She looked up at me next. “Tomorrow,” she whispered.
I nodded once because my throat felt too tight to say anything. She turned and left, and I stood there by the door, watching the elevator doors slide shut around her.
The second she disappeared, Honey meowed as if it already missed her.
“Yeah,” I muttered, letting out a dry laugh and scratching the kitten’s head. “Lucky girl, huh?”
Honey blinked up at me with those wide eyes, the same innocence as hers.
“You get to have her kisses,” I murmured, half-smiling. “You get to curl up against her chest and listen to her heartbeat.”
The kitten purred louder, curling into my hand as if it understood.
“Lucky,” I said again, quieter this time.
Because she kissed the cat goodbye.
Not me.
And I stood there, in the quiet glow of my penthouse, holding the warm little creature she loved, the closest thing I’d ever get to feeling her again before tomorrow came.
Chapter Forty-Five
Aurora / Joshua
Aurora
Morning crept in quietly, the pale winter sun painting soft stripes across my floor. And there they were: three little boxes, and a package stacked neatly against my door. Because the gifts from the girls came at the same time.
I went to pick them up last night and fell asleep before I could open them.
I pulled each box up to my bed and decided to open them one by one, starting with the biggest box, Layla.
When I opened it, I laughed under my breath.
It was a cream oversized cardigan, thick, soft, and beautiful. The kind of cream that looked like the one she always wore, the one she said made her ‘feel like home.’
There was a note attached, written in her loopy handwriting:
NYC misses you. You'd better wear this when I visit, or I’m stealing it back.
- Love Layla
I pressed the sleeve to my cheek, breathing in faint traces of her perfume that somehow clung to the wool.
The second box, Jennie.
She didn’t just sendabook.
She sentsix. A whole romance series, tied together with a silver ribbon and a sticky note on the top that said:
You can’t read one chapter and quit. Read them all. Then tell me who your book boyfriend is! Save one for me, too, cutie. Happy Nineteen!
I smiled.
Book boyfriend.
Jennie always teased me about that. Said I lived in stories too much. But this? This was love in pages.
