Just Stay.

Torn but Together

"What?"

Okay maybe she was a bit discombobulated from the kiss, but really who could blame her.

"You were right." he repeats. Unlike before, when she could barely look at him, he can't seem to meet her eyes. His hands were deep in his pockets, his eyes fixed on her bare feet. She had never seen him look like this.

"Look at me." she says. She spent five days without seeing his eyes, the last few minutes hadn't been enough.

He doesn't. He continues.

"I didn't leave because I wanted your family to be happy, though that should have been why. Your family deserves to have their daughter. Your son needs you. But making sure they were happy wasn't the reason I left. You were right. I was selfish."

She needed to see his eyes.

"Please look at me."

Still nothing.

"I was selfish because I wasn't brave enough to let you go. I knew you would want to go, and I couldn't-"

His voice broke but he kept going.

"I couldn't let you. I couldn't. I need you. I need you safe and I needed you not to leave. And I know that it should have been your decision, and I know it was selfish because I saved myself all the pain of being without you, and I barely thought about what me leaving might do to you, and I am so sorry Emma. But you have to believe me that I would have died if you have gone. You have to believe me that you leaving would have ripped-" he stressed the word, hands curling into fist in his pockets "-me apart."

"Killian. Look at me."

He looks up and his blue eyes are shot with sadness. He looked anguished. Torn apart.

Looking at him made her heart break all over again.

Neither one of us is moving. The air around us is scared to breath.

He says something so quiet she can't make it out.

"What?" she asks.

"I love you."

Those three words hit Emma hard. Those three words crashed into her, turning her entire world upside down, because never, never in a million years has any romantic relation said that to her like that. Like they know exactly how much it means and exactly what they mean by it.

Like they meant it.

Really meant it.

She was still in shock when she realized he was halfway across the room.

She scrambled forward to quickly, midsection ramming into the counter.

"Where are you going?"

She couldn't keep the tremor of panic out of her voice. Couldn't keep the undertone of apprehension from running through her words. 

"You told me to leave."

She had. 

She had yelled at him to get out of her house, and because this was Hook he was listening. He was listening to her and for the first time in her life she wished he wouldn't. She didn't know how to tell him, never knew how to tell him what was happening in her head. How much she had hated him for what he had done, how much it had hurt when she thought he was gone. She didn't know how to tell him that even though he had put her through all of that, every single cell in her body was screaming at her to make him stay.

He had told her he loved her.

He had told her that he loved her and that he was sorry.

He had said so many things. Things she knew made up for everything he did. That he needed her and that he loved her he loved her he loved her.