Nine
Paul awoke to quiet rustling coming from his living room and the complete conviction that his imprint was in his house. He pulled on a pair of jeans lying on his bedroom floor and walked into the living room, trying not to act completely insane as he hurried to see her.
She was curled up on the couch, a textbook open in front of her, but she sat upright as he walked in. For some reason, she blushed when she caught sight of him.
"Hi," she said, looking down at her lap. He wished she would stop doing that.
"Hey," he replied, stopping in front of her and hoping he didn't look like a complete creep. She was safe, she was at his house, and he felt better knowing those two things than days of sleep could have provided. As much of a pussy as it made him sound, he felt complete.
"I let myself in," she said, looking uncertain. "Is…was that okay?"
Paul rolled his eyes. "Seriously, what's mine is yours." He gestured extravagantly at the lopsided armchair that his dad had gotten rent-to-own and the bulky old TV that must have been manufactured sometime around the Vietnam War. "How long have you been here?"
"Only about an hour." She studied his face. "You need more sleep. You're still tired." She touched her chest absently, as if she could feel it, too.
"I've slept enough." He didn't want to sleep through another minute of the time he had with her. He nodded to her textbook. "Do you need to study?" There was no way he'd be able to help her with any of her subjects, but maybe she needed moral support or something.
A month ago he would have laughed out loud at the thought of being suitable to provide moral support to anyone. Maybe he'd just never cared enough to help anyone until her.
Bella grimaced and shook her head. "I'll finish it tonight, after I get home. I need a break, anyway."
Paul glanced outside. There was still a couple hours until sunset, and it was at least in the low-seventies out there. She deserved to be someplace better than a run-down reservation at the end of nowhere, but he wasn't going to take her off wolf territory unless she ordered him to. Hopefully she wouldn't think of it.
"Do you want to go to the beach?" he asked her. "I don't smell rain, at least for the next couple of hours."
She set her textbook down on the dirty coffee table and rose. "That sense of smell you have is freaky, you know," she told him, a faint flash of amusement crossing her face.
"You should try living with it," he said, grabbing a t-shirt from the dryer in the kitchen and following her out the front door. "Smells everywhere, twenty-four-seven. No escaping it."
She stopped halfway down the steps, looking horrified.
Paul immediately tensed. He took a deep breath, and then another, trying to catch the scent of what had frightened her.
He needed to get at least ten feet from her before he phased. Had the leech somehow gotten past-
But there was nothing. Just his imprint and the house and the rez and the ocean swirling around them on a faint breeze.
"What is it?"
"You can smell me," she said faintly. "I hadn't taken a shower for couple days the first time you came to my house, and when I was in the woods I was sweating and muddy and..."
"Don't fucking scare me like that," he said roughly as the fear drained from him. "You smell good," he added, still scowling at her. "You always smell good to me."
He expected her to blush or to start walking again, or even to get angry for talking to her like that, but he was taken aback when her shoulders tensed and she stared at the ground like she wanted to crawl into herself. Her hand strayed toward her collarbone, and he knew she was about to wrap her arms around herself and clutch her chest.
"What?" he asked, stepping in front of her. He pushed her hands back down to her sides. As usual, touching her skin felt like a warm shock to him, but he ignored it.
She looked away.
"Tell me."
She exhaled shakily, slowly. "That's what... he... always said. That my blood smelled good. It... called to him."
Paul let out a long breath, but his was to calm himself. "I don't want your fucking blood, Isabella," he said in a low voice, controlling his anger with difficulty. "You know what it meant, right? What the leech said?" He didn't wait to see if she would answer. "It meant he wanted to kill you. It meant he thought you would taste delicious." His bile rose at the thought of the leech coming anywhere near her or her blood. "Your blood means nothing to me. You do."
Now she was staring at him, her mouth opening like she wanted to speak, but he didn't let her.
"Don't you dare compare me to him. Ever."
"I didn't," she said, drawing back. Now there was a touch of anger in her voice, too. "But not because you said so — because I don't think that."
Paul's own anger was suddenly gone, as if she had taken it and drawn it into herself.
"Don't..." he started heavily, before words failed him. He swallowed as a memory of her unconscious form on the forest floor filled his head unbidden. "I want you to do whatever you want. I just... I can't fucking stand what he did to you."
She stared at him for a long moment, her expression unreadable. Then her shoulders slumped. "I can't either," she said quietly.
Her brief spark of anger was already fading, as quickly as it had come. Paul knew without it the reminder of the bloodsucker would pull her back down into her misery.
