A/N: -blush- As this is my first story I'm still learning about certain things like doing layout and summaries and that anonymous reviews are blocked by default. So my humblest apologies to Meghan and anyone else that was unintentionally deflected. And I appreciate your patience With a K. As razzle noticed, I put a lot of effort into this; I try to be meticulous, about my research especially, and it can be time consuming. Even when school and life don't intrude.

I sighed and shifted in my chair for what may have been the second or the three hundred sixty second time that day. I don't even know what day it is. Moreover, I didn't care, either what day it was or the fact I didn't know. Logically I know this is quite odd but it's a fleeting thought for it is also inconsequential.

Nothing matters.

To the left of me, father nudged Jasper with his knee while he attempted to turn inconspicuously. I wasn't even curious about what was going on around me but then I felt warmth creeping in, the frosty detachment thawed from my thoughts. It was like coming back into my body. As I warmed my mind immediately landed on Jake.

Daddy hissed under his breath and exchanged a look with Auntie Alice. Then everything zoned back out into nothingness and I no longer cared to follow my train of thought. Father rose abruptly, chair squeaking back in an unusually unrefined motion for him. I raised my head to follow his pacing. His gait was erratic and he was wringing his hands in his hair, careful not to look at me.

I knew he was upset but I just didn't care. I watched detachedly, completely dissociated like it was an over the shoulder shot in a made for TV movie. A bad one at that. I turned back to the table.

It occurred to me that this might be what it was like to be completely objective. I knew how rare an opportunity this was if it was true. Unfortunately I just couldn't bring myself to care about that either. At least not experientially, within me somewhere I cared.

I knew because my numbness was incomplete; like my hands after a snowball fight, no fine sensation but still able to feel pressure. Deep down in the body I floated above there was something simmering like a dormant volcano.

That can't be good. I shrug mentally.

Mother comes in and tells father it's time to go. It's Charlie Night and it appears that I won't be attending this evening. She gives me a stricken desperate look and then turns, curling in on herself, and leaves just as quickly. Father shoots Jasper a pleading look in passing as he hurries after her.

Jasper shifts closer with a half smile and takes my hand. He doesn't say anything and neither do I. I give no gesture of reciprocity, not even eye contact.

But then my body shifts upright, the slumped musculature tensing slightly like trying to rise from a coma. I could feel it now, distantly but alive.

I turned to Uncle Jass for an explanation. He didn't say anything but his eyes pleaded for forgiveness. My brows pulled together quizzically and his smile saddened.

"Nessie darling," Auntie Rosie called from above.

Then everything retracted again.

I stood and left without looking at either Alice or Jasper and met Emmet going up the stairs when he blocked my passage. He gave me an evil grin and then grabbed me around the shoulders with one arm and proceeded to grind his free fist in a twisting movement on top of my head, frazzling my curls into tangles.

I didn't lift a hand to stop him, dangling limply off his arm. He gave a sound of annoyance and released me so I could pass.

Rosalie was at her vanity brushing her hair and we catch eyes in the mirror. She turns and tsks at me.

"Come here," she points at the spot beside her.

I oblige and kneel next to her chair, holding onto a leg of it to brace myself when she begins working on my ruined tresses. She went on for a while, not stopping until every miniscule bit was unkinked, admonishing me the entire time.

"Honestly, Nessie, the damn dog is fine."

"You shouldn't be so worked up over that mongrel anyway."

"What on earth did you do to your hair?"

"We should be concentrating on your party instead."

I gave no responses nor did she pause for any.

When she was satisfied she took my elbow and guided me up and to the closet. She forgot about me there and began rifling through it making random noises. After a few minutes Alice glided in and gave Rosalie a disgusted look before taking me by the hand and leading me back downstairs to Jasper.

The movement made my stomach gurgle when we reached the kitchen and she sat me beside Jasper. There was a kinesic exchange between them before she pulled out her cell and ordered some Penang chicken with jasmine rice.

Father and Mother still hadn't returned by the time Carlisle and Esme came home. For some reason she had spent the day at the hospital with him. They both smiled and hugged me in greeting. I returned it pathetically with one droopy arm.

"How are you feeling?" Dr. Cullen spoke gently as he examined me; feeling my forehead and checking my eyes.

"Tired," I replied though my initial impulse was to say "not at all."

"She had some Thai food a little while ago," Alice informed him concerned, "Not much though."

