Sorry this is a day late yet again. School is killing me but I am doing my best to stay on top of everything here. Thanks again to those of you who are reading. I hope you enjoy the chapter!

Wick's POV

Taking Raven driving was possibly more terrifying than Wick ever thought. At first he works hard to exude total confidence in her and she soon picks up on it. Then he completely and utterly regrets the confidence he seems to have given her because she keeps pressing on the gas and she switches lanes to get around a particularly slow Civic and she blows right through a yellow light. He swears his life flashes before his eyes. Not because she's a bad driver but because she's so damn good there's just no way she's a real person.

Every so often he offers up some advice, mainly asking her to slow down for the sake of old Betsy, but she seems to know what she's doing just fine. It's beyond infuriating as he recalls the three months he spent with a death grip on the steering wheel and his mother sighing beside him going, "You're going to have to take your foot off of the brake eventually, Kyle."

Occasionally she turns too far, or not far enough, and he reaches over to help her not run into the other lane once or twice. But she gets the hang of it in mere minutes. He hates her for being so good at this. But he really doesn't. He wants to throw his arms around her and make fun of her for showing him up on everything and lean down to meet her lips as he mumbles something along the lines of, "Well maybe you can't show me up on everything." Which would lead to her rolling her eyes and answering, "I sure as hell can if you keep talking."

But right, no, hating her was probably for the best.

At dinner she's all over the place and he has a hard time keeping up with her. She keeps trying to go somewhere dark and angry and he fights tooth and nail in an attempt to keep her with him. Once in a while she did this, retreating into her gnarled, biting self as if attempting to fight him off. With enough effort he almost always pulls her back out.

When they walk out of the restaurant she's light again. Even with the heaviness of her leg she still manages to move with a bounce in her step as she begins rambling about something to do with his engine. "Tomorrow night I need you to quiz me," Raven says as she pops into the truck. The snow was falling a little more heavily now and she'd handed the keys over to him without complaint.

"On?" he asks, warmed at the thought of her knowing his schedule as well as he knew hers now. She pulls her seatbelt on without reminder and rubs at her knee as he pulls the truck into traffic. He shoots it a concerned glance before fixing his eyes back on the road.

"Just some stuff out of my book," she says, but he can hear an undercurrent of excitement. It was a little ridiculous, someone so thrilled over studying, but then he remembers her missing two years of school and hopes for college that don't seem possible. Perhaps getting giddy over having something to work towards wasn't funny at all.

So with a gentle swelling in his chest and the memory that he had been the one to give her that book to begin with, Wick nods. "You just want to show off," he teases as he pulls into her neighbourhood.

"As if I need any help with that," she answers and he thinks about her impressive driving skills and hates her for being right.

He comes to a stop in front of her trailer, putting the truck into park and letting the engine idle. Raven doesn't move to get out. The snow is falling a little more heavily now which is why he hadn't seen it at first but he follows her gaze and finds a car sitting out front of her trailer. It's not in the best shape and there's a bumper sticker on the back that he couldn't read from here. "Raven?" he asks because now her fingers are beating out a frantic rhythm against her leg and her breath is coming faster than it normally does.

She looks to him with fear in her eyes and a furrowed brow as her hand runs along her hair, finding nothing but the long end of her ponytail. "I can't…can you-" her chest heaves and he sees her bottom lip tremble.

That's enough, he decides after just a second more. He throws the car back into drive and goes straight for his place. There were no questions worth asking or words worth offering. Instead his hand reaches across and clenches around her leg, just above where her brace ends. She grabs it in her hand and holds him tighter than normal.

Once he's pulled into a parking spot Raven has the door open and is slipping to the ground before he's managed to get the truck to stop running. She walks in a rush to his doorstep and is through the door in mere seconds. The stairs slow her down and she's forced to lessen her pace as she takes each one slowly but surely. Wick comes up beside her and wraps his arm around her, trying to make her feel safe when she so clearly didn't.

His own hands tremble as he slips the key into the lock once they reach the top. She walks in before him and he locks the door as soon as their through. Her breathing has slowed, still heavy but more so from the exertion of the stairs than the panic she'd been experiencing. "Hey," he's saying before he's gotten any further in what he's going to do.

She offers him a thumbs up as she inhales deeply, the sound broken and fractured as it struggles its way down. The exhale is just as fragmented as her eyes fall shut and her head hangs in defeat. He takes a tentative step, remembering to give her space but offering himself in whatever capacity she wanted right now. She looks to the door and then to him and her breaths are still coming in heavy puffs.

"He shot me," she breathes out, her gaze falling to her leg, all emotion wiped from her face. She looks up to him, her frantic breathing paused as she swallows heavily. The space between her eyebrows cinches and a tooth finds its way to her bottom lip. Her hands clench and unclench into fists once and then twice. "He fucking shot me and she let him back in."

