Chapter Fifty-One Aurora / Joshua
Chapter Fifty-One
Aurora / Joshua
Aurora
I found myself sitting in the lowest row of the bleachers alone when lunch rolled around. I guess I wandered too far from my class. My phone was still glowing in my hand, the tiny heart icons flickering on my screen.
The girls had been tagging me all morning, so the follower count had been going up the whole day. The whole school saw me now.
But the one person who always did was quiet.
I stared down at the list of followers again. Scrolled once. Twice. Still nothing. Of course he hadn’t followed me. He saw me long before anyone else ever did… but maybe that was the point.
Maybe he didn’t need to.
The buzz came right as I was about to put my phone away.
@j_mlockhart started following you.
For a second, I froze.
J underscore M Lockhart. Joshua Maxine Lockhart?
Then I sat up straight, really straight, and the smile broke before I could stop it. It was small, stupid, uncontainable.
He did.
He actually—
Without even thinking, my thumb hit follow back instantly. No hesitation. Like muscle memory.
And before the warmth in my chest could settle, a voice, low, familiar, dangerously close, came from behind me.
“Waiting for me?”
My heart jumped.
I turned so fast that I almost dropped my phone. He was standing a few steps behind the bleachers, hands shoved in the pockets of his black trousers, hair still a little damp from practice, a smirk tugging at his mouth.
I shook my head quickly, shoving my phone down as if it burned, before standing up.
“N-no,” I said quietly, shaking my head again, though the blush on my cheeks betrayed me completely.
He crossed his arms, eyes flicking to the field. “Really? This is the soccer field. Or—” He tilted his head with mock seriousness, “football, as you English say.”
That teasing lilt in his tone made my stomach flip.
I glared up at him, or tried to, but he was already walking closer, the grass crunching under his shoes. When he stopped, only a few feet separated us, and his gaze swept over me once, quick, careless, but not really.
It lingered.
My breath caught.
The way his eyes moved from my shoes to the hem of my skirt, up the soft knit of my vest, it wasn’t inappropriate, it was… assessing. Like he was trying to figure out why I looked so different.
And suddenly, I was too aware of everything. The skirt, the thigh-high knee socks, the makeup…
I grabbed the sides of my skirt, twisting the fabric nervously, trying to look anywhere but at him.
He noticed. Of course he did. His voice dropped lower. “You look…”
He stopped himself, jaw flexing as if he were fighting whatever word almost slipped out.
I didn’t need him to finish.
The way his eyes softened said enough.
And it terrified me how much I wanted to hear the rest, anyway.
“Different?” I asked, my voice barely holding steady.
He blinked, as if I’d caught him mid-thought, but he didn’t answer. Just… stared. And that silence, that unreadable Lockhart silence, sent me spiralling.
I started rambling before my brain could stop me.
“I um, I wanted to try a new look today. And this was what I was able to find. I didn’t—I mean, I didn’t know if it was too much or too little, and I wasn’t sure if—”
He was still watching me.
My words tripped over each other, faster, softer. “I just asked because you didn’t finish what you were saying, so I didn’t know if it was a good different or—”
“Good.”
The word cut through my sentence, low and certain.
I froze.
He took a step closer, eyes steady on mine. “It’s a good different.”
The field went quiet around us, with only the wind and the faint echo of the ball being kicked somewhere in the distance. And maybe also the sound of my heart trying to leap out onto him.
My throat went dry.
“Oh,” I whispered, looking down, my fingers brushing the hem of my skirt again, suddenly shy all over.
—
Joshua
She was gorgeous.
Not in the practised, polished way most girls around here were, the ones who spent hours rehearsing perfection until it looked effortless.
No.
Aurora looked real. Yet unreal at the same time.
White skirt, soft cream vest, hair brushed over her shoulders, lashes just a little darker than usual, like she’d tried, but not too hard. Like she didn’t even know what she did to people when she walked into a room.
I’ve seen pretty girls. I’ve been in rooms full of them: models, actresses, girls with faces that could sell magazines.
But none of them held a candle to her.
She looked… soft.
And standing there, with the wind catching the ends of her hair and her lips parted just slightly as if she were about to say something, she looked like the type of beauty that you didn’t touch.
The kind you just… watched.
She looked like my mother’s voice when she hummed lullabies through a storm, like the first quiet second after a nightmare.
God.
She was unreal.
“Really?” she asked, soft, hesitant, like she was afraid the word might break if she said it too loud.
That one word hit me harder than it should have.
It wasn’t teasing. It wasn’t fishing for another compliment. It was genuine. Like she actually couldn’t believe someone would say something good about her and mean it. And something about that, about how small her voice sounded, how her eyes lifted just enough to meet mine, made my chest tighten.
God, yes, really.
But all that came out was a quiet, rough, “Yeah.”
Her lips parted slightly, as if she didn’t know what to do with the answer. She just stood there, blinking up at me with those wide brown eyes that never stopped looking like they were made for the light.
I should’ve looked away.
I didn’t.
“Really,” I said again, firmer this time, because she needed to hear it twice. Because maybe no one else had said it before.
Her fingers brushed the edge of her vest, her cheeks flushed pink under the winter sun, and she gave a small nod before glancing away, as if she were hiding a smile.
That was it. That tiny nod.
That shy, half-hidden curve of her lips.
And I was done for.
Completely, stupidly done for.