Emily tapped her foot on the ground as she stood behind the counter at The Brew after school on Monday. She kept a nervous eye on the door, waiting for Paige to come in. When Paige finally did come in, it was with a wide smile and a kiss for Emily, as if Saturday had never happened.

As much as Emily enjoyed the fact that Paige was back to kissing her in public after the fiasco at her meet on Saturday, they still needed to talk. She gave Paige her ordinary smile and coffee and let her get settled into her favorite booth. As usual, she checked on Paige occasionally and joined her on her break.

As soon as she sat down next to Paige, she let her have it with both barrels. "Tricia, don't you think that honesty is the most important thing in a relationship?"

Her dad was right. She needed to know the truth. She had made up her mind that, if Paige wouldn't come clean with her about why she wouldn't kiss her, they were over. And, of course, if Paige admitted that she was two-timing her, they were over. The best case scenario was that they could end up being friends, eventually, if Paige had been lying to her all along, but had some explanation that, given enough time, Emily could forgive.

Whatever the truth was, Emily wasn't just going to sit back and wait for life happen to her. Not this time. She cared about Paige, and she wanted them to work. But she needed to know whether the their story was going to end up being epic or tragic.

The smile fell from Paige's face at Emily's question, and she dipped her head. "I actually wanted to talk with you about Saturday." Emily nodded, somewhat skeptical that Paige had been planning to talk about it all along. She certainly gave no evidence of that over the rest of the weekend. "I was going to ask you whether or not you could come by after work tonight."

"Okay," Emily said nervously. It had to be bad news, she knew, or Paige would just tell her. "But are you going to tell me what this is about, or are you just going to make me stew over it until my shift ends?"

"I can't really get into it here," Paige said, her voice lowered. Emily tried not to roll her eyes. Paige engulfed Emily's hands in hers. "But I can tell you that I care about you, Emily, and that I want us to be together. Otherwise, I wouldn't be asking you to come over."

"Okay," Emily said again. She didn't like it, but at least she would have an answer, she hoped, later that night. Whether she and Paige would still be together the next morning, she wasn't sure. "What time?"

"Can I come get you at 8?"

The fact that Paige wanted to pick her up sounded weird – foreboding – but Emily nodded her assent.

When it was time for Paige to go, she walked up to the counter and pulled Emily in for a tight hug, longer and tighter than their usual good-bye hugs, and gave her a tentative kiss. "I'll see you at 8," she reminded her, with a hint of sadness in her voice.


Paige rang Emily's doorbell just before 8:00 and stood on the porch, nervously running her hand through her hair until Pam let her in. She waited with Pam, awkward and silent, until Emily made her way downstairs. Pam whispered a "good luck" to Emily as she and Paige walked out.

They were silent throughout the short walk to Paige's house. Paige held Emily's hand the entire time. She was holding it almost painfully tight, but it didn't feel like possessiveness to Emily. It felt more like fear. Emily wasn't sure whether Paige was afraid about what she was going to tell Emily, or afraid about how Emily would react.

Somewhere deep inside, she had the feeling that this might be her last time holding hands with Tricia Bradshaw.

When Paige opened the front door and ushered Emily inside, Emily's feeling of dread grew even more intense. Paige's parents were sitting at the dining room table, as were a man and a woman in business attire. Claire McCullers was the only one showing any hint of a smile. The others were poker-faced. There were a couple of Manila folders on the table.

"Do you want something to drink?"

Emily shook her head. She just wanted to get it over with. She needed to know what this was all about before her heartbeat became visible through her hoodie. From the way that the two strangers were dressed, perhaps teenage spies weren't, as Spencer claimed, only a thing on the Disney Channel.

Paige pulled out a seat for Emily and sat next to her. Claire McCullers, on Emily's right, reached out her hand and stroked Emily's back. Paige held Emily's hand for a moment, then moved her hand to her forehead, rubbing it nervously. Emily's first inclination was to rub Paige's arm, to comfort her, but she decided that she had better get the story before she got too comfortable with Paige.

Nick McCullers introduced the caseworkers, Kim and Andy, to Emily, and they got down to business. Emily sat in stunned silence as the caseworkers told her everything: names, places, dates, and the specific threats that had been made against Nick and his family.

Paige just kept looking down at her hands on top of the table, overwhelmed by guilt.

When the caseworkers asked whether Emily had any questions, she looked at Paige. Paige returned her gaze, her eyes pleading. "Emily, I didn't want to lie to you, I swear. But I didn't want to drag you into all of this, either."

Emily held Paige's shoulder, her eyebrows knit together in concern. "Patricia, are you okay?" Emily was surprised to hear herself using the formal name, but it seemed more appropriate in the moment; more urgent, and, somehow, more intimate.

Paige was equal parts relieved that Emily seemed to understand why she had been lying to her, and stunned that her first question was about how she was doing. She nodded weakly in reply, and turned the question around. "Are you?"

"I will be," Emily said. "It's a lot." She laughed nervously. When she caught her breath, she asked, "Hanna?"

