Aaaannnnddd chapter 2! Still schmaltzy Harlequin crap. Nonetheless, I hope you enjoy! This is only three chapters. I am making a rule for myself. SELF, YOU WILL OBEY.

It's something unpredictable

But in the end it's right

Faithfully, she doesn't mention anything to her father. He's blessedly absent most of the time, and she tells her sisters she is going to the market, or the library, or to search for father.

She's come up with a multitude of excuses by this point. She's used to lying to her father, but she hates lying to her sisters.

As previously mentioned, Alex usually sits next to her. For the longest time, this was without complication.

Then she came on one stormy Thursday for their usual lesson.

It should be noted that for being an immigrant stowaway, Alexander was remarkably confident as a person.

She had never seen him doubt himself, not once.

Well, not once until that stormy Thursday.

Almost like it was nature's way of reminding them that they were on a ship, the craft tossed in the waves. The thunder rumbled above them, and Eliza arrived to find Alexander tense, grabbing his knees with this arms.

He insisted he was fine. But Eliza had been through many lessons with this man, and today he was distracted.

"Alex, are you okay?" she asked again.

"Fine, Eliza. Now where were we?"

At that moment, a crack of thunder pounded and Alex dropped the book with a squeak. An actual squeak, followed by him shimmying to the corner and curling up against it, making himself as small as possible.

Eliza is stunned. She crawls near him, puts a gentle hand on his trembling shoulder.

"Alex, what's wrong?"

"Hurricane," he gasps out.

Eliza is confused.

It's just a storm, and a small one at that. Hurricane is a bit of an overexaggeration.

"Alex, it's just a little thunderstorm," she soothes, running a hand over his hair as a mother would, taking no mind of the fact that they have never been this close before.

His head shakes.

"Eliza," he gasps, turning to face her. His eyes are wide, panicked. Not the eyes she knew.

The ship tosses in the storm and Alexander practically wails with fear.

He is not a young man, capable of caring for himself here.

No, here, Eliza sees the little boy he was.

She wraps him in her arms, surprised when his head pillows into her chest.

"Eliza, my mother is dead. The hurricane, it…destroyed everything. I couldn't seem to die."

The words are nonsensical, but something inside her says Alexander tells nobody about this, that these words carry great significance to him.

The storm clears thirty minutes later, and Alexander tells her to leave, feigning a headache, his cheeks red with embarrassment.

But she tells herself right then and there; he won't be alone in a storm anymore.

(Maybe she's not just talking about the weather).

It's why she's there in the middle of the night a week later, Alexander sobbing in her arms while the ship churns violently in the waves, clutching her tightly, lost to the past.

It may seem like their entire relationship was built on sadness and ghosts of the past, but it never seemed so to Eliza.

In fact, Alexander made her laugh more than anyone she had met before.

He clearly wasn't a fan of Thomas Jefferson, nor James Madison, and the mocking, high-pitched voice he affected during their lessons on US constitution had her wiping tears from her eyes at some points.

(And the way he dressed. God, Eliza, I don't think I'd have been able to look him in the eyes without laughing right in his face).

Alexander wasn't like anyone she had ever met, and that thought introduced a seed of doubt into Eliza's mind. What could life have been if she wasn't a Schuyler, if she had been raised with people like Alexander?

What could she have known?

Who could she have been?

As it happens now, Alexander strikes up odd sensations in her. Sensations she doesn't have a name for.

They never talk about his reactions to storms, but she makes sure she's always there, and he buries his face in her shoulder, sobs like a little boy, murmurs something about his mother, and then kicks her out with cheeks flaming after the storm passes.

Sometimes she thinks he doesn't want her there in those times, but when she comes he is always in a corner, with his knees clutched to his chest, his eyes wild and searching.

When she opens her arms, he dives into them.

He seems to be two people in those times.

He grabs her hands sometimes, in a passionate tirade about whatever today's lesson is, and her cheeks heat instantly. He doesn't seem to notice.

She doesn't know what to make of him, until the day that he halts their lesson early, six weeks into their arrangement.

He closed the book gently, set it down.

Eliza looks at him in confusion. They usually go longer, and she knows it.

"Eliza…." He seemed unable to spit out what he wanted to say, which was a surprise, because she found Alexander Hamilton to be nothing if not an orator.

"Thank you," he mumbled.

She's surprised.

Incrementally, she leans closer. Besides a few scraps of food and a pillow here and there, she doesn't really think she's done anything for him.

"For what?" she asks.

"I don't know. Being here. Treating me like a human. You're…you're nothing like people would expect."

"What do you mean?" she can't tell if that's a good thing or a bad thing. Maybe she's horribly boring, and he's finally telling her so.

"I mean…you're just different. You're kind, and interesting…"

She scoffs. "I'm not the interesting one, Alexander. You've got me confused with Peggy or Angelica."

He shakes his head with a soft "no."

"No, Eliza. It's you. You're a lot of things you don't think you are."

:She's not, not at all.

"Like what?"

He shrugs, right up against her shoulder, and she's suddenly very aware of their proximity.

"Smart. Thoughtful. Interesting. Beautiful."

"Really?" she whispers, letting her face lean in close to his.

He looks at her with the most earnest expression, like every word he said was what he believed in his heart.

"I…didn't have much. Then I met you, and you…you changed something inside me."

The words fill her with that sensation, the one she can't describe.

It happens before she can think about it.

The touch of their lips is soft at first, but it heats before she fully processes that she's kissing Alexander Hamilton, the stowaway ship worker she found living in one of her father's ships.

And it's good.

It's really good.

Their lips and tongues tangle, and before she realizes it, she's on the floor of the crate and Alexander is on top of her and every nerve ending is on fire, every neuron is screaming.

