I really love this chapter, and I hope you all love it as much as I do. I don't name the chapters of Chasing Cars and I never have, but if I did I think this chapter would be called "Sanctuary". Soundtrack for this chapter (especially the second half) is "Boom Clap" as covered by Lennon and Maisy. Enjoy!

(Oh, and also I hope you don't hate me too much for where I chose to end this chapter. Sorry! It was what worked best!)

You're always gonna be family.
Come to Washington.
The new world's gonna need you, Carol.
And so do we.

-Rick

Daryl's eyes scanned over the words again and again, trying to get a grip on the complex series of emotions that felt like they were battering him from the inside out.

They were alive. He could start with those three words. They were alive. Rick and Carol… maybe even others judging by the 'we' on that last line. He had doubted it for so long despite the tiny spark of hope Beth had lit within him all those weeks ago. Despite the fact that she had cut to the heart of him to expose his fear and chased some of it away, just enough to allow that little spark to flare within him; the same spark that had kindled again just briefly in the wake of the katana-sliced bodies they'd found by the train tracks.

If it had settled in the time since as reality set in, then it was kindling within him all over again now at the sight of this note.

Rick and Carol, alive. The two people who were essentially his brother and sister- perhaps not by blood, but in all the ways that truly mattered. The two people he had been the most afraid for down in the deepest recesses of his heart, where he kept all the fear he tried so hard not to acknowledge. Fear for Rick, last seen in the middle of that battlefield with the Governor. Fear for Carol, lost and banished before then, sent away by Rick to survive all on her own.

He had known in his gut how strong they were. He had known that each of them was more than capable of survival, and yet the fear had still been there, dark and painful and aching in a place he had done his best not to face, until Beth had forced him to look right at it. Confronting it hadn't truly banished that fear, and neither had that tiny spark of hope. But now...

Now he knew they were alive. Or they had been, sometime recently. Despite the ambiguity of the time period, it was still more than enough to have that flame of hope crackling low within him, and he knew from the way Beth's fingers were curling tightly in his own that she was feeling the same. That she was thinking the same as he had.

They were alive.

Hand in hand they clung to one another, staring down at that map, both of them reading the words over and over as if they couldn't quite believe they were real.

Carol.
Rick.
Alive, alive, alive.

It was only somewhere around his fifth or sixth time reading it that his gaze finally strayed away from the black lettering to the other marks on the map. To the red line, drawn up through the eastern coast from Georgia and into Virginia.

It was then, as he traced that path etched across the map with his gaze, that he felt Beth's hand unexpectedly go limp within his own. Before he could do more than register it, her voice broke into the hushed silence, low with shock and disbelief as she uttered, "They left us."

Soft though they were, Beth's words seemed to smash through the haze in his mind, breaking through that endless repeating cycle of Rick andCarol and alive, alive, alive. As he slowly tore his gaze from the scribbled words on the page, he realized there was more than just astonishment in her voice. There was something else layered beneath it, something… tight and tense and taut, something like anger and hurt and confusion all bundled up together.

"What?"

Blinking her big blue eyes, Beth glanced up from the map towards him instead. Holding his gaze, she repeated again in that same low, tense voice, "They left us, Daryl. Rick, and whoever else-" She turned back to the map, eyes widening and her voice growing more and more sharply pitched as she went on in disbelief, "I can't… I can't believe they… they left us." He watched her swallow hard, muscles bunching and releasing in her throat before she continued, "I mean, Rick… he couldn't have been alone. He says we, right? So someone was with him. Michonne, probably, 'cause... 'cause remember those bodies we found by the railroad tracks? You said it was someone with a katana and someone else with a gun. So he's at least got Michonne with him, right? And if they went through Terminus, well, that's where…"

Her words had been coming quicker, sharper, as if her voice was rising right alongside her emotions, but then she swallowed hard, licking her dry lips before going on in a near-whisper instead, "Maggie. That's where Maggie was going, looking for Glenn. So… so they must have met up. Maybe even more of them... more of our- our family. They… they found each other and… and they… they left."

