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The Flower Called Azalea

7. The Human Way

Jake POV

I found her standing on the beach, facing the water, away from me. I knew she could hear me, but I still tried to walk as quietly as possible so as not to disturb the peaceful, yet tense, silence that filled the air around us.

"What?" she asked quietly as I approached her.

"Why didn't you ever tell me?" I asked with the same volume as her. When I was finally standing less than a foot away from her, I stopped.

"It wasn't just you. Sam was the only one who knew; I didn't want anybody else to know," she whispered, still not looking at me.

"Why?" I was so confused.

"Because I'm the youngest. And the smallest. I was the first girl to phase and I knew that if anybody knew about it, then everybody would go crazy trying to protect me and forget about the task at hand. And… I guess I thought that if I didn't let anybody else know, I could deny it to myself and make it stop, but that obviously didn't work…."

Her explanation made sense. "Okay, I guess I can understand that."

"And plus I didn't really want a bunch of teenage guys rummaging through my thoughts. I would much rather keep my mind to myself, thank you," she added.

I chuckled. That sounded like my Z.

Whoa.

My Z? Well… she has been my best friend for over sixteen years… yeah. She's mine.

I was about to speak again, but she still wouldn't look at me. That pushed its way to the front of my mind. Before I could think better of it, I asked, "Z, why won't you look at me? You haven't actually seen me for three months."

She sighed. There was an emotion hidden beneath it, but I couldn't decipher the meaning. "Oh, trust me, Jake. I've seen you."

"When?" I challenged.

"A little over two months ago, right before you phased."

"So you haven't actually seen me since my change, then?"

"No."

"Is there a reason for that? I mean, you can't still be mad at me, can you?" I asked as I tried to step around to face her, seeing as she wasn't going to turn around any time soon. When I stopped in front of her, though, she still wouldn't look at me. She stared unseeingly through my chest, as if she could see the ocean. As if I were invisible.

She closed her eyes for a moment before resuming the same unseeing gaze and replied. "I want to be."

"But you're not." It was a question, but it came out as a statement.

She shook her head slightly. "No."

"Then why have you been avoiding me?"

She chuckled humorlessly once. "I'm not mad, Jake. I'm hurt."

"What?"

"You chose Bella over your best friends since birth." She shrugged. "It hurts."

I pulled her into a tight hug, knowing she could handle it (because of her wolf strength) and she hesitantly wrapped her arms around me. After a moment, her arms tightened, and she buried her head in my chest.

"I'm so sorry," I breathed. "I never meant to hurt you. It's just… she needed me, y'know?"

She stiffened and then whispered, "So did I."

I pulled back slightly when I felt a few tears hit my chest. "Z?" Her head stayed down. "Hey, look at me," I quietly coaxed and she shook her head.

I was getting sick of her stubbornness, so I cupped her cheek and gently brought her face up so that she was facing me. As soon as I brought her head up, she looked away, but didn't try to move her head, knowing that it would be useless.

"Azalea Call. Look at me," I said firmly. She still didn't. "You know… it's rude to avoid eye contact when you're talking to someone…" I teased.

She sighed heavily and squinted her eyes shut. When she finally opened them, her beautiful green eyes were boring into mine and the world stopped. Everything around us just froze. It was as if we were the only two people occupying the entire planet and gravity released me. I now had firm, indestructible, iron cables locking me to this girl. My best friend. My Azalea.

"Did I just…" I trailed off, not really speaking to anyone in particular.

Z just slowly nodded at me and averted her eyes.

"Wait, so… when you said that you saw me two months ago… you imprinted on me?" I asked, confusion taking reign as the dominant emotion flowing through me.

"Yeah," she whispered, looking back out toward the water.

"Why didn't you ever tell me? Or at least let me see you? It would've saved both of us a whole lot of hurt."

When small, quiet tears began to slowly leak out of her eyes, it made me wonder if I'd said something wrong. But when she replied, it had nothing to do with anything I'd said. In fact, it was what I least expected to hear.

"I didn't want to take away your free will of who to love. That's the one thing I really hate about imprinting. You don't get a choice. But you chose Bella over me, Em, and Quil, and you really seemed to love her. I didn't want to take that from you," she explained.

"But I thought you hated her, and that's why you would never come to see me or hang out whenever she was here."

Azalea POV

"I don't hate her. I mean, I don't like her-she stole my best friend for crying out loud-but I don't hate her. I hate what she's done to you," I told him.

"What do you mean?" Poor thing. He was so confused. Clueless.

"Well for one, the motorcycles? You always used to tell me that nobody could pay you enough to ride one of those things because if you just hit a small patch of gravel or sand wrong, you could die. And then along came Bella, and bam. You're fixing up two motorcycles and riding them on the deserted streets of the rez."

"So… you hate that she got me to ride a motorcycle?"

God, no! …That part was actually pretty damn sexy. Seeing him, first working on the bike, and then actually riding it…. Is it hot in here, or is it just me?

