A few hours later, Hanna woke from a series of confusing dreams. What was even more confusing to her was the arm that was protectively snaked around her waist. She closed her eyes and sighed, she could feel gentle breathing on the back her neck. She assumed that Emily must have gravitated toward her in the middle of the night, but she was surprised by how comfortable and content she felt when she finally woke up.
Pushing away her thoughts, Hanna quickly wiggled out of Emily's arms and left the room. As she walked into the other room, she could feel those last few drinks creeping up her neck and quickly forming into a headache. She knew she needed to hydrate, and needed some space from Emily, from everything, so she left the suite to get ice from the machine down the hall. She was annoyed to find that there was no ice machine on the floor. Begrudgingly, she climbed the stairs to the floor above.
When she returned, Spencer had woken up and looked almost as bad as Hanna felt. She offered her a bottle of water before putting another bottle and two aspirin on the bedside table next to Emily, knowing she'd need it most. She glanced at the spot next to Emily where she had slept and couldn't help wondering if Spencer or Aria would have been there, would they have woken up the same way with Emily too. She shook her head of these thoughts and returned to her conversation with Spencer.
A few minutes later, the phone in room rang, waking both Aria and Emily up. Emily sat up and instantly felt her head begin to throb. She felt terrible and she remembered getting sick the night before and sharing a moment with Hanna on the floor of the bathroom. But when she looked down, she didn't see the clothes she was wearing last night. Instead she noticed that she was dressed in only Hanna's t-shirt. She also noticed there was an indent in the pillow next to hers. She wondered briefly who had slept there and who had changed her clothes, but became distracted by the conversation in the living room about Charlotte being missing.
Realizing what time it was, Emily grabbed for her bag, spilling most of the contents on the floor. She panicked as some of the medicine had fallen out and the girls were just a few feet away in the living room. She quickly and quietly gathered the pills and her jeans before making excuses to the girls and leaving the hotel. She was late for her appointment at Hollis Medical Center and couldn't afford for the procedure not to work.
Emily raced the whole way there and made it just in time for her appointment. This was one of her final rounds of lab work and she was thankful for that. She was in the last stage of her hormone therapy, which meant twice daily injections for the next week. She hated needles, but she kept reminding herself that it would be worth it in the end.
When she finally left Hollis, she checked her phone and saw texts from the girls about how Charlotte was found dead that morning outside the church. She couldn't believe it, how could this happen? The police had just ruled it a homicide and of course, they were caught in the middle of another investigation.
Emily couldn't believe how quickly the next few days went. Between the investigation and the funeral for Charlotte, everything seemed to blur together. All of the girls were anxious after being interrogated and all of them were told to stay in town for further questioning. Spencer had planned to stay through the end of her mother's campaign, so it was not as big of a deal for her. But Aria and Hanna couldn't wait to get back to their own lives. Emily just wanted to make it back to California before her procedure and before anyone learned that she was a fraud.
The night after Charlotte's funeral, Emily couldn't get her dad off her mind. The funeral had reminded her of everything she had run away from. She had avoided going to the cemetery portion of the funeral because the DiLaurentis plots were so close to her family's, but she knew she couldn't avoid seeing him forever.
Emily got in her car and before she knew it, she had driven to the cemetery like she was on autopilot. She had pulled up the cemetery and began walking towards where her father was buried. This was Emily's first time seeing his headstone. At the time, she couldn't face it. If she faced it, then it would be real. She would have lost her father and lost Hanna in such a short period of time. Facing that was too overwhelming at the time, so she had left right after his funeral and hadn't returned until now.
She kneeled down in front of it and gently placed the bouquet of flowers against it as she held her hand against the words "Loving father." She missed her father more than she knew how to handle. And she hadn't handled it very well. Tears formed in her eyes and she began confiding in him, as she had so many times growing up. She knew that if he was really looking down on her, that he already knew, but she felt she needed to finally say the truth aloud.
She confessed that she had been living a lie, for years. That after his funeral, she went down a dark spiraling path. There was something that felt broken inside her and she didn't know how to fix it. She began drinking so much that if not only affected her school work, but her swimming as well. She missed so many practices that she was kicked off the Pepperdine swim team and lost her scholarship. She dropped out of school and blew through the money that he had left her, mostly on partying. She had been so desperate to fill the hole that his death and Hanna had left her with.
She even experimented with drugs, which led to her being disqualified from the US Olympics team after a random drug test. They found several types of amphetamines in her system, which without a valid prescription, are banned substances and grounds for a lifetime ban. She felt ashamed of herself after everything that happened in high school and she didn't know to handle having that conversation again with her friends and her mom. So, she lied, she made up a whole fake life. She knew she'd eventually have to think up another injury-related lie to explain why her friends and family won't be seeing her competing in Rio that next summer.
By the end of her confession, she was only speaking through broken sobs. This was the first time she felt free, but she knew the moment would be fleeting. She knew that soon, she would have to return home and continue these lies that had become her truths. She knew deep down, that there were even a few lies that she had to continually tell herself, to protect her own heart.