Bitter Hearts (middle of the ride)

She's never missed Boston. It's not home, (no place ever has been, really) but it is familiar. Emma grew up in and around the city, bouncing through various foster families and group homes, never staying anywhere longer than a few months. She'd moved around a lot after escaping the system too, first on her own and then with Neal. It was prison that had grounded her, the eleven months she'd spent there the longest she'd stayed anywhere after the Swans had given her up.

Emma had hated every minute she'd spent in the desert so she booked it to Tallahassee as soon as she found the car that Neal had been oh, so kind to leave her. But the city's not near the beach, and the broken pieces of a promised home choke her every day she spends there. She leaves after just a few weeks with no real destination in mind. Packs up the bug and heads up the coast until she needs cash and decides that Boston seems as good a place as any to get some. She gets a job at a 24-hour diner in Fenway, not far from the ballpark and across the turnpike from the universities that line the Charles River. Mrs. Lucas likes a project, and she insists that Emma call her 'Granny' the way everyone else does. The diner looks like it hasn't been redecorated in her lifetime — aged wallpaper covers the walls, there's cracked linoleum on the floor, and newspaper clippings hang seemingly everywhere in cheap, mismatched frames. It's clean though, and popular with students for its large, wallet-friendly plates.

Emma picks up the overnight shift — she's got nowhere to live, and if she's gonna be sleeping in her car she'd rather it be in broad daylight. She drives across to the YWCA a couple times a week for a shower and bums around the river on afternoons when the weather's nice. The city is full of students around her age and she sometimes finds herself hanging out on the different campuses, trying to imagine if there were ever a way she could have wound up in such a place, full of hope for a brighter future. Emma doesn't even know what she'd study, hasn't given thought to the question of what she wants to do with her life since she took a quiz in high school that told her she should be a police officer.

She'd left high school before getting her diploma, and her and Neal never got to find out what 'going straight' together would look like. At the time she hadn't cared how they lived, so long as she was with him.

That had pretty much blown up in her face. How she's living now isn't great but it's something. It's all she's got. Then one day before her shift Granny catches her napping in the bug and drags her out of the parking lot and into what looks to be a converted garage attached to the diner.

"I cleared the storage out of here when Ashley's stepmother put her out on the street," the older woman says, blocking the exit with both hands on her hips as she watches Emma closely. "She stayed for a few months before she had the baby and Sean got his act together."

She and Ashley don't usually work the same shift — thank God, because she's not sure what she'd do if she had to constantly be reminded of the little baby she gave away. She's covered for the other girl a few times though when Alexandra has been sick. It makes her wonder… if she had been here instead of in jail, would she have kept her son?

Emma looks around the space, takes in the single bed, the three-drawer dresser with peeling paint, and the small side table with a microwave and toaster oven stacked on top of each other.

"It's not much to look at," Granny continues, "But it's heated. Which is more than I can say for that deathtrap of yours once winter comes around."

She wants to turn it down. Wants to say 'thanks, but no thanks' and get out of there as fast as she can for all the same reasons that she's never stayed at a shelter. (It's not that she doesn't like people, just that she doesn't trust them. The risk isn't usually worth it, even when they're trying to help.) But she hadn't planned on leaving Boston just yet, and with winter only a few months off... if she wanted to stay living in her car she should have stayed in Florida.

"How much?" she manages to ask, hating how rough her voice sounds.

"You in school?"

She shakes her head.

"You ever finish school?" She shakes her head no again and Granny sets a key down on top of the toaster. "Get your diploma in the next six months and it's free until then."

Emma's not sure she can do much more than stare and Granny huffs. "Your shift starts in five minutes. Don't be late."

The older woman turns to go and she reaches for the key, her fingers tracing over the tarnished metal. "Thank you," she manages, but she's not even sure if her boss hears her.

It's not that she's never tried to get her high school equivalency. She'd started working on it while in prison but as her stomach had gotten larger so had her struggle with motivation and by the end she'd only written one of the tests, barely passing the social studies portion. Emma knows a second chance when she gets one though, so the next afternoon she goes and finds out where to sign up for the three tests she still has to do. She leaves the prep center with an armful of exercise books and carts everything back to the garage.

