Killian was still thinking about Emma's final words from the night before when he made it to the café the following morning. It was perhaps due to his preoccupation that he didn't immediately realize there was someone already seated at what had become his usual table. He was almost standing beside it when he noticed the head of blonde hair that was slowly bobbing up and down as her left hand tapped a pencil against a sheet of paper.
For one long moment, Killian was frozen in place, worried that Emma would be expecting some sort of reply from him the instant he sat down. But through the haze of panic, his eyes landed on a sheet of paper tucked safely inside her notepad. The odd squiggles on it completely removed all of the worries from his mind.
"Is that… sheet music?" he asked, as he craned his head to get a better look at it.
His mother had once tried to convince him to take piano lessons as a child, but Killian hadn't enjoyed them. After only two sessions, his mother had finally agreed that they were a waste of money, given that her youngest son had simply refused to touch the instrument throughout the hour. While it had been decades since his last lesson, Killian was certain Emma had sheet music in front of her that morning.
At the sound of his voice, she seemed to jump in her seat, clearly startled by his presence, and then began gathering up her notes.
Emma had changed back into her usual denim shorts and had added a pair of black boots for breakfast that morning. As Killian made his way around the table to take his usual seat, he noticed that she'd also traded in her t-shirts for a black tank top - one that left her arms bare and gave him a wonderful view of her cleavage from where he was now sitting. Her long blonde hair was pulled back into a rough braid that trailed over her right shoulder, and instead of her usual assortment of glittering gemstones, she now wore progressively smaller golden hoops that climbed her ears.
"What if it is?" she asked, and for a moment, Killian had completely forgotten what they were talking about.
He gave his head a little shake to clear the cobwebs and then said, "I have nothing against music. I was just surprised to see sheet music on the table, that's all."
Suddenly, certain parts of the mystery that was Emma seemed to click into place. Killian felt a little stupid that it had taken him so long to piece them all together. If any of his colleagues ever found out, they'd likely run him out of the business.
"The song," he began, and she raised her head to lift a single brow in silent question. "The one you were humming yesterday," he explained, "I'd never heard it before because nobody's ever heard it before. It's something you're composing, right?"
"Something like that," Emma agreed, offering him a tight smile.
It wasn't hard to see the insecurity suddenly swimming behind her eyes, even if she was trying to cover it with bravado.
"It was beautiful," he told her, "I was humming it all afternoon. It was driving me mad that I didn't know what the song was called."
"Yeah?" she asked, as doubt warred with hope behind her gaze.
"Yeah," he assured her. "I'm really not gifted musically in any way, and even if I were, I'd like to think I know better than to sing someone's song back to them, but it uh… it stuck with me."
"Thanks," Emma said, offering him a genuine smile for the very first time that morning. A comfortable silence settled between the two of them for a moment before she nodded her head towards the two menus on the table and asked, "Breakfast?"
"Absolutely. I'm starving."
Emma chuckled as she leaned back in her seat, allowing him time to scan through the breakfast offerings.
"Are you not ordering?" Killian wondered, trying – and failing – to keep his eyes on the words in front of him.
"It's Monday," she replied, as if that explained everything. "The Monday special is their unique French toast recipe. I'm not passing that up."
Killian closed his menu and set it down on the edge of the table. "French toast it is," he declared.
Carlos must have been lingering close to them, waiting for the perfect moment to make his approach as the instant Killian's hand had left his menu, the other man hurried over with a glass of orange juice and a fresh cup of coffee, then asked to take their orders. With two of the French toast specials scribbled down, he made a quick escape to seat a middle-aged couple that had just arrived.
"So, uh… what do you have planned for today?" Killian asked, as he fiddled with his cutlery. He knew that he should probably spend the last of his time in France working on his book, but the opportunity to spend more time with Emma was hugely appealing to him – if she would let him, of course.
"Nothing much. I was just gonna take a walk around the village and then come back and do a little work. What about you?"
"Pretty much the same," he told her, hoping that he sounded as nonchalant as he'd been intending. "These memoirs are not gonna write themselves."
Carlos reappeared at that moment with steaming plates of food in each hand. Emma thanked him as he set one down before her, and Killian did the same before their server excused himself once more.
Emma had obviously ordered the French toast before as she quickly set to work assembling her meal, spreading some kind of thick, luxurious-looking cream over each slice of toast before she added the fresh fruits that had come with it and then drizzled over some sort of red glaze.
Killian looked down at his own plate, covered with different jugs and pots to personalize his meal, and decided to stick with the classic serving suggestion. After emptying the entire contents of his syrup jug onto his toast, he cut off a corner and took a tentative first bite.
"Not bad," he mumbled, once he'd swallowed it down.
"It would be even better if you hadn't completely masked the flavor with sugar," Emma pointed out.
"It's a classic!" he defended hotly.
"It's a heart attack waiting to happen," she chuckled. "Especially for someone of your advanced age."
Killian's fork froze in mid-air as he lifted his head to look at her face. The teasing smile dancing around the edges of her lips made her look lighter - carefree, almost - and he couldn't help returning it.
"You'll get to my age soon enough," he reminded her.
"Yeah, and then you'll be even older!"
She gave him an overly exaggerated gasp, and Killian rolled his eyes at it before cutting off another bite of his toast.
He made a big show of dragging the bread through as much of the syrup as he could, then brought it up to his mouth to slide it in as slowly as possible. The way that Emma's eyes tracked his every move wasn't lost on him, so when he'd finished swallowing, he allowed his tongue to dart out and swipe across his lower lip, gathering up all the excess syrup that had dripped onto it.