"Do you want anything, sweetie?" Esme bent over me, rubbing my right shoulder with one hand and my left cheek with the other. "Anything at all?"

"I want to sleep," I sighed.

"You can -"

"In my own bed," I cut Alice off. "Please," I added pleadingly, "I just want today to be over." And I very much did, it had stretched on forever.

Jasper watched her intently but she held eyes with me.

"Alright," she agreed reluctantly, "let me get a couple things." Grabbing Jasper and an oversize clutch, she hooked arms with me and we left.

She smiled softly when she tucked me in, placing a delicate kiss on my forehead while Jasper looked on from the empty doorjamb. They wished me goodnight and in the quiet of the cottage I could hear them when they turned on the television down the hall. Neither of them watched much of it so they must be doing it to mask their conversation. They needn't have bothered, I wasn't interested in their discussion or anything else for that matter.

Sometime later I turned in my sleep and reality came crashing in as I inhaled Jake's scent from the pillow. I was engulfed in the memory of the previous evening. No longer distant and blurry, I felt every nuance with sharp clarity, remembered every moment like I was reliving it, like I had awakened to him instead of the evidence of his past presence.

As his features faded into view, I thanked my subconscious for giving me what I could only have in my dreams. Languidly I hooked my arms around his neck, drawing his warmth down to mingle with mine. It was so cozy and comforting that I couldn't help but sigh in contentment and lull back to sleep.

My eyes slipped shut and I marveled at the texture of his raven strands as I ran my hand through it reverently. His hair was thick but silky, every inch rich with sensation.

Then he spoke. It wasn't until I felt his voice rumbling through him and into my core that awareness started seeping in and I realized that it was his relaxed weight on top of me that was responsible for why I felt like I was sinking into the mattress. It was because I was.

He was mumbling thickly and I couldn't really make out the words, just a couple here and there. When he turned his head to look at me I was hit with a wave of what smelled like antiseptic and rotten fruit.

That was when I came fully awake; to the knowledge that he was drunk. And that he was sprawled on top of me in my bed.

The novelty of his intoxication was just enough to stave off the panicked palpitations triggered by the reality of the situation, of his closeness. But only barely, my overly tuned nerve endings kept throwing me a constant array of sensation, detailing every molecule of his form pressed against mine. The intimacy of his physique was making my breath short and my body flame.

Desperately I tried to reel in my treacherous body enough to try and process what he was saying. But even once I was able to focus enough on his words to bring intelligibility to them he was still indecipherable.

Even aside from the slight slurring, he wasn't making any sense though he seemed to be desperately trying to communicate something to me, staring deep into my eyes. But he was just speaking random sentences that had no connection to each other or any discernible continuity.

"Didn't mean it like that. Because I would. Anything. Just like Embry."

I grasped at that, maybe he finally wanted to talk about his feelings; maybe the alcohol had opened him up. "What about Embry?" I coax gently.

"The same thing," he said sloppily but with an intense sincerity that belied his state. "I found someone more important than anything else. Then the pack, then my family, then my soul itself," he whispered softly laying his head down next to my cheek.

Oh dear god. He imprinted. I encouraged him to go out with Quil and he imprinted on some random bar skank.

Suddenly it felt like his weight was crushing me and all the air decompressed from my lungs.

I felt as if I was the impaired one, I couldn't keep my thoughts coherent and my mind devolved into a repetitive mantra of horror and denial. No no no nononono.

He was still talking; he nudged his head under my chin and was apologizing, over and over, for making me cry.

I lifted my hand from his hair and felt my face, it was still dry but that would change the second that the shock faded. If I didn't do something soon to release myself from the sweet torture of his embrace then I was going to start bawling all over him. And worse yet, he knew it.

Now I was the one that needed space. I wanted privacy to grieve for my heart for this was surely the end of it. And yet I couldn't bring myself to flee, to move him. This could very well be the last time I ever saw him and almost certainly would be the very last time we touched like this.

As much as I wanted to hide in some remote corner and drown in self pity, an even bigger part of me demanded that I milk this for all that I could. To hold him physically to me for as long as possible to create a memory complete enough to hold mentally for the rest of what was going to be an otherwise bleak and barren eternity without him.

Because I knew in that instant, that beyond all my denial, Jacob was the love of my life. And I had lost him before I ever had him. I never even had a chance.

