Hey everybody! So here is another one of my Rylor stories. I have been addicted to the fourth season of The OC for the past week and this idea just came to me. It does end happily so don't kill me for this chapter. I hope you all like it.

Disclaimer: I do not own The OC. If I did it would still be on the air.

Taylor walked into her room and looked around. It wasn't even her room. It was Mr. Robert's guest room and he probably didn't even know she was staying in it. She walked over to her bed and wiped away a stray tear and wished she was the type of girl to just lay down and cry. But she'd never been that girl.

In fact, these past months she'd been acting like somebody completely different. Hell, the past year she'd become a complete stranger. She looked in the mirror and she didn't even recognize herself anymore.

She'd always been Miss Independent, Miss Go-Getter. She never let somebody do something she could do herself. It came from being raised by a Drill Sergeant for a mother. Taylor Townsend knew exactly what she wanted out of life and how to get it. Or at least she always thought she had.

But then she'd graduated, and everything she thought she knew turned out to be different somehow. So she'd taken a year off of school to go abroad and see the world a bit before settling on a college. Then she met Henri-Michel and like an idiot, had fallen in love the moment he'd told her he loved her.

She'd always known she had issues with that word. Love. It was basically a four letter word with one meaning, "a profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person." But she'd never experienced it. She'd been searching for it all her life and had assumed she'd found it with Henri-Michel but the moment she had to actually be his wife, she fled. She hopped the first plane out of there and came back to the only place she knew, Newport Beach.

Newport Beach had been her home since she was a little girl. She knew almost everybody and vice versa. She was comfortable here, it was her safety net. When she'd first come back she'd been scared because she knew she couldn't go to her actual home. Victoria Townsend wasn't about to let her newfound freedom go and having Taylor back in her life on a permanent basis wouldn't have been welcome. Taylor knew she rarely told guys she was dating that she had a daughter. She was usually introduced as her sister. It had always been that way.

So she'd hidden out and had done a good job until Summer had spotted her that fateful day. She always looked back on that day and wondered if maybe she had been sitting at a different table if things would have turned out differently. Maybe she wouldn't have fallen in love with Ryan Atwood.

She'd always noticed him. Even in high school when he couldn't stand the sight of her, mainly because she worked hard to keep his soul mate out of Harbor, she'd always thought he was cute. But she'd known he was Marissa's, he had been since the Cohen's had taken him in.

But then she spent Thanksgiving with him and saw another side of him. The side that made her turn to him when Henri-Michel wouldn't give her the divorce without proof of her cheating on him. She'd just been hoping for a signature but Ryan had always been the type to ad-lib, she'd remembered that about him. That had started her obsession.

The whole sleep therapist thing was her biggest embarrassment or it could be the ground hog suit. She'd made a fool of herself in front of him over and over but he'd kept coming back to her. She'd thought they had progressed into something special after the whole Vegas fiasco and then had taken another couple steps forward when his father had shown up. But she'd been wrong. If their relationship was a baseball game they hadn't even left the dugout yet.

Taylor looked around one last time before striding quickly over to her closet where she pulled out her suitcase. She had to get out of here. She couldn't stand the thought of still being here when Julie, Kaitlyn, and Summer returned from her one and only birthday party. She'd had enough pitying looks to last a lifetime.

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Ryan sat on the bench watching Julie and Kaitlyn walk away from him. "If you don't tell Taylor you love her, you're an idiot." He couldn't get that thought out of his head. Kaitlyn may be young but she still had the tendency of speaking the truth.

The thought of being in love with Taylor scared the hell out of him, and it had nothing at all to do with her. He wasn't good at love. His father, his mother, his brother and then of course…Marissa.

When it came right down to it, everything came back to Marissa. He'd fell in love with her the moment he'd seen her standing at the end of her driveway, hair blowing in the wind. She'd been gorgeous and everything he'd always wanted but known he couldn't have. But then, somehow, he'd gotten the girl.

Marissa had been everything he wanted and everything he didn't need. His life had been complicated enough without adding another person who constantly needed saving into the mix. But he'd been helpless when it came to her. She just had to look at him and he'd fall all over himself fixing her world for her. Until, ultimately like he'd always known, there would come a time when he couldn't save her anymore.

Everyone had told him it wasn't his fault and that he had to move on and let her go. But it didn't change things. He'd appointed himself as her protector, the guy who would never let her down. He couldn't just let go of the fact that he'd failed. He'd been content to live in the darkness and just go through the motions of living. Until Taylor.

Taylor Townsend was like a hurricane. She would blow into your life and destroy everything you ever thought was right. But she did it in such a way that you'd just step back and let her. She was always good for a laugh and there was never a dull moment when she was around. Everybody had thought they were good for each other. But Ryan had fought his feelings every step of the way.