They break apart when the ship gives an unfortunately timed lurch, and they are both brought back to the present.

After that, they both silently accept that they are done for the day. She leaves and he doesn't try to kiss her goodbye. For some reason, that disappoints her.

She walks home that day, her mind racing.

She had kissed Alexander Hamilton.

She is a Schuyler.

She spends more and more time with him.

She is a Schuyler.

He is on her mind almost constantly.

They don't talk about it the next time.

But he sits close enough that his shoulder chafes against hers.

His name is John Alexander Sharpe.

(She almost laughs at the middle name).

He works in a trading company.

(Rather, he owns the company).

He is one of her father's best business partners.

He is forty-two years old.

She is eighteen now, her father tells her. A proper age.

He is who her father wants her to marry.

Her heart drops to her feet.

She thought she had more time.

Philip leaves them alone together. He scoots in close to her, clamps a hand on her knee without permission, drones on and on about the future of this arrangement while his hand strokes her thigh.

She fights the urge to vomit, or cry, or both.

When she lets him out of the house, after what feels like an eternity, he whirls around suddenly and seizes her face, crushing his lips against hers.

And there and then, Eliza sees the rest of her life.

Being controlled by this man. Being expected to do whatever he would like. Their first child would be born whenever he deemed it an appropriate time. She would not be able to leave the house without his permission. She would be a prisoner in her own life.

Angie, she had gotten lucky. For how boring John Church was, he was rarely around and didn't try to tamper Angelica's fiery personality.

This man would.

He may not be a cruel man, but he had expectations for Eliza.

And she…she had been stupid enough to think she had the choice between the life she was born into and a life she actually wanted.

Because, after all,

She is a Schuyler.

Father blessedly goes to work that night.

Eliza slips out the first second she can.

She barely remembers to bring her shoes.

It's a Friday.

Not the usual day. But her feet take her there anyway.

Alexander is asleep when she gets there.

She supposes she makes enough of an entrance to wake him up, crashing into his shipping container of a home.

He jolts up instantly. He's always had a fast startle reflex. Sometimes she wonders why.

"Eliza?" he rasps.

"Alexander," she gasps in return, sinking down onto the floor. The atmosphere here is warm and calm, the way it always is. Eliza feels it soothe her racing heart, a warm balm to her conflicted soul.

"It's Friday, Eliza. And nighttime. What are you.."

"I thought I had more time, Alexander. But he wants it to be in two months. And then I'll be trapped forever, I'll never see or do anything, I'll never…" her voice breaks, continues on a sob. "I'll never see you again."

"Eliza," Alexander crawls tentatively next to her, still shaking off the last vestiges of sleep. He takes her hand gently, rubs it with his thumb.

It feels soothing. It feels nothing like what that man's hand had felt like.

"What's wrong?

He's being cautious, she knows. Ever since their kiss a few days ago, he hadn't seemed to know how to act around her. He used to touch her in a friendly manner all the time.

Now he keeps his distance.

She doesn't want distance, not today.

So she crawls against him, tucks her head into the crevice between his shoulder and neck.

She feels safe here, she realized awhile ago. She feels at home, and not just because of the enclosed environment. It's Alexander, it's something about him.

Tonight, his hand passes up and down her arm, trying to soothe her without ever knowing what's wrong, and she is reminded of how ridiculous this whole situation is.

She is a high-class citizen; she had expected to be married off for as long as she can remember.

Yet the very though has sent her running to a shipping crate in a rusty ship, with an immigrant stowaway who made her feel butterflies in her stomach.

"Eliza, what's wrong?" Alexander whispers.

She heaves a heavy sigh.

"My father has found someone. Someone he wants – expects me to marry."

She feels him tense instantly.

Does this bother him as well?

"Who?" he chokes out.

"Some trading partner. He's forty-two. He kissed me and I…"

She's sure she sees Alexander's hands clench into fists.

"Alexander, I've been so stupid." she sighs, turning her face into his neck.

He's warm and comfortable and she'd be content to stay here forever, would be happy if the outside world just ceased to exist.

She feels his head shake.

"You're not stupid, Eliza."

She scoffs. "Yes, I am. What was I thinking, that life would just go on like this forever? That I could keep sneaking out? That what Father made Angelica do somehow didn't apply to me? No, I was kidding myself. Alex, I got so caught up in.." she waves her hand between them, "whatever this is, that I forgot that it doesn't really change anything."

He swallows hard. "This?"

"You know what I'm talking about. Alex, being here is like being in our own world, cut off from the outside. But the world still exists. We still have to live in it, and when we do, I'll still be a Schuyler. And you'll still be…"

She can't finish, but he knows.

"Bastard orphan immigrant?" he says with a sarcastic chuckle.

She casts her eyes on her feet, plays with her fingers the way she used to when she first started coming here.

"I'm sorry."

There's a long pause, and then she feels his hand under her chin, lifting her eyes up to look at him.

His brown eyes are soft, warm, and she curses the world because she feels so much for this man, so much she can't quite name, but their universes will never collide. The world will never allow it.

"We're going to figure this out, Eliza. You don't have to… I mean…"he swallows hard. "There is a solution, and we will find it. "

It's a lie and they both know it, but her mind goes blissfully blank when his lips press softly against hers, when his tongue probes her mouth gently and her lips part.

They kiss softly for a few moments, and then he pulls her down onto his makeshift bed to rest.

"You said you had two months," he whispers. "We've got time. We'll….just don't give up yet, okay? We've got time."

Go, be in love

I don't care, but don't ever pretend

That we're both unaware

'Cause the truth is that you still permit me to be

Close enough that I know you don't want me to leave