The knowledge that I was going to have an utter and total breakdown the second he left certainly didn't help my wildly vacillating mind. I was torn between fleeing for solitary solace and trying to cling to him forever, to go into complete denial and refuse to ever let him go.

It was like being rent apart as I considered each option again and again, idly petting his broad rippling back as I agonized in indecision. I hadn't realized I was doing it until he made a sound of lazy contentment. But when his arms tightened around me things became startlingly clear.

Jacob Black was in my bed at 3 am of what could very well be our last ever night together. He was drunk and compliant and in my arms. And he was reveling in my touch.

I adjusted my stroking hand so that just the tips of my fingers were trailing over the dorsal muscles lax with inebriation, tracing arabesques at a suggestive pace. He sighed and snuggled his face against my throat, lips brushing the soft skin there as his breathing deepened.

Turning my head, I began placing cautious kisses on his temple and then, when he didn't stop me, down the side of his forehead. His respiratory rate picked up as my lips crossed his brow and dipped to his chiseled cheekbone.

His eyes were open now, tracking my progress with rapt attention from beneath heavy lids. But there was a complexity to the sheen of his eyes that I couldn't even begin to process other than how it made my insides boil.

If I wasn't so secure in the knowledge of how intoxicated he was and that this was my first, last, and only chance, then I would have wilted under such a gaze and feigned contrition.

Instead I palmed the back of his head, twining my fingers in his hair, and showed him just how I felt. Not with pictures or words, just my complete love and devotion exactly as I felt it in that moment flush against him.

"Nessie," he whispered.

There was no way I was going to let him stop me now. I pressed my mouth to his softly, pecking my way slowly across his pliant lower lip. It tensed beneath mine when my eyes drifted shut but I had already put it all on the line, I had to let it ride.

If that other girl was going to have the rest of his life then I was taking tonight, I would not be denied. I didn't have anything left to lose, certainly nothing more important than him.

Tentatively I started nibbling his lip lightly, pulling it gently to loosen it back up. When it quivered I sucked it into my mouth; working it like ice cream that's too cold to bite, trying to melt his resistance.

The rest of his body went rigid and his eyes screwed shut. I fretted that he was going to push me off but I rejoiced internally when he didn't pull away. Emboldened I added my tongue to my oral caresses as my hands clutched and kneaded his shoulders and neck.

With a sound between a groan and a growl he succumbed to my ministrations. His arms clenched me like a boa constrictor and he began kissing back in earnest.

I didn't care that I could taste the alcohol, his mouth was an epiphany. Words like passion and lust suddenly had real meaning for me, no longer immobile words in dusty books, they danced and raged through my essence as if they owned it. The air was so thick with him that I felt like I was drinking it; it tasted like the muskiness of his cologne but concentrated. It made feel like I was as drunk as he was.

He slows after a few minutes, tugging my mouth softly with his, lipping it and releasing with excruciating slowness. He ignores my attempts to pull him back in, lapping at me and fondling my face with meticulous care until I'm squirming urgently beneath him. As my movements grow increasingly desperate, I sense his control falter. I press myself to him experimentally and his mouth pauses. I still but he stays tense so I try it again, rubbing slowly against the length of him.

He growled so deeply that it might have been a roar. There's a rush of wind and clicking sounds as he tears his shirt off and the buttons scatter across the hardwood floor. And then his lips were everywhere. Never before had our age gap been so apparent. I had just been playing at this apparently, and this was now the real thing.

I just had time to run my hands up the ridged perfection of his abdomen and pecs before he rolled us so that I was straddling him. Instantly I was self conscious sitting there astride him with my palms braced on his sculpted chest, as much as I wanted this, as much as I was enjoying it, I had no idea what to do.

My veins flooded with nervousness and I cast frantically for some instruction from my muddled mind.

Jake grabbed my hips firmly, stroking his large thumbs over the flat plane of the front of my pelvis. I felt a hot pulse between us and my belly burned with an ancient instinct. My body smoldered with a newfound feral knowledge and I reached for him in earnest.

That's when the bedroom door sailed across the room and smashed to splinters against the opposite wall, right to the side of the headboard.

Livid did not come close to describing the look on daddy's face. His eyes were black holes, lightless funnels of crushing death. I'd never seen anything like that before in my whole short life. My brain froze on a verse of Dante's describing the demons of the eighth circle.