"Beth-"

"No, Daryl. Think about it." When she turned to him this time, the look of pain in her eyes wrenched at something within his chest. It curled fingers in deep, like talons or hooks that curved right into the throbbing flesh of his heart and twisted in tightly. His heart only ached more at the plaintive sound of her voice as she kept whispering, "They left. They took whoever they had with them, and they just left. Without even trying to find us, without even thinking-"

The words, when they finally came to his lips, were halting and unsure. "Beth, you don't know that." Daryl's brow creased with worry, more for her than anything else. He hated the sight of her all worked up like this, the sight of her hurting in any way. Unlike a physical threat though, he couldn't fight with his hands to defend her from this, couldn't pummel it into submission or even tear it all down. All he could do was try his awkward, fumbling best to find the right words to do what his hands couldn't. To help her.

So he tried; tried to make his voice firmer, tried to say the right things. "You know how hard it would have been for them to find us, even if they did go looking?"

"We found them, didn't we?" She had a point there, but then again, they'd had big signs to follow. From the signs, to the smoke at Terminus, and the markings left on the trees; the path for them had been far easier to follow. Before he could point that out though, Beth reached for the map on the altar, picking it up and clutching it tightly in her hand. "And look at this." She shook it up at him. "Carol. They left a note for her, but didn't even bother leaving a note for us, not even just in case." The pupils of her eyes seemed to widen, to darken her blue eyes as her expression faltered even more and she breathed out, "Just like… just like Maggie didn't bother to leave a message for me, back on those train tracks."

And oh, yes, there it was. There was the real sore spot that Beth was carrying around inside, the dark and painful inner wound that this scribbled messaged had wormed into and was now rooting around unheedingly in.

"Beth…"

Pitched high from the pain within her, Beth's sharp voice echoed faintly across the vaulted ceilings of the church. "I mean, I understand them forgetting me. I get them not thinking to come after me, not thinking I might be out there still. But you? How could they not think you'd survive? How could they not have waited for you, or gone looking for you, or left a message for you, Daryl?"

That, finally, was too much for him to just passively listen to. He had been willing to wait for her to have her say, to let the painful words spill out of her, but he couldn't sit there and bear the sound of her demeaning herself like that. With firm hands Daryl reached out, tugging the map from her grasp and setting it down before gently cupping the sides of her arms instead. He waited like that, fingers curled around her arms until she was looking up at him. He waited until those big blue eyes met his own, allowing him to see the depth of exactly what she was feeling; the pain that was darkening her eyes, etching lines into her forehead, and turning down the corners of her lips.

Only then did he murmur in response, "You ain't worth being left behind, neither." In comparison to how much she had been allowing to spill out of her, his actual reply was brief. But heavy in every single one of those eight words was the weight of just how much he meant that; a firm honesty that wasn't just laced through his words but warm in his eyes as he looked down at her, trying to make her understand. "You ain't ever worth bein' left behind. You hear me? And I ain't… I ain't gonna stand for you thinkin' that, let alone sayin' it."

His fingers curled a little bit tighter against her arms, as if to help bring home the firmness of his words. But the true emotion was in his eyes as they held hers. He'd never been one for words, but that hadn't mattered when it came to Beth, because she seemed to be able to just look at him and see. So he held her gaze now, hoping she could see the truth of it in his eyes, hoping she could see the honesty with which he was trying to reassure her.

After a moment he felt her tremble faintly beneath his hands. The tension within her loosened, not with relief but with the release of emotion as she took a step forward to lean limply against him and murmured in a low voice verging perilously close to a whimper, "I just… all this time I wanted so badly for them to alive. I wanted to find them. I just never expected to find out that they'd not been trying to do the same thing. Even after Maggie..."

He hesitated for only a moment as she leaned into him to press her face against his chest. Just one moment, and then instinct took over. His hands shifted, sliding down her arms to her elbows and then carefully to her back, where his broad palms spread out across that delicate curve to hold her close to him. "I know," he murmured, looking down for one moment at the crown of her blonde head before he gently rested his chin on top of it. "Ain't like I expected that, either."

When she drew in a faintly shuddering little breath, Daryl found himself grunting out reflexively, "Not that we can really say they ain't looked for us. We don't know…"

His own words belied what he was truly feeling though. They were a mask, a front to be put up over the sinking sensation in his gut as other suspicions wormed through his mind. But Beth- sweet, understanding Beth- was as perceptive as always. "You're right," she murmured, shifting against him to free her hands from where they had been tucked between their bodies so she could brush them around to his back instead. As he felt her small, slender hands press just beneath the wings on his back, he heard her murmur, "I want to believe you're right, Daryl. That they tried, that they waited, maybe. That they wanted us to be alive, but they didn't have a choice… or didn't have a good choice, anyway."

