Author's Note: OMG you guys! I'm soooooo soooooo sorry it's taken me what? Two months to write this next chapter. But things just got so busy and I kept putting it off and putting it off. I almost decided to just quit since it had been so long but I kept getting notices that you guys were still reading my story and reviewing and I felt bad so I told myself no matter what, I had to finish. But don't worry, this is not the end yet but it is the much delayed 4th chapter. And to make up for it, I made it extra long with a definite Dasey moment AND a flashback to the three years Casey lost her memory. She still hasn't found the diary (which I'm pretty sure happens in the next chapter or if not, then most definitely in chapter six) but I did add some stuff in there that gives her a little insight to The Other Casey. I promise the next update will come this week since. I actually already have it pretty much plotted out and I might actually start on it as soon as I post this. Anyway, I hope you guys enjoy this and continue to read my story. And please review! They really did motivate me to keep going. Without further ado, please enjoy chapter 4!

P.S. Despite my reading it over a couple times, I did post this as soon as I finished it and so there may be a few errors here and there. I'll do another check when I get the chance but you have my apologies in advance

Disclaimer: I do not own Life With Derek or Dear Myself. Despite the number of coins I threw down the wishing well, it still hasn't happened.

Chapter Four: The Girl In the Photograph

Derek glared angrily at the bedroom door. His bedroom door. The door that led to their bedroom, his and Casey's. The bedroom that Casey had now been holed up in for twenty-four hours. He let out a frustrated sigh as he threw a frilly, decorative pillow against the wall. He winced slightly as a he felt a pinch of pain in his shoulder from channeling all his aggression in that throw.

He stared at the door again, practically willing it to open. When the door failed to magically open, he stormed towards the third bedroom (which normally served as the guest room/"Doghouse" since really only Sam or Derek got banished there) where he had been camped out since yesterday after Casey had made her announcement. He hesitated after opening the door and gave one last glance back towards his bedroom before muttering, "This is ridiculous," and slamming the door shut behind him.

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Slam! This was Casey's cue, one she'd patiently been waiting for for the last thirty minutes, despite the fact that her bladder had been crying out to the emptied. She opened the door as quietly as she could and sprinted towards the bathroom. She emerged five minutes later positively relieved.

"I feel so much better. I thought I was going to die," she mused to herself as she cautiously looked over at Sam and Emily's door and the guest room she assumed Derek was using. Given how the last twenty-four hours had gone, she figured she had about five minutes to grab something to eat before Derek came back out. She quickly ransacked the pantry and fridge for some cheese, crackers, rice cakes, and bottled water before high-tailing it back to the safety of her room.

As she sank into the bed after firmly closing the door and double checking then triple checking to make sure it was locked, she let out a slight self-deprecating laugh. Her room, she thought again. Hmph! She really did think of it as her room despite it being flooded with things that reeked of Derek and Casey. She grabbed a rice cake and took a bite as she got up to look at the photographs that took up every available flat surface. There were pictures of Derek and the other Casey at theme parks, at carnivals, at the ice rink, back at the old house. There were pictures of Derek and the other Casey with their arms around each other looking at the camera, candid photos of them giving each other a peck on the lips, pictures of them staring into each others' eyes, pictures from those photo booths of them making goofy faces at each other. Casey looked at each and every single one of the pictures with amazement. She looks just like me, she thought as she picked up a picture where the other Casey was firmly in Derek's lap with her arms wrapped possessively around him, smiling brightly into the camera. It was taken in their old living room presumably with their family present. But she's so different. Casey took another good look at the photo before putting it back in its place. I could never just sit in his lap. With my family all there! Casey thought about where her train of thought was going.

Ew! What the hell was I thinking? I would never sit in his lap in the first place. It's Derek!

She started to turn back towards the food she'd left on the bed when something caught her eye. It was a photo of a smiling Other Casey and Derek, only while Other Casey was looking towards the camera, Derek was looking at her. Casey couldn't help herself. She was drawn to the photo and as she picked it up her focus for the first time wasn't on Other Casey, it was on the look on Derek's face.

Oh my god, Casey thought, he really does love her. And then it happened. A quick, sharp pain in her chest. Casey dropped the photo and quick grabbed at her chest, she gasped out a breath ready to call for help but just as suddenly as it came it quickly faded into a dull ache that lingered for just second before it disappeared completely. Casey took in a shaky breath as she leaned down and picked the photo off the floor. What the hell was that? She straightened up and her eyes caught her reflection in the mirror. It was still surprising to see her hair so much shorter than usual and before she glanced away, a thought occurred to her. It wasn't very pleasant and rational Casey quickly shoved it out of mind. She tossed the photo onto the bed and gathered up the uneaten food before heading out the door. She knew what she had to do it and it was about time she started doing something about putting her life back together.