When she looks up to him again she doesn't look angry so much as confused. "Raven…" he starts because he doesn't know what else to do when the one person he loves most in the world is standing before him, her head shaking frantically from side to side and her eyes searching for an answer that couldn't be found.

His hand reaches out to her but she pushes it aside. She's stronger than he expected. "Don't." It isn't so much a warning as a plea. He pulls back. One of her hand twists into her ponytail and the other starts tapping against her bad leg. It's an angry beat, frantic and rough. "I can't…" Her eyes squeeze shut but there are no tears leaking past, just a steely resolve fixing itself into place once more. "I hate her," she whispers, a truth being unleashed from a place so deeply buried. "I hope she fucking dies." Raven spits out, her face contorting with the word. "Because that bastard crippled her daughter and she didn't even…she doesn't…Why doesn't she care?"

The next time she looks at him it's with wet eyes and a hollowed out stare as her jaw falls slack and her shoulders give. The anger has been rolled away by sadness. "I only ever asked her one thing," she growls towards him. "And she promised me. In the hospital she promised me that she would turn to anyone but him." Her lower lip trembles as a broken exhale gasps its way out. "I lost the use of my damn leg and she can't keep one fucking promise." The fury rolls out of her in full, fat tears.

The dry anger had been when she was still convincing herself she no longer cared. This wet rage was the proof of how much she did. He's not prepared when her tiny fists slam against his chest, not enough force to hurt him but it does cause him to stagger back for a second. "I only. Wanted. One. Fucking. Thing." She yells out the words, her fists hitting him after each one as sob rips from her throat and she finally surrenders into his arms. "Why doesn't she love me?" she gasps out, hands clenching his shirt as his arms wrapped tightly around her shaking form.

"She does," he promises because it's the only thing that feels the least bit right in this moment.

Her forehead rubs against his chest as she shakes her head. "Not enough," she chokes out. "Love isn't ever enough."

Every part of him wants to argue that statement but he thinks of her useless mother, draining her of every resource she has. He thinks of Finn, loving her his whole life but not enough, dying regardless of what either of them had. He thinks of his dad, getting behind the wheel in a drunken stupor and he thinks of his sister, surrounded in a tub of thick, bloody water.

The thoughts make him hold her that much tighter against him, trying for once to make it enough. She leans heavily on him but the only reason he's still standing is because of her. "I'm sorry," he says because love isn't enough and he doesn't know how to make it.

She shakes against him and it reminds him of how small she is in ways he's never been aware of before. "What if he kills her?" she breathes the question out. "What if he kills her and it's my fault because I ran away?"

"It's not your fault," he says with as much conviction as he can find. "None of this shit is your fault." The weight of her world sits heavy on her shoulders and for once he feels the true pressure that works against her each and every day.

Eventually her hands unclench from his shirt and she works her arms around him.

When she breaks away her eyes are red and puffy. She stares at him with sadness etched into each line of her forehead and the worry inscribed by the indent of teeth on her bottom lip. "Wick," she breathes out his name, a sad quirk of her lip being chased away by further tears gathering. "There's no way out," she mumbles, looking to the ceiling as soon as the revelation falls past her lips. "I'm stuck and she's never going to be anything more than a drunk and a user and-and…my mother." She takes a deep breath to calm her emotions as they once again climbed. "She's my mother and she's never going to love me enough."

The words are out there and they're open and honest and the kind of hurtful that digs into you in every weak spot. Bones snap and muscles tear and tendons release with words like that. "I'll love you enough, okay?" he tells her because he can't hold it back when she's breaking apart in front of him. He doesn't know if it's sufficient to hold her together, but he hopes she lets him try.

She studies him for a never ending second and then she pushes herself up onto tiptoes with her good foot, and throws her arms around his neck. Her hot breath blows against his lips for only a second before she crashes her lips against his, her hand pulling his neck down to meet her.

They meet in a messy, frenzied passion and her hands are everywhere in a seconds, running along the hem of his shirt, across his abs, through his hair. She kisses him and just like every other damn thing that Raven Reyes does, she doesn't half ass it. His hands find her waist the small of her back and the ends of her pony tail. He worships every inch of her that he has the right to touch and tries to commit the goose bumps that rise with each touch and the feel of her tongue sliding into his mouth to memory.

When she pulls away she's breathing hard, her slightly bruised lips now matching her swollen eyes. She looks up at him with a broken expression and a fear so obvious that he wants nothing more than to quell it. She takes a step back and his arms drop immediately. "Raven…" he starts.

She shakes her head to stop him and turns away. She's out the front door before he even knows what's happened.