But it didn't matter how much he fought it…he loved her. He couldn't pinpoint the exact moment that he'd started falling for her. Somewhere between their first real kiss or the ground hog costume. But he'd known he was in love the night she'd tried to get him drunk. It was such a Taylor move. Of course it backfired and she'd ended up drunk but she'd been impossible to resist that night.

So he'd told her. It had been the right moment and he'd known it was true. But then she had to go and be Taylor and jump ten steps ahead of him and mention how she'd already applied to Berkley and that they could now go together. He'd just started getting comfortable with the idea of being in love with somebody that wasn't Marissa.

But of course he hadn't said anything. He just kept quiet and went on like he wasn't thinking desperately of a way to slow things down. Then he'd thought of the dictionary. He'd known it was a mistake the moment he'd handed it to her. It was her first birthday party and he was sure she'd told everybody that they were in love and going to college together. A guy in love just doesn't buy his girlfriend a dictionary for her birthday. He'd embarrassed her…humiliated her. He shouldn't have been surprised that she'd run out on her own birthday. But he felt like a complete jackass for making her cry.

Taylor Townsend didn't cry. He didn't think he'd ever seen her cry. He'd known her for years and he'd never seen her shed a tear. She always had a smile on her face, forced or not. But he'd made her cry. Kaitlyn was right, he was an idiot.

Ryan stood up and hurried towards his car. He had to get to Taylor and apologize for ruining her birthday. But he could only think of one thing that might save his ass. Taylor's real birthday present.

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Taylor zipped the suitcase shut and turned off the TV. She'd put her favorite movie on while she packed and had even tried phoning her psychic…the line had been busy. That couldn't have been a good omen.

"What are you doing?" Ryan asked standing in the doorway. He was breathing heavily having run up the stairs at warp speed.

"Packing," Taylor said barely looking at him.

"Why?" Ryan asked shocked.

"I need to get away," Taylor said lifting the suitcase off her bed. She looked at him fully for the first time since he'd gotten there. "I need…some space."

"Taylor," Ryan said but he was at a loss of words. He'd never thought that she would leave. Taylor just didn't give up like this. It wasn't like her.

"Ryan," Taylor said in a tone of voice that made him wince.

Ryan looked around the room, noting that there wasn't one personal thing of Taylor's left. She wasn't just taking a vacation. It looked like she might not even be coming back. "Where are you going?"

"I don't know…" Taylor answered honestly. She was still trying to figure that out. She only knew she had to get away.

"I'm sorry," Ryan said but was cut off by a very annoyed Taylor.

"You're always sorry," she shot back. Taylor raised a hand when he opened his mouth to say something. "I'm sick of you being sorry Ryan. You've been sorry more times since we got together than Julie Cooper-Nichols has been in her entire life."

Ryan stared at her and knew she was right. "I know that this…relationship hasn't gone exactly the way you've planned."

"Oh my god," Taylor said staring at him. "You can't even say the word, can you?" She shook her head and forced him to move out of the way as she walked through the doorway.

"Taylor," Ryan said following her down the hallway and towards the stairs.

"Ryan," Taylor said again. She knew she was being difficult but she was sick of going easy on him. He'd broken her heart more times than she could count on one hand and she hadn't even affected his apparently.

"You can't leave like this," Ryan said taking the suitcase out of her hand so she had to stop. "We need to talk."

"About what Ryan?" Taylor asked crossing her arms over her chest. "About the fact that you hurt me tonight but hey, it must be like the twentieth time you've done that so that's nothing new. How 'bout the fact that you like to say things you don't mean but I should have known that too. I know, lets talk about the fact that I never meant anything to you except as a way to distract yourself from the fact you can't let go of Marissa."

"That's not true," Ryan said getting pissed off himself.

"It's not Ryan," Taylor said shaking her head at him. "You received a letter from her and you wanted nothing to do with me." When Ryan stared at her in surprise she laughed but there was nothing funny about it. "Didn't think I'd heard about that, did you? I live with Julie Cooper Ryan. Of course it came up. But I let it go, figuring you'd tell me eventually. But I was wrong." Taylor ripped the suitcase out of his hands and headed down the stairs before he could say anything.

"We need to talk about this," Ryan said finally chasing after her.

"No Ryan," Taylor said setting her suitcase down as she turned to face him one last time. "We really don't." She stared at him and she could feel the tears welling up for the second time. She definitely didn't want to cry in front of him. "It's over. We had a…well we had something and maybe we could have stood a chance if it had been years from now. But you aren't ready and I can't wait." She opened the door and picked the suitcase up and smiled sadly. "Goodbye Ryan."

Ryan stood in the front doorway watching as she hurried towards the waiting cab and climbed in after handing her suitcase to the driver. He wanted to chase after her and tell her all the things he'd been planning on saying and to giver her present but he couldn't. His feet were rooted to the floor. He could only stand there and watch as, quite possibly, the only girl in the world besides Marissa he could have loved rode away.