AN: Here we go, another little chapter here.

I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!

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"Don't…go…don't leave," Daryl panted against Carol's skin. He kissed the sweat dampened skin that he could reach and held his hands at her hips to keep her from slipping away from him just because the glory of the moment had passed.

She leaned forward, resting her head on his shoulder and seemed to give herself over to the idea of staying there, straddling his legs, for just a while longer.

Daryl spent the time that it took for him to regain his breath and to start to feel his heart beating normally kissing her and she returned the kisses with full affection. When he felt that he could even begin to really come out of the fog of the moment, she pulled away from him and he looked at her and smiled.

Her cheeks were still red, her forehead damp with sweat, and curls that didn't fall loose from the pins she had in her hair were sticking to her face, but her eyes were smiling at him as surely as her lips were…and she wasn't trying to run from him.

"Love you," he whispered to her.

She smiled and leaned her forehead against his.

"Love you," she echoed back.

And she held the position a moment before she finally did pull away from him and slid off the bed, putting on her housecoat as the only cover she had at the moment. He already knew she was going to the bathroom, her routine was predictable, to say the least.

"Hey…" he asked. She turned just before opening the bedroom door. "You OK?"

She smiled and nodded slightly.

"Wonderful," she responded. "I'll bring you a warm rag."

"Not staying in Sophia's room?" He asked, not sure anymore if she was coming back when she left the room at night. She shook her head.

"Not tonight," she said. "Five minutes…"

Daryl nodded at her and rearranged his pillows, keeping his position sitting against the back of the bed to wait for her return.

When Carol came back, Daryl watched her as she cleaned him up, washing him delicately with the warm rag she'd promised. He reached his hand out and tucked some of the stray hair behind her ear before he dropped the hand to her shoulder and squeezed it. She glanced at him, barely rolling her eyes in his direction.

"You take care a' me," he said.

"Because I love you," she responded.

Daryl chuckled to himself.

"You gonna spoil me treatin' me like this after I come home to Thanksgivin' dinner an' it ain't even November," Daryl commented.

Carol crossed the room, ridding herself of the rag, and a moment later she shed the house coat again and slipped into bed to sit near him. He reached and arranged her pillows for her to lean back against the headboard just as he was doing, but for the moment that wasn't her interest. She sat, straight backed, legs haphazardly crossed, and picked pins out of her hair, piling them in a tiny pile beside her on the mattress.

"Thanksgiving dinner was for Sophia," she said. "I could tell her no, Daryl. She wanted it and she was so…upset. She didn't know what she wanted to make for dinner and she really wanted it to be special. She wanted it to be something nice for you that she did…and when she asked for it…"

Daryl reached and touched his fingertips to her lips to physically quiet her since she might have kept on going, trying to explain or rationalize something that didn't need explaining, for hours.

"I thought it was good," Daryl said. "Real good. Best meal I had in a long damn time. I eat like a king."

Daryl didn't understand it, though. There was something else there. There had been something else there, just behind Carol's smile, the whole evening. She'd laughed and she'd told jokes with him and Sophia both. She'd seemed perfectly normal and perfectly happy to the sight of anyone, but Daryl wasn't just anyone. And he could tell, no matter how much she tried to hide it, that there was something there that he wasn't being told about.

There was something that kept making the smile insincere.

Daryl reached and bumped her chin with his finger and she offered him the quick, soft smile that usually went with his teasing. He let his finger linger there so that she wouldn't duck her head or turn away. She had no choice but to look at him or make a very blatant move to break the eye contact between them.

"What's wrong?" He asked. "I swear…I don't have a thing to be mad about when it comes ta dinner. And…I certainly don't got nothin' to be mad about when it comes to you layin' with me, so if that's what's got you bothered, it don't need to bother you."

Carol chewed her lip. He'd called her on it, but now he just had to wait to see how long it was going to take her to tell him what was wrong, what he'd done or someone else had done. It didn't take long, though.

Her chin still resting on his hand because he hadn't moved his hand she hadn't moved her face, Carol frowned.

"We saw Pru at the grocery today," Carol said.

Daryl couldn't stop himself from growling.

"Yeah? What'd she want?" He asked. "Some drive you ain't done enough for or somethin' more'n likely."

Carol moved then and Daryl dropped his hand, letting her go. She moved her collection of pins to the bedside table where she'd find them the next day and then combed her fingers through her hair.

"No," she said. "She wanted to know why I hadn't been at church. She said that she'd seen Andrea. She…said she's expecting again."

Carol stopped and rolled her eyes at Daryl.

"She asked if we were," she said. Carol dropped her eyes and Daryl nodded his head to himself. That was one of the biggest problems, sometimes, about living in small towns. Everyone had the distinct belief that what happened in your home was their business. It seemed that if he could keep most of them from sticking their noses into his life, he could keep Carol from even having bad days, but it was inevitable that someone was going to come calling and remind her that life just wasn't exactly what she wanted it to be.

He didn't say anything, though. He waited to see what she was going to say or how she was going to react. He was going to go off of her.

"She met Sophia," Carol said after a moment. She rolled her eyes back in his direction and he nodded at her. "Daryl…I told her Sophia was our daughter. I told her…she's my daughter."

