Chapter 26 – We Managed
Author's Note: I know I said 2 more, but even writing this has been a struggle, so this is probably it, y'all. Don't go into this expecting it to be some great work of mystery/thriller fiction or something, that is not my strength, I did my best but sorry if it doesn't live up to what you were expecting. Also, I'm back to my old tricks, so expect crying. Thanks for reading, sorry for being a flake, maybe I'll stop being bitter and angry about this show some day, but that day isn't today.
Again, I haven't watched the show in ages, so this is probably going to track with absolutely nothing, I'm mostly just making stuff up at this point. This chapter is wholly unedited, so there are probably typos and things that don't make sense, apologies in advance. Also, if you like Ezra, or Alison, or basically any of the men in Rosewood that aren't Mike, you probably shouldn't read this chapter, just a heads up.
Emily's POV
All mistakes are my own.
TW: Depression, anxiety, PTSD, flashbacks, trauma, discussion of violence and abuse.
Disclaimer: None of the characters or story lines from Pretty Little Liars are mine. If they were, it would be one big Spemily story (and there would be no predatory men who get to do whatever they want without consequences).
The day we emerged from the Dollhouse is still hazy in my memory; faded and unclear, like a dream that you can only half remember upon waking. After Melissa shot Alison, it was as though all of the fight left my body – we were safe, and I was spent.
There are flashes of Spencer and I helping each other up the long set of stairs until our moms showed up out of nowhere; of hospital rooms and IVs; or worried faces and yelling and an empty sensation that I felt deep in my gut whenever I wasn't right next to Spencer. Cops I had never met were somehow always there, always asking questions and demanding answers that I didn't have, somehow every one of them with stale breath that constantly reminded me of Noel's face in mine, slamming a needle into my neck.
I couldn't sleep without waking to the sound of Ezra's neck breaking under my feet.
Even when time began to arrange itself in some manner of chronological, understandable order again, everything felt wrong. The investigation continued, the police refused to tell us anything, and I was prepared at any moment to find myself back in the hellscape that I still wasn't certain we had actually escaped.
When the therapist my mom made me see used words like PTSD, hypervigilance, and dissociation, it felt so clinical, so tame compared to buzzing, burning sensation that seemed ever-present in my brain.
I didn't want to talk about it. Talking about it was the last thing I wanted to do. It sat right there alongside getting my fingernails removed one-by-one and eating snails. Absolutely fucking not.
The only thing I did want to do was lay in bed, wrapped around Spencer, and never move again. Spence seemed to feel similarly, seeing as we kept ending up on beds or couches or benches, wrapped up together and doing absolutely nothing.
My mom became worried about codependence. Spencer hadn't spoken a word to anyone but me since we were rescued; I became her voice in a strange role reversal that I was still getting used to seeing as I really didn't want to talk to anyone either. For Spencer, I would, though. Mom thought maybe if Spence and I spent some time apart, we might heal better, find our bearings somehow. I just clung to Spencer tightly and refused with every ounce of energy I had left; it wasn't much, but she dropped the idea.
At that stage, I don't know what would have happened to me if my mom had succeeded. The me in that moment was convinced that if I didn't have Spencer to hang onto, I would just cease to exist, waste away into nothingness because I was no longer tethered to the earth.
I'm not entirely certain the me in that moment was wrong.
- Spemily -
It was a month before we had the capacity to actually gather everyone under one roof again. I suppose we should have wanted answers before that, the pre-torture version of us definitely would have, but I found myself unable to care why everything that happened to us had come to pass. I don't think I had the energy; I don't think any of us did.
"Spence, Hanna is downstairs, we should go see her at least, you don't have to say anything, I promise," I whispered soothingly, softly running my fingers through her hair as she lay in her bed, staring off into the middle distance, barely acknowledging my presence.
I sighed a bit at the lack of response. She had been drifting a lot more lately, and I was worried. Her therapy sessions only seemed to make things worse and I was ready to fight her therapist if things didn't improve soon.
"Honey, we should really go downstairs, I promised Han she could see you for at least a minute or two. You don't have to do anything but come downstairs with me, we can come back up as soon as you want and I'll be with you the whole time," I promised, leaning down to place a soft kiss on her cheek, right next to the corner of her mouth, hoping to rouse her from whatever distant land or time she had traveled to in her brain.
