Present

"You know I don't owe you an emotional conversation about this shit, right?" I asked after we walked into Esmond's apartment. After we got to the apartment complex, Jacques ran to a bar for safety. Honestly, I should have gone with her.

"Fine." He said as he took off his suit jacket, laying it on the back of his lounge and rolling up his shirt sleeves. Fuck. He knew what that did to me. I let out a slow breath. "We won't have an emotional conversation. We'll do hand-to-hand training."

"How will that make it easier?" I asked. He shook his head.

"You need to move when you get anxious, so let's keep you moving. Do you need to change?" He knew me well.

"Can't get changed if I get sprung on the street." I said, like what I was wearing wasn't comfortable enough to move in. A pair of jeans and a knit sweater. This would be fine.

"Okay, let's see if you held up while you were in prison."

"I thought the conversation would be about how you care for me." I said with sarcasm. He said back at MI6 that he was going to clear everything up, that it 'killed him inside' that I knew it was all fake from his end. It had to be. I didn't care about the excuse of throwing me in prison to keep me safe. It was bullshit, and we both knew it. I didn't care that only this morning he said that he couldn't lose me.

Today had been a long day, and I didn't care anymore.

"Punch me."

"Gladly." I said, tightening my fist just enough to make it hurt but not enough to hurt myself, and swung right for his damned nose. He blocked it easily, which I had expected.

"Alright, let's go for it. Why did you think it was fake?" He asked as I swung again and he blocked the attack before he swung for me.

"Because it was an op for you." I said, as I jumped away and blocked his next swing. "You threw me in fucking prison, and I don't care about the sentiment behind it because it's still exactly that. You threw me in prison and didn't talk to me throughout the entire time I was there." I swung back, but got frustrated and went to kick his knee. "If you care about someone, you don't abandon them." He dodged the attack on his knee and swung his fist at my rib cage. I manoeuvred away but couldn't get away from his grasp and he pinned my back against his chest.

"You're right, I shouldn't have abandoned you. I just needed time. I had to figure out what I was fucking doing because, believe it or not, arresting you and putting you in prison wasn't actually planned like I said it was." He said, my breathing rapid as he let me go.

"Wow, really? Another lie?" I wanted to punch him in the nose again, but he blocked it.

"Max-"

"No, if it wasn't planned tell me why you did it."

"It was a knee-jerk reaction." I swung to his sternum.

"To what?" He blocked it.

"To... to you saying you loved me."

"What?" I had to stop. I couldn't go for another punch because his words cut me deep. The reason he threw me in prison was because I told him I loved him? "Are you fucking serious?"

"I had already been talking to Jake about how to keep you safe. We thought about prison as a failsafe. We were meant to talk to you about it first, but then you said those fucking words and..." He trailed off, and I stepped away from him.

"And what, Esmond?" I asked, taking another step away and looking up at the ceiling to keep my burning tears from falling down my cheeks. I didn't want to be doing this. I would have been happy to leave this all unresolved. Happy to keep assuming that it was all fake from his end, so that I could tell myself that the feelings weren't real and I could blame him. "Did you realise how far you had manipulated me? You felt bad, so you needed to get rid of me? Get rid of the evidence of what you had done?" I asked, lowering my eyes to meet his again.

He shook his head.

"No, I got scared." He said, and the unsteadiness of his voice made my thoughts stop. Literally, my brain just stopped functioning.

"Scared?" I had to clarify.

"We had been so set on not having emotions become a part of what we had, but I was screwed from when I first saw you."

"I..." I didn't know what to say.

"And I wish I meant that first night, but that was the nail in the coffin. It was from when I saw your face in a file on Queen. I knew I had to get to you. I had to find you, and talk to you, and know you. But then I had to have a reason for it, so I figured I could do my job and..."

"Do me?" He smirked.

"One way of putting it. But to do undercover work, you have to act and I can't. It's why I work unsolved, cold cases, ones that take more work and resources than we have. I thought I could do my job, keep emotions out of it. That first night, I knew it was a bad idea to try, but I still did." He said, and I didn't know whether to interject, so I kept quiet as he walked over to me. "I mean, I had a character I was supposed to play, an alias I was supposed to use, but I just fucking forgot when I saw you in that dress. Had to cover up later by giving myself a fake last name in a last-ditch attempt to keep my identity safe."

"That didn't last long..."

"That's the point I'm trying to make, Sierra." Sierra... I had missed my name, missed him calling me by it. "I had a plan, a set one that was going to work, but then you screwed me up."

He closed the gap between us and stared into my eyes, the tears from before all but a memory in the back of my mind.

"What I'm trying to say is what I didn't say to you back then." He raised his hand to hold my neck, and I didn't flinch away.

"I love you, Sierra, I always did."