Teaching jj

Chapter 36

"I always want to be with you, JJ," Emily replied, turning her body to run her fingers through JJ's blonde hair as she whispered in her ear, "Fuck, I can't even lie to you to protect myself. I certainly can't make myself stop wanting you - and I've tried so hard for so long that I'm just ... I'm just so fucking exhausted by the whole thing. The whole charade."

"What charade?" JJ repeated quizzically, furrowing her brow. "You just said ..."

"I only said that to hurt you," Emily admitted, her dark eyes cast downward. "Every time we were ... every time we were together, I wasn't acting. If anything, I had to bite my lip and stifle the desire to scream out your name - your real name - when I came. Didn't you notice? Didn't you notice how I never once called you 'Alexandra'? It's because I couldn't. Because I wanted to believe ... I wanted to pretend ... that it was real."

"It was real!" JJ insisted, pressing her hands hard against Emily's thigh. "It was real for me, too. You had to know that. I mean, Emily, how could you not have known that?"

Emily swallowed hard, reaching down to remove JJ's hands from her thigh. "Because of Will. Because you've spent years in an emotionally-abusive marriage, pretending to love someone you can't stand. How many times, in how many hotel rooms, in how many different cities, have I stayed up all night with you, listening to your stories about him and trying to convince you to leave him - if not for yourself, then for Henry? And how many times have you agreed with me, only to have everything go right back to the way it was the second you returned home?"

JJ began to speak before Emily cut her off. "Listen, JJ, knowing how I feel about you changes absolutely nothing. Even if you feel the same way. You won't leave him and I don't know if can settle for some kind of arrangement with you. I want you ... but I want all of you. And I'm not asking you to decide tonight, but I needed to tell you this now, before we return to Quantico, I'm either going to be yours completely or not at all. Do you understand, JJ?"

"I understand," JJ repeated quietly.

Emily leaned forward and kissed her with intensity, with desperation. "Get the blanket from the back of the car and put it near the trees while I run upstairs to the bathroom," she murmured, stroking JJ's cheek with her thumb. "If this is going to be the last night we ever spend together, I want to remember it as ours. Not as Vivian's and Alexandra's, not as 'I need to go home and wash my clothes before Will and Henry wake up,' but ours and ours alone."

In the bathroom, Emily's guilty eyes stared back at her in the mirror. Because she knew that the ultimatum she'd just given JJ was bullshit. She was so head-over-heels in love with this woman that she'd settle for anything, even helping to contribute to the elaborate lies JJ would have to construct for Will's benefit, even accepting the meager crumbs of affection and time-constrained trysts in hotel rooms that their affair would require.

She never could have imagined that as JJ spread the blanket down among the trees in the backyard, she was thinking, I don't want just 'anything' with Emily. I want it all.