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.
Chapter Fifty-Two
Joshua / Aurora
Joshua
Monday, February 10th. Still stuck in the damn cold and the week of love. I don’t even know what to do with that.
I was just cutting across campus when I saw her, legs swinging off the bleacher, notebook beside her, hair moving with the wind. She looked small but alive, kicking her feet as if she were counting the seconds until someone noticed her.
Someone like me.
So I walked up, pretending it was casual. “Hey.”
