there for a second, letting the quiet hum of the car be the only thing keeping me from thinking too much.
Then I opened the door.
And there she was.
Crouched by the concrete wall near the stairwell, knees tucked close, her long hair spilling forward as she held out her hand to a tiny ginger kitten.
The damn thing was trembling, half-starved, probably living off crumbs and luck. And she was whispering something soft under her breath as she tore little bits of food from a sandwich.
This girl…
Feeding everything and everyone but herself.
Always giving. Always caring. Always finding something broken and trying to fix it, even if she couldn’t fix herself.
I stayed where I was, halfway between the car and the door, frozen like an idiot. She didn’t see me, too focused on the kitten now daring to inch closer, nose twitching as it sniffed her fingers.
And she smiled.
Small. Quiet. Gentle.
Like the kind of smile you’d miss if you blinked too fast. I felt something shift, sharp, familiar, heavy. That same ache that started the first time I realised I didn’t just notice her, I saw her.
I wanted to say something. Tell her she’d get sick sitting on the cold floor. That the kitten would bite her, that she’d give too much again and forget to eat dinner.
But I didn’t.
Because knowing her, she’d just nod, smile, and do it anyway.
So I walked past. Quietly. Didn’t say a word. Didn’t want to scare her or the damn cat. But as I swiped my keycard and stepped into the lobby, I caught myself looking back one more time.
And she was still there, knees on cold concrete, soft hand outstretched, feeding something small and hungry. And for a second, I wondered if I was any different from that kitten.
Always starving.
Always waiting for her to notice me.
The elevator doors slid open with a quiet chime, the kind that echoed too loudly in an empty building. I stepped in and rode up in silence, picturing her still there.
Soon, the door opened again, and I stepped out, key carded into the penthouse. The lights came on automatically, soft, gold, expensive. Everything here was expensive.
The marble floors, the glass walls, the view of the city that everyone else would probably kill for. But all I could think was how dead it felt.
I dropped my keys on the counter. The sound bounced off the walls, sharp and hollow.
Took a slow walk around the place, past the couch she once sat on, the coffee table where she’d spread out her laptop and notes, the kitchen where she ate my food like it was the best thing she’d ever tasted.
It wasn’t. But she made it feel as if it was.
Now the same space felt wrong.
Too still. Too clean. Too… quiet.
I sat down on the couch and leaned back, staring at nothing.
This was supposed to be my peace, my escape from the world, from people. But it turned out I’d got so used to her being here, her quiet presence, her small footsteps, her way of making the air feel lighter, that without it… this place didn’t even feel like mine anymore.
It felt like a cage.
A luxurious, penthouse-sized reminder of how badly I’d fucked up.
I had everything I thought I wanted.
The silence, the control, the space. And somehow, it had never felt emptier than it did now.
It’s a shame, really.
Because I know there’s no ‘another chance’ for us. No reset button. No easy fix. I crossed a line that can’t be uncrossed, burned a bridge that can’t be rebuilt.
And for what?
To prove that I didn’t care? To protect myself from feeling too much?
Now I’d give anything to feel that too much again: her laugh, her scolding texts, even her shy little glares when I said something dumb.
But all I’d got left was this empty penthouse and the memory of how it felt when she was here, when she made it warm, when she made me warm. And fuck, I’d ruin myself all over again just to have that light back for one more night.
Knock.
I turned upon hearing that.
Then again, soft, hesitant.
I blinked at the door. Nobody knocked on my door. Ever. Not Alex, not the delivery guys, no one.
I stood up, half-expecting it to be maintenance or someone who got the wrong floor.
But when I pulled it open—
There she was.
Aurora.
Standing in the hall with her bag slung over one shoulder, hair slightly messy from the wind.
For a second, I thought I was imagining it. My brain filled the quiet with a hallucination I actually wanted to believe. But then she looked up, those tired, gentle eyes meeting mine, and the air in my lungs stopped.
Just like that, the place felt alive again.
The sterile air, the white walls, the empty quiet—it all softened the second she was there. That strange, invisible warmth she carried everywhere spilt straight into the doorway.
She lifted her phone with her good hand and typed something. I leaned down to read.
