The euphoria from getting the tattoo started to fade when I saw Mallory. She's wearing a white tank top with an old school looking logo on it with short jean shorts and her blond hair is down in two French twin braids. It took me a few seconds to pull my brain out of the gutter with how good she looked, it almost reminded me of when we were still in high school. The one difference though is that now she looks free. I pulled in another deep breath and my eyes found her again.

"Well because whenever I've been back here over the years, I never really strayed far from Fort Bragg. I have some time right now and needed to clear my head and decided to get a tattoo for my dad." I said and noticed that Logan has now let go of my legs and ran over to Shane who picked him right up.

"Shane's one of the best tattoo artists around, so you definitely came to the right spot." Mallory said with a fond look on her face as she watched Shane take Logan over to his station.

"You guys know each other?" I asked sensing the familiarity between the two.

"You can say that." Mallory said and smiled when she saw Shane doing something with Logan.

"Okay, I'm going to head out." I said wanting to remove myself from whatever is going on right now.

"Actually, can we talk? Like have a mostly civil conversation that doesn't dissolve into both of us yelling at each other for the mistakes of our past?" Mallory said grabbing my wrist before I could move to the exit.

I looked over to Logan and Shane and found them in their own little world by Shane's tattoo station before looking at Mallory.

"Fine" I said wanting to clear the air between us before I leave again.

"Shane" Mallory called out into the empty shop.

"What's up?" He asked and looked up from the notebook.

"We are going to go for a walk, Troy is only working a half day today so he'll come by once he's out. I'll see you guys sometime later." Mallory said.

"Sounds good, say by Logan." Shane said.

"Bye Mom, bye Dani!" Logan yelled smiling and gave us both a wave.

I returned the wave and followed his mother out of the door. It was only when we got outside did I notice that Mallory slid her hand down from my wrist to intertwine our fingers. I didn't say anything but just kept my grip light and let her lead me down an alley to an area behind the shop.

Behind the shop there is an awning that is attached to the building that's covering a couch and picnic table, with a basketball hoop and fire pit not far from the awning. It looks like this place is a hang out spot for artists in the shop as the table top is covered in different color paints and drawings. It was then that Mallory finally took her hand away from mine and took a seat on the couch. With my back turned to her, I took in my surroundings to find that there was a retaining wall about ten feet down that blocks the back of the building from the street.

With the knowledge that nobody is going to be able to come from behind to surprise us, I took a seat on the bench of the table and faced Mallory. She didn't say anything for a few moments and I thought that maybe this was a bad idea. What else can come out of us trying to have another conversation about our past. All the other ones we had so far has just left us both more hurt then before. How can this one be any different?

"I don't think I've seen Logan take to another person as fast as he did when it comes to you." Mallory opened softly with Logan. The kid was an easy topic to start with so I guess it was better to ease into it then come out directly swinging.

"How so?" I asked.

"When it comes to adults, it usually takes him a while to break out of his shell. But when it came to you, all he wanted was to talk and be around you. Something that shocked me a bit at first. But then again, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree I guess." Mallory said and gave me a smile.

"You're not wrong." I said and offered her a kind smile before sighing. "Look, I want to apologize. I should have jumped down your throat like that the other day."

"No Daniella, don't apologize for that. I shouldn't have pushed at your dads wake. It wasn't fair when I knew you were hurting so I'm sorry for that." Mallory said, her blue eyes warm and body language relaxed making her apologize more sincere.

"Thank you, so uhm, what did you want to talk about?" I asked.

Before Mallory could answer her phone started to ring. She fished it out of her pocket and muted the call before sending whoever I'm guessing called her a text before looking back at me.

"Sorry, that was Troy asking about Logan." Mallory said.

"Still interrupting us I see." I said with a little bit of snark on the comment.

"Always interrupting us." Mallory said with a bit determination on her face. "Look you deserve the truth about everything, I've been wanting to give it to you for years now and always hoped you would come home but I've never seen you around before until now."

"The truth about what?" I asked already not liking where this conversation was going.

"The truth about what happened in high school and afterwards. Look, Troy and I aren't what you think we are." Mallory said and started to play with the ring on her finger. My hackles started to raise like I was about to walk into a trap and I knew I needed to find an exit route now before something blew up in my face. My eyes went from watching her spin the ring around on her finger to meet her waiting eyes. When she was caught, Mallory instantly stopped playing with the ring and straighten up.

"Looks like you guys are still married and have a family to me, correct me if I'm wrong?" I asked and pressed my back into the wooden table.

"We are still married yes, and we have Logan together. But that's about as normal as we get. Troy is, Troy's my best friend. He has been there for me through everything and is basically the only one who hasn't left me." Mallory said and sagged into the couch.

"Lets just make one thing clear before you continue, you pushed me away. We had a plan but you didn't want to see it through." I said my blood started to simmer at her statement.

