I seem to be having no luck at the moment, as I was rushed back to hospital for some more emergency surgery. But now that the pain meds are not needed as much I'm finding myself with plenty of time to edit and write.
Emma barely heard a word of Killian's panel that morning. To keep her emotions in check, she shut down. She didn't even bother to lift her eyes from her lap, and Ruby had to admit, the day was going nothing like she'd planned at all.
When Killian left, Emma bolted for the door, moving faster than she ever had before. Ruby had to jog to catch up to her friend and when she did, it was to find her hurling into a trash can outside of the hotel.
"I'm sorry, Emma," she soothed, pulling her friend's hair back, out of the way, and rubbing her back gently.
"I told you this was a bad idea," Emma mumbled, when she'd finally emptied her stomach. "He hates me. I shouldn't be here. I'm just going to ruin his weekend, which will ruin everyone else's weekend."
"Maybe if you speak to him during the photo ops…"
"I'm not doing the fucking ops," Emma yelled, her voice rising with her anger. "I'm done, Ruby. I'm just so fucking done."
Ruby wasn't really sure what to say. She'd never seen her friend this way before.
"Let's get you into the bar," she offered, when Emma began to shiver slightly.
"I'm going back to the hotel," Emma stated, tearing her badge over her head and throwing both it, and all of the convention documentation, into the trash can she'd just made use of. "I just… I wanna be alone for a while."
Ruby bit back her own tears and nodded to show she'd heard her friend, as she watched Emma turn and walk back in the direction of their hotel.
When she turned the corner, out of sight, Ruby cringed slightly before plunging her hand into the trash can to fish out the tickets Emma had thrown away.
While Emma cried herself to sleep, back in the hotel room, Ruby decided it was time to take some action. She waited patiently for the start of Killian's photo session, and downed a couple of shots of tequila in the bar to help boost her courage.
Much like Emma had done in the past, she managed to wait out the call long enough to make sure she was the last person in Killian's line. It wasn't easy though. Whoever was in front of her kept finding excuses to leave and return, insisting that she didn't want to slip back into her place in the queue.
Thankfully, Ruby was much more intelligent than she was, and as soon as she entered the room that the photo ops were taking part in, she put her plan into action.
"Ooops. I left my tickets with my friend," she lied, slipping back out and heading down the hall. "I'll be right back."
She lingered round the corner for exactly three minutes, before heading back at a light jog, waving the tickets in the face of the volunteer on the door.
"Got them," she cheered, a little too happy with herself.
She watched on as everyone else in the room took their pictures with Killian, the man himself looking a little stiffer than she'd seen him at the previous convention. The woman before her seemed to go into full-on meltdown-mode after her picture was taken, gushing to him about how much he'd changed her life and how she was his biggest fan.
Ruby had always been a little cynical, so she couldn't help but roll her eyes at the staged dramatics. She did, however, almost feel sorry for the poor guy, who looked clearly uncomfortable with the situation.
Almost.
He had made her friend cry, after all.
When it was her time, Ruby straightened her shoulders and handed over all of her photo op vouchers.
Killian greeted her with a soft, "Hi," to which she replied, "I wanna talk about my friend, Emma Swan."
Emma wasn't sure how long she'd been sleeping for when she was woken by a knock at the door.
"Go away," she called out, thinking it was housekeeping.
The knocking got louder.
"GO AWAY," she yelled again.
There was a moment of silence before the knocking started over, more persistent this time.
Emma hauled herself off the bed, running her fingers through her hair to detangle it a little, before she wrenched open the door, ready to give whoever it was on the other side a piece of her mind. "What part of go away don't you understand?" she snapped.
The figure in front of her turned slowly, and Emma's jaw dropped.
"Your friend said you had something to tell me."
"I… um… what?" she asked, all eloquence leaving her.
"Your friend. The feisty brunette. She said you had something to say to me." His face was just as cold and emotionless as it had been the last time they'd spoken, and Emma's heart broke a little more.
"Why do you care?" she asked, blinking back the tears that were already forming.
"You missed the photo ops," he replied softly, looking down at his feet.
"Well, you made it clear you didn't want me here," she countered.
"And yet… you still came."
"Yeah, well… blame Ruby for that," Emma muttered, petulantly.
Neither of them said anything for the longest of moments. Emma wasn't sure what to say that would make anything better, and she had no idea why he'd suddenly shown up at her door.
"This was a waste of time," Killian mumbled, turning on his heels.
"Wait," she called out, her mouth opening before her brain had time to catch up. "He's gone."
"Who?" Killian asked, cocking his head to hear her better but not yet ready to turn around and face her.
"Neal. My fiancée. My ex," she corrected. "He's gone. I kicked him out."
"Why should I care?" Killian scoffed.
"I don't know," Emma replied softly. "I just…. I just wanted you to know that I didn't set out to hurt you. I wasn't trying to trick you. Things just sort of happened and I lost control."
"You never wore a ring."
Emma was momentarily confused by the statement. What on earth did jewelry have to do with anything?
Then it clicked.
"He never gave me one. He didn't work. He couldn't afford an engagement ring. You know that old saying that you should spend two month's wages on an engagement ring? Well, two months of nothing is nothing," she laughed bitterly.
"So you didn't take it off around me?" he asked, finally turning back to face her.