(Her first night she'd discovered the mattress was as hard as a rock and probably older than she was but it had been nice to stretch out her legs instead of dozing curled up in the back of the bug.)

She loathes studying in the space. It's fine as a place to sleep, but the grey walls and dim lighting remind her of a prison cell, of dry desert air and a growing belly. The following week she tries out various different coffee shops and rejects all of them as too distracting. She's not like the other people studying around her, doesn't have the money to plunk down on an iPod and a pair of headsets to help tune out the rest of the world, let alone to buy fancy drinks on a daily basis.

Eventually she finds herself tucked away in a corner of Boston University's Mugar Memorial Library. The semester only started late the week before so the library is quiet and nearly empty. She's not worried about the reasoning through language arts exam so she spends most of her time on the science and math material. Science is easier but math… not so much. Emma has to force herself to do algebra by promising herself a treat afterwards. (She remembers some of this, was not a terrible student when she'd been in school. Just an inconsistent one.)

It's after two hours of working on problems in the library that she ends up wandering through the halls in search of a bake sale to satisfy her sweet tooth. She finds one in the College of Arts and Sciences and treats herself to a chocolate cupcake with buttercream icing and star-shaped sprinkles. There's a crowd of students nearby but she leans against the wall on the edge of the group to savour her treat, holding her messenger bag across her body.

An older man with a limp and a cane walks up and unlocks a classroom and the students all start filing in. In short time the crowd has thinned enough that the professor can see her and he regards her and her half-eaten cupcake with raised eyebrows.

"You know," he says, "You can finish that in class."

Emma tries to correct him through the chocolate in her mouth but there's something about him that stops her. Something commanding in the quiet way that he speaks and carries himself and it makes the words die in her throat. She lets him usher her in, figuring that she was done studying for the day anyway and what the hell, maybe it will be interesting.

She takes a seat about three-quarters of the way up the lecture hall and pops the last bite of cupcake into her mouth before pulling out a pen and notebook, deciding that she might as well not make it obvious that she's not supposed to be there.

"Good afternoon, everyone. I'm very sorry to report that Professor Hopper has had to take an extended leave of absence. I will be taking over the course in his stead. There is a revised syllabus, but those of you who have already bought their books don't need to worry, the course materials are the same. My name is Professor Robert Gold, I am the chair of the Department of Psychology here at the university, and this is PS 261 — Social Psychology."

She loves the class. Gold has an obvious depth of knowledge and a flair for showmanship that hooks her almost immediately. And the subject is interesting. The terminology is a little lost on her, but she picks up a syllabus on her way out and finds an older version of the textbook in the library and catches on quickly from there.

It becomes as much of a reward as an escape. Every Tuesday and Thursday she finishes her studying early then disappears among the rest of the students, able to pretend for three hours a week that she's just like them. This is what she would be doing if her life hadn't gone and turned to shit right at the very start, an endless cycle of bad luck and bad decisions. She buys a new notebook just for the lecture notes and manages to steal the login id. of one Mary Margaret Blanchard (an Education student who definitely needs to learn not to fall asleep at the computer) which lets her access databases for articles not in the textbook.

She doesn't dare participate in discussions for fear of being found out and her preferred seat is selected with anonymity in mind (not too close, not too far, and not next to anyone), but the class is a highlight of her new study routine that sees her on campus almost as much as she's at the diner.

The GED stuff still sucks, but now that she can see what else is out there she's a little more motivated to get the exams over and done with. Emma doubts she'll ever be able to afford university and she still doesn't know what she wants to do with the rest of her life but it definitely doesn't involve working the overnight shift at Granny's Diner forever.

It's not that the diner is awful — most nights she's alone out front; just her and the cook serving up partiers trying to sober up and then the early-risers looking for coffee before her shift ends. In the early part of the evening she's usually working with Granny's grand-daughter, Ruby, who works up until ten and then goes off in search of entertainment. Granny is constantly threatening to throw her on the overnight shift but never follows through. Emma wouldn't mind the company though — Ruby isn't afraid of holding her own, even if that usually means flirting with half the customers.