"You're right. I know that now. It took me a long time to actually see and understand what you were saying back then. It would have worked. We could have had it all but I didn't want to listen and try to make it with you and I think it will be one of my biggest regrets in life, walking out that door that day." Mallory said with tears in her eyes.

I didn't know how to feel about her statement. On one hand, I'm happy that she finally admitted the truth about what I was saying all along. The other was anger that only now, ten years later, a whole life time later, Mallory is admitting her fault in the plan we made together. Who knows where I would be right now, where we could have been right now? I think my silence was too long for Mallory to handle so she just continued on.

"Back in high school I was too scared of the unknown to be myself. You were proudly out; it was something you couldn't understand. The only person who did was Troy. We bonded over that during high school. We used each other as covers whenever our parents asked where we were. When I was with you, I said I was actually with him. We always said we were with each other and they didn't question it. When they did start to question all the time we were 'spending' together, Troy and I came up with saying we are dating each other." Mallory explained.

I kept my jaw clenched shut. Mallory said she wanted to explain, I'm going to give her the opportunity to do so before I speak my peace. I think we both owe that to each other at this point.

"He was my beard. Once I told my parents that Troy and I were dating, they backed off almost completely. I got to be with you whenever I wanted, that was why our senior year we were basically joined at the hip. He gave me the cover I needed to be out with you. Then prom happened. Troy asked me to go with him because he was getting pressured by his parents to take me. It was the only thing he asked me to do for him since we started our fake relationship." Mallory explained and sagged farther into the couch.

"When I saw you there with him that night, it felt like my heart was ripped in two pieces." I said remembering the night that everything came crashing down.

"I know, the look on your face is something I don't think I can ever forget, still haven't all these years later." Mallory said quietly.

Mallory and I sat in silence for a while, wrapped in the memories of that night. It was our senior year and we made it through, for better or worse, together, and I wanted to celebrate that before I went off to boot camp. So I asked Mallory to go to prom with me. It wouldn't have mattered if anybody outed her because even though I was leaving, mom and Peyton would have given her my room to stay in before she went away for college. But Mallory convinced me that she didn't want to go, the way the conversation ended sat with me for a while. So, instead, I asked Dominic to come with me. I didn't want to go by myself and Dominic was a pretty popular freshman at the time. So he agreed and he was my date for the night.

Both decked out in suits, Dominic and I went to the catering hall. We got there kind of late and missed the cocktail hour but that didn't matter to us. Once we got inside, Dominic and I went our separate ways, he found a group of his friends while I went off to speak to some of mine. We mingled for a while before we got back together with drinks and watched as most of my grade got onto the dancefloor to dance the night away.

It was then that I noticed her. Mallory, standing towards the middle of the dancefloor in a navy-blue dress that hugged her every curve perfectly. I got a few glorious seconds to take her in before I saw that she was wrapped in Troy's arms. That was when I realized why Dominic agreed to come with me to prom that night. Dominic managed to hold me back from storming onto the dancefloor but not before I made a bit of a scene and they noticed. Both Mallory and Troy turned our way and her eyes found mine. Tears were pouring out of my eyes as Dominic was somehow able to pull me out of the catering hall.

I pulled myself from my reverie when I heard a car horn. I couldn't help but jump up and pull a knife from my pocket looking for danger. It took me a few seconds to realize that there was no immediate danger and I tucked the knife away before sitting back down. Mallory looked a bit surprised at my actions but didn't say anything.

"Why didn't you just tell me about your deal with Troy in high school Mal?" I asked trying to pull myself together after hearing all of this new information.

"You know, it was just never a thought. When I was with you, I didn't want to think about him, at all. I just wanted to be with you." Mallory said her eyes not meeting mine.

"What happened after I left?" I asked. It was the question I was most afraid to ask.

"After our last fight, if I didn't have Troy holding me up, I don't know if I would be here right now." Mallory said and wrapped her arms around her stomach like she was trying to protect herself from the pain of the past.

My eyes were burning into her and I hoped that she could feel it. How is it that we both equally destroyed ourselves to the point where we didn't see a future? With a deep breath, I stood from the bench and walked over to her. I took a seat next to Mallory, close enough that our legs and hips were touching because we both need it at this moment. Slowly Mallory sagged into my side and I just kept still, to let her set the pace.

"That summer was the hardest of my life. My parents thought I broke up with Troy with how depressed I was. And because I couldn't tell them the truth about us, I had to let them believe it. Troy and I spent a lot of time out of the house because he couldn't come over. A lot of those summer nights we fell asleep in the back of his truck, him to afraid to let me go home alone, worried he wouldn't see me the next day. Troy pushed me to go off to school in the fall though and I made it once I got there. Being away from here, helped more then I thought it was going too." Mallory said and slowly her arms unwrapped themselves from her stomach.