Moving more quickly than she had in weeks, Spencer turned her head and captured my lips with her own. At first, I was ecstatic about the contact. Intimacy outside of cuddling hadn't been a priority since we got back, but I had grown to miss it as I slowly came back into my body somewhat, and I hadn't wanted to push Spencer, so this was the first kiss we had shared since our rescue.
So, I immediately kissed back. But something was off. At first, it was just the urgency, her frenetic pursuit of my lips was endearing in a way because it made me feel wanted and desired, but that franticness soon turned bruising, harsh, demanding. She held my head firmly in place and there was nothing gentle in that kiss, there was only desperation.
Tears threatened at the back of my eyes, and I had to push her away hard to escape her grasp, gasping as I stood and retreated from the bed. My heart was pounding, fear crawling through my veins, and I felt sick. I immediately flashed back to Noel grabbing me, getting in my face and threatening me, and it made me dizzy with panic.
The sound of Spencer puking over the side of the bed was what brought me back.
Turning back toward her, I immediately recognized that she was hyperventilating to the point of making herself sick. So, I pushed down my own panic and the way my skin continued to prickle in response to it, and returned to the bed, sitting behind Spencer and pulling her into my chest so that she could feel me breathing against her back.
"Spence, love, I need you to breathe with me. You're hyperventilating, Spencer, I need you to lean back into me and follow my breath, okay? I've got you, but I need you to breathe with me, baby."
Spencer did not lean back and breathe with me. Instead, she yanked herself bodily from the bed and began to pace the room as far away from me as she could get, hitting herself in the forehead with her palm over and over again while she continued to hyperventilate and try to talk to me at the same time.
"No, no, no, no… I hurt you, Em. I hurt you. I don't get to breathe… hiccup… I'm as bad as they are. They hurt you and so did I… hiccup… I'm so sorry, Emily, I'm so sorry… I don't deserve you, I don't deserve to be here, I don't, I don't, I…"
She was hyperventilating too bad to continue, and I knew she was going to pass out soon if I didn't help her get her breathing under control. Recognizing that breathing exercises were not going to do the trick, I calmly walked into her bathroom and flipped on the shower, leaving the water cold.
I knew it was going to suck, but I was running out of options.
Walking back into the bedroom, I stood directly in front of Spencer and took her face in my hands, doing my best to try to catch her eye.
"I'm okay, Spencer. I love you, and I am okay, but I need you to do something for me right now. Can you do something for me right now? Can you come with me?"
Spencer continued to hyperventilate, her eyes skittering around the room as tears ran down her face, but she did follow me as I directed her into the bathroom and then into the shower, both of us still fully clothed.
The impact of the cold water forced us both to suck in a sharp breath, and the shock helped slow Spencer's breathing almost immediately. She only seemed to cry harder though, and she slunk away from me, pressing herself into the corner of the shower.
"I'm so sorry, Em. I'm so sorry. I can't believe I did that, oh gods how could I have done that? You should leave me, Emily. You should leave me and not look back. I can't let myself hurt you again. I can't."
She slid to the floor of the shower as she spoke, crying hard and beginning to shiver from the cold water still cascading over us.
I turned the handle to make the water warmer before kneeling beside her, steeling myself against the pain of my bare knees on wet tile, and gently caressed her right cheek in an attempt to get her to turn toward me, or at least glance at me.
"Spencer, I forgive you."
In my opinion, there was nothing to forgive. She was hurting and desperate to feel something that wasn't pain. She wasn't thinking and her intention wasn't to hurt me. But I knew that she needed to be forgiven, she needed for me to say it or she would never be able to move past it, she would never be able to forgive herself.
My next thought was that we needed to find her a better therapist, because whoever she was going to was shit.
"You… you, what?" She stuttered, her eyes big as she sniffled and finally looked at me.
The pain that was reflected back at me, that empty aching feeling that escaped from her eyes and echoed in my own chest, had me crying along with her immediately.
"Can I hug you?" I asked quietly, unable to respond to her question until I was wrapped around her in some way.
Spencer just nodded a little uncertainly, and I moved to lift a leg over hers so I was straddling her waist, but I did so as slowly as humanly possible to give her time to stop me if it was too much. She didn't stop me. But she also didn't touch me, keeping her hands at her chest and almost seeming to push herself even further back into the wall.
Finding no way to hug her without forcing the issue, and wondering if I shouldn't just remove myself entirely, I decided to try one more thing. Reaching out gently, I took her face in my hands and placed a soft, brief kiss on her forehead, then one on her cheek near where I had kissed her earlier.
