He Took Her To The Lake We Promised To See Together Chapter 06

He Took Her To The Lake We Promised To See Together Chapter 06

By the time I reached Red Mesa, New Mexico, dawn was just beginning to break.

Rachel Morgan, the project lead, was waiting outside the terminal.

She blinked when she saw I had only one suitcase.

“That’s all you brought?”

“It’s enough.”

She didn’t ask anything else. She simply handed me a cup of warm oat milk.

“Get something in your stomach first. Your professor told me you haven’t been feeling well. You don’t need to join the team today. I’ll take you to staff housing so you can rest.”

The oat milk was still warm.

I wrapped my hands around the cup and thanked her quietly.

My phone buzzed nonstop on the drive to the field base.

Ethan had sent more than a dozen messages since the night before.

Ethan: [You’re still doing this?]

Ethan: [We have a client pitch tomorrow. You quit now and expect everyone else to clean up the

mess you left behind?]

Ethan: [Send me your address. I’ll have Mason come get you.]

The last message had arrived half an hour earlier.

Ethan: [Come back by noon. I won’t hold this against you.]

I read it once and closed the chat.

Even now, he still believed I’d left only to force him to give in.

Rachel noticed my expression.

“Work trouble?”

“Not anymore.”

I opened my email and transferred access to every studio account I still controlled.

Then I replied to Ethan.

Emma: [All files and account access have been handed off.]

Emma: [From now on, don’t contact me about the studio.]

After sending the message, I shut off my phone.

The staff housing was small, but my window looked out over the endless New Mexico high desert.

The distant mesas and dunes glowed gold in the morning light, nothing like the city lights of

Boston.

I unpacked my suitcase and set the holiday cookie box from the hotel on the table.

That Christmas, I never got to eat the cookies Ethan had promised to share with me.

Thousands of miles away, I finally had a room that was mine alone.

Back in Boston, Ethan was just waking up at the hotel.

The first thing he did was check his phone.

The only messages from me were those two curt replies.

He stared at them for a few seconds, then called.

I didn’t answer.

A second call came, then a third.

Finally, he sent a voice message.

“Emma Parker, that’s enough.”

“The studio isn’t somewhere you can come and go whenever you feel like it.”

“Be back by three this afternoon. We’ll talk in person.”

It was the same entitled tone I’d heard for the past four years.

As if all he had to do was give me a deadline, and I was supposed to rush back to his side.

I deleted the voice message and changed into the work clothes issued by the project team.

The moment I stepped outside, Rachel handed me a project ID badge.

My name was printed clearly across it.

“Welcome to the team.”

I stared at it for a long time.

At Ethan’s creative media studio, I’d handled more projects than almost anyone, yet I’d never been given an official title.

Whenever someone asked who I was, he would wave it off.

“Emma’s one of us. She just helps out sometimes.”

As if all the nights I’d worked through and all the clients I’d landed were nothing more than little favors his girlfriend happened to do.

Here, I didn’t have to be defined by anyone else.

The name Emma Parker belonged to me alone.

At noon, Ethan and Mason walked back into the studio.

The proposal they needed that afternoon was still nothing more than a basic outline.

One of the business partners paced the room anxiously.

“Emma handled the entire core proposal. Now that she’s gone, who’s presenting?”

Ethan’s face darkened.

“Didn’t she hand everything off?”

“She handed off the existing files. She didn’t stay behind to finish the rest of our work for us!”

Mason flipped through documents, growing more irritated by the second.

“She knew we had the pitch today, and she chose now to walk away in the middle of a project. How is that not revenge?”

Ethan didn’t argue.

He didn’t message me again until the client showed up early.

Ethan: [Send me the final proposal.]

Ethan: [We’ll deal with everything else when you come back.]

I was heading into one of the historic sites with the field team when the messages finally came through over the spotty connection.

I replied calmly.

Emma: [The final proposal wasn’t part of the handoff.]

Emma: [I’ve already left the studio. I have no obligation to finish it for you.]

Ethan called almost immediately.

This time, I answered.

“Emma Parker, do you really have to make a scene in front of everyone?”

“I’m not making a scene.”

“Then where are you?”

I looked toward the historic chambers glowing in the sunlight at the edge of the high desert.

“Somewhere that’s none of your concern.”

Ethan gave a cold laugh.

“Fine. Keep this going as long as you want.”

“Let’s see how long you last without me or the studio.”

He hung up.

He still believed I would eventually come back.

What he didn’t know was that the gates to the project site were already opening in front of me.

This time, I wasn’t someone’s girlfriend, and I wasn’t Ethan Cole’s unpaid assistant working quietly in the background.

I was Emma Parker, an official member of the Southwest Heritage Imaging Project.