“Do you mind,” he asked, voice dipping lower, “if we talk?”
I blinked. “Um…”
“It won’t be quick,” he said honestly. “And I’d rather not—” His eyes flicked up toward the security camera above the lobby door. “Do this here.”
Oh.
So this wasn’t casual.
I looked at him again. Really looked. His shoulders were set like a businessman, but his hands weren’t. His hands were restless. Clenched, then flexing, as if he were holding onto something that wouldn’t stay.
Whatever this was, it wasn’t some power game.
It felt more like…desperation.
For Joshua.
My chest pulled tight.
“I can have you back tonight,” he added. “He’s still at practice. Yes?”
I nodded. “L-Late practice.”
“So he won’t be home for a while.”
He knew his schedule.
Of course he did.
I shouldn’t. I really, really shouldn’t.
Joshua would hate this.
But for some reason, all I could think was… this was his dad. The man he refused to look at. The man he talked about like a wound. And that man was here. Waiting outside his building like a kid who didn’t have a key to his own house.
“I’ll come back right after,” I said quietly.
His shoulders dropped the tiniest bit. “Thank you.”
He turned, lifted a hand, and the black car at the kerb pulled forward as if it had been waiting the whole time. Sleek. Polished. The driver was already out of the front seat, opening the back door before the tyres had even fully stopped.
This was… not normal life. Not mine, anyway.
I slid in first, hands in my lap, trying not to look nervous. The leather was soft in a way that nothing should be. John—Mr Lockhart—settled in beside me a second later. The door shut with a heavy, expensive click.
It was quiet.
The city moved outside. Headlights. The smear of sunset on the glass. My heart was in my throat. I could feel him looking sometimes. Then looking away. Then looking again.
He didn’t say a word.
Neither did I.
We just drove, in silence, through LA. Away from my building, away from campus, toward the kind of neighbourhoods where houses stopped being houses and started being proof. And slowly, like the sun dropping, the skyline thinned. The streets grew wider. Quieter.
Then I saw it.
Not a house.