Just a moment ago he had been the one comforting her and now the tables had turned. It didn't feel like a sharp turn, but something so smooth and natural and easy that it almost seemed as if they had simply rounded an even lap to the other side of a circle, rather than made some drastic flip. It felt just as right to comfort her, even if he struggled to find the words, as it did to be comforted in return.

It felt equally as right to just stand there in front of the altar, stock still in the square of light patterned by the colors of the stain glass window, holding each other close and breathing until the rise and fall of their lungs found the same pattern.

He didn't know just how long it was that they stood there. It could have been hours, though some distant and logical part of his mind judged the lack of movement from the square of light and thought it had only been five minutes at most.

However long it had been, it was her voice that broke the silence to say, softly and surely, "At least we've still got each other, right?"

His head tilted down so that his nose grazed the soft strands of her hair, and he breathed in deep before unhesitatingly murmuring on the exhale, "Of course. That ain't ever gonna change."

There was so much more they needed to discuss, all of it tied up in the red lined path marked on that map. Daryl knew that. So despite his desire to just stay there holding her, his hands spanning her back and hers pressed right beneath his wings (as if the feathers might be sprouting from her touch instead of his back), after a moment he rested his lips lightly against the crown of her head and then drew back to look down at her.

"C'mon," he murmured gruffly, rubbing a hand lightly in a circle over her back. "Let's finish checking this place out and maybe lock it down for the night. Then… then we can figure out what comes next."

It didn't take them too long to explore the rest of the small church, combing through the rooms off the main space. Rather than split up they stayed together, moving side-by-side through small rooms, examining religious artwork on the wall, and rummaging with mild interest through the papers on the desk in the office.

In the end there was little of interest though; or rather, neither of them found a single thing related to the family that they knew had stayed here what he could only guess was a week or two ago. If there was a hint of disappointment in either of their expressions, it was a thing briefly shared in the meeting of their gaze, in a faint quirk of Beth's lips and a slight shrug of Daryl's shoulder… and then they moved forward. Because that was what they did. They kept moving, kept pushing forward. They focused on their routines, allowing the busyness to push certain worried thoughts from their minds- for now, at least.

With the interior of the church swept and secured they moved to the outside, doing one more walk around the place and ensuring all the doors were firmly shut and locked and there were no walkers or anything else worrisome in sight. The strings of cans that Beth kept within her bag was hung up in front of the church, just in case, and only then did they retreat within, shutting and barring the heavy double doors and officially claiming the sanctuary of the church for the night.

"It's kind of fitting, in a way." Beth must have caught the turn of Daryl's head from the corner of her eyes, because as his gaze settled on her she went on, "Taking sanctuary in a Church. That used to be an official thing, claiming sanctuary in a church against the law, or to find safe harbor."

"Think I've seen it in a movie before," Daryl grunted, moving past her down the aisle of the church. He was pretty sure he'd seen some candles back in the office that they could light; soon the sunlight filtering through the windows would fade and the church would darken. He wouldn't advise lighting too many, not wanting the glow from within to alert people outside to their presence, but they needed some light to navigate by.

Beth followed after him, quiet for a few moments until they reached the office and he bent down to rummage through the cabinet and fetch out some candles. As he pulled free a couple white candles in glass jars, he heard her muse behind him, "I wonder if that's what this place was, too them. Our family, I mean. Was it sanctuary? Did they come here right after whatever it was that happened at Terminus?"

Her questions were unanswerable, or at least unanswerable by anything other than more questions. Questions he could feel pricking at the back of his mind and rising just to the tip of his tongue. Questions like: What did happen at Terminus? What were they running from? Was it the same people who had made the marks on the trees? The same people who had killed the priest, who had cut off his leg and grilled it at a campfire in front of an elementary school? And those people, if they had been from Terminus, if they had left those marks and killed that man… where were they now?

When Daryl looked at Beth, he saw those same questions deep in her eyes, reflected in the black of her pupils and the blue of her irises as she held his gaze and gave a soft sigh. They both knew there was no way to answer those questions and yet, they couldn't help but wonder.

"Maybe," was what Daryl said, finally, standing up with the candles in his hands and offering one to her. "I reckon maybe they did. Ain't no way to know, but… it makes sense."

