her. // dacre montgomery

7.

Dacre spends about fifteen minutes in the shower, just scrubbing himself raw. It had been about two weeks since his night out with Jack. His mind was still stuck on his most recent drunken excursion with Shay's sister, and it was driving him crazy.

Apart of him was still pissed that Shay never mentioned having a sister in their conversations, but he ultimately knew it was his fuck up and that was something he couldn't blame her for.

It technically wasn't cheating, he kept telling himself. At the time they had only been together for just shy of two weeks. Their relationship was nothing yet. It didn't matter. But he couldn't help but feeling like shit every time he looked at Shay.

So tried smothering himself with her, almost tripling their amount of time together in hopes that it would drown out his thoughts, but it was only seeming to make things worse for him. He couldn't touch her, and looking at her made him sick. He had contemplated for days on telling Shay, he really did, but he couldn't help but think that she would undoubtedly leave him. Screwing up two weeks into a relationship wasn't a good look for anyone. Maybe he was being selfish, but who could blame him. Things were looking up for the first time in a long time, why would he not want to keep it that way as long as he could?

Shay didn't seem to notice his declining behaviors, but Dacre was definitely going through it. He had bitten his fingernails down to the bed, he was exhausted twenty-four seven, and he was extremely paranoid. He kept waiting on the day where Shay wouldn't come back to him, but it never happened. So every day he counted as a small victory, but he couldn't say he was working hard for it.

Shay had started staying nights at the Montgomery house. They were sleeping in the same bed--sometimes David included--and they left at the same time to go to work. So in all actuality, things were good on the outside. He must have been playing a damn good role because as far as he could tell Shay was happy as ever, and she didn't seem suspicious about him. She had also been taking care of David since the accident, making sure he was taking his meds, and giving him baths. Dacre insisted that he that he would take care of it, but every time he tried to intervene, Shay would give him "that look" and he would back off.

He could see that Shay and David were bonding well, and as much as it made him happy, he hated the fact that he never seemed to be there when it was happening. Dacre had added her as one of David's primary guardians at school and yeah it might have been a little too soon, but he didn't hesitate to remove Jennifer and he felt odd about having a void space. Plus by then, David had started to flock to her. He called her 'Chay' because he couldn't pronounce the 'Sh' correctly in her name. Shay thought it was the cutest thing ever when she told them one night while they were watching the news, that she changed her name in Dacre's phone.

She was doing everything so right. And he felt terrible.

To add onto his internal suffering, David was acting out. The doctor informed him that it was because of his head injury and his meds, but Dacre was growing tired of it. Shay tried to shield David from most of his scoldings or time outs by distracting Dacre, which for the most part worked, but other times just provoked to keep acting poorly. He almost canceled their Thanksgiving today trip because of it, but Shay assured him that it would be good for all of them. Plus David would behave better with Shay around.

So once he finished showering and managed to get he and David dressed, they loaded the RV, and were on the way to Shay's apartment. She lived en route to the camping site, so it didn't make sense for her to come all the way to his house.

Once Shay was in, they made their way towards the campsite. David filled the silence with his singing, asking Shay questions about tents, and his frequent "are we there yet" questions. Dacre was thankful though, because without it he didn't think he could maintain an hour long conversation with Shay without combusting. They eventually made it, Dacre pulling into their rented space and beginning to set up camp. David ran around in anticipation. Dacre told him off several times to stop: he was going to end up hurting himself. Of course with his behavioral patterns recently, he knew he wasn't going to listen, and Dacre ended up putting him in time out inside of the RV.