CHAPTER 38

 EVAN

I clasped her hands, guiding her towards my car. Sofia trailed behind,already settled in the backseat. Without objection, Emerson took her place in the front seat, our silent drive echoing with unspoken tension.

"Where are we going?" she finally broke the silence."Home," I replied, and the weight of the word lingered in the air.

The journey continued in a heavy silence, emotions simmering beneath the surface. As we reached my home, I instructed Sofia to find solace in her favorite doll, leaving us alone at the dining table.

"Do you need anything?" I offered, my voice carrying the weight of regrets.

"Tell me everything about Sofia, Jules, and please be honest this time.I'm not gonna give you a second chance," Emerson demanded, her resolve palpable.Seated beside her, I embarked on a painful journey through the past,recounting the day she had left me. The day when my attempt to stop her led to a life-altering fall down the stairs, leaving me with injuries and haunting words in my ears - 'You killed her.'

"What happened that day?" she asked, her eyes now a mirror reflecting a spectrum of emotions.I began the tale of a drunken night, of friends who had betrayed trust and spiraled into chaos. Jules, a victim caught in the crossfire, had meta tragic end. One of my friend killed her I tried to help her but she died at the moment.The burden of hiding her murder rested on my shoulders,a secret that had shaped the course of my life. I confessed to the cascade of events, the guilt, the pain, and the revelation that Sofia, the little girl who had unwittingly become a pawn in our narrative, was Jules' daughter, not mine.

Emerson, now weeping alongside me, had unveiled layers of pain I had long concealed. The echoes of regret, love, and lost chances reverberated through the room as I pleaded for understanding."Emerson, I'm living in fire whenever I see Sofia looking at the picture of Jules—the only memory she has. She doesn't even know how another's love feels like. But I'm glad that you didn't give me a chance to explain everything because if you did, I would never have met Sofia.I would never have had a beautiful father-daughter relationship with her. I'm having so much pain from losing you and, of course, losing Sofia's mother, Jules. I'm not her biological father, but I know how much pain she feels from not having her mother. She is a kid now, but I can feel the pain in her eyes."

With these words, I opened my eyes to meet Emerson's tear-jerker face, a moment suspended in the web of emotions neither of us anticipated. The threads of our lives, now intricately interwoven, held the promise of healing or the threat of unraveling.

Neither the roads supported. Neither the destination waited. What should we write about our life? Expectations also made fun of us.