I am completely overwhelmed with the response you have been giving to this story - especially to the last chapter. Thank you so, so much and I feel like I can never thank you enough for your kind words and encouragement.

…

Chapter Twenty-Six.

"What'd you do? Rob a bookstore?"

Daryl's head jerked up and saw Rick standing there with a smile on his face as he looked down to the table and the stack of books next to Daryl's arm. Daryl slapped the paperback he was currently reading shut and slid it over to the side.

"Nah. Just went to the library," Daryl said. "Carol helped me find a few things and was readin' a little before you got here."

Rick slid into the seat across from him, tossing his Sherriff's hat down beside him and a waitress appeared with her pad and a tired smile.

"What can I get you boys?" She asked, pen poised and ready to write.

"Coffee for me," Rick smiled in return.

"Coke," Daryl grunted, only glancing up at her for a second before looking back to Rick. It was Jessie – Punky Bruiser from the roller derby – and she was always giving him these smiles that just made him want to shift and squirm. "You look like shit," he then commented to his friend.

Rick smirked and nodded in agreement, sinking into the booth's vinyl bench seat a little lower. "Didn't get much sleep last night. Kept waiting for my wife to get home."

Daryl raised an eyebrow at that but didn't say anything.

"We got into a fight. I accused her of some stuff. She screamed back and then stormed out. Probably went to her boyfriend's," Rick said and then rubbed a hand over his face. "When I told her that she was cheating on me, she didn't deny it."

Daryl wasn't too sure what to say to that. He had liked Lori from the moment Rick had started dating her. She had never looked down at him like he was trash or looking like she was wondering why Rick was hanging around with such a lowlife. She had immediately accepted that Daryl was Rick's best friend, practically his brother, and she had always been kind to him and never acted like she didn't want him around when he showed up at their house. She had even been the one to suggest that he be Judith's godfather when the baby was born.

But if Rick and Lori were to get a divorce, Daryl would side with Rick without question. It was just the way things went. When a couple split, the friends got split, too, and Daryl had been Rick's friend long before they even knew Lori existed.

"'m sorry, man," Daryl said, figuring he had to say something.

Rick shrugged, acting as if it wasn't bothering him, but Daryl knew him too well and could see the pain in his eyes that he was in. "Nothing lasts forever," he said.

Jessie returned with their drinks and took their lunch orders – cheeseburgers for both of them – before they were left alone again.

"What are you reading?" Rick asked, changing the subject, reaching over and taking one of the books from the stack. He only glanced at the title before looking up at Daryl again with a cocked eyebrow in a silent question.

Daryl shrugged. "Just want to understand it, I guess," he said.

"And you can't ask her?" Rick asked.

Daryl shook his head. No, he couldn't ask Beth. He knew she would probably tell him if he did but he didn't want her to have to think about it. She had to think about it every day – writing every morsel of food she put into her mouth down in her journal, keeping track so she could know she was getting enough throughout the day – and when she was him, he didn't want her to think about it. He just wanted her to be Beth. Pretty Beth with her soft smiles and happy laughter and her sweet songs. When she was with him, he didn't want her to have to think about scales or weight or how everyone either avoided her or treated her like she was some damn China doll, ready to break at any second.

But he did have questions. He couldn't help it. There was so much about her eating disorder that he just didn't get. It had given her a need to have everything neat and clean around her and she seemed to always be cold, even in ninety-degree heat, and he couldn't help it anymore. He was curious and he wanted to at least understand a little bit because to him, starving yourself and going hungry when you didn't have to was completely beyond his understanding. When he was a kid and had gone to bed at night with pains in his stomach so severe, he had almost wanted to cry, he would have given anything for the chance to eat three meals a day. When he was a kid – and still now, he guessed – food had been everything to him.

It was Monday and he had gone to the library, asking Carol for help on finding him some books to read, and he was already trying to figure out how to hide them from Beth in their tiny trailer. He didn't want her to know he was reading things like this in case she took it the wrong way and got hurt or insulted.

And now, just a couple of chapters into the first one, a part of him was regretting getting these books. Anorexia was a mental disease and as the author dove into the psychology behind one starving themselves, Daryl just thought of Beth, younger and being in the same mindset enough to do this to herself and he couldn't imagine the Beth he knew now doing this to herself. It just didn't add up in his head.

"Here we are, guys," Jessie announced, carrying there tray of food. "Rick. Cheeseburger. Nothing on it. Daryl, cheeseburger. Lettuce, tomato and pickle. No onion," she said as she set each plate down in front of them.