She was stock-still as I pulled away but was looking at me with wonderment rather than terror. The shame was still there, but we would work on that.
"I forgive you, Spencer. I love you, and I forgive you, and I could never leave you. I'm here, and I'm okay, and we're okay. I love you so much."
I was the one hiccupping now, trying so hard to convince the love of my life that being separated from her was the last thing I ever wanted.
"What did I ever do to deserve you?" She questioned in an almost silent huff, gazing at me as though I were some puzzle for her to solve.
"You make me feel safe, you always have," I replied easily, finally pulling her toward me by the shoulders and holding her tight, my legs wrapped around her waist as I tried to get as close as possible.
She was still a little stiff in my arms, but she didn't try to pull away, her arms wrapping loosely around me instead, almost as if she were afraid to hold me too tightly for fear of hurting me again.
"Safe? Even after I…"
Spencer couldn't even say it, and I could practically feel the shame and guilt dripping from her words. I shushed her gently, feeling her heart rate pick up again.
"Even after that," I confirmed, running my hands in soothing patterns up and down her back as I felt her slowly relax in my arms.
The panic attack had done a number on her, there was no way she was going downstairs to see everyone. No way in hell.
"Can I take you back to bed, love? I think you need some rest. I'll just go down and tell everyone we have to reschedule."
"No, you should go and talk to them, I'll be okay, you should take care of you for once, Em. I know you've been wanting to see Hanna for a while. Go, talk to her, I'll be okay, I promise," Spencer murmured quietly, exhausted and stumbling a bit as I helped her to her feet and out of the shower.
"Let's get you dried off and into bed first, we can figure everything else out after," I offered instead, leaning her gently against the vanity as I searched out some towels and some warm, dry clothes for the both of us.
She was slumped a bit when I came back, dripping on the floor and staring off into space again. It was hard to reach her when she drifted off like that, so I slowly and gently began pulling off her wet clothes and drying her off, my only thought to care for her while she couldn't do so for herself. I tenderly wrapped her in the towel as I began to dress her, worried she would get cold in the interim, and then leaned her up against the vanity again once she was fully clothed.
Spencer continued to stare off into space as I dried and dressed myself, and I knew I was unlikely to reach her again until after she had slept for a while, if not until the next day. So I guided her into the bedroom and tucked her in, wanting nothing more than to slip in beside her and hold her forever.
A soft knock on the door stopped me, though, and I placed a lingering kiss on Spencer's forehead before making my way to the door.
"I didn't mean to interrupt, but I was worried when I heard the yelling and then more worried when it stopped…" Hanna offered quietly, her eyes darting back and forth between me and the bundle of covers that was all she could see of Spencer.
I let out a small sigh, feeling the sadness that I tried so hard to avoid weigh heavy on my shoulders as I glanced back at my girlfriend.
"She's having a bad day, Han," I offered as an explanation, not really sure what else to say.
"Can I stay with her for a while? I'm having a bad day too, and being around all these people is making my head hurt," came a quiet, tear roughened voice from slightly further down the hall.
Hanna and I turned to find Aria poking her head out of a guest room a couple of doors down, her face red from crying and that same look of exhaustion on her face that I saw on Spencer so often.
Nodding emphatically, I motioned her over, wrapping my arm around her tiny form and guiding her into Spencer's room. Leaving Aria at the foot of the bed, Hanna at her side, I knelt next to Spencer, stroking her cheek lightly as I spoke to her.
"Hey Spence, Aria is going to stay with you for a while, she's having a bad day and she needs to feel safe for a little while, okay?"
Spencer blinked for a moment, glanced at Aria out of the corner of her eye, and then slowly shifted back from the edge of the bed. She then lifted the covers, inviting Aria to join her. Our small friend took the invitation immediately, and Spencer wrapped a protective arm around her waist.
"I didn't protect you when I should have, but I promise, Aria, I won't let you down again. You're safe now," Spencer whispered, tired but determined.
It was the most like herself Spencer had sounded since our escape, and I could feel the tears running down my cheeks in relief and gratitude. Aria just snuggled further into Spencer, and they both seemed to fall asleep almost instantly.
"Come on, Em. Let's go make sure the Mom Squad doesn't disturb them. Spencer and Aria will be okay," Hanna suggested quietly, squeezing my shoulder before placing a hand at the small of my back and slowly leading me out of the room to let our friends sleep.