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She did everything in her power to stop herself from pacing in front of the door. She'd taken her sweet time putting the food back where it belonged. She'd walked like a turtle towards the door. And now, she'd spent five minutes taking deep, calming breaths that she was now starting to feel light headed. She was about to knock when a muffled voice called out from behind the door,

"For crying out loud, come in if you're coming in already!"

Casey slowly opened the door, and peeked into the dark room. Derek wasn't standing by the door but was instead laying spread eagle on the bed on top of the sheets. He had an arm draped over his face and hadn't bothered to look over at her as she opened the door and let herself in all the way. She purposely left the door open as she edged further into the room just in case the need for a quick getaway came up.

"How'd you know I was out there?" Derek stifled the urge to reply with, "Because I KNOW you." And instead went with the safer, "Because I could practically hear your brain analyzing and re-analyzing and over-analyzing through the door."

She left a half-laugh. "But what if it was Emily or Sam?"

"Impossible since they left at the crack of dawn and said they'd stay out the rest of the weekend to let us have a chance to sort it all out."

"Oh," was all she said. She forced herself to look around because she didn't know what to do next. Derek looked perfectly content to just continue to lie there and she was so uncomfortable she was practically crawling out of her skin. The silence stretched on and Casey was practically twiddling her thumbs trying to work up the nerve to start the conversation she knew they had to have. And Derek continued to lie there, for all intents and purposes, effectively ignoring her.

One minute of silence became two. Two became five. Five became ten. Ten became twenty. When Casey had been standing there for twenty minutes she began to become angry. She'd been standing there working herself into ball of frazzled nerves and Derek and just laid there like a lump of humanity. Probably sleeping. Why was she the anxious one while he got to be completely calm and oblivious? She continued to work herself into a full on snit unaware that she was letting out grunts of indignation.

"How much longer do you plan on just standing there?"

Caught completely off guard, Casey returned with an undignified, "What?"

Derek chuckled as he removed the arm from his face and slowed propped himself up on one elbow to face her. "I said, 'How much longer do you plan on just standing there?' Or were you actually going to say what you came here to say? Because I assumed when you came in here that you had something to say or otherwise you'd still be locked in the bedroom like a petulant five-year-old like you have been the last twenty-four hours."

Casey's jaw dropped in shock. "Ah! How dare you –"

"How dare I what?" Derek challenged. "How dare I lock myself away for a whole day? How dare I spend all day avoiding you like the plague? How dare I ignore several, repeated pleas to just talk to you? Oh, wait that was you."

"Yeah well, you…you –" Casey was at a loss. She was losing the round and she knew it.

"I what?" Derek asked innocently.

"You kept me standing here for twenty minutes when you knew I needed to talk to you."

"I don't recall preventing you from speaking. I remember lying here waiting patiently for a conversation you never started."

"I –? Ooooh!" Casey cried out in frustration and stormed out of the room. Derek smirked to himself and resumed his former position.

"Same old Casey," he muttered to himself. But he knew it was an empty victory. They would have to have the conversation sooner or later and he'd only managed to delay it for a little bit. She'd be back and soon. Probably within the hour and they'd finally have the talk he'd been in no rush to have. He knew how the conversation would end and he wasn't exactly looking forward to it. And since there was nothing else he could do, he waited.

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Casey found herself standing in front of the guestroom yet again an hour later. They were going to have this conversation and she wasn't going to allow Derek to distract her or annoy her or piss her off and lose focus on her objective. She knocked on the door as a courtesy but didn't bother waiting for a reply before pushing it open. She was ready to give him piece of her mind for his earlier behavior but stopped when she saw him sitting on the edge of bed, apparently waiting for her.

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Derek sat up the moment he felt her at the door. He always knew when she was there. He could be a room filled with hundreds of people and he would know the second she stepped foot in it. And it killed him that she could just forget that. But he was Derek Venturi and he wasn't going to let her walk away from him that easily. If he had to play things her way for the time being so be it. If they had to start all over again, he would do that too.

He remembered back to the accident and when Casey had first woken up from the coma and they all found out she had amnesia. They'd had to start over then too and it had worked out. He remembered when as a joke he'd told her she loved eating pickles dipped in peanut butter. He'd come home the next day from his part time job to find her in the kitchen crying. Spread out on the table was every variety of peanut butter and more types of pickles than he knew existed. She'd tried them all. When she noticed him standing there, she looked up at him and sobbed the whole story to him.