I put my left hand down on her thigh, palm up and open, an invitation if she wanted it. It took a few seconds but Mallory reach out and took my hand in hers.

"College was hard. I was in a five-year advanced program to get my masters to teach in the shortest amount of time incase my parents found out about my sexuality. It was a lot of pressure. Troy was away at another school far enough that we only saw each other over Christmas break and during the summer. Things were good between Troy and I for a while. Then when I came home for summer vacation before junior year, Troy and I went to a party together. It was some of his old football friends but I knew a lot of them. We got super drunk together and just had a really good time. We were both home and got to escape the pressure of school for a little while. Then somewhere in the middle of it all, we ended up making out. We were both drunk and horny and alone. We had sex for the first and only time that night and didn't use protection." Mallory said as she ran her hand over my knuckles.

"Then came Logan." I supplied, the first time speaking in a while.

"Then came Logan, nine months later. When I figured it out that I was pregnant, I told Troy right away. We talked together for a week about if I wanted to continue the pregnancy. At the time I didn't want to, I really didn't. I was barely 20 years old and pregnant. We talked about abortion or adoption but that whole time all I could do was hold my stomach. Giving up the baby for adoption or choosing not to have the baby at all just put more stress on my heart. It was then I decided to keep the child and together Troy and I came up with a plan. He transferred schools to be close to me and gave up playing football. It took me a most of my pregnancy to come to terms with that. It just felt like our fight all over again, even though I never asked for it, he did it anyway. Just like I knew you would have if I pushed harder for you to stay." Mallory said.

"We told our parents together and they were shocked but supported us. I managed to finish my junior year early to be able to go home to have Logan in April. I took a gap year as most of my senior year would have been student teaching and observing classrooms and I couldn't do that with Logan being that young. The following year I went back to school and Troy and I got an apartment off campus so we could be away together to raise Logan. It was hard, we had to balance our schedules and my internship along with his. We almost couldn't make it work. But after Troy graduated it freed up a lot of things so when I went back for my master year, I could really get into it." Mallory said and started to trace an old scar on my forearm.

"After I finished school we moved back here and found an apartment together. Troy just took his final CPA test and passed and started working at a firm while I was working as a sub in our district while I was looking for a permanent position. It took a while but I finally got placed at our old elementary school teaching sixth grade." Mallory said.

"You still there?" I asked soaking up the new information Mallory shared.

"Yea, well not right now because its summer vacation but yes I am. I love it there." Mallory said and I could hear the smile in her voice.

"Do you still talk to your parents?" I couldn't help but ask and Mallory sighed.

"No, and I don't want to talk about what happened between us." Mallory suddenly stopped tracing my scar and I reached out to squeeze her hand.

"You don't have to tell me anything you don't want too. But how does Shane fit into this?" I asked.

"Shane is Troy's boyfriend. They've been together for years." Mallory said and with a chuckle, the light returning.

"Troy and Shane?" I asked trying to wrap my head around that.

"Yea. They met it college, shared a few classes together. They didn't know what to do with their feelings at first. It was just friends with benefits but feelings quickly got in the way. They had a rough first few years together but they got it together now. Shane's like a bonus dad for Logan. He loves to come to the shop and draw with him." Mallory said and turned her attention to a longer scar on my arm.

"You have a lot of these don't you?" Mallory asked and firmly ran her fingertip down the scar.

"I do, they are scattered all around." I said and sighed.

"How'd you get this one?" She asked holding firm to that one scar.

"Hand to hand, he had a knife, I didn't. I let him get this slash in so I would be close enough to him to twist the knife from his hand so I could use it against him." I said trying to leave out a lot of the gorier details of that mission.

"You let yourself get slashed?" Mallory asked and sat up to look at me.

"It was either him or me. That slash gave me the opening I needed to get the knife as I didn't have any other weapons on my person. I got the knife and ended the threat before he could end me." I answered.

Mallory hummed and turned to face me. She brought her legs up and sat criss cross. I let her look at my profile for a few seconds before turning to face her.

"What about you? What happened after you left?" Mallory asked. I looked in her eyes. Those big blue pools were looking at me full of hope, excitement even to learn about what I've been up too for the last decade.

"Going through boot camp broken hearted was the worst thing I've ever had to go through. If I didn't have Morgan looking out for me, I wouldn't have made it through. She kept pushing me through it. After boot camp was over, Morgan and I went off to Fort Benning Georgia to continue our training and we both went on to be infantryman, served a few combat tours together. When my superiors saw that I exceled with a sniper rifle, I went to sniper school. It was a seven-week course at Fort Benning. When I was done I went back to my unit and was the lead scout sniper for the rest of my time as an infantryman. After my first service term of four years, I went to Ranger School. Close behind boot camp, it was the hardest two months in my army career, but it was worth it." I said and looked down to pick at my fingers.