"Emily! What happened? Have you been crying?" My mom questioned in a gentle, pleading tone that she had adopted in the last month.
I sometimes felt like she was talking to me the same way she would have an abused and abandoned stray dog, and I had to work hard not to get defensive about it. She cared, and she was worried, that was all, but I had to consistently remind myself of that, so I took a deep breath before I responded.
"Spencer and Aria are just having a bad day, but they're okay, and I'm okay. I honestly think that seeing each other in a safe place helped them a lot. They're napping now. I think they could both use the rest," I responded honestly, Hanna's supportive hand on my back helping me not turn right back around and retreat to Spencer's bedroom yet again.
Mom just hugged me tightly before plying me with every conceivable food and drink item available, only letting up when I finally agreed to eat some of the cookies she had brought over, obviously anticipating high emotions that would create the need for comfort food.
"So, what did you all gather us together to tell us?" Hannah asked tentatively, looking from mother to mother as they too looked one to the other.
Mrs. Hastings finally sighed and stepped forward.
"We wanted to tell you all together, but I think Spencer and Aria might be struggling too much to hear everything right now. Come, sit in the living room, there is a lot you need to know."
Hannah and I looked at each other, nervous, and moved together to sit as close as possible on the couch, leaning against each other for support. Our respective moms came to sit beside us while Spencer and Aria's moms paced in front of us, obviously struggling with where to begin.
"What Wren said to you in the bunker, that Alison started the game, he wasn't wrong," Mrs. Montgomery started, sucking in a deep breath, presumably to try pull back on the anger that was visible just beneath the surface. "Alison had been at it since middle school, in varying degrees obviously, but fairly continuously, nonetheless. From what Veronica's investigators have found, it's likely one of her teachers was her first victim.
The woman caught Alison bullying one of her classmates and told Alison to stop, that she would report Alison to the principal and her parents would be notified. If the woman is to be believed, Alison was enraged and told the teacher that if Alison got in trouble for the bullying, the teacher would only barely live to regret it.
Being a teacher and an adult, the woman paid little heed to seemingly idle threats from a thirteen-year-old and told the principal anyway. Alison did get in trouble. Two days later, the teacher was taken to the hospital – she had collapsed after drinking her morning coffee in the privacy of her own home. Apparently, she had somehow managed to swallow rat poison.
She couldn't prove it, but she knew Alison had something to do with it after she found a toy rat in her chair the day she was finally able to return to school. Terrified and uncertain what to do other than to share the experience with one of her colleagues, the teacher quit that same day and left town. No other teacher in that school threatened or punished Alison again.
That was apparently how the game began."
Hannah looked a little green around the gills, so I started rubbing her back gently in an attempt to calm her.
"Do you need a break, Han? Or some water, maybe?" I asked quietly, distressed by my friend's distress.
And even more distressed by the fact that I had had no emotional reaction to anything shared up to that point, no reaction whatsoever, really. I didn't feel anything, just numbness and a sense that nothing about Alison or her past could surprise me anymore.
Hannah just shook her head and motioned for the Mom Squad to continue, leaning into her mom heavily as she took a deep breath in preparation for whatever insanity came next.
I just stared forward, face blank, knowing it was only going to get worse.
It was Mrs. Hastings who picked up the thread, still pacing.
"Alison kept journals after that, the investigators found some of them in the bunker. Holbrooke, who was obviously part of Wren's band of shithead perverts, told us that Wren had stolen them from Alison almost as soon as he demanded to be part of the game.
Apparently, Wren was one of Alison's targets, but he caught her out – was the only person to ever do so, according to Holbrooke."
"Spencer caught her, too, that's how she ended up getting arrested after all," I interrupted, almost unconsciously channeling my girlfriend's need to correct information whenever possible.
Mrs. Hastings quite literally smirked, and I couldn't help but grin slightly at the look of pride on her face, but it quickly turned to a grimace when she remembered she still had so much evil bullshit to share.
"Alison had created the game for her own amusement – she basically lined up targets for herself, found people that had something she wanted and planned a way to get it from them, whether that be through blackmail or threats or, eventually with unsettling regularity, bringing them to the brink of death just to show them that she could.
She was never a team player, as you both well know, and it's clear from her journal entries that when she "brought people onto the team," it was really just her using them, manipulating them, until they weren't useful to her anymore. That was what she tried with Wren after she targeted him to try to get access to prescription medications to use to taunt another victim. When Wren found her out, she "recruited" him, but he never played by the rules, and he never fell for her sweet words or subtle promises.