Beth bit her lip, but as she curled her fingers around the cool glass that encased the candle, she gave a slight nod. When he turned to lead the way out of the office she followed, saying as she walked, "I think they did. I think they left Terminus and found there way here, and it was like… a sanctuary, for them." As they came out the office door Daryl hesitated, looking at the altar for a moment before ignoring it to pass down to the aisle between the pews. It was as good a place as any to sit and talk, for now. The sun was still setting and they could light the candles without fear of being spotted through the windows. Later, after it was really dark maybe, they'd go into one of those other rooms to hole up safely for tonight. But for now…

For now he settled in the middle of the aisle, dropping his bag and then following suit to sit on the hard floor. Without hesitating Beth moved right with him, sitting down on the floor with her back to the side of the pew right next to his. Though they were not pressed side by side as they sometimes were these days, when Beth stretched her legs out she did it at a slight angle, just enough so that her foot brushed his leg for a moment as she settled.

"I think whoever left those marks was from Terminus, too. Maybe they- our people- were trying to escape… but they followed?"

Daryl nodded at her guesswork, knowing it would only ever be that unless they somehow did catch up to their family and find out the real story. It was a good guess, though, pieced together from what they'd found at Terminus, and the path they'd followed, and the note.

The note. That was what truly lingered in his mind, though. The note, and what to do about it. He could see it not only in her gaze, but in the turn of her head, the way sometimes she'd glance back in the direction of that altar and the folded map they'd left there.

Rick.
Carol.
A map, and a route outlined in red.
Alive, alive, alive.

The words were right there on the tip of his tongue, a should we and do you think hovering right there at the edge. If a thought could have feet (an odd mental image), it would have it's toes curled over the rim of a cliff; hesitating, waiting for the push of action. Forwards to the fall, or back, instead?

In the end it was Beth who took the leap; Beth, who like always seemed unafraid to ask the hard questions or pull reality out of the shadows and into the light. "So what do we do?" She asked, her face golden in the glow from the candle she had lit and perched on the floor beside her. "Do we go after them? Do we follow their map?"

In the flickering candlelight, he studied her face. It wasn't the first time he'd peered at her like this, when she was all lit up in the glow of a candle, or a fire. Far from it. It wasn't the first time he'd done it in silence either.

Daryl didn't think he would ever forget that one night, and how could he? How could he forget it when everything about it was exactly why they were here today? Why they were who they were, today. All because of that night; not only her questioning words- what changed your mind?- but what had followed, too. The near loss, the panic, I'm not gonna leave you and Beth! Beth!.

She had changed, since then. They both had, of course, in so many ways. Right now he studied those changes; the visible ones, anyway. Her face looked different in the candlelight now; thinner, but not in an unhealthy way. Leaner, stronger, marked by the faded-bruise and the scar on her cheek, but also… warmer. The look in her eyes was without a doubt warmer, and there was a glow to her that he knew didn't come from the candle's flickering flame. He didn't know if he could say just where it came from, or maybe he was simply too cautious. Maybe he didn't dare wonder, let alone claim, that the warm glow he saw on her face matched the warmth he felt inside, and that it came from the same place. From the two of them together, from the weight of her in his arms standing by the altar earlier, from the tangle of her legs in his own as they'd slept last night, from the warmth of her lips against his. From them.

He looked at her, and he drank her in. Every warm, shining inch of her. She looked right back at him, holding his gaze without breaking it… and neither of them needed to say a word. He could see the promise in her eyes and knew that it was right there mirrored in his own: Me and you andthe two of us and that's what matters and maybe even ain't nobody else that matters like this, nobody, nobody, nobody.

Daryl didn't have to say anything out loud. He knew she could see the promise in his eyes the way he could see it in hers. But still, he found himself murmuring lowly, "I think we do what's best… for us. You an' me."

He was gratified when she not only nodded in response but scooted closer. He shifted instantly to make room, so that both of them could rest half their backs against the side of the pew behind them and, more importantly, Beth could lean her side against his.

The silence extended around them for a few beats of his heart, a few rise-and-falls of his lungs, and then she said softly, "I think maybe we should follow them… eventually."

That had him turning curiously towards her, tilting his head down as he raised an eyebrow.

"I mean… in the end, it's not like we have anything else to do. We could stay here, of course. We could find somewhere else to stay, somewhere else to hole up and… and make ours. Or we could keep moving. But I think… no matter what we do, we'll always wonder where they are, and if we could find them. So maybe we should try."

"Eventually?"

"Yeah." Beth gave a tiny smile up at him. "Because I was thinking… you know, it wouldn't be smart to just go after them on foot. Following a vague outline on a map, without any other plan. And you and me, we're pretty smart."

