"LeeLee," he breathed, standing up.
She turned and started walking away.
"Wait – LeeLee!" he calls louder, starting to walk after her.
She clenches her hands into fists and starts walking faster, her shoulders tensing up.
"Leah, stop!" he shouts, starting to run, his hand outstretched towards her.
Finally, she stops and whirls around. "What? What could you possibly want with me?" she spits out venomously. "Can't you take a hint? I don't want to talk to you!"
He stops short. "LeeLee…" he whispers.
She steps closer. "Oh, and one more thing. My name is Leah. Leah Clearwater. Not LeeLee." She snarls the words at him.
He swallows. "Fine," he acquiesces. "Leah, please, just hear me out."
"Hear you out? What could you possibly have to say to me that your wife hasn't already said?"
That gives him pause. "What? Emily spoke to you?"
She nods. "Mhm, twice, in fact!" she says with sarcastic cheer. "And I just loved hearing about all these decisions that have apparently been made about my life, like how I'm getting back together with you, and ruining her life in the process!"
Sam holds his hands out placatingly. "Leah, please. I can explain. What Emily said – forget about it. It's mostly untrue anyway."
She raises a brow. "Mostly? Would you care to elaborate on that?"
He swallows. This is the moment – it's now or never. "Leah, please sit," he invites, taking her hand and trying to lead her over to a nearby lounge chair. She snatches her hand away from him, but goes to sit on the chair, perched lightly on it like she might take flight at any moment.
He sits down heavily next to her. Unsure of where to start, he tries to make small talk. "Do you remember what we used to do here?" he asks with a wry smile.
She immediately gets up and makes to go back to her room. He grabs onto her hand and won't let go. "Wait, Leah, I'm sorry. Please sit. I promise I'll explain."
She sits, but stares straight ahead, arms crossed over her chest. Every cell of her body radiates anger and discomfort. He rubs his hand over his face and sighs.
"It's true that I left Emily," he begins. "Well, technically, she left me, I think. She returned me her ring. But she didn't do it so I could be with you, of course. She did it because we both regret what we've done to you. And yes, I'll admit that when I heard you were coming back, a little part of me hoped that we could maybe get over our differences and start over."
He intends to continue, to explain more about the hole in his heart she'd left when she'd disappeared, but she stands up, in a rage.
"Get over our differences?!" she exclaims furiously. "Wow, what a neat, elegant way to sum up the way our relationship crashed and burned! 'Get over our differences'!" she says in a mocking, high-pitched tone, waving her hands about to show how ridiculous she thought his choice of words were. "Don't say it like that, Sam. Don't make it sound like we couldn't figure out where to live, or where to have the wedding, or what kind of fucking flowers to buy. Don't try to absolve yourself of blame, Sam. Our relationship ended because I caught you in flagrante delicto with my cousin, a woman who swore to me her whole life that she would be my best friend. That she would be there for me no matter what. Our relationship ended because not only was I not enough for you, I wasn't worth enough for you to tell me to my face before you went out there screwing some other woman. That is why our relationship ended, Sam.
"And I'm not interested in coming back to La Push. Why would I? Just to relive all the torture all of you put me through? Do you think it was easy, Sam, being able to read the mind of the man who left me? Who didn't care enough about me to fight some stupid biological urge that you think is destiny? You didn't even respect me enough to end it before you were in bed with my cousin. And then I had to learn all about how good she is to you, for you. How she can fucking cook, get the stupid grass stains out of your fucking shorts. Just non-stop broadcast from your mind every single time we shifted. Oh, and let's not forget about the icing on the shit cake, the fact that everyone I grew up with, people I called my friends all my life, considered me a bitter, sad bitch who had nothing to do but feel jealous about your perfect life. Like my feelings weren't valid and important. Like I should have accepted that I was just a pawn in some giant game of destiny. My life, my dreams and goals, all dispensable. Secondary to the almighty imprint.
"So no, Sam. I am not interested in getting back together with you, or coming back to La Push. For God's sake, Sam. It's been ten years since we broke up. We've been apart now longer than we ever were together. We're completely different people, Sam. For God's sake, you have children! Why do you keep clinging to the past? What are you going to tell them about how Daddy left Mommy for Aunt Leah? Do you realise how that will fuck with their minds?"
