A/N

Hi everyone,

I decided not to post this until it was finished as I learnt on my last story I'm a starter, not a finisher!

Random fact - this entire story was inspired by the song Kings of Leon - Pickup Truck. Literally couldn't get the idea for this out of my head when I listened to it! So if you know it, you'll notice I've actually stolen lines from the song where they worked!

Thanks

Eli

"Walk ya home?" It came out of his mouth before he could stop it and he had to resist the urge to wince as he said it.

"Sure, why not?" She flashed him her thousand watt smile that made his chest ache. He had missed that smile so goddamn much.

Daryl suddenly couldn't quite believe that he was there, turning down the dusty street lined with the exact same shops that were there when he left the town five years ago.

When he left, his intention was that he was never coming back. He had done what he did best when things start fucking with his head and that's running.

He had been a family friend of the Greenes for as long as he could remember, from being a little kid sneaking round for food when his parents had none to becoming Herschel's right hand man on the farm, stepping into Shawn's shoes when he went to fight for his country and never came back.

From the day they met as kids him and Beth, the youngest Greene daughter, had become best friends. At the time he had never dreamed of admitting that to anyone, including her, but she was. There was nothing they wouldn't do together and nothing they hid from each other; she tended to his back when his daddy would beat him and he would teach her how to track and camp in the woods.

But then at aged 24, he knew he had to run.

Beth had dreams. Big dreams that would get her out of their small town, taking her soothing country songs out to big cities. With her blinding beauty and Southern charm, he knew without a doubt that she would make it. So when she told him the reason why she wasn't going to do it, he knew he had to run.

Beth Greene, the girl he had already at that point realised he'd always been in love with, probably from the day they met, told him while they tended to her horse in the barn one day that she was in love with him. And not only that, she loved him so much that her dream, above all other dreams, was to settle down with him. And in case he didn't get it, she made clear she was expecting marriage, babies and a home. She had stared at him steadily, so damn unafraid, and then stepped right up to him and kissed him like it was something they had been doing every day. He fisted his hand in her hair, grabbed her hip and pulled her close and kissed her like she was the air he needed to breathe.

As his body hummed and her breath moaned, his head suddenly cleared and he understood what she meant.

He released her like she burned him, stuttered backward before standing stock still staring at her intensely, staring right into her future. He saw his basic run down cabin, her tired, tending to a screaming baby, worrying about paying the bills while he left her alone, gone to work trying to make ends meet. There wasn't the Beth he pictured on magazine covers, polished and confident, laughing with the person interviewing her on television, living her life in a swanky upstate apartment, happy that her dreams became her reality.

And he knew then he couldn't do that to her. He couldn't take away those dreams. Those dreams they had spoken about so much they had become her destiny.

So he left. Got in his truck and headed West, with no plan or destination other than getting himself as far out of the way of Beth's dreams as he could.

In the five years he was away, he watched every music channel, read every event magazine, scoured concert listings and learnt the frequency of every radio station hoping to finally hear about the nations darling, Beth Greene. But he found nothing.

He fretted for months that maybe something had happened to her, but let his mind tell him other stories, like that she had made it big in other countries and right now, was touring Europe, or that she was living her dream but in the background, as a producer or songwriter. Either way, she was still out there, making it big, free from the heavy anchor Daryl would have been for her.

Over the five years, there were so many times he thought about just going back, telling her he was sorry, that he loved her and that he wanted her dream of the two of them together more than he wanted anything else in the world. But in that time, in the end he went back just once. Only then did he learn what had really happened.

It was about two and a half years after he left and it happened by chance really. He was eating his dinner at the diner next door to the car repair garage where he worked, alone as always, scanning the newspaper.

Flicking through the pages he spotted the face of Herschel Greene.

A grainy black and white picture of Herschel's warm eyes and kind smile sat in the middle of the page, next to Herschel's name and under the title of the section, 'Funeral Announcements'.

His heart had seized up tightly in his chest and the paper crunched under his grip as his eyes scanned the text back and forth without fully taken it in. His eyes blurred over the words "Beloved Father" and he had chucked bills angrily on the counter before walking out, leaving behind his half finished dinner and a crumpled newspaper.

The next day he had bought the same paper and that's when he decided he was going back. With Annette already gone when Beth was just thirteen and Maggie no doubt still with her preppy little boyfriend, Daryl had chewed the inside of his mouth thinking of Beth out there all alone.

When he finally returned to his home town later that week he hadn't bothered with any trips down memory lane, instead driving straight to the funeral, arriving in the car park by the gloomy and grey churchyard with the mourners and minister already around the grave.

He had hung back at first, smoking a cigarette, while trying to decide whether he was right to even be there, when he saw her. She had her back to him, her blonder hair tied up into a loose bun with a thin back jacket that seemed to hang off her frame. Her head was bent and he noticed immediately that she was trembling. He knew her. He could see in his mind her face, sad but resolute, trying her best to hold back the tears even though they were already streaming silently down her face.

If he had any doubts whether he was right to be there they were gone in that instant and he pushed himself off his truck, walking up the hill ready to be there for Beth when she needed him.

When he was no more than ten meters away, he stopped in his tracks. Now with a better view of who she was standing with, a figure leaned closer to her, suddenly more close than any of the others seemed to be. Stepping closer still, the figure leaned into her and put a comforting arm around her. While Daryl was squinting trying to recognise who it was, Beth had turned to look up at the man, giving him a weak smile before he leaned down and kissed her gently on the lips.

The turn of the stranger's head to plant that kiss left Daryl with no doubt who the man was. Feeling his stomach drop and like he had forgotten how to breathe, Daryl turned on his heel and got back in his truck as fast as he could. Foot back on the gas, he'd driven straight home having spent no more than ten minutes in the town he had lived in his entire life.

He knew what he had read in the funeral announcement and accompanying obituary and he knew what it meant. Herschel hadn't just passed on, he'd been sick for nearly two and half years. The obituary made it clear he had round the clock care from his doting daughters who had also done everything in their power to keep the farm going too.

He could read between the lines. He knew what that meant for Beth's dreams.

What he never thought was how somehow, all of that would mean she would end up in the arms of Deputy Shane Ward.