She's behind the counter watching Ruby do just that (she's pretty sure she hears something about lemurs and wonders what that could possibly have to do with the waitress' vet school application) when a guy in one of the booths signals to her.

Grabbing the coffee pot out of habit, she heads over, careful not to smirk at the pathetic picture the friend sitting across from him makes with his face buried in his arms on the table. (Granny's been on her about her people skills lately. It's not that she's ever rude, but apparently she has trouble keeping her thoughts off her face when people are wasting her time.)

"Evening lass, do you happen to have a dessert menu? My miserable and moronic friend here believes that cheesecake will solve his relationship woes."

"Let me guess," she says, topping off their drinks. "You think he should go for the usual tub-of-ice-cream prescription?"

"'S not gonna help, mate," the other guy says, lifting his head. "I could be drowning in a pool of marshmallows and still be miserable."

"Well, we don't have that, I'm afraid. And there's no dessert menu either, but there is cheesecake. You're welcome to come up to the counter and see what else we've got."

"Thanks," guy #1 says and she nods before turning to head back.

"Hey, I know you right? We have a class together?"

Emma stops in her tracks and turns, unable to keep the frown off her face. "Um, maybe?"

The guy grins and it sets off an unwanted flutter in her stomach. He's easy on the eyes, that's for sure. A little scruffy, dark hair, blue eyes, and a cleaner sounding accent than his friend. But good looks and an easy smile have never gotten her anything worthwhile before. Whoever this guy is, he's not worth the risk.

"I'm Killian," he says, holding out his hand. "And this is Will."

"Emma," she obliges, reluctantly shaking his hand. "Let me know if you want that dessert."

She's barely back behind the counter before Ruby corners her.

"Who's the guy?"

"I don't know. I think he goes to B.U."

The other girl raises a perfectly manicured eyebrow and Emma regrets saying anything. "You know that by looking at him?"

She shrugs and crosses her arms over her chest. She likes Ruby about as much as she likes anyone, but she's not going to give in to a gossipy interrogation.

Ruby just rolls her eyes. "You should go back there. He's glanced over half a dozen times in the last minute alone and he's cute."

"I'm not here to flirt."

"Well, that's your loss then," she says, grabbing a rag and heading out to wipe down a table. She leans over way further than necessary in front of the guy she was chatting with before and if the display makes Emma shake her head and put the clean mugs away a little harder than necessary she won't admit it.

Since he'd mentioned it, she's pretty sure that she does recognize Killian from Social Psychology lectures. He and his friend don't wind up getting the cheesecake, but he keeps looking over at her anyway, even giving a little wave as they leave. An hour later Ruby ends her shift and leaves with lemur-guy and Emma is grateful to be alone again. The last thing she needs is someone trying to be friends with her.

Emma shifts uncomfortably in her seat as Professor Gold continues to talk about the Stanford Prison Experiment. This week's topic is conformity and obedience and if she'd known what she was getting into she'd have stayed at the library. It had started out okay, but then he'd gone off on a tangent and drawn half the class into a discussion and Emma had sunk into her seat, just wishing that she could disappear.

Most days she manages not to think about it. But listening to a bunch of people going on about internalizing roles and behaviour when they have no idea what prison is actually like... It's like there's a bright neon arrow pointing at her for everyone to see screaming, "Convict!"

Emma digs her nails into her palms and forces herself to stay seated and silent.

From the corner of her eye she sees the person on her right slide across the handful of empty seats between them and realizes that it's the guy from the diner just as he leans in conspiratorially.

"Gold's a bit sketchy if you ask me. Bet he wishes it had been his own experiment so he could milk it for all it's worth."

Under almost any other situation she'd have rolled her eyes at the unwanted conversation but now she latches onto the distraction. "I'm sure there are loads of famous, questionably ethical experiments yet to be done."

Killian snorts. "Too right, lass. Either way, this is exactly the kind of messed up shit that makes me glad I'm in engineering." He looks over at her and Emma keeps her gaze locked straight ahead. "What's your major? Please don't say psychology now that I've gone and put my foot in my mouth."

She should have seen it coming, give a mouse a cookie and all, but the question still catches her off guard. "Oh, um, I haven't decided," she mumbles, hoping that's an actual thing and not just something that happens on tv.