Daryl stared at her, waiting for the rest of the story, but he got nothing else. Finally he cleared his throat and shrugged slightly.

"So? She's your daughter," Daryl said. "She's our daughter. Or she will be, soon as they do all the paperwork an' stuff, make it official. Good as done. You can tell Pru she's our kid."

Carol chewed her lip again and shook her head, her eyes focused on him now.

"No," she said. "I mean, I told her she was my daughter."

She hesitated a moment when Daryl wasn't exactly sure how he was supposed to react to this and then she spoke again, offering him more explanation.

"Pru said Sophia looked like me," Carol offered. "Daryl, I told her she's my daughter."

Daryl nodded at her again.

"Carol…she is your daughter," Daryl said. "I don't know what you want me to say about it. I knew it, it ain't news to me no more."

"Pru's going to tell everyone, Daryl," Carol said. "You know she is. I didn't even think about it then. I just wanted to say it. I wanted to…"

Suddenly Carol's expression changed from the more or less calm expression to one that screwed up her features and let Daryl know that she was more than likely going to be crying within the span of a few moments. He scrambled to get to his bedside table and dig out a handkerchief. He'd learned to keep several there for the possible attacks of tears that would overtake her for one reason or another. He offered it to her when he came out with one and she shook her head at him even while mopping at the tears that had begun to fall.

"I just wanted her to stop looking at me like that," Carol sobbed. "I just…I wanted her to know! Maybe I can't remember it, but Sophia's my daughter! She's real…she's just as real as…she's real, Daryl! She's real!"

Daryl didn't expect her to melt the way she did. Honestly it had been since she'd come to terms with Sophia being there that Carol had broken down. This was more of a collapse than he'd been prepared for.

"She's real," he offered, moving now so that he could get to her and pull her against him, trying to get her to calm down. "Of course she's real…hell…we ain't both gone mad, Carol. Whole world ain't gone mad and started imaging her. Sophia's real. An' she's really yours. Really gonna be ours soon as the paperwork's all done."

Daryl pulled Carol into him, rearranging himself on the bed and pulling her after him so that she had no choice but to lie down quickly to keep from tumbling into him. When her sobbing didn't stop immediately, he wasn't sure if it was over what happened with Pru or if it was simply a number of things that, finding the perfect excuse since she was already crying, had decided to gang up on her and all come out at once.

Regardless, he didn't ask for the time being. He simply held her, like he typically did when she got overwhelmed by something, until the sobbing slowed and started to turn more into the sniffling and hiccupping whimpers that were like the drizzling rain left over at the end of a thunderstorm.

He rubbed her back and her arms, anything his hands could find, until he was sure that she was a little more able to communicate with him.

"She's real," he repeated. "She's real…an' she's yours…and it don't matter who Pru tells. She can…tell everyone she meets, everyone she knows. It don't matter. She's just spreadin' truth for once."

Carol, having found control of herself once more, lifted enough from him to be able to look at him and he found her hand with the handkerchief and mopped at her damp face more.

"What are they going to say about me?" Carol asked. She shook her head at him. "We weren't married…they're going to know that. What are they going to say about me? What are they going to say about you?"

Daryl sighed.

He really didn't care what they had to say about him. He wished he could keep them, anyone really, from saying anything about Carol, but that wasn't going to happen either. He wasn't even able to keep his own brother from saying things.

Still, it wasn't the first time that people had talked, and it certainly wouldn't be the last, and he just didn't care. They had each other, they had Sophia now. Tonight they'd had Thanksgiving dinner just for the hell of it.

He didn't care what people had to say, because they didn't matter.

Daryl reached and pulled at Carol's arm and she looked at him strangely, not knowing what he was doing. He forced her to look at her own hand, her wedding band pinched between his fingers.

"Looks to me like we got married," Daryl said. "So it don't matter not one bit what nobody says about me, you, or our kid, Carol. It just don't matter."

She frowned at him, but didn't respond.

"Why don't you wear your diamond?" He asked. "You didn't lose it?"

"No," she said. "It's…I have it…but I don't wear it unless I'm going out."

Daryl hummed.

"Need to take ya out more, then," he commented.

She was still frowning, but not with the same intensity as before.

"I don't care what people say," Daryl said. "I ain't let 'em stop me from livin' my life before, and I ain't lettin' stop me now. And…you ain't gonna let 'em stop you neither, you hear me?"

Carol still wore the frown, but she nodded at him slightly and he looped a hand under her arm and tugged her gently.

"Come up here," he said. "Give me a good goodnight kiss…OK? Be real nice to me and let's get some sleep. Gotta be bright in the mornin' so Sophia don't go to school worried about us."

Carol didn't look entirely convinced, but she did move to kiss him and Daryl rolled and turned out his lamp before he settled down and let her curl in next him so that he could arrange the cover over them. He lie there, for a little while, and listened to see if she would sleep. For a while he could tell that she was awake, worrying, and he trailed his fingertips over her skin to try to calm her. When he finally heard her breathing even out, he closed his own eyes.

They were likely to hear about things, and people were no doubt going to talk, but they'd get through this together.