Embry's POV

Silence.

That was what I heard as I drove Cathryn home from Jacob and Quil's. What I felt. That almost never happened. Not unless something very bad was going on. For Cat and me, comfortable silences justdidn't exist. We were either listening to the radio, the volume so loud that I feared for our eardrums, or talking so fast in so many words that we stumbled over each other in effort to get them out.

And it wasn't my imagination. Jacob and Quil and Renessmee, who'd been there, too, had noticed. She didn't speak hardly the whole time. That in itself wasn't entirely unusual, as Cathryn didn't talk too much with people except for me. She didn't mean too, she just got lost in her own little world where nothing existed but music and dancing and pretty colors. She had the art of daydreaming down to a science.

But this was different, and we all felt it. She wasn't off in some parallel universe. She was much too alert for that. She jumped at small noises. When she thought I wasn't looking, her eyes followed my every move. Of course she didn't know that I was always looking. But when she did know I was looking, she'd avoid my gaze like the black plague. And she was always touching me. Leaning on my shoulder or sitting in my lap or tracing the veins in my wrist, the lines on my hand. But she never kissed me.

It had gotten to the point where Nessie pulled me aside and asked me if something had happened to her. And I had to reply that I didn't know, which may as well have been German. When it came to Cathryn, I always knew. No exceptions. Jake and Quil didn't bother. They knew from my expression that I was just as ignorant as they were. Her mood, whatever it was, settled over us like a fog, taking all of us to the dark depression she was in. So I'd left with her. There was no point in hanging out with people if it was going to be awkward and miserable the whole time.

But now it was so much worse. I was alone with her in a car, left to soak up her indignance by myself. I finally understood what she meant when she complained about the radio not being on. She was always trying to explain it to me. Quiet was actually the loudest thing out there.I didn't turn anything on, though. I wanted her to start talking, to tell me about what had happened and why she was acting like this. She usually told me everything, sometimes more than what I wanted to know. Because she knew I was the only one she could trust not to judge, not to tell, not to feel anything but what she felt. I kept waiting for her to let me fix it.

But she never did.

Cathryn's POV

In romance novels, when the girls talk about the guys they end up with, they always talk about the way it feels when they touch him. They feel shaky, like the way they feel for them is so strong that they can't even handle it. And it scares them, it makes them uncomfortable, but its so wonderful, so addictive, that they could never go back to their life without him. Like his very presence made the world around them just fall to pieces, but his touch rebuilt a new one, a better one.

I had recently decided that that wasn't the way at all that I felt when I was with Embry. I mean, I'd probably known since forever, but I'd only just made the conscious realization.

As you probably know by now, I'm not the most put together person in the world. I forget things, I lose things, I accidentally destroy things. I forget to listen, forget to perform, forget to consider. It was too easy for me to retreat inside myself, to become totally oblivious to the world around me. And I could never stop. So every few months, what would end up happening was everything I'd recklessly ignored would catch up to me, and I'd be forced back into reality to find that I had so much to do, so much to make up. Too much, and almost no time. I wasn't wonder woman. The very prospect of accomplishing what needed to be done terrified me.

But when I touched Embry, all that went away. If I needed something braught to me, I could call him and I knew he would bring it. If I couldn't do something, I'd get him to. If I said the wrong thing to the wrong person and some one was mad, it was never Embry. Occasionally something happened that was more than that and I was in dangerously close vicinity of getting my face pounded in. But Embry beat them to it every time.

He was the ultimate safety net. Nothing could touch me when I was with him, nothing bad could ever happen. Like a little child in the arms of a mother, there was nothing he couldn't save me from. And believe me, that was no blind faith. I had pushed the limits. Anything you could do for a person Embry had done for me without thinking twice. In his arms my world, which was usually spinning out of control, was completely still.

Now. That was great and all, but the downside of having some one like that was you got to feeling like that protection was real. And it wasn't. It was a feeling, an idea. When Derek had come to me and told me what I was to do, I hadn't been able to get to see Embry fast enough. And when I had he had more than lived up to my expectations. I felt lazy, almost lethargic with the walls he built around me. I still knew what I had to do, but with him there it had seemed so much easier.

But that was over. I was in my room, all alone, and it was all I could do to keep myself upright from the weight of what I was feeling. Don't ask me what it was. I couldn't tell you. I just knew that I'd never in my life felt that bad. My father dying was like a field of clovers in comparison. Without even meaning to, I crumbled to the ground, my body rocking from the sobs that had come on too quickly for me to see coming. I'd never wanted his heat, his beautiful eyes that I'd always taken for granted more than I did at that moment. I never knew it was possible to feel the kind of pain that I felt.

Maybe Embry was going to be hurt. Maybe he'd live the rest of his life wishing for me and crying himself to sleep over me and seeing my face behind his eyelids whenever his closed those brown orbs. But at least he'd be alive. I wouldn't be. I could feel myself leaving, retreating into lala land for the last time, too weary and frightened to ever come back out.

Sniff sniff. So sad.

And kind of cheesy now that I reread it. But you've got to take into consideration the fact that these are SOIULMATES we are talking about. I mean, what is their relationship if not a little corny from time to time?

Besides. Mostly its sad.