That just did not work for Alison. If she couldn't control him, manipulate him, use him, and then get rid of him, she had to come up with another way that she could keep him out of her way. So, a few months before her disappearance, she set up the rules of the bigger game.
Alison and Wren would compete, they would each pick targets for the other for a while, try to trip each other up or get them caught before springing them from whatever trouble they got into, but the honeymoon period didn't last for long.
Wren started recruiting other perverts who liked to watch and control people, and all those people just so happened to be men who were interested in teenage girls. Alison became a target as soon as Wren recruited Ezra, Ezra was obsessed with her after Alison flirted with him and then left him in the dust; he wanted revenge. For Wren, it was the perfect way to finally win the game.
Alison couldn't let Wren and his buddies have that kind of power over her, so when she realized she needed to regroup and plan in order to really get rid of them, she staged her disappearance. That was when Wren and his team set his sights on you all, and when Alison realized she finally had a weakness that she hadn't planned for."
Everyone simultaneously turned toward me and I wanted to vomit immediately.
"Great, good to know, can we move on?" I squeaked, wanting to focus on anything other than the fact that the narcissistic psychopath who ruined our lives had done it partly because she was in love with me – I was still grappling with what exactly that meant about me as a person and I did not need to dwell on that right at that moment, particularly when I didn't have Spencer to curl into when the whole idea made me want to disappear.
"Sorry, Emily, but it is important. You all became pawns in Wren and Alison's game because Wren saw you all as tools to get to Alison, and Alison had to try to make it seem like you were all equally important lest she show that her true weakness was Emily and Emily alone. Wren obviously figured it out eventually, but not at first.
You all kept frustrating Wren's plans, and he just kept recruiting people. He recruited Mona because he knew she was both unstable enough to be manipulatable and smart enough to be believed as the mastermind. He recruited Lucas and others that Alison had bullied to throw everyone off, a distraction and also a snub at Alison – he apparently believed himself to have no enemies, but he miscalculated, too.
Melissa figured it out. She was suspicious when she was with Ian, Wren had recruited him early and Melissa learned pretty quickly that he was being a shady bastard, but she kept it under wraps because she knew he wasn't smart enough to be planning anything – she knew someone else was pulling the strings.
She had her suspicions about Wren from the start, and that was why she accelerated her relationship with him as quickly as she did, and why she was so upset when she found out Wren was messing with Spencer. Melissa almost went to the cops then, but Wilden was lurking, and she didn't know who she could trust. So, she kept working alone until Jason showed up with suspicions of his own. They worked as a team until Wren had Jason thrown down that elevator shaft, Jason and Melissa both decided it would be better if he left town.
Alison knew there was someone else in on the game, there was too much interference between her actions and Wren's for there not to be, so she decided to come back. Melissa kept showing up where she wasn't supposed to, and Alison got suspicious, started having people trail her. Melissa went to Peter, and Peter got her out of town, but wouldn't listen to a word she said about Spencer and the rest of you being in danger. The ass.
Anyway, that was when Wren decided enough was enough. Alison got distracted when she found out Spencer had feelings for Emily. She was more invested in keeping you two apart than she was in the game, because if there was one thing Alison always thought she had control over and possession of, it was you, Emily."
I grabbed the decorative bowl off the coffee table in front of me and promptly emptied the one cookie I had eaten into it – I was the reason we had been tossed into that hellhole. Everyone else had to go through that because of me. Spencer and Aria were broken because of me. And I couldn't do a damn thing to save them.
The living room began to swim around me, blurry and moving in a way it shouldn't have been. I was finding it difficult to breathe.
"You're hyperventilating, Emily. I need you to take a deep breath, I need you to follow my breathing, sweetheart," my mom implored, pulling my hand to her chest so I could follow her breathing and brushing my hair out of my face as Hanna wiped the vomit off my chin with a wet rag that had appeared out of nowhere.
"Spencer," I gasped, unable to control the rate of inflation and deflation that was happening in my lungs, convinced that I was going to pass out at any moment.
"I'm right here, baby. Look at me, Emily, I'm right here."
And there she was, Spencer was kneeling on the floor between me and Hanna somehow, looking calmer and more alert than she had in a good long while, and placing my right hand on her chest while she anchored her left hand solidly to my hip, grounding me.
