Never Have I Ever Fallen in Love

Chapter 23

"I've already told ye, Scout. I'm going. You're staying."

"God damn it! Daryl! Anything could be out there! A herd...people who would be willing to kill you to get to the farm...anything! I'm coming!" I insisted watching the look on Daryl's face grow more annoyed. We had been arguing for several minutes about what I had to do when Daryl went out looking for the little girl, Sophia. We'd been through this routine dozens of times now and I was slowly becoming bored with it.

"And what if there are!? I don't want yer gettin' hurt! You'd be safer if ya stayed at the farm. That's what yer doin'. End of discussion." I sighed as he strode forward and firmly yanked the knife I had in my hand out of it and threw it into a corner of the tent. After doing so, he turned and glanced at me then down at the floor, shaking his head.

"I can take care of myself..." I weakly tried again even though he didn't look up at me. I sighed then bent down and picked up one of his dirty shirts that was in his view and as I stood and bought it with me, his eyes followed it then met mine. He smirked slightly.

"No, Scout. I'm sure Officer Friendly's woman will have something fer all you women te do. Y'know...cooking...laundry.." he nodded down to his dirty shirt in my hand then up at me. I raised my eyebrows at him then threw the piece of cloth in my hand at him, hitting him square in the face. It fell off of him as soon as it landed to reveal his face smirking even more.

"You sexist asshole." I muttered under my breath then turned and walked straight out of the door of the tent to make my way up towards the house.

"Scout..!" he shouted after me and I turned around to face him.

"What?"

"I was kiddin'..." 

"Whatever. Can I come with you?" I asked, in the hope that he would agree.

"No."

"Screw a cactus, Dixon." I glared at him then carried on making my way up to the house.

He just didn't seem to understand what I wanted to go for. Yeah, I wanted to help look for the little girl even though I had never met her; she didn't have an emotional hold onto me yet, at the end of the day, there was still a child out there in the woods by herself with no food...no water...no weapons...no nothing. She was probably terrified she was going to be bitten at any second if she wasn't injured or dead already. Yeah, I also wanted to make sure Daryl was alright and he was getting to places safely with no interruptions that put his life at risk. That still wasn't the reason though. The real one?

He kept on disappearing for the entire day. And when I say the entire day...I mean...from before I even got up to way after I retreated back into our tent. I had stayed up waiting for him the first couple of times he went and he came back in the middle of the night, emotionless. Baring in mind that the day before he went we were absolutely fine, he came back and every single time he would just stare at me blankly and not reply to anything I said. He just sat there, staring. 

I had a funny feeling that looking for Sophia wasn't the only thing he was doing out there and I wanted to know why he acted so peculiar when he came back. I had to know.

"Scout!"

I turned as a female, southern accent shouted my name. I saw Maggie advancing on me with a smile on her face and I didn't ignore the fact that she had a bounce in her step.

"You don't need to borrow my car anymore, do you? I was cleaning it earlier. Saw what you and Daryl did to it."

My eyes widened at what she was trying to make it sound like and I blushed slightly, shaking my head.