"No. God, you're not getting it. She's changed you! What I hate is how you sulked around after she went back to her bloodsucker. You wouldn't even talk to the rest of the pack. I hate that she has you at her beck and call; you'll do anything for her. I hate that… God! I hate that you're so in love with her!" My voice had raised at some point during my rant, but I couldn't recall when.

"I hate that-" he swiftly cut me off by pressing his hot lips to mine.

Oh. My. Lord. This is what I've been waiting for, for ten years. It was magic. I eagerly kissed him back. At least until the kiss started to deepen. It's not that I didn't want it to, but, as right as it physically and emotionally felt, there was just something that didn't sit well with me about it.

Slowly, when he felt my hesitation, he pulled back and rested his forehead against mine. His eyes opened to stare straight into my eyes and he said, "Azalea. I love you."

Normally, those words coming from his delicious lips would make my heart soar. But they just made my heart sore.

I shook my head slightly and looked away. "This is what I absolutely hate about imprints," I whispered.

"Huh?" he asked.

"You still don't understand, do you? The only reason you're saying that to me is because of this stupid imprint! If it weren't for this freak werewolf gene, you would still see me as your best friend, and you would still be in love with Bella, and I would still be pissed and hurt," I said, my eyes flashing.

He looked thoughtful for a moment. He looked as if he were going to deny everything I said and then thought better of it, so he asked me a different question, instead. "If all that's true, then how do I know that you wouldn't just see me as your best friend?" he challenged.

"Jake," I whispered and then gained a little more conviction as I spoke. "I've been in love with you for the past ten years. When I imprinted on you, I didn't feel the slightest bit different, except I knew. I knew what I always suspected was true. I just had that gut-feeling that I imprinted, and then when I asked Sam about it, he confirmed that I was right. So you can't say that I wouldn't feel this way about you."

We were both silent for a long moment, and we eventually ended up sitting on the sand, wordlessly. About thirty minutes had passed, and neither one of us had said anything. At least, until he finally broke the deafening silence.

"So what do we do now?" he asked quietly.

"I don't know," I murmured.

"I want to be with you, Z," he said, turning to look straight at me.

"I know," I acknowledged. "I want to be with you, too, but I don't know if I can."

"Why? We're destined to be together," he said as if that solved every problem in the world. Which, maybe in his world, it did. But in the real world, things were never that easy. Especially when his imprint happened to be me: the most stubborn living creature alive.

"Jake, it's just knowing that you would've chosen her if it hadn't been for all this… supernatural crap. And she would've chosen you, too, if it were a normal world. If she didn't have her bloodsucker, and everyone on the rez was just pure human, you and Bella would've ended up together, leaving me forgotten in the dust," I said and hot tears began to slide down my face again. Damn it all! Why couldn't I stop crying? Hadn't I done enough of that already?

"Z… you wouldn't have been forgotten, you know that," he reassured. "I could never forget you."

"You would've. You and Bella would've ended up together, gotten married, had a family, grown old together…." I stopped. "I would've been erased from your mind in a matter of months." The tears were coming stronger now, but so was my voice.

"Azalea. We've been best friends for over sixteen years. How could you ever think that I would forget you in a few months?" He looked confused, angry, but most of all… hurt.

"Because I would've made you forget about me. It would've been too heartbreaking to watch some other girl live the life that I've so desperately wanted since I was six. I would've avoided you like the plague, probably even move out of the country for college and stay there. You never would've heard from me again. You would've been happy with Bella and wouldn't even give me a second thought."

"Okay, now you're just being overdramatic," he rolled his eyes.

It may have come off that way, but I was most certainly not being overdramatic.

"Don't you dare tell me that I'm being overdramatic," I growled. "You have no idea how I feel, so don't pretend that you have even the slightest idea of it."

"I know exactly how you feel. I imprinted on you, too, remember?" he asked, giving me a 'duh' expression.

I shook my head. "No. You don't. You know how the imprint feels, that's true. Now imagine that times ten. That's how I feel. That's how I've felt all along and the reason the imprint didn't implicate me as much as it did you. For you, it made you see me as more than a best friend or sister. For me, it only showed me that I had been right all along. But it had no impact whatsoever on my heart."

"Z…" he began, but couldn't seem to finish.

"Yeah. So go ahead. Go back to Bella. I mean, you did, after all, fall in love with her the human way," I muttered and walked away.

Jake POV

The human way? What the hell was that supposed to mean? Wait. If all this started ten years ago… then Azalea fell in love with me the human way. And I was just too dumb to realize it. Embry had been trying to convince me for the past nine years that I was in love with her, but I never listened to him.

I broke myself out of my reverie and looked up. Azalea was nowhere in sight.

Shit.

I fucked this up.

Big time.

Okay! That's it for this chapter! I know it's not as long as the last couple, and it's probably not as good… but anyway! I always love reviews and reading what you guys think of this story! ^_^ Reviews make me happy. So please, let me know what y'all think! Kay? Kay! ^_^