"I wanted to try something to get my memory back and I thought maybe eating my favorite food would trigger something. So I tried the peanut butter and the pickles we had here but it tasted disgusting so I thought maybe it was the wrong kind and so I tried every brand I found at the store and every kind of pickle I could find and it's still disgusting and I just can't do it. I'm never going to get my memory back." Casey began to sob as she finished explaining. Derek couldn't stand it when girls cried and this wasn't any less uncomfortable. Still, his albeit small but still existent conscious wouldn't allow him to just leave.

"Umm…okay but why are you crying? It's just pickles and peanut butter. No big deal."

"Yeah but remember you said I loved it. I mean I may not remember but I should still love it right?" Now firmly trapped in the lie, Derek was forced to roll with it.

"Well, it wasn't something you just started to like over night," he improvised. Casey furrowed her eyebrows as she tried to understand. So he continued, "It was from an ongoing dare we had. We were trying to get each other to admit it was gross first and eventually we started to like it."

"So we both like it? Well, that makes sense because of the dare. And it's an acquired taste."

"Yeah, that's right," Derek quickly replied, relieved that she seemed to buy it but mostly because she had stopped crying.

"So, which kind of pickle and which kind of peanut butter was it?" Damn it, Derek thought.

"Umm…the…the sweet pickle? Yeah, the sweet pickle and the extra crunchy peanut butter." Casey smiled as she forked out two sweet pickles from the jar onto a plate and grabbed the extra crunchy peanut butter and set it down in front of them. She grabbed one and dunked it into the peanut butter while she offered the remaining pickle to Derek. She waited while he picked his up and also dunked it into the peanut butter. She smiled as she held hers up ready to take a bite, "Bon appetite!"

"You too," Derek muttered as he took a giant bite of the pickle covered in extra crunchy peanut butter. He fought very hard against the urge to gag and had to use all his strength to force it down his throat. Casey took a bite of hers.

"You know, this isn't so bad. Then again it could be because I've been sitting here trying to eat it for the past hour. But you like it so I shouldn't say anything."

"Well, you don't have to force yourself to like if you don't." He hoped she'd take the out he offered. "I mean just before the old you liked it doesn't mean you can't develop your own likes. You'd still be you even if you're not exactly the same."

"Thanks, I really needed to hear that," she said and smiled at him with her beautiful blue eyes twinkling. It was in that moment that Derek realized he'd been right. Things didn't have to be exactly the way they used to. Things could be different this time.

"But you know, it really isn't so bad," Casey was explaining as she took another bite. "I think I'm actually starting to like it. It is really gross though when you think about it. I'm so glad I'm not the only weirdo who likes it."

"Yeah," he replied, with a tight smile on his lips and forced himself to swallow his second bite, praying silently he survived the next one, "yummy."

Derek smiled at the memory. To this day they had a jar of sweet pickles and extra crunchy peanut butter sitting next to each other in the fridge. As he sat there, reminiscing as he waited for Casey to work up the nerve to knock on the door, he suddenly remembered the secret he'd kept the past three years. And guilt washed over him as the knock finally came and in walked Casey.

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"Derek?" Casey said hesitantly as she walked up to the bed.

"Took you long enough," he joked but even Casey noticed it was a little forced.

"You were thinking about something huh?" She took a seat next to him.

"Just remembering something." He turned his gaze away and instead focused on something to his left, away from her. Something about the way he said it got to her and though she couldn't identify the emotion, suddenly the plans she had painstakingly labored over in preparation for this conversation went out the proverbial window and she thrust the photograph she had brought with her at him.

"You love her, don't you?" she blurted out. The moment she said it she wished she could take it back.

"Excuse me?" he asked as he took the picture from her and looked at it himself. It was dark in the room so he stood up to switch on the light so he could see what she was talking about.

"The girl in the picture, you love her." Casey couldn't stop the word vomit. And why did it sound like she was accusing him of something?

Derek took a good look at the photograph and looked back at Casey who was now concentrating on the floor.

"Case, of course I love you," he replied. Casey looked up and he handed the picture back to her. He smiled gently at her and Casey knew it was a smile unlike any she'd ever seen from Derek, and especially for one directed at her. Their fingers briefly brushed as she took the picture back and as she looked at that smile, she again felt the pain in her chest. But instead of the sharp pang, it was the slow, dull lingering ache and she was careful to mask her expression. And she pulled her hand back she quickly turned and returned her concentration to the floor.

Casey was a smart girl and she was quickly beginning to realize what that dull aching in her chest was. She looked at the picture in her hand and focused on the smiling girl. Her gaze shifted to the boy looking at the girl so lovingly and she forced herself to look back up at Derek who was now watching her. As their eyes locked, the dull aching returned and she made herself look away. One thought kept repeating itself in her head,

Casey, you are in so much trouble.