CHAPTER THREE

She is waking from a light sleep. She is first aware of the steady rocking of a ship. It rises on a wave and eases gently again. Then, she is aware of the sunlight streaming through the shutters on the windows as she opens her eyes.

It is morning. An ocean breeze drifts in and brushes against her bare shoulders. She can hear gulls somewhere in the distance and the hum of men's voices calling to each other from somewhere above her. She stretches her limbs out like a cat and lets out a small noise of contentment.

There is movement in the bed next to her. The mattress shifts and sags under his weight, and she smiles to herself as he moves in next to her.

"Good morning." His voice is rough with sleep as he presses his lips against her ear.

"It is a good morning," she murmurs drowsily and rolls over to face him. He pulls her in closer, tracing little circles on her back with his fingertips. "You found me."

"I will always find you, love." The ship undulates gently beneath them. He brushes a stray strand of hair from her cheek.

She looks up at him then. His eyes. So blue. She holds his gaze there for a moment until his mouth drops onto hers, and he moves her onto her back.

She gives him a light, teasing little laugh as his lips follow her jawline and down the curve of her neck. Her hands stroke his dark hair as he drops a kiss in the notch at the base of her throat, moving down to the hollow between her breasts.

She closes her eyes and arches her neck as he moves downward, dropping kisses across her midriff and then lower. "Killian…" she murmurs throatily.

"Wake up!"

Her eyes snap open, and he rolls back over onto his side. A voice calls. There is a knock at the door to his cabin.

"Wake up! Wake up in there!"

"Damn," he mutters, and then turns to her. "This isn't over, Emma."

Then suddenly, he is gone, and the bed is cold and empty.

"Wake up! Mom!"

She woke up with a start. She was in her own bed in her own apartment, sheets twisted around her, and it was Henry banging insistently at her door. She sat panting breathlessly for a moment before rising and opening the door.

"You've got lousy timing, kid." She leaned groggily against the doorframe.

Henry wrinkled his nose. "Huh?"

"Nothing. Never mind." She gave him a light wave of the hand. "What are you doing? It's late."

Henry looked up at her impatiently. "It's not that late, mom. You just went to bed early."

She looked back at the clock at her bedside. It was only 9:15.

"Well, what's so important you woke me up?"

"Kyle just texted me. His dad said it would be OK if I came up for sleepover."

"It's Sunday." She shook her head sleepily. "It's a school night."

"No school tomorrow. Remember? In-service day."

She sighed. She had forgotten all about the annual teacher workday. She hadn't exactly been in full possession of her wits this weekend. "Oh, right. Sure. Just take your toothbrush."

But he was already off with an eyeroll. "I will."

"And a change of underwear."

"Mom!" He drew the word out into five syllables.

She waited until she heard the apartment door click shut behind him before moving from the spot. She was wide-awake now. It was a mistake going to bed so early, but at eight o'clock, she found she could no longer keep her eyes open.

Was it any wonder? She hadn't slept at all the night before after finding the stranger's name in her dream journal. She had watched the numbers on her bedside clock creep past midnight, but she was no closer to sleep than she'd been hours earlier.

Her mind had roiled. She knew him. Somehow. But what about the rest of it? Was her life with Henry really just a lie? And if so, where had she really been for the last ten years? And how did the dark, handsome stranger fit into her life?

Her nightly sleep had been interrupted for a year now by unsettling dreams. But tonight's dream was something altogether different. Her senses were flooded by it. The swelling motion of the ship. His dark scent. The feel of her naked skin against his. It had all been so vivid, so…intoxicating.

She shook the thought from her head and stumbled into the next room. The rain was holding steady outside with no signs of letting up. The dull greyness matched her mood, and she had drifted through the day under a storm cloud. Henry had noticed it, eyeing her with concern and an occasional, "Are you okay, mom?" She had gotten used to replying with a numb, rote: "I'm fine. It's nothing."

The streetlight across the street flickered on and off, and she stood at the window with her arms wrapped around her middle. The light flared brightly for a moment, and a car's passing headlight lit up the storefront across the street. There was someone there.

It was him. She had stood at this window just before bed, and the sidewalk there had been empty. Now, he had returned. He was standing under the shop's awning for shelter, but it wasn't completely able to shield him from the driving rain.