She can see him tilt his head in her peripheral vision, considering, but refuses to look over at him. She's not sure which is worse at the moment — paying attention to the discussion going on in class, or fumbling her way through a conversation about majors and career plans that she doesn't have.

"Why don't you say something?"

"Excuse me?"

He points his chin towards where Gold is gesticulating while rambling about selection bias and the lack of a neutral observer. "You seem like you have an opinion on this stuff."

Emma exhales sharply and lets go of her grip on the armrest to fiddle with her pen, still refusing to meet his eyes. "It doesn't matter."

"You know someone who went to prison."

It's so quiet that at first she's not sure she'd heard him correctly, thinks that he's somehow picked up on that bright neon arrow. But he'd said it so softly and he was still leaning towards her...

Emma takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. "Yeah," she says, finally looking over at him.

He nods. "My dad did some time when I was young. Might still be, for all I know. We haven't heard from him in awhile."

There's not really much she can say to that. "I'm sorry."

Killian scrunches up his face in distaste and she almost laughs. She knows exactly how he feels and it's the exact same way she always does whenever someone finds out about her shitty past.

"It was a long time ago," he says. "But I know what it feels like."

She bites her lip and nods, glancing over at him again and starting a doodle with her pen.

"So what kind of engineering?"

Killian sits next to her every class after that. He waggles his eyebrows at her each time he can tell she's holding back an opinion and Emma rolls her eyes in response but it's comfortable, sitting with him and chatting a little before and after class. He's in mechanical engineering with an aerospace concentration and doing a minor in English literature (not that any of that actually means something to her) and she fumbles her way through telling him that she's working at Granny's and is only here part-time, which is only half a lie. She finds out that he'd lived in Boston for a couple years but mostly grew up in London with his brother before coming back over for university on a scholarship. It's a struggle to find the pieces of her past that she's comfortable sharing in return but she winds up telling him that she grew up around Boston and had traveled the country for a bit before coming back to the city. (He seems to perk up at that, and she wonders if he also has a bit of wanderlust in him.) They flirt a little back and forth, but mostly she just enjoys the feeling of having a friend for the first time in a decade.

They even work on an assignment together. He joins her at her usual spot in the library before class one week and they split up the articles they have to review. She can't turn it in, but it gives her a break from her GED stuff and she finds she enjoys spending time with him outside of class as well.

Sometimes Killian will come by the diner on his own late at night when its quiet, spreading his textbooks out across the table and working on assignments for his engineering courses. Emma will join him for a hot chocolate on her break but their friendship never branches out further. And she knows that as nice as it is, she can't let it. The more time she spends with him and the more pieces of herself that she shares, the greater the chance he'll discover she's just a fraud.

She's been on the other side of it before, way back when she found out Lily hadn't been an orphan after all. She didn't stay then. There's no reason to think he would react any differently than she had.

They're halfway through the semester, studying social cognition and attribution, when he and a couple friends come into the diner near the start of her shift. Apart from the guy who'd been moaning about marshmallows when Killian had introduced himself she's never met any of the people he's mentioned to her. It makes her uneasy; wondering what's changed, and if her little bubble is about to burst.

"Isn't that your B.U. guy?" Ruby whispers and Emma silently curses whatever made him come in before she was alone at the diner.

"He's not — I… No," she stammers.

Ruby smirks. "Wonder why he's coming over here then."

She spins around to see that the guys he brought with him have both sat down at a table but Killian, sure enough, is headed over towards where her and Ruby stand behind the counter.

"Hi," he says. He's scratching behind his ear and he seems nervous and it just makes her nervous too.

"Um, hi. I'll be over in a minute to take your orders."

"Actually it's only gonna be three coffees to go. We just came by because I wanted to, ah — Well, my friend Jefferson, the one in the ridiculous scarf," she leans over to see who he's talking about as he continues, "He lives in this big old house that he inherited and he's finally agreed to host a party there on Saturday and I was wondering if you might like to come."