He chuckled, the unexpected sound rumbling in his chest. "Oh yeah, are we?"

"Of course!" The little smile turned up in a second, forming a bright grin that lit up her whole face. "I mean, you're the founder of Dixon University after all, and I like to think I'm it's star student, so we must both be pretty smart."

Daryl might have snorted at that, but Beth's little soft giggle also stirred something within him. It had that warm, fluttering feeling rising up inside him again; a sensation seemed to strain within him, to fill every inch of the confines of his heart and then push outward, as if it could expand through his ribs to warm his whole body.

It wasn't the only thing that happened when she smiled at him, or when she laughed, or when she did whatever it was that made him feel that warmth. There was something else that strained, too, something physical rather than emotional, something that strained against, rather than within. It was something that made his pants feel a little bit tighter, made him shift in place and try in vain to adjust himself, without drawing attention to it. Not that he thought she would judge, or even be uncomfortable with it. In fact he was pretty sure she would be the opposite of uncomfortable with it, which right now, well… just made him shift in place even more and do his best not to think about it.

He focused on her, instead. On her smile and the way she leaned into him, and how warm she was against him. He focused on her voice as her giggles trailed away and she went on more seriously, "Anyway… it wouldn't be smart, just to try and go after them. To walk all that way, without knowing what we might find."

The way she spoke, hesitating over the words… it meant something, he knew that. It wasn't an unsure hesitancy, but rather a weightiness. As if she was holding something back, not out of fear but more to tease him, to draw it out and make him ask. And because she was Beth and he was Daryl, and she could hook in her pretty little fingers and draw anything out of him, he let himself do just that. "So you gonna spit out whatever idea y' got in mind, Greene? Or you gonna make me get it outta you, somehow."

"Oh!" The smile that crossed her lips- playful, mischievous, and warm- made that heat flutter slow in his belly, simmering like a pot on a flame and slowly but surely buildin' towards a boil as she went on, "Well I was just gonna tell you, but now I'm wondering just what you'd do to pull it out of me, Mr. Dixon."

A stray curl of hair had fallen across her cheek and he didn't know what was more temptin' to him right now; the urge to reach out and brush that away, or the urge to tease her or, lord, the urge to trace the lines of that smile with the pads of his fingers and then his lips, until he found out if it were possible to taste a smile like that.

(He thought if it were, it would taste sweet like her; sweet like strawberries or maybe cherries, or maybe a juicy Georgia peach with just a hint of tang to it.)

In the end he did reach out, the rough pads of his fingers brushing across the soft curve of her cheek, pushing back that curl of hair even as he breathed out her name, low and gravelly with an implicit warning that was far from the threatening growl he would have given anyone else. "Beth..."

"You know that's not exactly motivating me…" Her voice was light and teasing, but with a husky quality to it that he couldn't ignore, and as he watched her she tilted her head against his touch like a cat, butting her cheek up against the palm of his hand. For a moment they stayed there like that, his worn palm cupped to her cheek, fitting perfectly to the curve of it. He just watched her, studying the flutter of her eyelashes and the way they dusted her cheeks for a moment before she exhaled a soft sigh and let them open, so she could meet his eyes.

"I think what we need is transportation. And not just… not just whatever random car we manage to find that'll probably break down or run out of gas eventually anyway." Beth hesitated and there it was again, that weightiness but also a spark, bright in her eyes. Seeing that excitement filled him unexpectedly with anticipation, but even still he never could have guessed what would come from her lips next. "I think we should go back and get your bike. Not Merle's bike, at the prison. Your bike."

"My-" Thrown, he stammered out, "My bike?"

"Yours." She nodded and this time the smile that crossed her lips was softer, sweeter, more familiar. "You told me about it, remember? Back at the old Mill. You told me you had to leave it behind, when things went to crap and I said maybe we could go back and get it, and you said maybe. Maybe, after we checked out the fire, and Terminus." She lifted her hands palm up as if to say: And see? We did that, and now here we are.

And with that gesture, Beth finished, "So why don't we do that, then? Why don't we go back and get your bike, and gather more supplies along the way, and then follow that map and try to find our family." She trailed off into a silence that he didn't fill, until the seconds stretched on and finally she murmured in a near-whisper, hesitant and hopeful, "So what do you think, Daryl?"