"Thanks, Jessie," Rick smiled at her and Jessie smiled in return before her eyes moved over to Daryl but he was pouring ketchup over his fries and not looking at her or even paying attention.

"Let me know if you guys need anything else," she said with one more smile before turning and walking away.

Rick smirked, looking to Daryl. "She knows you living with your girlfriend?"

Daryl shrugged, not even twitching at the use of the word girlfriend towards Beth. They hadn't talked about it but if she wasn't that then what the hell was she? She loved him and they lived together and he was pretty damn fond of her. They didn't have to have a conversation to decide they were in a relationship together. They already knew that. It was pretty damn obvious they were.

"Small town. 'm sure she knows," Daryl said, picking up the burger with both hands.

"Where is Beth today?" Rick asked.

"Went to the farm. Guess one of the sheep is ready to give birth and her popsand sister needed her help," Daryl answered before taking a large bite of the burger.

He looked to the stack of books for a moment. Just having them around, it made him uncomfortable but he didn't want to return them. He wanted to keep reading and learning because even after living with Beth for a couple of months, he still had no clue about any of this and unfortunately, it was a part of who Beth was and he wanted to know all there was to know about her. He knew, eventually, he would have to tell her some more things about himself but he wasn't ready for that yet and Beth wasn't pushing him to tell her anything. They were both moving at the same slow speed and he was relieved they were on the same page without a discussion.

He looked back to Rick. "So, what are you gonna do?" He asked. "'bout Lori?"

Rick sighed and avoided the question for a moment as he took a sip of his coffee. "Guess we could always go to therapy or something if we decide to work it out. I don't know if I want to work it out though. It's hard to imagine. Being inside of my wife when I know I haven't been the only man in there since our wedding."

Daryl inwardly cringed. He didn't really want to think about the inside of Lori. Ever.

He let out a grunt and took another bite of his burger. "You know who the guy is?"

Rick shook his head. "No. And I don't know if I really want to know either. Either I know the guy and I'd want to kill him or I don't know him and I'd still want to kill him." He dunked a French fry in some ketchup and brought it to his mouth. "So what are you and Beth going to do?" He asked with a sly grin.

"'bout what?" Daryl couldn't help but frown.

Rick snickered. "You making a commitment to her?"

"We live together and she knows I'm not doin' anythin' else with anyone else," Daryl kept frowning. "And I know she's not doin' anythin' either."

Rick's smile faded a little and he looked at Daryl with a serious stare. "That's good, Daryl. I'm happy for you. At least one of us isn't completely failing when it comes to women," he said.

"You didn' fail anythin'," Daryl said quietly. "It's Lori that's sleepin' around."

"Yeah…" Rick nodded his head slowly. "Courts usually give custody to the mom."

"So, you're filin'?" Daryl looked at him as Rick sighed heavily.

"I think so. I don't really want to work on something that's she already checked out of," he said and Daryl nodded, getting that. "I still love her though. That's what's really shitty about the whole thing. I still love her and she obviously doesn't love me." He smirked bitterly and shook his head at himself before taking another sip of coffee.

Daryl was quiet, taking another bite of burger. He had absolutely no idea what to say. Rick was his best friend and was always there to listen to Rick when he needed to talk but he never knew what to say in return. Especially about things like this. What the hell did he know about love and relationships? He was closer to forty than thirty and found himself with a woman in a relationship for the first time in his life. He had no idea what he was doing most days and had taken the habit of just following Beth's lead and picking things up from her.

Daryl took a sip of his Coke. "If you want, I can give Merle a call. We can go to a strip club or somethin'. Distract you for a while."

He had said it as a joke though he knew that even though Merle was married and happy with Annie, he took strip clubs very seriously and if one was mentioned, he never saw it as a joke. And he had been to his fair share of strip clubs in his life – always with Merle dragging him – but he hardly paid attention to any of the girls, usually just sitting at the bar and drinking as Merle nearly got them kicked out.

Rick snickered at that and even though he shook his head, he said, "Yeah. Sounds good," he said and Daryl gave a single head nod.

He may have been new to this whole relationship thing but he did know that if he was going to a strip club, he would definitely have to tell Beth.

…

He had stowed the books into the bag on the side of his bike for the time being and after going to the house and after Hershel telling him that Beth was in the barn, he headed in that direction. She was sitting in some hay, a newborn baby lamb in her arms, and she was holding a bottle of warm milk, letting the lamb suckle from it.

"Hey," Beth smiled at him as he approached but he noticed the sadness in her eyes.

"Wha's wrong?" He asked, lowering himself into the hay beside her.

