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XXVIII

His rough, warm hands were under my shirt, working it up when the honk sounded. 

We both froze, his hands right beneath my breasts, my legs wrapped tightly around his waist, and my hands tangled in his hair with his hot breath fanning over my neck. 

"Negan." I whispered, and he practically tore himself away from me, pulling his gun out and sitting up straight to look around. He seemed almost frantic, until he looked up in the rearview mirror, and relaxed. 

"It's just the others, they caught up. I'll just go out and tell them we were waiting for them while you uh... straighten up." He said, smirking at me, and I realized he was probably right. I probably looked entirely too sexed up to be going to meet anyone. But he didn't look much better from what I could tell. 

"You should uhm... fix your hair first." I said softly, face probably bright red, but his normally oh-so-neat hair was sticking up in practically every direction, and I'm sure they'd know what we were doing if he went out like that. He nodded, and flipped down the mirror, patted his hair a few times, and then not even a minute later he got out of the car and walked to the back. Taking advantage of being alone, I sat up, frantically started to tuck the front of my shirt back into my pants, and flipped the mirror down to find my hair looked thoroughly roughed up, there was a nice big hickey on my neck that I had no possible way of covering up, and my lips were so swollen and red, there was no way no one would know. Even with the remaining two hours of drive time at least, I would probably still look like a wreck. 

Awesome. 

"Alright beautiful, we're good to go." Negan said, pulling himself into the truck without a care in the world, and I turned my glare onto him. 

"Seriously? You had to give me a fucking hickey?" I growled out, gesturing to the flaming mark on my neck, flipping the mirror back up in the process while he started the truck back up and drove. He barely even spared it a glance, but I could see the corners of his mouth lifted in a smirk and it pissed me off. 

"Well if you won't marry me, how else am I supposed to show people that you're mine?" 

"I'm not yours Negan. This was a one time thing. It's not going to happen again." 

"Whatever you say beautiful. Why don't you just take a nap, rest up those pretty eyes of yours. Of course, if you wanted to you could use those delicious lips of yours on something a little down south of mine, if you get bored or anything." Negan said, winking over at me, and I couldn't help but let the snarl of disgust curl up my lip, and I turned away from the man, curling into myself in my seat and leaning against the cool window. 

"No? Well, if you change your mind, it's always open to you beautiful." I just rolled my eyes, and watched the trees pass by, eventually letting it lull me into a semi-peaceful sleep.

I'm supposed to be leaving with Aaron tomorrow morning, to try and recruit some people, and I can't help but hope that she'll be out there, that tomorrow I'll ride out, and I'll find her and Dale, up in some house, living a nice quiet life by themselves. Honestly, if that happened, I'd stay with her. No reason for me to stay here.

They don't need me here, but she... she needed me. And I need her. It's been so long... more than three years since I've seen her face, her smile, heard her laugh, looked into those beautiful green eyes, told her I loved her. Cuz fuck I do. I've never loved anything the way I love her. 

"You think she'll be out there?" I whispered, sitting on the stairs of Rick's fancy new house, while Glenn sat next to me, waiting for Maggie I suppose. 

"Maybe. Who knows. I hope she is." Glenn said, and when I glanced over at him, he was looking at me, almost expressionless, but I could see the anger on his face. 

"You can say it if you want to." I mumbled, wringing my hands as I rested my elbows on my knees, staring out at this new 'home' we had found. 

"No. I don't need to. You've heard it enough over the past three years. It's not just your fault. You drove her away, but she chose to leave, and we chose not to go after her. Maybe... maybe if we had worked harder, tried harder to go after her, instead of just putting it on you, maybe if she felt like she would have been safe to work out everything with you, and knew that we didn't blame her for anything, that we still needed her, maybe she would have stayed. It's not just on you. And even if it was... it's been long enough. You've been punished by all of us every single day since it happened and you took ever single word, every single punch without a word of retaliation. You've been letting us punish you for something that happened so long ago. It's enough." Glenn finished, clapping my shoulder with his hand and letting it rest there for a moment, and then he stood up and backed away, going back into the house where Eliza was bawling her eyes out. 

She's only a few months younger than Dale, which makes me worry about Riley even more. If this little girl cries so often... then surely Dale does too. Calling for walkers every thirty minutes, hungry, tired, hot, dirty, wet, doesn't matter, whatever is wrong with that baby, she cries. And if Dale is like that... shit. 

I'll fucking pray to make sure she's alive.

I'll find her. I always do.