Stop Falling (Rick Grimes Romance)

Chapter 15

Chapter 15........on the front lines

I did just as I promised Maggie I would. Not because I wanted to but because I had made a promise. That and I was pretty sure she would all but drag me from my bed kicking and screaming. The fallowing day I got up and went through the motions of my empty shell of a life. It was hard to fane happiness when you were depressed so I didn't even bother to try. Aimlessly I put one foot in front of the other and started about doing what was expected of me.

No one really said much to me. In fact people went to great lengths to stay out of my way. I guess they all thought I was a nut case after my freak out in the cafeteria fallowed by my three week stint as a hermit in my cell. Perhaps I was crazy but I didn't give a shit either. Oddly enough my true friends turned out to be those that were closest to Rick as well. I guess you never truly know who will stand by your side until the time is called upon them.

The one good thing about being so close to Rick was I knew his routine. Where he went and what he did through out the day. A man of habit I knew how to avoid running into him. I took every precaution I could to make sure our paths never crossed. Laurie on the other hand was a whole other storey. Everywhere I went she seemed to be dogging me all the way. Never close enough for a confrontation but always lingering near. An ever present reminder that she was here now.

I decided to join Carol and Maggie along the fence line. I figured it would be the one place Laurie wouldn't fallow. Placing myself between my two friends I began to spike walkers in the head when I looked down the fence line. I guess I was wrong as there stood Laurie a few chain links down glaring at me. I suppose in her mind I was the other woman no matter the excuse and she was just trying to prove a point. Or at the very least that was how I was choosing to justify her actions.

"You know what gets me?" Carol asked pausing to wipe the sweat from her forehead. "How she acts like she is the only victom in all this. That everyone set out to hurt her."

Grunting as she pulled the spike back Maggie rolled her shoulders in an attempt to ease the ache out of her muscles. "I can tell you this much I guarantee there was a little something something going on between her and Shane. Hell I'll bet there still is."

Looking puzzled between the two of my friends I shrugged my shoulders, "I dropped off the grid for a bit remember. Who's Shane?"

"The guy she showed up with that night," Sasha strolled up behind us using her spike as a walking stick. "He was supposedly Ricks best friend and partner before everything went down and Rick got shot. If you believe their storey Shane said he thought Rick was dead so he saved Laurie and Carl and got them out before they bombed Atlanta. They hooked up with a group and stayed at a camp north of the city."

Jabbing a walker between the eyes Carol yarded her spike back. "Ya well I don't exactly believe any version of the storey I've heard so far. There is more to it that they don't want anyone to know. She wants to lord yours and Ricks relationship over his head so she can control him. Make him feel like he was the one in the wrong. That much is clear."

"Hail one for saint Laurie," Maggie said mockingly. "Don't let her make you feel bad with that injured act she puts on. It's little more than a wolf in sheeps clothing."

Glancing from my friends to where Laurie stood I decided they were right. The long and short of it was that Rick and I had done nothing wrong. It wasn't some cheap tawdry affair that had began immediately after and it didn't destroy their marriage. As soon as she came back into the picture and we realized she was alive I stepped away. We had done what was morally right. Besides if you believed Rick the marriage was done long before the walkers came to be. If she chose to let what Rick and I were come between the two of them then that was her problem. For that matter Laurie wasn't my problem she was Ricks.