"Killian…" she was surprised to hear herself say aloud, as she had in her dream. She was just as surprised to realize that she wasn't entirely sorry to see him. She stood for a moment with her fingertips against the cold, rain-streaked window before crossing to the bedroom and throwing on a pair of jeans.

She stood with her hand on the doorknob. This was insanity. She shouldn't go down there. She wouldn't. But then she turned the knob and hurried down to the street.

When she pushed open the front door of her building, he turned his head expectantly in her direction. His face registered nothing, but a small flicker of a smile, and he watched as she dodged the puddles in the street and hurried to stand under the awning next to him.

His hair was matted down by rain, and a dark fringe hung in his eyes, making him look a schoolboy. He waited for her to speak.

"Your real name. It's Killian. Isn't it."

"Yes."

"I don't remember you." It wasn't the entire truth.

He nodded up and down sadly, but there was hope in his voice. "I know."

"But I'm willing to accept that I knew you before."

One corner of his mouth curled up into a smile. She had seen it before in the alley. It was meant to be brash, she knew, but it couldn't mask his genuine relief.

"So…what do we do now?" Her eyes darted away for a moment. She was afraid. He could see it in her eyes. It was what he had come to love about her. The way she would try to hide her fears and be strong for everyone around her. But he could sense it, in small, frightened looks that no one else was meant to see.

"For a start, you could invite me upstairs before we both float away," he said gently, hoping it would make her smile. She turned with a nod, and he knew he was meant to follow her.

They walked silently back into her building, and they rode up on the elevator together, the space between them thick with tension. She pushed open the door of her apartment, and he took a cautious step inside.

"Where's Henry?"

"Sleeping over at a friend's house," she said, and then added, "Don't get any ideas." He gave her a look of feigned offense. She ignored him and gestured to her bedroom door with a nod of her head. "Bedroom's through there…"

"Now who's getting ideas?"

"I meant the shower is in there." She rolled her eyes. "You can dry off. Clean up."

She led him into the bathroom and turned the water on for him. "Sorry, it's…." she started, and then stopped herself.

"A bit of a two-handed operation?" he asked wryly. "Don't worry. I'm quite deft with just the one."

"Do you always do this?" she snapped. "The repartee? The double entendres?"

He looked back at her for a long moment. She was lost and afraid, even if she was trying very hard not to show him. It pained him to think he was the cause of her hear. He softened, reaching out to her with a gentle, sincere gesture of the hand. "I'm sorry," he said, willing her not to cry. He couldn't bear it if she cried.

"There are clean towels on the rack if you need them," she mumbled quickly and left him there, pausing for a moment in the doorway of her bedroom. She could see his shadow spilling out from the bathroom and across her bed and then there was the faint noise of his clothes dropping onto the floor. She shivered and went out into the living room.

xxXXxx

She was curled up in one corner of the sofa when he finally came out. He was toweling his hair dry and wearing only what looked like a set of old-fashioned men's underwear. They came down to the knee and buttoned up at the fly like breeches. The thin cotton fabric left very little to the imagination. Her eyes darted away when he entered the room.

"Sorry. Clothes are wet," he said before she could protest. His voice dropped low. "And there weren't any men's clothes in your closet to borrow."

He was making a point, of course. She wanted to reprimand him for invading her privacy, but she didn't have the energy. After a beat, he crossed and sat cautiously next to her on the sofa. It was a long moment before she spoke.

"What happened to me and Henry? Why can't I remember everything? Was there an accident? Some kind of psychological trauma?"

He sighed. He had just gotten her to believe that she had known him before. Bringing spells and magic into it would only set her back again.

"Psychological trauma. Something like that." He knew she didn't quite believe it, but it was as satisfactory an answer as any for the moment. The truth would have to wait.

"So…if this is all a lie, where have I really been for the past ten-something years?"

He weighed it in his mind carefully before going on. He took a deep breath. "For the last two years, you've been the sheriff of a small town in Maine called Storybrooke. Henry was there, too. Before that…I don't know."

She sat there in silence, taking it all in. He inched closer to her. He waited for her to move away, but she didn't.

"I want to remember."

"You will. I can help you."

She studied his face for a moment.