Emma shook her head fondly as she stabbed at a blueberry and then popped it into her mouth.
"So…" she said suddenly, when she'd finished eating it, "If you're writing your memoirs, you must have lived a pretty exciting life. Tell me a little about it."
Killian hesitated for a moment, wondering just how much to reveal. He knew that if he said too much, it wouldn't take Emma long to realize that he was not the local anchor she seemed to think he was. However, he also knew that she'd obviously revealed something personal about herself that morning, so he felt it was only fair that he should reveal a few more of his own secrets.
"Okay," he said, "um… when I was first trying to get into the business, after graduating from college, nobody would really take me seriously. The only job I could get was for a small news station as a fact-checker, which was fine, to begin with, but fact-checking gets boring really quickly."
He paused his story to finish the next bite of his meal and realized that Emma had already finished hers and was offering him her full and undivided attention.
"So, I uh… After a year of doing the same thing over and over again, I decided to take matters into my own hands, and I did something a little naughty."
"Like what?" she snorted, because it was obvious that she believed even a young Killian wasn't capable of misbehaving that badly.
"I, uh… I faked a press pass, snuck into another country with a friend and a video camera, filmed myself reporting on an uprising against the government, and then sold the videos back to the station I worked for."
Emma's eyes had widened throughout his story. Killian could see the shock and disbelief that were coloring her gaze.
"You're serious?" she asked.
"Yep. Thankfully, for some reason, they decided to keep me on staff and allowed me to continue making my own videos to sell back to them instead of firing me."
"Wow. That's, uh – that's actually pretty cool," she chuckled. "I wouldn't have thought you had it in you."
Killian snorted out a bitter laugh as he turned his attention back down to the last few bites of his meal. "Yeah, well… it wasn't all good. I tended to focus on places that were seeing the most devastation. The places that a lot of bigger companies couldn't get into or simply didn't want to report about. And, while it was shocking to the audience with the more and more they saw, I seemed to be drifting in the other direction. The more death and devastation I found, the less it bothered me."
Emma didn't say anything while he pushed the last of his meal around his plate, and Killian wondered if she could tell that the darkness of those days hadn't yet fully rescinded. He wondered if she could see that he hadn't quite managed to forgive himself for what had become of him during that time.
"But that all changed?" she eventually prompted, as she reached out to stab her fork into the bowl of untouched fruit on the side of his plate.
"Yeah," he agreed. "Someone pointed out to me that I needed to make a change, and after a couple of months of searching and sending out resumes, I landed a desk job at another network. I still wanted to cover those big moments – the ones that really shape our lives, but I wanted to work on the trivial stuff between them too. I needed to work on it to help bring a little perspective back to things. It's amazing how teen beauty pageants can do that for you," he teased gently, and Emma's face lit up at his change of tone.
"I can only imagine," she deadpanned, as she pushed her empty plate away from herself. For a moment, a long silence seemed to stretch between the two of them. It wasn't entirely comfortable, but it wasn't painfully awkward either. And then, she finally spoke up again.
"I um… I hope I'm not overstepping, but I just wanted to ask if you're happier now? Do you think you've found that balance? Do you think it's something you still need?"
Killian's head shot up so fast that it would have been comical had it not been for the sobering effect of her words. Nobody had ever really asked him those kinds of questions before and, as he was sitting and contemplating his answer, Killian realized that maybe if they had, they would have gotten a completely different response to the one he was about to give.
"I, uh… I think so."
At Emma's questioning look, he added, "I love my job. It's everything I could have hoped for it to be and so much more. I have wonderful friends. My mother is still around, and she still takes good care of me. I live in the best city in the world, and I don't really want for anything. But um – I dunno. I guess it just feels like maybe something's missing," he finally explained, because, until that very moment, Killian wasn't entirely sure he'd ever realized that about himself.
"I get it," she assured him. "Your life can be as perfect as you've always dreamed, but that doesn't mean your heart won't stop aching for something you'd never even realized you'd wanted until it was right in front of you."
Killian nodded his head in agreement because he couldn't think of the words to give her at that moment. For someone so young, Emma had an air of wisdom around her that even his most senior colleagues seemed to be lacking. He assumed it was due to the way she'd been raised, which made him wonder if maybe that was why he'd been so drawn to her all of this time. Maybe what his life was missing was someone who just got him, without ever really trying. Because while he had wonderful friends around him in New York, Killian knew that none of them would have reacted the same way to the news he'd delivered that morning as Emma had done just a few minutes ago.
"Yeah," he finally agreed. "Yeah, I think you're right."
"I usually am," she threw back at him, and just like that, the tension of the moment was gone.
"So," she asked, after she'd finished eating her way through the berries Killian had left behind, "Do you fancy some company for your walk this morning? I mean, it's not like I have anything better to do."
Killian scoffed at the implication behind her words and watched as she pulled out a few Euros from her wallet. She tucked them safely under her coffee cup and then busied herself with digging through her bag to find a pair of sunglasses.
"Thanks. It's nice to know that my company is preferable to doing literally nothing else."
Emma giggled at his faux-offense as she unfolded her legs and pushed herself up to her feet.
"You can lead the way," she told him, as she checked through the contents of her bag one last time, and then looped it over her shoulder. "It's my turn to stare at your arse for a while as you walk."
Thank you for reading and reviewing.
Once again, Emma's look for this chapter can be found on my Tumblr account.