"God, no. I never had one to begin with. I never set out to trick you," she reiterated. "I didn't even expect any of this to happen. And once it did, I knew telling you about him would stop it. I didn't want that either."
"What did you want?"
"You," she confessed quietly. "I wanted you. I still want you. I didn't know how much I wanted you until you kissed me that night."
Emma couldn't bring herself to look at Killian after her confession, so instead she chose to look down at her feet. She really wished she'd had the time to slip on her boots before answering the door.
"You look pretty today," Killian complimented, his hand coming out to twist a piece of her hair around his finger.
Emma looked up at his words, trying not to move her head too much so he wouldn't stop touching her. "Ruby made me wear it," she shrugged. "You look great. You always look great. I mean, you kinda look a little tired, but you still look amazing," she rambled.
Killian chuckled a little at her words before slipping his fingers under her chin to tilt her head up.
Emma pulled away quickly when she realised just how close they were standing.
"Please tell me you don't have another secret to confess," he gritted out at her sudden movement.
"I vomited earlier today," she replied. "I haven't brushed my teeth yet."
She watched as the tension quickly drained from Killian's shoulders.
"Go brush your teeth," he told her, indicating to the open doorway with a nod of his head.
"You'll still be here when I've finished?" she asked.
"I was planning to wait inside the room," Killian teased, "but I can wait here if you'd rather."
Emma didn't really think before she grabbed a fistful of the front of his shirt to haul him into the hotel room.
When she left the bathroom, having brushed both her teeth, and her hair, she found Killian perched in the corner of the sofa, flicking through the television channels mindlessly. She made her way round to the other side before sitting down cautiously.
He might have given her hope to fix their relationship, but she also knew they had a lot to talk about.
"Will you tell me about him?" Killian asked. "I mean, you were engaged to him, right? So why leave him?"
The answer 'he's not you' was on the tip of Emma's tongue, but she knew that wasn't what Killian wanted to hear. He'd made it perfectly clear before that he didn't want to be that guy.
"I told him that I'd kissed another man," she said, her hands fiddling with the ring Ruby had given her instructions to wear that morning on her right index finger. "I couldn't not tell him. I didn't want to be that girl either. I didn't want to be a cheater and I was already lying to him about where I was going. I didn't want to lie to him about this too." She took a moment to clear her head before she carried on. "He didn't care," she laughed bitterly. "Told me that we all make mistakes and it didn't matter. So, I asked him how many mistakes he'd made before in our relationship."
"I'm sorry, Emma," Killian offered, shifting a little closer to her on the sofa.
"Apparently he's well known for it in town. But nobody thought I'd ever have the balls to kick him out."
"Why did you?"
"I told him I'd been coming to conventions to see you. He told me there was no way in hell someone like you would ever be interested in me. Guess he just struck a nerve."
Emma felt the sofa dip a little as Killian shifted closer, his hands coming up to tilt her face up until her eyes met his. "He was wrong," Killian stated. "I can't stop thinking about you. Even when I wanted to forget you, I couldn't." He leaned in slowly and Emma thought he was going to kiss her, but Killian stopped just short of it, before pulling back once more. "I'm not this guy either, Emma. I'm not the kind of guy who thinks it's cool to fuck his fans and leave them high and dry after. I don't do that. So, if this, whatever this is between us, is going to happen, I need you to be honest with me."
"I will," she promised quickly. "I was just scared."
"And you think I'm not?" he asked, cocking a brow at her. "Do you know how many horror stories agents will tell you about dating fans when you make it in the industry?"
"I'm sure everyone says this, but I'm not one of those crazy fangirls… I swear." Emma cringed a little at the look on Killian's face. "I mean, I know most people don't spend thousands to meet their idols, but I don't know where you live or anything crazy like that."
"Good to know," Killian laughed lightly.
"I um…" Emma hesitated for a moment before continuing with, "I haven't seen the show since the weekend before the last convention."
Killian looked up, surprised by Emma's confession.
"It kinda hurt too much to see you kissing another woman after you'd just kicked me out of your life."
"Sorry I was so hard on you," he apologised, bringing his hand up to cover Emma's. "I just… I assumed that maybe you'd been playing me the entire time and I didn't want to wake up the next morning and find all these trashy stories about me all over the internet."
"I would never do that," she protested. "I wasn't even gonna tell Ruby about us, but she saw you looking at me in the restaurant at our first convention and just wouldn't drop the subject."
"It's fine," Killian reassured her. "You can tell your friends, Emma. I'm not ashamed of you. I just… I liked you. The idea of reading about how I thought you'd betrayed me, stung. So, I lashed out at you. And I won't ever be able to apoloigse enough for that."
"You already have," she told him, smiling for the first time in what felt like months.
"Then maybe we should start again?" Killian offered. "With complete honesty, this time."
"I'd like that."
When Ruby returned to the room later that evening, it was to find her best friend fast asleep on the small sofa in their room, curled into Killian Jones' side.
Thanks for reading.
I'm finally caught up on replies now so I wanted to say thanks to erikalynnbowman, Pixiepaws1, CaptainSwan, Luna, KellenB and all the guest reviews who I could not personally reply to.
If I missed anyone's review, feel free to hit me up for you next teaser.