I propped my head against the cool metal of the doorway as relief shuddered through me.

Safe.

She was sitting in the chair by the window, her knees tucked tightly into her chest, as Alice dozed in the nearby bed.

I closed my eyes briefly as the thrumming of adrenaline slowly began to dissipate. In an instant my eyes flew open again as if to confirm it was true.

She's safe.

I slid my phone out from my pants pocket to update the security team when faint scuff of footsteps briskly turned the corner.

"Forgive me your highness, but visiting hours are over."

I glanced over my shoulder at the petite nurse, her severe salt-and-pepper bun and pristinely ironed scrubs giving no indication of the long shift she had likely endured.

Emma must have stirred at the sound of her voice because she was suddenly standing in front of me. She looked much the same as she had this morning, except her eyes were rimmed red.

A tight knot twisted in my chest as I had to actively fight the urge to pull her into a tight embrace.

The nurse smiled and nodded towards Emma in way of familiar greeting. "Perhaps tomorrow you and Alice can spend some time writing."

Emma's lips twisted painfully in attempted smiled.

The nurse murmured something else about "wrappings" as Emma silently slipped between us and down the corridor.

My voice sounded foreign to me as a croaked 'thank you' before jogging after Emma.

* * *

Having missed her getting into the lift, Emma was stalking toward the electric front doors when I finally managed to catch her.

"Ems, there will be paparazzi out there—"

"Who gives a damn," she bit out. "They'll post whatever they bloody want anyways."

I swallowed what felt like a razor lodged in the esophagus as the images of her snogging another man forced their way into my vision, flashing before my eyes. I shook my head forcefully, as if to be rid of the negatives imprinted on the back of my eyelids.

"Emma, wait I didn't bring the car—"

"Great," she retorted. "We'll take the Tube."

"To where?"

With a cry, Emma whirled around just as my fingers managed to take hold of her elbow. She threw her arms wildly, releasing herself of me, and staggered several steps backward.

"I don't know!" She cried. Her eyes were more wild than her limbs, wide-eyed and bulging as they desperately searched the room around us.

"Doesn't bloody matter! Anywhere I go—they'll be there to snap a picture, to call me names, to—" A sob welled up in her throat but she somehow managed to choke it down. "There's nowhere to go, don't you see that! Anywhere I try—he'll find me! He'll never leave me alone, I-I'll never be free!"

The sob escaped her this time. It began at her knees, which wobbled as if threatening to buckle, and racked her already straining lungs before bursting from her quivering lips.

She clamped her hands over her mouth, but it did nothing to lessen the cry of the wale or the heaving of her breathe. It was when she clamped her right hand over her left that I finally noticed them.

The cuts punctuating the swollen skin of her knuckles.

"What is that?" I breathed.

But she didn't hear me or, perhaps, didn't care to.

I reached out to take her hand in mine, but the second my skin grazed hers she leapt backward, cradling the wounded hand against her chest.

"D-don't!" She cried.

"The hell is that?" My rising panic propelled me forward, and it took several steading breathes before I could force a dismal amount of calm into my voice. "Emma, what happened to your hand?"

She clamped her eyes shut. "N-nothing!"

"Did that prick hurt you?"

"N-no! I-I hurt him!"

She was shaking so violently I might have wondered how she had remained upright through it all had my focus not been entirely on the now re-opened wounds along her right knuckles.

"H-he grabbed m-me and I-I..."

Suddenly everything—the renewed thrumming of my heartbeat, Emma's halting breathing, the ambient noises of the hospital—went silent.

"He forced you?"

For the first time since the bloody interview this morning, Emma's eyes locked onto mine. You think I willingly kissed him? Willingly touched him?"

"I'm going to kill him," I seethed.

"I would never do that, Tom!" She took two steps forward, instantly halving the distance between us. "How could you ever think I could?"

Emma's movement broke through my homicidal focus.

"I... he's your ex," I shrugged helplessly. "You have a history—"

She opened her mouth to retort, but her words were replaced with a hiss as her fingers had instinctively ground into fists, stretching the already traumatized bones and skin.

"Emma—"

"You thought I cheated on you and you... nothing? No yelling, no throwing things... NOTHING?"

Her shout echoed through the cavernous entryway. Emma must have interpreted my shocked silence as some sort of affirmative for it was a dark laugh that exploded across the room next.

"Wow, okay. Tell me is it because you're truly indifferent or because you expected nothing less—"

"Emma, don't—"

But she was too far gone now to take notice of my words.

"Because you think all the same thing everyone else does. That I'm some gold digging—"

"Stop it," I growled.

"Scheming whore!"

"Enough!" I shouted.

Emma immediately stilled. Her eyes filled with renewed tears and her mouth hung slightly open until she forced herself to close it.

"Just... enough, Emma," I sighed as I dragged a hand through my hair. I didn't care that I probably looked like a mad man with hair standing on end or that we were engaged in a shouting match in a public hospital, in full view of any paparazzis stalking around just outside the glass doors.

I didn't. All I cared about in that moment—and in every moment since I had seen the pictures—was that she was safe.

"It killed me seeing those photos, is that what you want to hear? It killed me thinking you wanted him, that you didn't feel the same for me that I feel for you. But if that's what you wanted, if he made you h-happy—" My broke then and I had to swallow several times before it would return to me, even more ragged than before.

"How could I yell at you for that? I want you to be happy, Ems, even if—even if it means it's not me that gets to hold you."

Emma's short locks whipped through the air as she shook her head adamantly. "There's no one else, Tom. You're the one I want. The only one I want. You have to know that by now!"

I merely nodded, my own eyes watering now.

"I need to hear you say it," she whispered.

"I know... I'm the one you want."

After a moment, Emma sucked her lips between her teeth and held two limp arms out toward me. Not needing any more invitation than that, I swooped her into a hug and pressed my lips into the top of her head.

"I hope you kneed him as hard as you did that jackass at the bar," I mumbled into her hair.

Emma's chest shook with a silent laugh. "I bit his tongue...hard. I wouldn't be surprised if it needed stitches."

"Good."

"And I may have injured his jaw."

I squeezed her tighter. "That's my girl."

💕