Heartbeat // A Derek Hale Love Story (Teen Wolf)

You Might Be Right

"You had sex?" My chest twitched with an emotion I didn't want to acknowledge. I usually pretended it wasn't there, especially when I was with her. 

"No," Lillian said. "We were going to."

"Just trying to keep the colloquialisms straight," I joked, fighting to keep up my usual demeanour in this conversation about things I wish hadn't happened. "Why didn't you?"

"I didn't want to. I don't really like the idea of sleeping with someone unless I'm in a relationship with them. I was stupid to have done it with Will before but I did it because I had such a huge crush on him and assumed we'd never date."

"Oh," I murmured. "That's unfortunate." Not at all unfortunate, actually. 

"Yeah, but that wasn't the only reason. My arm's been really sore since last night. Will and I were making out when it started really hurting again and then I remembered what a terrible idea it was to keep going. And I thought about Derek. Then I kicked Will out and you showed up."

"Huh," I huffed, my brows furrowed. "How's your arm now?"

"It's fine. It hurt so much for that one moment half an hour ago and then it's been normal ever since then."

"Why?"

"I have no idea. I woke up at two AM with this shooting pain and it was sore ever since, with that final stabbing pain before it went away."

"Where in your arm?" I asked. I was probably overthinking things. My lips parted slightly as she pointed to her left forearm.

"What?" she prompted, seeing my expression.

"Nothing. Just trying to think of why that might be. That's pretty weird." I wondered if it was still a good idea to tell her how I spent my night.

"Yeah, and now I just miss Derek," she huffed. "I know you think he's awful and he killed my grandfather but I'm not so sure anymore. I feel like I should be more horrified at talking about this but I'm not."

"Fair enough," I sighed, brushing a hand over my head. The words 'You might be right' got caught in my throat.

"So what made your night so whack?" she inquired, tilting her head.

I still wasn't sure if I should tell her and I was expected to answer. "Uh... Well..."

She raised her brows expectantly and I knew any lie I'd come up with would have her skeptical.

"Don't freak out, but Derek got shot last night."

Her eyes widened and her entire body went stiff as a board, like it was completely honed to that message and what it meant. "What."

"He was shot by hunters," I said quickly, quickly realizing she was in the dark about all of that. At least, I didn't think Derek told her before they broke up. "He was fine but--"

"Hunters? Where?"

"At Eastern and Fifth."

"No," Lillian snapped. "Where on his body." Her questions were so demanding they didn't even sound like questions. Questions didn't have to be answered but these... they did.

"His forearm."

"Which arm."

"Left."

Her expression changed ever-so-slightly to something like perplexity for a second and faded. I was sure we were considering the same thing, given what happened to her in the past twenty-four hours. What that meant. I had no answer for her. I decided to just tell her the rest of the story.

"He would've been fine immediately, what with all the wolfy healing juice but it was a bullet laced with wolfsbane. He showed up at school looking like hell and demanded we help him. I didn't want to but he kind of forced us. Made sense, he was desperate. So I drove him to the vet clinic and we waited for Scott to find the same bullet in the hunter's house.

"He was getting worse and worse and said that if the infection reached his heart he would die. He told me if Scott didn't find the bullet in time I would have to cut off his arm. I said 'Hell no,' and he said 'Hell yes.' We argued for a while but it didn't matter because Scott found it. Derek used the wolfsbane in that bullet to heal himself and now he's fine. But he almost died."

Lillian stared at me for a little while. I wasn't sure she would say anything. Maybe I said too much.

"I have so many questions right now, but really all I need to know is he's okay?"

My heart twinged as she said it. "Yeah. He's fine."

"Alright, good."

"It would've been good if you'd been there. I'm not good with blood."

"Do you think he even cares that we broke up?" Lillian interjected, her mind obviously elsewhere. "He hasn't tried to call or talk to me or anything."

"I mean, you did snarl 'Stay the hell away from me' when you broke up," I said as gently as I could.

"If he really cared I don't think he would let that stop him, especially if he wanted to set the record straight."

I didn't really want to encourage her to get back together with him but I was inclined to agree. There must have been some other reason Derek hadn't tried to talk to her. He'd been very clear about me not calling her when I asked earlier but his words didn't match his eyes.

I shrugged. "You know him better than I do."

Lillian scoffed. "I used to."

A/N: Thanks for reading everyone! I hope you all had good weekends! I'm having a blast writing this and I hope you all like reading it!

We're coming up to one of my favourite plot archs of this book! Anyone have any ideas? 

Thank you for your support! Let me know what you thought of the chapter!

Cheers,

- TAAF_