He picks up her hand and presses her palm to his chest, so she can feel his heartbeat. She tries to pull away, but he's still an Alpha, and she's just human now.
"Leah, the whole time you were gone there was a hole in my heart. I don't mean that in the metaphorical sense. I literally mean that I was in pain the whole time you were gone. I felt it, when you were leaving La Push that morning, four years ago, and the pain didn't subside until you came back."
He stands up, still holding her hand to his chest. He doesn't know if he will ever be able to let it go, now that she's in front of him, touching him. "I know that –" he almost chokes on the words he's about to say. "I was awful to you. We all were, but me especially. I never cared about your feelings as much as I should have. I never defended you to the others as I should have. I failed you, Leah. As a leader, as a friend, as a fiancé. And I am so –" he chokes on a sob. "So sorry, Leah. I swear. If there was any way for me to turn back the time, I never would have hurt you."
He lets her hand go, and it drops back to her side. "I think that as much as Emily was my imprint, you are my soul mate. And as long as I was in constant contact with you, that bond was satisfied. Even if I couldn't be with you, even if the bond was twisted and warped because of me. It was enough, for me to be around you."
Oh, God. Shocked at the news, Leah has to sit back down. "God, that's fucked up, Sam," she groans, grinding the heels of her palms into her eyes. "Do you realise what you're telling me? You wanted both me and Emily. How is that fair to either of us?"
He sits back down next to her, pulls on her wrists gently to tug her hands away from her face, so he can look her in the eyes. He knows this could well be the last time he ever gets to see her, and he's going to make sure it's enough to last a lifetime. He wishes he had a camera.
"I know it's not fair," he admits. "Especially not to you. God, I don't know why things happened the way that they did. It wasn't fair to either of you that I kept clinging to you both, especially you, Leah, given the circumstances." He can't quite bring himself to say 'because I proposed to you, then fucked your cousin and married her instead, but still wanted to keep you around even if it meant you couldn't move on and would be miserable for the rest of your life'.
"But Leah, I understand now. Seeing you back here after so many years – you look so good. Truly. I haven't seen you look this happy and free in ten years. The distance really has been good for you. And I can't take that away from you. So I'm not going to ask you to stay here with me. Because I love you, and I should have done this a long time ago. Like, maybe seven years ago. You know, when the Cullens left and everything kind of died down," he clarified, just in case she wasn't sure of the significance. "Leah, I'm setting you free. And I really do wish you the best. I hope you'll be happy enough for the both of us," he says with a sad smile.
"Sam…" Leah puts her hand on the back of his neck, then pulls him in and kisses him on the forehead. He closes his eyes and feels tears slide down his cheeks.
"Thank you for saying all that, Sam," Leah says. For a moment, it was like he was the Sam she'd known in her youth, the one she'd fallen in love with, had wanted to spend the rest of her life with. And she missed him, and for a moment it was so tempting to just say screw it to the rest of the world and come back to the life she could have had, but that was impossible now.
She rested her forehead against his. "I knew, Sam," she admits. "I knew that there was some part of you that still loved me. I could see inside your mind for six years, remember? But it wasn't enough." And he understands that, but that doesn't make it any less painful. He's not sure why fate saw fit to torment the both of them in this way, but he wishes he'd done more to fight it. There was a time in his life when he would have moved mountains to make Leah stop crying, and the idea that he ended up being the cause of most of her tears is heartbreaking to him.
"Sam, I loved you," she says, and her use of the past tense turns his heart to ice. Somehow, his lungs have stopped working. He wonders absently if this is how he will die. But she's not done speaking, and he tries his best to listen to her, even though everything seems to be falling apart around him.
"I know that some part of me will always be yours. But we really are different people now, Sam, and just because we fit together once upon a time doesn't mean that's the case now. I have a life, out in LA, and you have one here. It's not one you can just uproot, is it? You have children, Sam. You can't abandon them. You're not your father."
He nods, recognizing that she has a point even though it makes his heart break. Her fingers curl in the short hair at the nape of his neck, then she kisses him softly. "Will you let go of the past, Sam? Together with me?"
He kisses her back helplessly. This was more than he'd ever dreamed he would get. One last kiss to remember Leah, the woman he'd loved because she was strong, and fiery, and independent, and not because of some supernatural urge. His large hands come up to cradle her face, and he finds her cheeks wet with tears.
And Sam lets go.
