Me: Go to practice!
Joshua: Fine, fine, I’ll see you at home.
Joshua: I miss you, though.
I bit back a smile I couldn’t help. He was dramatic. And clingy. And I loved it.
I was staring at the screen while walking, thumbs warm over his last message, thinking about what I’d say back, something soft, maybe something like miss you too even though I’d literally seen him this morning—
When I sawhim.
A man sitting on the stone ledge by the front entrance of our building. Not a student. Not staff. Not security. Older. Suit. Dark coat. Gold watch. The kind of expensive that people don’t talk about out loud.
And his face.
Joshua’s face.
Older, sharper, tired.
I stopped without meaning to.
He lifted his head as if he’d been waiting. “Do you live here?”
His voice wasn’t rude. Just… worn. Like it hadn’t rested in a long time.
I swallowed and nodded. “Y-Yeah.”
His eyes flicked over me. Not in a creepy way. More like he was cataloguing information. Trying to solve something. “Do you,” he said after a beat, “know the boy who lives in the penthouse?”
Boy. As if Joshua wasn’t six-foot-three and built like a wall.
I nodded again. Slower. My throat tightened on instinct. “Yes.”
His jaw shifted, as if that answer landed somewhere heavy in him. “Joshua Lockhart,” he clarified. “Do you know him personally?”
Personally.
I hesitated.
Because no one knew about us except the girls, Alex, and Emily. And this was his dad. The dad he didn’t talk about in the best way. The dad whose name sat on the side of ships and warehouses. The dad whose name he said out loud with his teeth clenched.
I shouldn’t say it.
Joshua wouldn’t like this.
But the man in front of me wasn’t some cold CEO monster with cameras in his eyes. He just looked… tired. Sad, even. Like whatever he came here for mattered.
I shifted my bag up on my shoulder and forced the words out. “I’m his—”
I paused. Felt my face heat up.
Then, quieter: “I’m his girlfriend.”
Something flickered in his expression. Fast. Almost invisible. Not shock. Not anger. Just… relief, maybe. Relief with a crack down the middle.
“Girlfriend,” he repeated, like he was turning the word over. “I see.”
He paused for a second before continuing.