"I've got you, babe, deep breath, I've got you, always, you're okay, Em, you're okay," she practically chanted, keeping her eyes locked on my own in a way that I couldn't pull away from, couldn't avoid.
Finally, I started to breathe.
Hanna moved from the couch so Spencer could sit beside me, and Spence pulled me tightly into her side, shushing and rocking me as though I were a small child. I just curled even more deeply into her body and cried.
"Cry as much as you need to, love, as much as you need. She's gone now, she can't hurt you anymore, Emily. None of them can hurt us anymore. We're safe," Spencer whispered, squeezing me tightly and placing kiss after kiss on the top of my head until Hanna's mom cut in.
"She's right, Emily. All of them are gone, you're all safe now. It's time to grieve, but it's also time to heal, and we'll all be here with you, every step of the way."
- Spemily –
We had all had independent plans to go to schools around the country, follow big dreams, and live independent, sophisticated, grown-up lives.
But, after the bunker and everything that happened there, that wasn't meant to be.
Getting out of Rosewood was a must, but Hanna and I couldn't gather the motivation to go back to school after graduation. Spencer and Aria both wanted to, though, so Hanna and I just followed them to a big state school in Seattle – a big enough city that we could get lost in it and far enough away that we weren't constantly reminded of Rosewood.
We got a house together, Spencer's mom agreeing to co-sign with us when we convinced her she didn't need to just straight out buy the house for us. Caleb and I started remodeling it, with Hanna serving as interior designer, while Aria and Spencer went to school. I worked part-time at a local pool, lifeguarding and offering swim lessons from time to time, while Caleb made money consulting on computer things that I didn't understand, and Hanna found an executive assistant job that let her tell everyone what to do all the time.
It was hard work, but we somehow managed to convince Spencer not to take on a part-time job, at least for the first year. Aria said she would go nutso bananas if she had too much free time, so she interned part-time with a local community newspaper that paid her a decent wage and let her write about whatever she wanted as long as she helped with some of the event planning and marketing behind the scenes.
We were still broken, and haggard, but we were breathing. We were even happy sometimes, content to be alive and together and not running for our lives anymore.
But bad days still came. Our individual depressive episodes tended to arrive in cycles, one ending and another starting so that there was always someone in bed for longer the usual and who needed a little extra help for a while.
Sometimes, at the beginning, Spencer sunk a little deeper than the rest of us, holed up in our room for weeks, but we found her a therapist and some medication that started to help after a while. I still couldn't have doors closed for long periods at a time, and our heat bill was always astronomical because there was always a window open somewhere in the house, but everyone put up with me; I don't think anyone wanted to be shut in ever again if they were honest.
We managed, we got each other through, and, eventually, we even got Spencer and Aria graduated from their undergrad.
Spencer considered grad school, she wasn't sure what she wanted to do for work, but she eventually got really engaged with local organizing efforts on environmental and civil rights issues and eventually found a job that let her do that at least part-time while she worked another part-time gig running logistics for a local food bank.
Aria was still writing, even though she swore she wanted to give it up 98% of the time because it never failed to make her think about Ezra. We, along with her therapist and a friend she made at a local meditation center she spent a lot of her time at, did finally convince her that she didn't need to make a living doing that if it didn't make her happy, though. So, instead, she somehow found her way into running local arts events while doing her own work on the side, selling some of it but mostly just doing it because she wanted to.
Hanna loved her executive assistant job and swore she would never leave it; she was practically running the company after five years there, but, as she argued, she had little actual responsibility and never had to worry about the financials, so she couldn't imagine anything better. Caleb loved how much time off she got, and finally convinced her to marry him when he promised to be the one to stay home with the kids if they decided to have them. I think the fact that he proposed in the new addition to the house that Caleb and I had convinced her was an office space for all of us but was actually the equivalent of a private wing for the two of them definitely helped seal the deal, but I could be biased, that shit was a lot of work.
Mona showed up on our doorstep not long after Caleb proposed, fresh out of another stint in in-person care that was apparently a real mental health facility and not the hell prison that was Radley, and Hanna didn't even bother to ask before immediately bringing her into our home on a permanent basis. Spencer struggled with the idea at first, it dragged her back in a way that she hadn't experienced in a while, but a long talk with Mona one night seemed to clear the air.