She stares at him, her mouth hanging open, as she tries to figure out what to say. This isn't just a friend thing — he's asking her out, and the thought should have her leaving Boston in the dust, memories of the last time a guy smiled at her like that flashing through her mind. Instead she's surprised by the fact that she wants to go, wants desperately for the little life she's fabricated to be real.

It's far too risky, though.

"I work Saturday night. I work, well, every night."

"Not this Saturday!"

They both turn to look at Ruby, who's practically bouncing on her toes next to Emma.

"Ruby—"

"I'll cover for you! Granny won't have a problem with it and you can take my Sunday morning shift with Ashley — there's way better tips. But you should totally go to this thing, Emma. Have fun for once!"

Killian's grinning at her and this is it: she's in a corner and there's no backing out.

"Yeah, okay."

"Great! So I'll get those coffees and you can get the address and all that stuff," Ruby says, skipping off and leaving them alone.

Emma goes for what she hopes is an exasperated smile, fidgeting with the napkin dispenser on the counter between them. Killian's still just smiling at her and she finally rolls her eyes.

"So where does Jefferson live?"

Jefferson, she finds out, lives in a brownstone just off of Kenmore Square and not far from the university. For two days Emma tries desperately not to think about the party, which of course means that she doesn't think about anything else. She's never been to a party before, was never invited to any in all the schools she went to growing up. Her biggest worry isn't so much the not knowing anyone there but more that the default conversation topics (what are you doing in school? What do you want to do when you get out?) are all things she can't answer.

Plus, she's pretty sure Killian wants to date her, and she has absolutely no idea what she wants to do about that.

There's also the question of what to wear. Ruby makes multiple suggestions from her own closet, all of which Emma rejects immediately. She does borrow her co-worker's curling iron though, caving to the other girl's insistence that she do at least one thing special with her appearance. Other than that she goes for her usual jeans paired this time with a sheer black tank top. Jefferson's place isn't that far, and it is a college party (with all the drinking that implies, she assumes), so she leaves the bug parked at the diner and takes her leather jacket for the walk over. It's about twenty minutes to get to Bay State Road between the square and the river and she finds the house pretty easily, even if she's a little concerned about there being no sign of a party happening yet.

She's standing on the sidewalk wondering if she's too early when the door swings open and Jefferson calls her to come inside.

There's some music playing in another room and she hears voices, but overall it seems pretty low-key and not at all what she was expecting.

Emma says as much as Jefferson takes her coat and he laughs. "Sorry to disappoint."

He leads her into the living room where a dozen or so people are sitting around talking and eating pizza. Killian jumps off the armrest of the couch when he sees her, drawing her into the room and making a lightning quick round of introductions before taking her to the kitchen for "nourishment."

(His hand is warm against her back and it's startling because now that she feels it she realizes he's always been careful not to touch her. He's in her space when they're bantering, but not part of it.)

They talk for a bit before heading back into the living room, pizza and beer in hand, and Emma settles onto the floor next to the couch, listening to the different conversations going on as she enjoys her pizza (super cheesy and absolutely delicious). Killian forgoes the armrest to sit next to her, sending a grin her way every once in a while and filling in missing information when he can. (It's a hazard of being the new person in a crew, all the inside jokes and conversation shortcuts that she's not part of.)

(It would be hard if she wasn't used to it.)

She mingles as best she can and while some of his friends make an effort to talk to her, for the most part she's content to float between conversations. She learns that Jefferson is a psych major who hates how people only want magical solutions to their problems and that Robin (who she recognizes as the other guy Killian had brought to the diner when he came to invite her) is in Economics and wants to destroy the system from the inside. She chats with his girlfriend Marian, teases Will about desserts, and meets the latter's on-again/off-again girlfriend Ana as well as a small host of others.

It's when Killian is out of the room and Tina is harassing Jefferson about using disposable plates that Will slides into the empty spot next to her on the floor.

"So, how badly does Professor Gold want to murder Jones? D'you figure he took over the class 'cos he wanted to make life a living hell for 'im?"

"What?"

She doesn't mean to sound so abruptly incredulous, but this is the first time she's heard of any sort of grudge between Killian and their professor. After all, this is an elective for him, how would they even know each other?