I had never once been scared of any of my family but in that horrible moment I feared my father. I was petrified. And my father was absolutely apoplectic with rage; eyes cutting like obsidian daggers, mouth streaming with venom that flecked in time to his snarls.

Drunk as he was, Jake was still better equipped to deal with the situation than I. He tucked me beneath him and then jumped from the bed. This garnered father's undivided attention and he tracked Jake like prey.

With just the slightest of glances to me, Jake leapt through the window a man and landed outside a wolf. Sprinting on impact, he had disappeared into the woods before father landed behind him. But father was right on his tail without a single word to me.

I sprang from my bed but father had been swallowed by the night as well. As I dashed to the dresser for clothes unquestionably intent on pursuit, grandma and Auntie Alice soared in, eyes fearful.

They saw my panic and convened on me as one, hugging and comforting me between them. I tried to tell them that we needed to help Jake, that we had to stop father, but as soon as I opened my mouth I began sobbing uncontrollably. I was only dimly aware that this upset them as I grabbed grandma Esme's chin and showed her father's face coupled with Jake's subsequent flight, father right on his heels.

She assured me that my mother and my uncles had spotted them crossing the yard and were already hot on their trail, that they wouldn't let daddy do anything rash. But I caught her giving Auntie a look of deep concern over my head.

Jake was in danger and it was all my fault. With that condemnation I dissolved into hysterics.

Oh god, Jake. What had I done?

There was a thick filter of inattention over my recollections of the day but I distinctly remembered Aunt Rosie saying he was fine. As comforting as it was to know that, I was still horrified about the damage I had done to our friendship. I had taken advantage of him in a weakened state for selfish inexcusable reasons.

No wonder he hadn't been to see me today; he was probably with his girlfriend. It was the first full day I had ever gone without seeing him.

From the day I was born, Jake was there. This was something I never questioned; it would have made more sense for me to wonder why the sun rose in the mornings. Not one single day did I go to bed without having seen him, talked with him.

Even when he was still in school all day and performing all night pack duties, he would go without sleep to spend what little free time he had with me. I think he would have happily given up school as well, if I hadn't made it clear I wanted him to graduate. Looking back, I think I may have insisted because I couldn't go to grade school, I wanted him to have the full experience so I could have it vicariously.

And now it was over, this day probably just the first of many that he would spend with her instead. The thought hit me with such an earth rocking intensity that I felt woozy.

I gritted my teeth and ripped my mind from it. This had to be what was going on, why Uncle Jass was dogging me like my own personal bottle of vampire Prozac. Why daddy was- Oh!

I bury my head in mortification feeling more than a little ill. No wonder daddy couldn't stand to look at me, I'm the slut. I've never felt so ashamed, especially because I can't bring myself to regret it.

That memory of Jake was the most precious thing I owned now. I need it more than I've ever needed anything else beside Jake himself; more than family, more than blood.

I got up as quietly as possible, tiptoed to the doorway and listened intently but heard nothing. They must have left once I was asleep.

Impulsively I grab a spare notebook and write myself a letter, pleading for me to not forget again, to use my forced neutrality to my advantage and find a way to manage this crisis. Most importantly, to remind myself how much I really did care underneath it all and to not lose sight of that. There was a sense of urgency to my frenzy, like manic hypergraphia, I felt time was short.

When I had written everything I could, I knelt to tuck it under the bed and came across Jake's ruined shirt. It reeked of his cologne and I wrapped it around the notebook before stuffing it under the mattress.

I lay back down and tried to formulate my next step but my mind kept veering between the vivid ecstasy of Jake's touch and the crushing finality of his words; his imprinting, his real one. I had known this would happen one day. I knew when I overheard Rosie talking to mother about how he acted on the day of my birth; how he went from mourning mother to fussing over me instantaneously.

If he could fall out of love with someone as perfect as mother than what was his strange little adoptee to expect when the time came?

I felt so light-headed from the pressure in my brain that the hot release of tears was welcome. Intent on indulging it while I could, I bawled until my hiccupping dissolved into the heavy exhalations of sleep.

Endnote: That blush makes even more sense now, doesn't it.

I really did not mean for the bedroom scene to get as far as it did. It was supposed to be just a teaser and then it kinda got away from me somehow.

That was my first time with anything like that and I'm very nervous about posting it. I'm worried that I might have overstepped my T rating. If this is the case please please please do not report me, just let me know and I will edit it down.