"Hanna knows," Paige said. She had already disclosed to her parents and the caseworkers the way that Hanna had called her out. "It's not that I chose to tell her and chose not to tell you, Em" Paige explained. "When she confronted me, I kind of panicked. She knew that something was up, and I couldn't come up with a plausible cover story. She's the one who came up with the politician's daughter thing," Paige scoffed.

Emily clutched Paige's arm a little tighter. She wasn't bothered by the fact that Paige had told Hanna rather than her. She was only worried about everything that Paige was going through.

"Well," Kim began, "we have some questions for you."

Emily told them about her swimming and her family. She told them about Spencer's suspicions and investigation.

The caseworkers conferred for several seconds. "Okay," Kim announced, "we'll let Spencer continue her investigation. She shouldn't be able to turn up anything."

"But keep those lines of communication open," Andy chimed in. "If she does uncover anything, we'll need to know about it. Stat"

"It might actually help us to sew up any loose ends that we may have missed," Kim said.

"But we never miss any loose ends." Andy added quickly. He wanted to reassure their clients that they weren't in any danger.

"No," Kim agreed. "We don't. That's why it's important that we keep a tight rein on this. We're going to meet with Hanna and Ms. Marin, and, Emily, we'll need to meet with your parents."

"My Dad's in Texas," Emily blurted out. She was relieved that the caseworkers weren't going to ask her to keep things from her parents. She was also relieved that they would be on hand to help her explain things to them.

"That's not a problem. Do you Skype?"

Emily nodded.

"Is that secure?" Nick asked.

"It may not be a secure medium, but no one has any reason to be tapping into Emily's Skype account," Andy said.

"No one knows that you're in Rosewood, and there's nothing to connect you to Emily," Kim explained.

"We do need to be vigilant," Andy added, "but not paranoid. The bad guys are out there, but they're not everywhere. We don't have to worry that they're tracking every electronic conversation in the country at every given moment."

"No, we just have to be concerned about persistent media - things that get posted on-line and stay up there. We have to assume that they're doing image-searches on a daily basis."

"And, Emily, you and Hanna can help with that. If you see any posts where Tricia is visible..." Andy nodded at Emily, and she nodded back to confirm.


After everything was resolved, Paige walked Emily home. They took the long way. They both wanted more time to talk, although neither of them had mentioned that as the reason for taking the long way. They just ended up going that way. And although they wanted more time to talk, they weren't actually doing much talking.

Paige was still clutching Emily's hand tight. "So," she said after a bit.

"So," Emily repeated.

Paige stopped in her tracks and turned to face Emily, taking both of her hands. "Emily, I'm so, so sorry."

Emily smiled, reaching up to brush the hair away from Paige's face. She let her hand remain on Paige's cheek for a moment before she dropped it down to her shoulder as she asked, "For what?"

"For lying to you... for dragging you into this. I don't know - for everything, I guess." Paige turned her head to the side so that Emily wouldn't see the budding tears. She leaned it down against her shoulder to wipe them away.

"Hey," Emily said, using her other hand to turn Paige's face toward her. "I'm not mad, Tricia. I understand why you did what you did. And I'm sorry that you had to go through all of that." She kissed Paige's cheek, picking up the faint taste of a tear. "Thank you for letting me in." Emily knew how much it meant that Paige had let her in. It meant that Paige was serious about a future for the two of them.

Paige nodded her head and hugged Emily. After a sigh, she took Emily's hand and they started walking again. "So, you're not going to break up with me?" Paige asked, watching the sidewalk underneath her feet.

Emily bumped Paige with her shoulder. "You're going to have to come up with a better story than that to scare me away!" Paige smiled at this, and gave Emily's hand a squeeze.

When they stopped at Emily's porch, Paige offered to come in to help Emily explain what was going on. Emily shook her head. She knew that seeing Paige in all puffy-eyed and mopey would only make her mother panic. "Just hold me for a minute, okay?"

"Gladly." Paige needed it as much as Emily did, and she held on as if she were clinging to a lifeline. "We're going to be okay?"

Emily stepped back and stroked Paige's cheek. "We're going to be okay," she said confidently. "We are okay. I love you."

Paige smiled and pulled Emily in again, giving her a kiss after they hugged. "I love you, too!" she said eagerly.

It wasn't their first kiss, but it was the kiss that sealed the first time that they had acknowledged their love for each other, and Emily was floating on air. As she closed the door behind her, she leaned against it, touching the lips that were still tingling from the electricity of that kiss.


"Good night?" Pam asked, walking up to Emily with a smile.

Emily was startled back into the present by her mother's voice, and yanked back down to earth by the weight of what they had to discuss. "Yeah. Mom." Emily linked their arms and led her mother over to the couch. "But there's something that I have to tell you."


A/N - Pardon the interruption. I've noticed that, since about a week ago, the FF site and app only mark this story as updated every other day (and my views drop off significantly on days when it's not marked as updated).

I'm guessing that people who follow me get notifications every time I update, but everyone else, just so you'll know: I update every day - usually at around 9AM GMT Monday-Thursday, and before 1PM/13:00 GMT Friday-Sunday.

Not that I expect you to spend every day with this story... :) Thanks for reading!

(This chapter puts me at just over a half million words published on FF in the year & 5 days since I started writing. Can't even believe that...)