Saving my electricity bill, so I’ll rely on your place for now.
I didn’t even realise my jaw had gone slack until she tilted her head, waiting for an answer.
God. Of course she’d phrase it like that, casual, practical, like she wasn’t doing me a mercy just by standing there. Like she wasn’t single-handedly bringing this dead apartment back to life.
I stepped aside, quietly, my throat too tight to say anything that wouldn’t sound wrong.
“Come in,” I managed, barely above a whisper.
She walked past me, slow, cautious, the familiar scent of her shampoo following.
Her bag brushed my arm, light but grounding. And I swear, I felt something inside me unclench. The hum of the city faded outside. The lights in the penthouse glowed warmer somehow.
Maybe she didn’t come back for me. Maybe it was just for the electricity. But even so... she was here.
And that was enough.
She dropped her bag by the couch, pulled her laptop and notebook out, and sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the coffee table.
Like this was her place.
I stood there for a second, hands in my pockets, not sure if I should stay or vanish. Then I turned toward the kitchen, giving her space, pretending to be busy, pretending not to be hyperaware of every tiny sound she made.
The soft thud of paper. The click of her pen. The quiet rhythm of pages turning.
She didn’t say anything, didn’t even glance up.
But then—her hand lifted.
No words, no text, just a small movement, fingers curling once, a silent come here.
So I went.
I sat down next to her. She didn’t look at me, just tapped her pen against a few pages of handwritten notes, then pointed to the laptop.
“You want me to type this out?” I asked quietly.
She nodded, eyes still fixed on her notes.
“All of it?”
This time, she turned slowly and gave me this look. A look that said you owe me. Not out of cruelty. Not even anger.
Just quiet truth.
I sighed, rolled my shoulders, and nodded back. “Yeah, okay.”
She slid the laptop toward me and went back to her notes, scribbling with her left hand, neat even though it wasn’t her dominant hand.
And I started typing. Each word she’d written, I copied. Didn’t change a single sentence. Didn’t dare.
And as the room filled with the sound of my typing and her steady writing, I realised how easy it was to fall into rhythm with her. Like this, working side by side, no yelling, no tension, was how it should’ve been from the start.
For once, it didn’t feel like I was trying to fix anything.
I was just… here. With her.
She’d been quiet for a while, just the scratch of her pen and the soft clicking of the keyboard between us. And honestly? I was proud of myself. I hadn’t messed anything up yet.
Or so I thought.
Because then she suddenly turned toward me, frown deep, her lips parting just slightly before she stumbled out,
“Y-you—”
I froze, blinking at her. “Me… what?”
She huffed, flipping a few pages of her notebook with her cast arm, then jabbed her finger at the screen.
The page number.
Shit.
“I—what?” I looked down at what I’d typed, then back at the notebook, then back at her. “You gave me the book open like that,” I said, half-defensive, half-panicking. “I thought I was supposed to start there.”
She let out this small, frustrated breath, and her mouth started to move again, quiet, broken. “C–common s—”
She couldn’t finish it, but I understood.
And my brows shot up. “Oh, so you think I don’t have common sense now?”
That got her.
She whipped her head away so fast, hair brushing her cheek, and lifted her good hand to cover her face. Not because she was scared.
Because she was annoyed.
Annoyed at me.
And fuck, for some reason, that almost made me laugh. She was so much like Alex when annoyed. British menaces. Adorable though. Not Alex. Her.
The way her shoulders rose a little, her neck stiff, her ears going pink. She wasn’t used to arguing with me like this. Not without fear. Not with this kind of normalcy.
“Okay, fine,” I muttered under my breath, smirking a little as I backspaced the whole page. “Starting over. From page one. With common sense this time.”
Her hand twitched, as if she wanted to throw a pen at me but couldn’t. And I swear, seeing her that flustered, that human again, after everything that happened…
It almost felt like breathing for the first time in weeks.
We’d fallen quiet again after our little argument, well, she’d gone quiet, and I was still trying not to smirk about it.
Her notes were scattered all over the table, the pages soft at the corners from how many times she’d rewritten and highlighted them. The kind of detail only someone obsessed with doing everything right would have.
After a moment, I tried to strike up another conversation. Something random, something about her.