"I'm sorry they did that to you," he continued, following me out of the stall. "I'm sorry that happened to you because of me."

"Listen, I just want to go home, okay?" My eyes were red-rimmed and I looked like crap. "I don’t want to talk about it, and I don’t want to fight. I just want to leave."

"Alright," he said with a nod. "I'll drive you."

"I would rather walk."

"Why?"

"Because I want to be alone."

He frowned. "No."

My eyes widened. "No?"

"No," he confirmed, pulling his keys from his pocket. "I don’t like it."

"You don’t like what, D?"

"Not being with you right now." He kept his green eyes locked on mine as he spoke. "Leaving you alone with that big ole brain of yours."

I thought about arguing, but decided against it, wanting to get away from school just that little bit more than I wanted to salvage my pride. "Fine."

His brows rose. "You'll let me take you home?"

"Yes. Okay." I conceded. "Thank you."

"No problem," he replied, holding the door open for me. "Glad you realized that it ain't gonna be that easy."

"What isn’t gonna be that easy?"

"Leaving me twice."

"Excuse me?"

"You heard me." Letting the door slam behind us, he slung an arm over my shoulder. "I already let that happen once. You sure as hell ain't leaving me twice."

Oh boy.

19 Daryl

We walked side by side to my truck. This was good. It meant that she didn’t blame me for Britt and Ash's horrible fucking prank. She trusted me enough to get in my truck when I held the door open for her. Problem was, I knew in my heart that I didn’t deserve her trust, not when my guilty conscience weighed more than the world on my shoulders.

"I like your truck," Molly said once we were both inside.

"It's a bucket of rust," I shot back, cranking the engine. "But it's a bucket of rust that I spend my summers working my ass off to maintain."

"It's refreshing," she corrected, smiling across the seats at me. "It's you."

I frowned. "It's me?"

"Uh-huh. In a school laden down with pretentious assholes and over-priced cars, it's nice to see you – your truck, I mean." Her cheeks flamed as she spoke. "You're too real to be just another sheep with a trust fund."

"Yeah?" I chuckled. "Well, remind me of that the next time I break down in the middle of bumfuck nowhere and start wishing that I was just another sheep with a Range Rover and a padded trust fund."

She grinned back at me and I felt a pang of relief inside of me. She was smiling again. She was still puffy eyed from all the crying earlier on, but her tears had dried up, staining her pretty cheeks with watery tracks of sadness. Sadness that I was able to erase for a little while. I wished I could erase every sad moment in her life so that all she had to look back on was happiness. I wanted that for her more than anything.