No Escape

Let Me Love You

Spencer sat down grumpily, the last one to take a seat of the five in their usual lunch table. Alison silently slid her tumbler towards Spencer.

"What's this?" Spencer almost barked out in annoyance.

Alison slid it closer to her. "Coffee. Don't worry, I haven't drank from it, yet."

Spencer eyes shifted from angry-at-the-world to almost in love with Alison and she cupped Alison's face in her hands and pulled her in. But then she felt Emily's hand on her chest pushing her back.

"Mine," Emily warned, but she waved Ali's tumbler in front of Spencer, and Spencer took it greedily.

Alison pressed a kiss to Emily's cheek to placate her and she felt Aria nudge her side. She only smiled at the smaller girl, who seemed entirely too happy to see Alison and Emily happy, too.

"How'd you know Spencer was going to need that?"

Alison shrugged. "I didn't. I've just gotten used to carrying coffee with me. I'm trying to purge out of it." Then she paused, watching as Spencer breahed a sigh of relief after her first sip. "That, and the stress level Spencer has been in the past few days. Is the Decathlon Meet all that worth it?"

Spencer's eyes shot towards her and she heard a chorus of "Ali!" around her to which she had to raise her hands up in a sign of mock surrender. After which Spencer gave them a very long lecture about how important Academic Meets are and she received accusatory looks from the three others. Hanna was just able to shift the conversation back to another topic when Alison's phone rang.

It was only Emily who noticed the flicker in Alison's eyes before she excused herself from the table to answer it. She watched Alison as she spoke, visibly in hushed tones, her lips barely moving to keep the conversation private.

"The longer this goes on, the more apparent it is that you are turning into a lovesick puppy," Hanna commented, and despite her curiosity at who could have called Alison, Emily looked back at Hanna to throw a French fry at her.

"Am not." Then Emily paused. "Well, maybe I am," she corrected with a grin. And the three other girls laughed. The laughter died down when Emily walked back, a worried expression on her face.

"What is it, Ali?" Aria broke the sudden silence at the table.

Alison looked like she was debating on whether or not she should be telling the others about who had called. But then she remembered that maybe she didn't have to deal with everything alone anymore. However, it still weighed heavily on her when she spoke. "Noel needs my help."

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"Ali, you don't have to do this." Emily spoke in a hushed tone, standing class to Alison as Ali put her things inside her locker.

"I can't leave him hanging, Emily. He helped me a lot when I was on the run."

"But you're finally free of -A having any secrets above you. You've told the police everything. You can't let Noel ruin that."

"I haven't told them everything. Just those about me."

"That's my point! Ali-"

"Emily." She closed her locker door and turned to face her girlfriend, who looked more and more worried by the second. "Our relationship was purely transactional. I kept his secrets if he kept mine."

"Was that how you managed your sex lives, too?" Emily blurted out, regret showing on her face when she did.

But Alison's reaction wasn't anger. Her eyebrows simply lifted then she cocked her head to the side, her shoulders relaxing. "So this is you jelaous?"