When Hanna and Mona and Caleb became an official thing, Spencer's protective side reared up, but Caleb somehow calmed her down with daily boxing lessons in my basement workshop. I couldn't complain, watching my girl sweating and beating the shit out of Caleb in nothing but yoga pants and a sports bra every morning was an ideal way to start my day, though I did learn to avoid anything sharp until the workout was over, she was just a little too distracting to be good for my health.
- Spemily –
"You look far away; do I need to bring you back?" Spencer called softly, swinging a leg over the top of me and leaning down to kiss me gently back into the present.
Comfortably cocooned between our mattress and the most beautiful woman in the world, it was hard to be anywhere but in the moment. Still, I had been thinking a lot, we were coming up on the seven-year anniversary of our escape from the bunker, which just so happened to occupy the same month as the anniversary of us, as a couple.
I had been so worried that she wasn't ready for so long, that niggling fear in the back of my mind, that voice that sounded suspiciously like Alison yelling that she would leave me eventually, but, for some reason, the voice couldn't stop me that morning; I couldn't stop myself.
Gripping her hips firmly, I rolled us gently so that I was the one above her, and so that we were close to the nightstand I had hidden the ring in. She looked a little surprised at first, then expectant, but I don't think the box I pulled out from the secret door I had recessed into the nightstand was exactly what she was expecting.
"Emily," she whispered, her voice more a gasp than anything, her eyes giant and a little too uncomprehending for my comfort.
I rushed to make her understand.
"I know this isn't exactly a movie-worthy type of moment, but I didn't want to share this with anyone else, Spence, not even our family, because I want you to know that it's okay for you to say "no." I love you, Spencer, I love you more than everything that exists or did exist or could exist – and I'm not as good at words as you, but I needed to tell you, even if it's not something you want, that I want to spend the rest of my life loving you in any way that you will let me.
If you want to keep living in this house and making sure Aria is okay and listening to Hanna and Caleb and Mona argue until they realize they're just horny and we can never get married or raise kids and just keep being like we are now, forever, that's more than okay with me. If you want to get married, if you want to have kids, if you want to move to freaking Antarctica, I'll be right there with you, supporting you and loving you and never leaving your side, and that's more than okay with me.
As long as I'm with you, as long as you let me stay by your side, whatever that may look like, I'm more than okay. I will love you forever, and that is all this ring has to mean if that's all you want. But I'm yours, Spencer. I always have been, and I always will be. Always."
Spencer just stared at me for a moment, her eyes still wide, before she started reaching into the drawer of the same nightstand I had pulled her ring out of.
It was my turn to be confused.
She stayed quiet as she withdrew a box, not dissimilar to the one I held in my hand, and slowly opened it in front of my face.
"I literally just got it from your mom in the mail, Emily. Yesterday, I got it yesterday. How the hell did you beat me to this?"
I just kept looking back and forth from her face to the ring, jaw hanging, more than a little flabbergasted. Spencer had always seemed incredibly blasé about the idea of getting married, I didn't even really think it was in the cards, and yet, there she sat, my grandmother's ring in her hand and looking at me like I had kicked her dog.
Then, as if I hadn't been surprised enough, she slapped her box closed, snatched mine out of my hand and snapped it closed too, put them both in the nightstand drawer, slammed that closed, and then none too gently rolled us back over so she was on top again.
"Nope," she stated firmly, her eyes sparkling with mischief, which was the only thing keeping me from being terrified and depressed at the same time.
I was fairly certain the "nope" did not mean she wasn't going to marry me or at least spend the rest of her life with me, so there was that at least.
"Nope?" I asked hesitantly, no idea where this was going.
"If you're going to be my wife, and I'm going to be yours, then we're going to do this right. I get to plan something romantic, you get to plan something romantic, and we both get to ask each other again, even if we already know what the answer is. Aria can help you with your proposal speech if you want," she offered, smirking at the last bit.
I couldn't resist smacking her on the shoulder.
"Hey! It was a good speech! Not all of us inspire people with our words for a living, Spence, jeez," I laughed, relieved and ecstatic and so very in love.
"As long as I get to call you my wife, you can say anything you want to me, baby," she whispered hotly in my ear before capturing my lips in a searing kiss.
Breaking away gently, my chest heaving for breath, I framed her face tenderly with my hands, my gaze never leaving hers.
"I love you so much, Spence. Nothing would make me happier than to call you my wife."
A tear dropped heavy on my cheek before her lips were back on mine and I was blissfully unaware of anything that wasn't my future wife.
There was just one thing I knew for certain: as long as we were together, we would be more than okay.