"You said we were old friends. Just how good of friends were we?"

"We were…" He considered his answer. He wouldn't lie. He had meant it when he told her he would not resort to trickery to win her. But he would, perhaps, shade the truth. "When I kissed you yesterday. It wasn't exactly our first time sharing an intimate moment."

She nodded as if his answer had not surprised her.

"This…other life you say I was living. Was I happy?"

It was another question he knew he couldn't answer with full truthfulness. "You had happiness in your life. A great deal of it. But there were dark forces that threatened your happiness. Dark forces that are still at work."

She rose from the sofa and paced the floor in front of them, raising her hands above her head in exasperation. "Well, you're just making this sound better and better all the time. I've got a good life here. Great job. Henry's happy. And you expect me to give that all up, for what? So I can go battle dark forces? Go be some kind of savior for a bunch of people I can't remember? Why? Why would I do that?"

"Because I know you, Emma. The memories you have aren't real. And I know you'd rather have pain that is real and true than a lifetime of happy lies."

He was right. She'd been lied to her whole childhood – by social workers that told her she'd find her forever home. By foster parents who told her they would love her as their own, only to abandon her at the first sign of trouble. But it was her pain, and she had lived through it. It had made her who she was, and she couldn't regret any of it. If the other life was truly her real life, then she needed to find those memories again.

She turned to face him again, her hands on hips, chin raised resolutely. It was a look he recognized well, and at that moment, he knew she would follow him. "All right," she said as bravely as she could manage. "What do we do?"

"You come with me. We'll leave at first light. I can help you get your memories back. I know you have no earthly reason to, but I need you to trust me."

"I'll go. But not Henry. Not yet anyway. I can't make that decision for him. He'll stay here with his friend's family." Overwhelmed and exhausted, she suddenly felt she could no longer keep her eyes open. She closed her eyes to keep the room from spinning around her. "You can stay here. On the sofa. And no funny business."

"You never have to be afraid of me, Emma. I would never force myself on a woman. Bad form. I wait for her to come to me."

"How chivalrous."

He shrugged lightly. "I generally don't have to wait very long."

She opened her mouth to give him a reply, but then she saw that he hadn't meant it as some witty riposte, it was simply a statement of fact. She could feel redness bloom in her cheeks.

"I shouldn't trust you."

"But you do."

"Yes. God help me." She turned and shuffled towards her bedroom. "You can sleep on the sofa. There are extra blankets in the closet over there," she said over her shoulder. She stopped in the doorway and gave him one last look. "Good night."

He said nothing but watched her go and then laid himself down on the sofa looking up at the ceiling with one arm tucked behind his head. He lay in the dark awake for a long time, long after the soft, final click of her bedside lamp.

xxXXxx

He was awakened by the sound of a muffled scream.

He sat upright, getting his bearings as his eyes adjusted to the dim. He heard it again, another cry coming from Emma's bedroom. He leapt over the back of the sofa and ran into her room. He could just make her out in the dark. She was still asleep, writhing with the sheets gripped in her hands

"Emma! It's all right." He touched her hand, and she sat bolt upright with a sharp inhalation. She seemed for a moment not to see or hear him. She sat taking ragged breaths with the covers clutched to her chest. "You're all right."

He chanced a small touch of his fingers against the back of her hand. She let out a terrified cry and swatted blindly at him. "Sssh! Emma, you're all right," he said as he caught her wrists in his hand and pulled her against him. He smoothed the hair away from her face. "I'm here. It was just a nightmare. You're safe." His voice was low and soothing.

He could feel her heart beating wildly against his chest, and he sat holding her in the stillness until her breathing evened. Finally, she lifted her head. "Henry…he was dead. He was lost and alone. I could hear him calling me. And then when I finally found him, something…evil tore his heart out of his chest."

"It's all right. Henry's safe."

"It was so real."

He pulled her to him again, and she let him. He wouldn't tell her yet just how real it had been.

"I won't let anyone hurt you, Emma."

He held her for a long time until he could feel her grow limp in his arms. He lowered her gently onto the bed and sat there for a moment in the half-dark. Finally, he lifted his legs and stretched them out on the bed in front of him before curling himself against her body and drifting off into a sleep.

END CHAPTER THREE