(The other part of her knows there were clues. She remembers the way he'd frowned when she'd invented what she thought was an average grade for the article review they'd worked on together, how he'd refused to share his grade in return. And he's always been a good seatmate for her because he doesn't participate or draw attention to them, just keeps his head down and does his work when he's not trying to make her smile.)

"Why would Gold want to murder Killian?"

"Because when he did Psych 101 back in first-year the professor was Gold's wife and she had a bit of a thing for him," Jefferson says, jumping out of his argument with Tina-the-green-fairy to chime in.

"For him, or with him? Because I always heard it was with him," Ana says and Emma shakes her head in an attempt to clear the conversation that she does not want to be having.

"I leave the room for two minutes and you lot start spreading lies about me. What friends you are," Killian says, rejoining the group. Emma smiles up at him because really, she's a high school dropout and juvenile offender, what should she care if he slept with one of his professors?

Killian winks at her before clapping Jefferson on the back. "I'm afraid we've drank you dry, mate. Want me to run out and procure some more libations?"

Will mutters something about Killian's vocabulary when he's drinking and it makes her snort, drawing his attention over to her.

"Care to come with, love?"

She unfolds her legs and pushes up off the floor with a bit of a wince. "Actually, I should probably head out. I've got the morning shift at the diner tomorrow." She casts her eyes across the group and smiles, "Thanks for having me."

"You okay to drive?"

"I left my car at work, so I will be by the time I get there." She also won't have to drive anywhere by then either, but they don't know that.

Killian frowns and crosses over to her. "Let me walk you there, then. These arseholes can wait an hour for their next beer."

She opens her mouth to turn him down — she's a big girl, she can take care of herself — but then shrugs instead. "Sure."

The night is cool and she zips up her jacket as they head out the door, stuffing her hands in her pockets. Killian falls into step beside her easily and there's a beat of semi-awkward silence before he huffs.

"Sorry about them, by the way."

She lets her gaze fall to the sidewalk as she smiles. "Don't worry about it."

"You're not curious?" he asks, glancing over at her as they reach the end of Jefferson's street and turn down towards the square.

"It's really not my place."

He hums. "Did you have fun otherwise?"

"I did, yeah." And it's true. It had been nice to go out and simply sit around talking and drinking beer with people her own age. The comfortable casualness of the night hadn't been what she'd been expecting, but it had been the nice kind of surprise.

"Will and Robin are talking about going up to Montreal for Thanksgiving weekend to hit up some bars. You're welcome to come along if you like."

Emma chuckles. She can imagine exactly who's idea that was and she's not surprised that the brits in the group would rather go up to where the drinking age is lower than stick around for the shopping madness that takes over on Black Friday.

"I think I'll pass, thanks."

They walk through Kenmore Square with its partiers and Citgo sign and turn down Beacon Street, crossing over the turnpike and railway tracks before turning off a block before Audubon Circle. As much as she had fun at the party and as much as she's worried about what tonight could mean for her friendship with Killian, this walk back with him is the most enjoyable part of her night by far. It's just them, bantering comfortably back and forth. He likes to quote Shakespeare when he's a little drunk, apparently, reciting soliloquies at her and looking hilariously scandalized when she bites her thumb at him in response. Emma tells stories from late nights at the diner and he dishes about the engineering prank the department has planned for the spring. It's fun, and she wishes that Granny's was further away, or that she had just asked for the night off instead of swapping shifts with Ruby and having to leave early as a result.

"So why engineering?" she asks as they turn onto her street.

He huffs and it's this long, drawn out thing. As if she's placed the weight of the world on his shoulders with her question. "I wanted to build ships," he answers. "These days I think I mostly just want to sail them."

"And go where?"

"I don't know, anywhere. Neverland."

There's a little bit of a lost boy hiding behind the bright in his eyes and she forces herself to ignore it. She doesn't want his story, not when the cost is usually having to share her own.

"Alright there, Peter Pan."

"Peter Pan?" he scoffs, the humour back in his voice. "I'm more like a dashing Captain Hook."

It's Emma's turn to scoff, and she bumps her shoulder into his before turning serious. She may not want to talk about either of their pasts, but feels it's important that he know she understands. "Psychology is the only thing I have for myself," she says. "Everything else I do because I have to."

