AN: So I hope you liked the last chapter! Here goes chapter numero dos!

Disclaimer: Wait! Can you guess? I... don't own Gallagher Girls! Yay! Lol

Smoke filled my nostrils as I blinked my eyes open and the world slowly started coming back into focus. Fuzzy shapes twisted in front of me like a kaleidoscope on steroids. I reached up and touched where a giant gash had been cut into my head but it had been covered by a bandage. I felt down near my ankle and noticed that the cut on my thigh had been treated as well. There was a really warm blanket around my shoulders and a fire was roaring in front of me. Finally, the world stopped spinning and a pair of green eyes came into focus. They were sad and angry and scared all at the same time, but I knew them. I'd spent the last year and a half trying to discern the secrets hidden behind them to no avail. Until two months ago.

"Welcome back, Gallagher Girl," Zach said dryly. I sat up slowly and rubbed my head where a migraine was starting to form.

"Where are we?" I asked, my voice groggy (which tends to happen after you hit your head on a giant piece of metal and then on a metal trashcan).

Zach leaned over the fire and prodded it with a stick, making the flames swirl into the air like a giant light show. The area around us was small. It was a clearing in the middle of the woods somewhere; heavy canopy cover loomed overhead. There was a small stash of food sitting next to Zach on an old rotted log, and a water jug sat only a few feet away from the food.

"Away from them," he said just as dryly. He got up and went over to the small tent set up at the far end of the camp and started moving things around inside.

"Zach..." I said, needing to know why he was so upset but afraid to ask.

He stood up and set something down gingerly, turning around slowly, almost as if he were an injured animal. "You know, I don't know whether to be offended or not." He tried to laugh, to lighten the mood in any way he could, but nothing was funny anymore. "You just... left." He stared into my eyes. "I offered to take care of you. We could have been in this together!" His voice was rising and I felt the full weight of the situation settle in on me. He rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger, turning around: away from me. I looked down at my hands in my lap. I didn't know what to say so I just sat there. I heard him mumbling under his breath but I only caught bits and pieces. "...stupid... wouldn't work anyways... girls... can't trust..."

After what seemed like an eternity he turned around again, the wounded look in his eyes gone, replaced by fury. "So why did you do it?" He asked bitterly. It was so different then the Zach that I had left the month before, I was stunned into silence. After a moment, he continued. "Why did you turn me down and then leave by yourself?"

I looked up at him timidly. "You were right, Zach." I said quietly, "I needed answers and no one was safe around me anyway. I needed to go but..." I drifted off for a moment. "But you weren't safe either. I couldn't risk you, too," I confessed quietly. It was silent for a moment until I continued, my gaze dropped back to my hands. "So I may be being foolish, but please," I said using the words from that night at Blackthorne and looking up at him pleadingly, "Let me be foolish this time."

He looked at me understandingly and then came to sit next to me on the log that creaked with age as he sat down. "I can take care of myself, you know," he said softly.

I nodded slightly, looking down again. He ducked his head to look me in the eye and brushed a few stray hairs behind my ear. "I could protect you, too," he said staring into my eyes. I looked up at him.

"But what if something happened to you?" I whispered. It was an eerie silence that pulsed between us that night.

He smiled slightly. "Nothing is going to happen to me," he said, but I knew he couldn't know that. Knew he couldn't promise something that permanent. No spy could. And maybe that's why I turned away just then, considered saying no again. But I knew it was too dangerous to go in without backup again, and everyone else I trusted (not that I entirely trusted Zach) would have been in far greater danger. Besides what could they do to him anyways? His mother was a leader in their little cult, for crying out loud! She wouldn't let anything happen to him...

Which made him the perfect cover. We both knew it. Combine our spy training with that kind of immunity and we were practically home free! But I knew it wasn't that simple. I knew that sometimes casualties are taken and accidents happen and sometimes spies don't come home at all. I looked at the boy who I had thought was dead, who should have been dead, a month ago, but he stood beside me completely unscathed, save a scar or two.

He should have died, I thought to myself.

I slammed my eyes closed. "I... I can't risk losing you, too," I said thinking back to my father's journal and how it didn't end in his hand. Nothing would ever end in his hand again.

Zach took my hand gently and my eyes opened slowly, painfully. "Gallagher Girl, look at me." I kept my gaze fixed on the floor. "Cammie," he said softly. I slowly looked up into his green eyes that were so full of hope it was intoxicating. "I don't know what's going to happen tomorrow or the next day or the next week," he said. "But what I do know is that you can't do this alone. I can't do this alone. We need each other, Gallagher Girl."

I looked at him and felt myself begin to cave. He was right, I knew. I needed him and he needed me. So that's why I turned to him and slowly said, "Okay. What's the plan?"

AN: Well! What do you think? REVIEW! And maybe I'll reward you with another chapter! 15 Reviews and the next chapter will go up! ;) (PS I know it was kind of sappy, for those of you who really like that, here's to you! For those of you who don't, don't worry the real action is going to set in soon )