“Tell me about it,” she muttered, placing her hands on her hips now. Her eyes scanned the crowds before them. No one seemed to be paying much attention to them. Save for a few people, they seemed to cling onto Regina’s every word—probably out of fear than anything. Unfortunately, they were forced to suffer through it. This had to be some kind of punishment, or maybe she was just being sadistic—possibly both.
Luckily for them, they were experts when it came to getting out of sticky situations. If they could get paid for it, they would have a very steady income. Looking back when he had pointed it out, her lips pressed together. “Not yet,” she responded, jerking her chin toward Regina for a brief moment. She had noticed that the Mayor had a tendency to look toward their general direction every fifteen seconds.
After another small handful of passing moments, Regina looked away and she grinned. Placing her hand on his shoulder, she urged him toward the back before following him around back. When they skirted around the corner of the building, she pressed her back against the wall and waited to see if anyone called out to them. When nothing but droning words reached her ears, she shrugged her shoulders and loped around the building, heading toward the beach.
“Looks like we still got it.”
When Emma warned him not to head towards the exit just yet, Neal’s eyes followed her line of sight until he crossed gaze with Regina—and immediately broke that brief fraction-of-a-second eye contact again as he turned his attention back to the blonde before him with a bit of a sour look.
“It’s creepy how she can give a whole speech and still pay attention to us in particular. I guess the whole stalker thing’s like a second nature to her.”
He really didn’t need much urging to make a speedy way towards the exit as soon as Regina averted her attention from the two of them, and soon enough, they had left the building without anyone noticing—or at least the ones who had seen them leave did not seem to care much, nor would they alert anyone to their absence, he assumed. Taking a good whiff of clean air, Neal produced a sigh of relief to be away from the boredom that had been threatening to choke them, before finally setting out to follow Emma towards the beach.
“It’s like riding a bike—don’t think you’ll ever really get rid of that skill once you’ve earned it.”
Allowing for a large grin to slip onto his features, he sped up his pace for a moment to catch up with her, eyes fixed mostly on the horizon, though he did allow for his gaze to wander towards her every now and again as they walked.