The Edge of Always

Prologue

THEN

‘So, this is it? You’re really leaving?’

Emmett nodded, his eyes full of tears. Luna’s too. She thought it might have been the wind, the way it whipped around them, making their eyes water. Luna thought it could have been the wind, but really, she knew that it wasn’t.

They stood together on the edge of the cliff – their cliff. Below them, the sea battered against the rocks, sending big foamy froth into the air. For one halfway hysterical moment, Luna wanted to laugh. It was a plenty dramatic place to be dumped by.

Emmett had his duffel bag by his feet. That’s how Luna knew that this was a proper goodbye – the sort where you pack all of your worldly goods into a bag because you know for certain that you’re not coming back.

Luna knew, on some rational level, that it wasn’t the bag’s fault that Emmett was leaving.

The bag was a symptom of his leaving, not the cause. But still she hated it.

‘I have to go.’ Emmett shouted a little louder because of the wind.

Luna had imagined this moment of their last tragic goodbye a thousand times.

They had a love as intangible and flighty as the wind, something that was impossible to grasp; that was impossible to hold onto.

But this wasn’t at all how Luna had imagined their last tragic goodbye would go, with both of them having to shout.

Emmett held tight to the lapels of her denim jacket, his head bent forward. It stole almost all of her breath, how much Luna wanted him to stay in this place. This place where she longed for them both to belong.

‘I just… can’t.’ He looked at her straight and Luna knew what he meant. He meant that he couldn’t forgive her, for the secret she’d kept.

Which, maybe, was fair enough, since Luna was sure that she’d never forgive herself either.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. It was the truth. She really was sorry.

‘I know,’ Emmett answered, finally letting go of her jacket, leaving her untethered in more ways than one.

‘I’m sorry, too.’ He turned to walk away, and it struck Luna how wrong this whole thing was.

She was meant to be the one who leaves. Not Emmett, never Emmett.

Her whole life was wrong now, falling apart and ruined, and Luna knew that this moment on the cliff would haunt her.

That it would charge through the rest of her life like an electric current, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake.

She had the strange sensation of wanting to shiver right out of her skin. Just shrug it off and leave it on the ground like a snake. Possibly, being dumped was turning her insane.

‘But Emmett,’ Luna called. ‘You can’t… because… because… I love you!’

Words she’d wanted to say so many times were finally free, only to be stolen by the wind. Words that had formed a thousand times were now out there, living and breathing with a life of their own in this world where everything was wrong.

He didn’t turn around.

Art flashed into Luna’s mind, a collage of colour and form. It often did when she felt so emotional. Weeping Woman by Munch. Ophelia by Millais. It struck Luna that Millais, Munch, and all the others, had never fully captured it – what it was to have your heart broken.

‘Emmett,’ she shouted, one last time.

But the wind took her words, lifted them to the sky and blew them away.