Emmett didn’t know how long he walked. He just kept moving, his feet dragging over pavement, the pain in his jaw a dull throb compared to the wreckage inside his chest.
Uncle Edward’s words rang in his ears.
"She loved you. And you destroyed her."
God.
He already knew that. He’d known it the second he saw the look on Elisia’s face—the sheer devastation, the way her voice had broken when she told him he was dead to her. But hearing it from her father made it feel final. Like a sentence had been passed down, and this was the punishment: exile.
Maybe he deserved that, too.
A sharp gust of wind cut through him, and only then did he realize where his feet had taken him.
The lake.
It was where he and Elisia had spent their first summer together, where they’d snuck out late at night just