"My dad was so proud of me for every step further I took in my career, always excited to show me off to his friends in his office whenever I came back from deployment, graduated a new course or was promoted. He the one who gave me my Ranger tab when I finished the course. Now, five years later I'm leading my own team." I said.

"You make it sound so simple." Mallory said.

"It wasn't. There was a lot of blood, sweat, tears, injuries, and deaths. Even though I'm only 28, I've seen and felt enough to be 58." I swallowed hard to push down my emotions before finally picking my head up to look at Mallory. My military mask slipped over my face as I tried to keep my emotions in check but I could see the moment Mallory noticed by her expression. Her warm eyes turned concerned and she just picked my hands up and held them tightly in hers.

"None of that matters right now. Right now you're home, safe, in one piece and alive." Mallory said her eyes staring to shine with tears.

"Only for the next few days." I answered.

"What do you mean?" She asked and I knew my next sentence was about to shatter the little bit of peace we managed to just find.

"I'm going back. I'm only here in South Carolina for another few days before I go back to Fort Benning to brief my team and we fly out for Germany to finish our deployment on Monday." I said barely able to get through the sentence.

"No, no, no, I just got you back, you can't leave again." Mallory said as the first tear fell.

"I don't have a choice. Like I told you at the wake, we were in the middle of our deployment when I got the phone call about my dad. The only reason why I'm home right now is because of how high up Dad was in the army. I was going to ask to finish my tour stateside but I can't because my team is being called upon." I said not holding anything back even though I know I was about to break Mallory's heart this time around.

"Okay, okay, so it's only going to be for another few months, till the end of your tour, then you'll be back." Mallory said trying to pick herself back up but I know I couldn't let her have hope right now, not when I barely have any myself.

"My tour, the end, I don't know when it's going to end. My new orders, there isn't an end date to them with the state of the world right now." I said and tried to be strong for both of us even though all I want to do is throw up.

When the words finally registered with Mallory's brain, tears started pouring out of her eyes. I pulled my hands from hers and just pulled her into me. Mallory cried on my shoulder for a while. My own tears mixing in with hers for a while as I tried to console her. Finally they started to slow and I pulled Mallory off my shoulder to look at her. Her blue eyes are blood shot now as I wiped away the last of the tears that were falling.

"I didn't mean to make you cry, I just wanted to tell you." The unspoken, so if you were looking for me around town and didn't find me, was right on the tip of my tongue. Mallory picked up on my train of thought and nodded slowly pulling herself together.

"When is your last day here?" She asked.

"I don't have the details yet but either I'm flying home to Georgia or driving on Saturday." I said not really even wanting to think about my last days I have here.

"Can I see you again before you leave, if you have time?" Mallory asked, her eyes searching mine.

"Yea, I would like that." I said.

"What about Thursday?" Mallory asked.

"I'm actually coming back to see Shane Thursday morning, but after that I'm all yours." I said and offered her a smile.

"I'll just come to the shop again and we'll go from here." Mallory said. I nodded and gave her a bigger smile as our plans fell into place.

I completely pulled away from Mallory now. When I finally let go of her hand, Mallory looked a bit lost. I tried to not let it get to me as stood from the couch and took a deep breath. Before I could overthink it, I leaned down and pressed a kiss to Mallory's forehead before pulling away and starting to walk back to my truck.

"Wait!" Mallory said and I heard her jump up off the couch. She grabbed my wrist again blocked my path back up the alley. "Can I get your phone number, so if something comes up we can change the plans?"

I wanted to say that nothing was going to pull me away from our plans on Thursday but I just gave Mallory a smile instead.

"You already have it." I said simply.

"What?" Mallory asked confused.

"What phone number did you think I gave Logan? The pizzeria?" I said and watched as Mallory's eyes lightened. I didn't say anything else but leaned in and gave Mallory a kiss on the cheek before turning around to make my way back to the truck.

a/n: now that was an info dump. But now we are finally clearing the air between the two. song on the side is Waves That Rolled You Under by Young Summer. found this song and band while reading a Wanda Maximoff/Natasha Romanoff fanfic that I don't remember the name of right now but it was fantastic and the music used to accompany the writing was top-tier. so now you get this gem of a song from that fanfic. listen to the lyrics, if you guys haven't figured out yet, most of these songs I add to chapters have meaning.

I love how much you guys are commenting on this fic, makes me happy to see. keep them coming.

next chapter is a little break from Mallory and Dani, then chapter 13 will be a huge chapter for them again. so huge in fact I had to separate it into two chapters.

I actually have a nice cushion of chapters written, I'm starting 17 now, I don't know how long this book is going to last, I'm think maybe between 30-40 chapter overall, so we shall see.