Worse than his careless dismissal of my return two years ago was the fact that he had sat with me during lunch this week and still didn’t remember me.

It hurt, worse than I cared to admit even to myself, but what could I expect?

He grew up good, popular, handsome.

He was the quarterback of the high school's football team.

He was everything I wasn’t – not to mention in every group I would never be welcomed into.

One of the popular ones.

One of the school's elite.

I was one of the invisible.

It was a hard pill for me to swallow really, knowing that I had shaped, dreamt, and envisioned this boy all through my recovery. I'd clung to the memory of our friendship throughout all the surgeries and the pain, the loneliness and the sheer despair.

I held onto the memory of a boy who didn’t exist anymore.

Repressing a shiver, I hurried to Mercy's Comet, while she continued to chew the boys out. "Well, if it isn't Bebop and Rocksteady. Ever hear of Drivers-Ed? No? Well, maybe you should sign the hell up because you can't drive for shit, douchebag!"

"Like getting mowed down, Six?" Rourke's familiar voice taunted, as he leaned out the passenger window of the Chevy, grinning at my friend. "Just say the word, baby, and I'll be more than happy to put you on the flat of your back."

"Hard pass."

"Denial is a river in Egypt, Six."

"Whatever you say, butt-muncher. In the future, watch where you losers are going."

Storming away from the boys, Mercy joined me at her car and released an audible growl. "I'm going to kill that prick."

Yeah, I had a feeling she was going to do a lot of things to Rourke, but killing him was not one of them. Verbal foreplay was Rourke and Mercy's thing, and whether she admitted it or not, she was totally hot for him.

A shiver rolled through me when the red pickup pulled into the parking spot next to ours. The driver's side window rolled down and the older version of the boy I used to know stared back at me. "I'm sorry about that." He had the same green eyes, but his deep, masculine voice matched the stranger he had become.

My breath hitched and I quickly dropped my gaze.

Breathe, Molly, just breathe.

When I wrangled my emotions into check and looked up at him, my mask was firmly in place. The same mask that I wore every day since returning to Ocean Bay. None of these people would ever get a chance to see beneath it. He would never see beneath it, see the real me, and that suited me just fine.

"That’s okay," I chirped in my brightest tone, as I tossed my bag in the backseat and climbed into the passenger seat of Mercy's car. "Good luck at the game tonight."

Daryl didn’t reply to that or offer me a smile in return. Instead, he continued to study me with his razor-sharp gaze, as his eyes roamed over every inch of my face.