Hard to Love {A Hotchniss Story}

Chapter 35

But Emily didn't go to talk to him because he left the headquarters wanting to pick up Jack from school himself and take him home to Hailey. So Emily was left all alone in the round table room for a while until Jennifer came to her with a first aid kit to bandage the gunshot wound properly since it was a through and through shot and Emily had no intention of going to the hospital.

"Take off your jacket and lift up your sleeve." Jennifer ordered Emily and for once Emily was compliant. "You really said Doyle wouldn't hurt you while you came here with a gunshot wound? Really Em?"

"What I meant was that he wouldn't do anything which could have long effects on me and my health. I know him JJ." Emily felt trapped within her own self. She loved Aaron most, she was in love with him, he was the man she knew she wanted to spend the rest of her life with. But at the same time, a few years back, she felt the same way about Ian and she never found closure when it came to him.

"Do you still love him?" Jennifer asked as she knitted her brows.

"I loved the way he was with me, the person he was with me but I don't think that was him." Emily explained, but it wasn't an answer to Jennifer's question.

"Do you love him now?" Jennifer insisted and Emily felt her stomach turn upside down while she was in search for an answer.

"I don't think so." Emily shook her head. "But I know he loves me and everything that went on between me and him, well, that's not something I can think of lightly while we work on this case and while I know how much this could affect Aaron."

"Then tell him, you're not high school kids who keep secrets from each other. And if you do, it might only become worse with Doyle watching your every move and waiting to strike at any moment." Jennifer knew Emily loved Aaron, there was no doubt about that. But she was afraid that for once Emily wasn't in a right place to properly do her job.

"Has Aaron come back?" Emily didn't want it. She was already in the fog with Ian Doyle's presence and the last thing she wanted was to amplify that by having Aaron asking her questions to which she might know or not the answer.

"I'll go check in a sec." Jennifer told Emily and after properly bandaging her arm Jennifer went to get Aaron who indeed was back from taking Jack from school to his mother's house. She told him to go into the round table room because Emily had to talk to him and Aaron did so without any other question.

"What did you want to talk about?" Aaron asked as he sat across from Emily instead of sitting right next to her. "If it's about stopping this case then you're wasting your breath Emily because people way up high want Doyle in prison again, it isn't just about you anymore."

"I told you that this, that us, is my first relationship..." Emily paused hoping he would step in and say something, but Aaron was carefully listening to her words. "That with Ian it was all pretend, it wasn't. There was love between Ian and I and as much as I hate it, it wasn't all on his side."

"You've been undercover before, not for three years, but you have been for a year a couple of times. Was there love between you and those people also?" Aaron didn't want to be rude about it, but the thing he hated most was being lied to and he knew Emily thought that this Ian Doyle thing would never come to surface again which was why she chose to not say anything about it. But this made Aaron feel even worse about her lying.

"No, there wasn't." Emily stopped there because trying to defend herself would only make the hole she was falling in deeper.

"So you loved Ian Doyle?" Aaron asked after a pause of a few seconds.

"Yes." Emily kept her answer simple as if she was being interrogated for a crime she committed without her wanting it.

"You loved a criminal? A killer? A kidnapper? Should I go on?" Aaron asked and Emily shook her head. "I don't want to put blame on you for this, but out of all the criminals you've encountered you had to love the most unlovable one?"

"He wasn't unlovable to me." Emily said, but in a low voice. "Yes, he did all those horrible things, things I don't even want to think of. But he was good to me. I'm not trying to find excuses, or justify his actions. Ninety percent of the things he did were terrible, but that ten percent, the man I saw, the man he was with me, well that was different."

"Do you still love him?" Aaron felt as if the air was punched out of him as he asked that question and waited for Emily's answer.

"His coming here, escaping prison, it's made me scared, not excited to see him again. I had questions for him when he was locked up, questions I knew I would never get the answer to because there was no logical answer, not in my mind anyway. I mean I could say I understand him and his questions, but I cannot understand how someone can actually do all he did." Emily paused realising she wasn't actually answering Aaron's question. "You're the one I love, not him. I loved him, but I do not love him anymore."

"Then why did you tell me that us was a first for you?" Aaron asked in all seriousness.

"Because I was scared you'd look at me the way you're looking at me now."