They've reached the diner and he stops walking, turning to face her. "What about tonight?" he asks quietly. "Was tonight for yourself?"

She snorts. "Tonight was for Ruby."

She should leave it at that. Say goodbye and sit in her car until she's sure he's gone. Maybe drive around the block, even. But he's staring at her with his ridiculous eyes that are bright and blue even in the dark and she knows what he's really asking. And maybe it's the beers that she had but she can't bring herself to tell him no. She likes him. And she likes who she gets to be when she's with him.

Her eyes flick between his and then she's grabbing the lapels of his jacket, pulling him into her. "This is for me," she whispers, barely a second before his lips crash into her own.

If there's one thing she's sure of, it's that she's made a terrible mistake.

Never has she more wanted to bang her head against a wall than in the days following the party. One kiss, one stupid, stupid kiss, and she's turned into a pathetic excuse for a human being. It's all she thinks about, her mind constantly flashing back to how his lips had felt against hers, the way he'd run his fingers through her hair, the feeling of his scruff under the pad of her thumb. She hasn't kissed anyone in over a year, not since Neal, but now she can't even remember what that felt like.

And when she's not thinking about it, she's freaking out over what it's going to mean for when (or if) she goes back to Social Psychology. She stares at the door to the diner through her double on Sunday and again all through Monday night — even though she knows he has a huge exam that he's studying for — terrified that he's going to come in. She can't deal with him and his smiles and his flirty banter. And never has she been more relieved to not be able to afford a phone because she knows he'd be texting her but she needs more time to figure out what the hell to do.

She wants to be the kind of person who can take a chance on him, but she's been deceiving him from the start. Even if she does want to make that leap… she can't without telling him the truth — about her schooling at least — but the chances of him still wanting her afterwards are slim-to-none.

And that's without telling him about jail, or being an orphan who nobody wanted, a teenage runaway who gave her baby up. Maybe he would understand — he's given her enough bits and pieces for her to know his childhood probably wasn't the greatest either — but he's pulled himself out of that. He deserves more than someone still in the thick of it.

Emma wants to run, but she's committed to staying in Boston at least through the winter and already has her first GED exam scheduled for next month. And she was telling the truth when she said that psychology is the one thing she does that's actually for her. She's not ready to give it up yet.

(She doesn't want to lose her friendship with Killian either, but knows she doesn't really have a choice. No matter what she does, he'll leave eventually. Better to cut and run before she makes the mistake of getting in too deep.)

By the time Tuesday's class rolls around she's committed to sticking her head in the sand. She stays a little longer at the library and makes sure that she's one of the last people to file into class, keeping her head down and taking a seat on the opposite side of the room and a few rows down from where she knows he's sitting. It's agony, and she swears that she feels his eyes on her through the full ninety minutes. She barely takes any notes, tapping her pen and bouncing her leg anxiously as Gold lectures about choice and self-justification. She's driving her new seatmate crazy, she's sure, but as much as she wanted to keep coming to class now she just wants to leave.

She can't get out of there fast enough when it finally ends, hurriedly throwing her stuff into her bag and not even closing it before she's out of her seat. But she's not fast enough, is barely in the hall when she feels a hand close around her arm and spin her around. Her bag goes flying — all of her books and materials scattering across the floor as other students try to get out of the way.

"What the hell?" she yells, jerking her arm away and facing him.

Her hostility falters when she looks at him because she'd thought he'd be maybe a little hurt, but she wasn't expecting the anger that's etched out on his face.

"Aye, I could ask the same of you," he bites back, indignant. "Have I done something to offend you, lass?"

'Look, I'm sorry, alright?" she says, crossing her arms over her chest. "But the other night was mistake."

"I'm not some bloody ponce. If you wanted to stay as friends you could have just told me."

She flinches and Killian tilts his head at her, realizing what her reaction means. He licks his lips, raises his chin and she hates that he can read her so easily.

"No, that's not it, is it?" he says. "You don't want to be anything at all."

"It's nothing personal. Trust me, it's better this way."

"You don't believe that. You just don't want to take a chance," he argues.

