Taking a Chance

Chapter 29

The days flew by and Daryl never ending up calling his brother. He was busy working at the dealership and taking overtime when they offered it, busy with learning to live with Gabrielle and busy simply enjoying himself just too much to want to deal with the complications that Merle always brought with him. Daryl was enjoying married life more than he ever thought possible. This was nothing like when his parents were married. Sure he and Gabrielle didn't agree on everything, but they didn't have screaming arguments and he would never raise a hand to her like his old man did to his mother. They respected each other, which his parents never did.

Daryl wished he had met her years ago, so they could have had more time together, but then again he was a stupid dick back then and she would have probably hated him. They certainly didn't start off on the right foot to begin with, even though there was an underlying attraction between them. This was probably the way it was meant to be, so who was he to question it.

They were getting together with Rick and Michonne fairly often. Sometimes it was to go out to dinner or just hang at one of their houses. The two pairs of best friends had married and became two couples that spent a lot of time together. For Daryl, it was good not to be the third wheel with Rick and Michonne anymore. Daryl realized the benefits of being in a relationship when it came to other couples. He felt like he finally belonged for a change.

In the meantime, while Daryl was living and loving his life, and forgetting about his toxic brother- Merle didn't forget about him. He was still pulling small burglaries in order to get money for food and drugs. He was hiding out from the dealer that he owed all that money too, but that was getting harder and harder to do. Word on the street was - Merle was in big trouble.

It took Merle almost two weeks, but he used his tracking skills and some desperation to find Daryl. The one good thing the learned from their father was to track and hunt. He applied a variation of those skills to the tracking down his errant brother and was proud of himself that he had finally found Daryl.

He thought that Daryl may be living close to the only other person that was important to him...his buddy Rick, so Merle drove around Parkvale numerous times trying to find either one of them. Merle had never liked Rick. His selfishness always wanted Daryl at his beck and call, and Rick got in the way of that, plus Rick stood up to Merle, which of course didn't go over well with him. Rick was also a cop and Merle hated cops as it seemed all they wanted to do was give him a hard time or put him in jail. That he deserved to be locked up behind bars never entered his mind. Merle never thought anything he did was wrong.

One day he, he was parked at a fast food joint debating if he should check the garbage can for uneaten food, when he saw Rick driving by in his cruiser and he carefully followed him. He stayed back far enough so it wasn't obvious on what he was doing. He wasn't stupid. Merle watched the car pull into a driveway and park. Since he entered the house without knocking, Merle figured Rick lived there.

So during the week he hung out around town, trying to find Daryl on his fancy motorcycle, but he didn't have any luck. Then that weekend he parked by Rick's house to see if his brother ever showed up. Merle was lucky that it took only one Saturday of lurking in his beat up car, for Daryl and that bitch he married to show up. His little brother sure had it hot for her, as even walking up to the house he had his hand on her ass. "The slut loves it," he said out loud. " Ol' Merle here could teach her a fuckin' thing or two. That's for sure. She'd be screaming for more once she felt how good this piece of meat felt fuckin' her. I bet she's the type who likes it hard and rough...yeah the rougher the better."

He drove by slowly noticing the make and model of the car, plus the tags. It probably belonged to the bitch, he thought even though Daryl was driving it. Then he drove around to back to where he had been hiding to watch the house again. About twenty minutes later, he saw them all leave in two separate cars and Merle followed slowly behind them. They eventually pulled into the parking lot of a Mexican restaurant and they all went inside. Since when did his little brother start eating in restaurants? "He was so fuckin' whipped," Merle thought to himself. "That bitch has ruined him."