"The mama rejected him for some reason," Beth said and looked down to the lamb, smiling faintly as she did so. "I told daddy I'll be the one to take care of him."

Daryl didn't know what to say so he just sat quietly and watched Beth as she fed the lamb, singing a soft song to the animal, something about never being able to take something away from a person. He didn't know. He hardly ever knew any of the songs she sang. He just knew that he really liked it when she sang. Beth Greene had the prettiest voice he had ever heard.

"If you want, I can build somethin' for 'im at the trailer," Daryl offered and Beth instantly stopped singing, her head whipping over to look at him. He shrugged his shoulders. "A pen or somethin'. Little shed for 'im to live in."

Beth looked at him for a moment and then she broke into the softest smile he had ever seen. "Just when I think I can't love you any more than I already do," she told him in a soft voice that made the tips of his ears turn red. She leaned in then and he met her lips halfway, the kiss soft and brief but it made his lips tingle as always.

She looked back down to the baby lamb and began singing again and Daryl couldn't help but stare at her, thinking of what he had read in the book that morning. Stuff about loss of bone mass and low white-blood cell counts that left her more open to infections and sickness than most people.

But the most life-threatening damage is usually the havoc wreaked on the heart. As the body loses muscle mass, it loses heart muscle at a preferential rate - so the heart gets smaller and weaker.

He heard those words in his brain as he had read them and committed them to memory as soon as he did. He wished he had the ability to look into Beth's chest right now so he could see her heart; see that it was beating and it wasn't going to stop anytime soon. It had scared the shit out of him as soon as he had read that paragraph. Some singer, Karen Carpenter, had died because she had anorexia and her heart had grown too weak and had just stopped working.

Was that going to happen to Beth? Was he just going to wake up one day and look at her next to him and find out that her heart had stopped sometime during the night without him realizing that? One day, would she just die and there would be no way to stop it? He had gone so much of his life without her but now that she was here, he didn't know what he would do if she suddenly wasn't anymore.

"Hey," she suddenly nudged him gently with her elbow and looked at him with a smile. "You're frowning. What's wrong?"

"Nothin'." He automatically shook his head. "Jus' thinkin'. I've never had a pet before."

Beth smiled brightly at that. "I like how that sounds," she said and looked down to the lamb. "Our pet. Our little lamb," she said, laughter in her voice. "But that's not why you're frowning," she looked back to him and he wondered how she had gotten so damn good at reading him.

"No," he said but there was no way he was going to tell her what was actually on his mind. He might as well tell her what he had to. "Rick's thinkin' of gettin' a divorce," he said and Beth's eyes widened. "Lori's been sleepin' around. Rick doesn' think they have anything they can save."

"Oh my goodness," she said in a hushed tone. "I had no idea."

He shrugged. "Not like they're taking out an advertisement. I had lunch with him today. He made up his mind about it there. I told him me and Merle could take him to a strip club to get his mind off things. Seemed to like the sound of that."

He looked at Beth, studying her face, trying to figure out what she thought about that. She was looking at him and he swore that her eyes were actually twinkling.

"'m not gonna do anything… if you're worried about it," he said in a low voice.

She instantly shook her head. "I'd never worry about that. And I'm not worried about anything. I'm just trying to imagine you in a strip club," she said.

He felt his lips twitch a little and he shrugged. "Not my favorite place in the world."

"You're a good friend," she said.

"So are you sayin' I can go?" He asked.

"Don't do that," she said. "I don't want it to be like that between us. Thank you for telling me what you're doing but you don't have to ask for my permission."

"I don't?" He asked and he knew he sounded completely clueless but he couldn't help it. When it came to this – having a girlfriend – he was beyond clueless.

"Nope." Beth laughed a little. "You're a grown man and there's no reason why I shouldn't trust you. And if it really bothered me, I would just say fine and let you figure it out on your own. It's what girls do."

He couldn't help but roll his eyes, plucking a piece of hay. "Girls are nuts."

"Yeah." She laughed again. "But you love me anyway," she said and there was still a lightness in her voice, obviously having no idea what she had just said.

But Daryl knew. He caught it instantly and he looked at her, at her smile and her pretty twinkling eyes, and he felt nothing inside of him that screamed to argue.

She finished feeding the lamb and she gently pulled the bottle away, murmuring to the him that he was such a good lamb and she already loved him so much.

"Yeah," he heard himself murmuring in agreement.

This whole time, he had thought that he didn't love her; that he didn't even know how to love but he looked at her and realized he had never felt anything before like what he felt for her and maybe that was love. Maybe he was in love with Beth Greene and maybe he had been in love with her this whole time.

…

Thank you very much for reading and please review!