"Not everyone can afford to, Killian!" she snaps and she can practically see the fight drain out of him.

"Too right, love," he sighs, stepping away and bending to pick up one of her workbooks.

Emma sucks in a panicked breath and shoves him away. He nearly falls on his ass but she doesn't care, yanking the high school-level math book from his grasp and clutching it to her chest.

"Emma—" he starts, but she can't even look at him, scrambling to get the rest of her workbooks before he can.

"Just leave, Killian," she begs. "Please, just leave."

She knows he's looking at her but he saw, he knows, and she knows exactly what she'll see when she meets his eyes. She knows she'll just see the same look that she always has when people find out everything she's lacking and she doesn't want to see it, not from him, not ever again.

Emma takes a deep breath, presses her lips together, and lifts her head anyway, holding her bag close to her chest and staring him down until he shakes his head and finally walks away.

It doesn't make her feel better.

She knew it wouldn't. Knew that pushing him away would only make her feel worse. Emma tells herself that it's better in the long run, that the longer she stuck around the worse it would be when he eventually left her.

She barely gets through her shift at the diner that night and she knows that Ruby and Granny notice. She wants to be angry but only has herself to be angry with so instead she glares at every customer, drags the chairs around furiously as she mops, and drowns herself in coffee. She barely says two words to Ashley when the young mother comes in to relieve her and sleeps through the day on Wednesday, skipping out on studying in favour of going to see a movie by herself. By the time her next shift rolls around she feels dull and numb and when she wakes up on Thursday she knows that she has to go back.

Not to class — Emma doesn't think she can set foot in Social Psychology again — but to the university, at least. It's the best place for her to study, and she'll be damned if she loses her focus, or anything else, to a boy.

She sits at her usual table in the library, spreading her workbooks around her and burying herself in sines and cosines and tangents which still fail to make sense three hours in. She checks her watch out of habit as four o'clock comes around before hiding it in her bag so she won't look at it anymore. What's done is done. Time to move on.

Emma turns her full attention back to the set of problems she's been working on, determined to do another hour of work before heading to the diner. A shadow blocks her light and she looks up with a glare to find Killian standing across the table from her, bag slung over his shoulder.

"You should be in class," she mutters, folding her arms over the book in front of her.

"So should you," he retorts.

Emma gives him an exasperated look and picks her pencil back up. "We both know that's not true."

Killian drops his shoulders and sighs. "Look, I want to apologize. It was never my intention to hurt you and I shouldn't have pushed the issue. I was an arse and I'm sorry."

She shrugs and looks back down at her work. "You didn't know."

"I hope you're not skipping because of it."

"It's not skipping if you're not a student," she replies, not looking up at him.

"Why do you go?" he asks, his voice soft. He's fiddling with the back of the chair and something in his tone makes her meet his eyes.

"I like it," she says simply.

"I've seen your work. You're a better student than I am. Better psychology student, at any rate."

Emma rolls her eyes at him. "I'm a lousy student. Probably can't even pass this stupid math exam."

It feels weird, talking with him as if he's always known that she isn't really enrolled like him. Killian scratches the back of his head and gestures to the textbook, silently asking her permission. She's got nothing left to lose at this point so she nods and he turns it towards him.

"Trig?"

"I have to pass in the next few months. Granny's letting me stay in the converted garage attached to the diner rent-free so long as I have my GED by the spring."

If she was testing what his reaction would be to that revelation, he doesn't give her much to go on. Killian hums quietly and pulls out the chair, grabbing a pencil from his bag. "My brother taught me a trick for remembering the relationships between the functions," he says, sketching out a shape in the margin of her graph paper. "Can I show you?"

Emma just stares at him. She'd been so sure that he'd be like everyone else and wouldn't want anything to do with her after finding out she was just a dropout. Hell, he'd been so angry she'd even considered the possibility that he'd tell Gold and have her banned from lectures out of spite. Instead he'd left class to seek her out and was offering his help with her math problems. She wasn't sure, but this was probably what it felt like to have a friend.

"Emma?"

His question shakes her out of her thoughts and she leans forward to get a better look at what he's doing.

"Yeah. Yeah, okay."