The night was freezing cold. Nothing could keep the to the bone chill from her pale skin. All she wanted to do was go back home and sleep. To curl into a ball of blankets, turn on the electric blanket and the house heater, and be pronounced dead to the waking world.

But no, she was here, waiting outside some god forsaken, run down hell hole waiting for the most frustrating man she had ever had the pleasure of calling a friend. She was sixteen for sliced sake! The last thing she needed was to find friendship in a nineteen year old trouble maker.

But she was there, patiently waiting for him to get the slip on his father. Like every other summer, she was stuck in the Podunk, rundown, hick infested state of Kentucky. She supposed she could do what her sister decided on: spend the whole summer working and slaving away in Oakland, just a measly eight hours from home. But being the idiot she was, Olivia Grayson wanted adventure; and at eight, the time she made her decision for the rest of her life's worth of summers, riding on an airplane all by herself was the greatest opportunity yet.

Little did she know her aunt would stick her in the hospital, and unbeknownst to her, it would come to be her life's aspiration to be the doctor of such a place as the clinic her said aunt started. And more importantly, she hadn't known she would meet her greatest friend in the whole state.

Raylan Givens.

She had met the pain in her ass when she was nine, he was twelve. Hehad driven almost two hours to see her aunt and when he was nearly five minutes way, crashed the car he had jacked from his own father.

Auntie Lola was a saving grace apparently.

Taking him under her wing when his father got a little 'jumpy,' as she had put it; and it wasn't until Olivia was twelve that she realized what her dear aunt had meant by that.

So here she stood, nearly seven years later, waiting for the same boy she had spent nearly every waking moment with every consecutive summer. Two hours away from her warm comfy bed. The weather didn't make a lick of sense, it was summer… in Kentucky. But somehow it was nearing the low fifties, with a wind chill factor the young brunette didn't even want to consider. Huffing out of frustration, she saw her breath come tumbling out into the air like mist from a great waterfall. The trees seemed to be swaying to the huffing and teeth chattering song she had been playing for the last ten minutes. The great oak's limbs dancing gracefully, leaves making a beautiful and hypnotizing ballet of green and deep brown.

"Boo" the voice came right next to her ear causing her to jump and swing around, fist out first.

And that fist very nearly gave one surprised Kentucky boy a black eye.

"Raylan Givens!" she whisper yelled, hoping not to wake his father, though she knew he was most likely passed out in a drunken stupor in the living room "Never, do that again! You scared me half to death!" Olivia's face red, and not with happiness. Not only had she driven nearly two hours in the middle of the night, but was then forced to wait in the freezing cold for an immeasurable amount of time, only to have her supposed friend scared the living shit out of her.

Happy was not an adjective she would use at the moment.

A charming smile came to his smug punk-ass lips, as he looked down at her. His hair was a mess, and his cloths wrinkled beyond repair, but his oddly shaded brown, green and other listless colors, eyes shone with a happiness she hadn't seen in a while. It made her anger subside, but also put her in a state of anxiety; his eyes had shone like that nearly a month ago, one of the last times she had that light, right before he chucked her into the lake a mile and half outside of Harlan.

"You could have killed me with that powerful punch" Raylan, always one to tease about her lack of strength when it came to fighting, headed towards her car with a bundle of unknown objects in his hand.

Being a California girl, she had to learn far too many things from her Kentucky best friend. How to shoot a gun, how to take whisky, how to understand half of what the people in the damned towns were saying, and how to throw a good punch.

"You would have been so stunned, if you were a predator, I would have had time to run like hell," she walked a bit behind him to the driver's side, aiming her comment at him with a proud glare.

"I would have caught up to you before you even made it in the car" he answered back smoothly, a cocky but matter-of-factly look on his devilishly handsome face.

"I wouldn't care," she grabbed a shotgun hidden under a blue plastic tarp from the back of the truck. "Who said I wanted in my car?" her eyebrows raised defiantly as she stared at him head on.

"Put that thing away before you hurt yourself," his non-reaction made Olivia roll her eyes.

Muttering under her breath, she gently put the gun back in its rightful place and hopped into the driver's side door.

Before they knew it, they were headed… actually she didn't know where they were headed.

"Raylan? Where are we going exactly?" she turned out from his driveway and headed back to the main road.

"Make a left up here, at the broken barbed wire fence,"

For the next twenty minutes or so he gave her odd directions like that. She was glad her car had four-wheel drive, because the thing she was diving on was not considered a road… in any stretch of the imagination.

"Stop, pull up just a little… okay park" before any more explanation could be made, the nineteen year old was out of the car. Slowly Olivia followed. She was supposed to be sleeping. She left in the morning for another year. Summer was ending. Perhaps her leaving was signaled by the sudden weather change, not that she believed the weather was dictated by her comings and goings.

Sighing she found Raylan in the bed of her hammy-down truck. She had loved this truck for the last two years, learning to drive a clutch from her aunt and Raylan.

"Raylan, this better be good, because I'm freezing" her dry humor was not lost to the only male in the vicinity.

"Come on ice queen" he replied with a struggle to keep his smile off his face.

When they had first met, she was a wee little nine year old that wanted nothing more than to stitch up his laceration. She had found delight in his wounds, but not the emotional ones, the physical ones.

Everyone he had ever met knew who he was, because of his father, or because he had pissed on their lawn or some other god-offal prank.

But the little naïve girl from California had no preconception about him, and because of this, they became fast friends. She had shown him around the hospital when her aunt was working and couldn't do much with either of them, and little Olivia, or as he had called her for as long as they had known each other, Olive, knew every inch. She spent so much time inside, he had realized, she missed all of the fun that could be had outside.

So he made it his summer goal to get her outside… and it wasn't all too hard.

They had been best summer friends ever since.

Olivia had made it onto the truck bed, finding the objects in his hands from earlier were blankets and pillows.

"Why do I feel like you're about to drop and A bomb on me?" she knew him to well, and that made the country boy finally let go a smile. They may only talk for three months of the whole twelve, but she knew him like the back of her hand, and he knew her.

"Because I am," he laid down on one side, and she on the other and they, together watched the stats.

"Just tell me" she said after a few minutes of nothing but frogs and crickets.

"I'm leaving Kentucky," they sat in silence star gazing for a while before Raylan turned his head towards one of his closest friends. Her face was straight, as if he had said nothing at all. But he could see the tall-tale signs of sadness. When she bluffed, she knew and sensed every single muscle on her face, and controlled it acutely.

That was her tell; she was too composed, to stiff.

He waited for her to comment about it, but it never came. He was about to speak when she gave her one word reply.

"Good"

SO, WHAT DO YOU THINK? I'm GOING TO PICK IT UP ABOUT… OH, 22 YEARS FROM THIS MOMENT… AHHH! CRAZY RIGHT? RNR MY FRIENDS :)