He thought it was ridiculous. He thought it was silly, pointless, completely random... he thought they could find any old car or bike and it would serve the same purpose, and yet…

And yet he didn't really think it was any of those things. And yet, as he watched her watching him with those big, cornflower blue eyes, as he lifted his hands again to drag the roughened tips of his fingers over the delicate line of her jaw, he found himself replying simply, "Okay."

She laughed again, a little breathy giggle that was tight with nervousness and yet instantly seemed to release the coiled tension within her, causing her to exhale in a breathy voice, "Okay?"

"Yeah," Daryl murmured simply, a hint of a smile quirking up at the corner of his lips. "Okay. We'll do it. We'll go back, an' find my bike… and then find our family, if we can."

And since she was smiling up at him bright as the sun, he didn't tell her that right now, sitting here in the hush of the church and the flickering light of the candles with her, he felt like he was already with his family. Like maybe now she was all he really did need. Maybe she had been, for a long time now.

He didn't tell her any of that, but he did move. He did lean in, until the fingers on her cheek slid back to tangle into her hair, and his lips grazed her own. He'd only meant for it to be a soft kiss, but then she leaned into it too, parting her lips against his so that the kiss deepened and he could taste her; soft and sweet as a warm peach… but better. So much better. Because she didn't just taste like a sweet peach; she tasted like Beth. And when she pulled back from the kiss, it was with a soft and breathy little laugh that had his own lips curving into a slight smile in response, even as he asked, "What?"

"Sorry. I just couldn't help thinking about the fact that you're kissin' me in a church."

With a smirk and a chuckle, he replied, "Bet you were a good church-goin' girl, weren't you?"

"Mhm." But a smirk tugged at her lips, too, and he watched as she leaned up to brush her lips slowly over his again and murmur against the seam of his lips, "Maybe not so much anymore."

The sound of her saying that, all husky and low, made him wanna just, well… take the Lord's name in vain. Or something. Something else, something so much more than just taking the Lord's name in vain.

Before he could say anything- or even kiss her again- she surprised him by climbing slowly to her feet, curling her fingers around the candle and bringing it with her as she rose.

Sitting up a bit with one hand propped on his knee, he looked up at her through the lanky fringe of his hair and asked in an unexpectedly rough voice, "Where you goin', Greene?"

"Well I was just thinking," she murmured, cupping the candle in her hands so that the glow of it played across her face. A stray thought whispered through his mind, soft as a feather: As if she needed anything to make her look more like an angel. With a slow smile, Beth went on, "The sun is going down, and it might be safer in one of the back rooms. And... " The faintest hint of a flush stained the apples of her cheek as she turned half-away, and then glanced right back, her hair swaying with the movement and the flame of the candle gutting for a second before it caught and flared bright again, bright as her sweet smile as she finished, "And it's more… private."

There was just a few seconds where her gaze drifted; up over the pews and their bibles, over the podium and the altar, and the cross.

Bet you were a good, church-goin' girl, weren't you?
Maybe not so much, anymore.

He was climbing to his feet even as the words echoed in his mind, easily scooping up his bag and bow and the spare candle as Beth began to walk down the aisle. The faint sway of her hips beckoned him and there it was again, that stirring, straining, tightening. He clenched his jaw and willed it down, willed it steady, even as the warmth in his chest spilled over to fill every inch of him as if it were pulsing right along with his heart to the rhythm of her name: Beth, Beth, Beth.

Lord, she is gonna be the end of me.

At the end of the aisle stopped and turned to look over her shoulder and for a moment he was struck by the flicker of golden light across her jaw. She glowed like an angel, and she didn't even need wings. How could his end come at the hands of an angel? If it did, he figured it would be the sweetest end there ever was.

Her blue eyes met his and her smiling lips parted to breathe out softly, "Come with me?"

He was already on his feet, and all it took was one look for her to pull him forward. As if he would have done anything else but follow her. As if hecould do anything else, as if he'd want to do anything else but follow her. Anywhere. Everywhere. To the end of the world.

But right now, just to a small room in the back of a church, where he could hold her in his arms and taste the sweetness of her on his lips. The closest he'd ever known to tasting, touching, feeling the warmth of heaven.

Or maybe not heaven, but something else. Sanctuary. In her arms.

Don't be too mad about that ending. If it helps, I am currently planning to have the next chapter pick up right after that end scene. Probably. Maybe. If not, I will compensate accordingly.

Anyway, as always I live for your comments and I love them all. Thank you so much for reading this chapter and continuing to read Chasing Cars! It's been a busy couple weeks for me but I will try to update asap.