"Come on," he said quickly, trying to pull her thoughts away to anything else. "Let's go to the beach. You can find seashells and make a necklace or a belt or whatever white kids do with them."
She rolled her eyes and smiled, and Paul had the flashing thought that he would say whatever it took, no matter how inane, to see that smile again.
"I'm pretty sure I've never heard of anyone making a seashell belt," she said as they began the short walk to the shore.
"Yeah? What do they do with them, then?"
"I don't know. I guess they put them in a jar or something."
Paul snorted. "That's stupid. They belong in the ocean. They don't mean anything sitting on a shelf in somebody's McMansion."
She gave him a sideways look, like she was surprised, but she didn't say anything else as they walked.
The tide was low, and she took her tennis shoes off before the beach got too muddy. "I like feeling it," she explained, as if he was going to try to stop her or demand an explanation.
Her feet made tiny footprints into the damp sand, and he felt huge and ungainly walking behind her as his deep prints dwarfed hers.
She reached the edge of the water and stopped, staring over the horizon. Stronger waves sent out tendrils of seawater that pooled around her ankles before being drawn back into the sea.
"I never really paid attention when I was down here before," she said absently as he stopped beside her. "I don't like swimming, and I think surfing would kill me." She bent down and picked up a quarter-sized stone that had been smoothed by the ocean waves. "But it's really pretty."
Paul's gaze flicked over the water and back at the shoreline, and he tried to pretend he was seeing the beach for the first time, that he hadn't been here hundreds of times before.
It wasn't white sand and long, flat beaches like he'd seen in pictures of Florida or the Caribbean. It was harsh and ungroomed, with barely a beach at all and weathered rocks breaking through the surface of the water. A half mile down, where the beach dwindled to nothing, white-crested waves crashed against the rock-lined coastline.
"I guess it is," he agreed.
She was still facing the ocean, her back to him. "I should have paid more attention," she said after a minute. "Coming here just always seemed so... temporary. It didn't matter what it looked like, because I knew once I turned eighteen I'd never be back. But my mom was so unhappy..." She wrapped her arms around herself. "Everything... everything would have been really different if I had never come back."
Paul felt a stabbing pain at the thought of never seeing her, of never even having met her. "A lot's changed," he agreed. Understatement of the century. "And most of it sucks. Not you," he added hastily.
He was never sure how to balance the way he acted around her, between the near-obsession that his wolf sometimes brought out — which would make her run screaming — and his feigned casualness — which he was afraid might make her think he didn't care at all.
To his relief, she didn't look offended, and she slowly began to follow the shoreline again. "No, all the wolf stuff is fine. I'm glad I get to know about it now. It's... well, you know. The other." She grimaced and let the rock drop from her fingers, splashing water against her legs.
Paul did know. Steeling himself as he walked beside her, he pushed on to what he knew he needed to talk to her about.
"I know you probably don't want to talk about how you're feeling." Fuck, he barely even wanted to. He was so unqualified that it wasn't funny. But it seemed like there wasn't anyone else. "But I know you're at least sleeping better. Do you… feel any better?"
She stared at her feet as another wave washed over her toes. "A little," she said finally. "Less… dead."
He nodded awkwardly. "Well, I'm, um, here for you. Always. I'm sure your dad is too, plus everyone else in the pack." He scowled. "And Jacob."
She gnawed on her lower lip like she did when she wanted to say something but wasn't sure how to start. She opened her mouth and closed it again.
Paul waited. He had always been impatient, yet his imprint brought out aspects of himself he never would have expected to be capable of.
"Is... is Jake mad at me?" she finally burst out.
Paul snorted aloud at the absurdity of Baby Alpha ever being mad at Bella Swan.
"Don't worry, it's me he's pissed at."
Her anxious expression faded, and she looked almost offended on his behalf. "For imprinting? That's not fair. You couldn't help it."
Paul shrugged. "He knows that, he really does. But it's a lot easier to be mad at me than the gods, isn't it?"
She examined a tiny unbroken seashell in her palm. "I guess. But if he's not mad at me, why won't he call me or come see me? He would barely look me in the eye yesterday."
Paul stared at her in surprise. She wasn't stupid; he had thought she must be before he had imprinted, but she wasn't at all. Oblivious, though, that she definitely was.
"It's hard for him to look at what he knows he can't have," he said finally.
"Oh," she said after a long pause. "But he should have already – I told him, on multiple occasions – he's the best friend I've ever had. The brother I never had."
Paul snorted. "Yeah, but unless you could prove that you were actually blood relations, he wasn't going to give up that easily."
"He should," she said, scowling. "He of all people should know how much I'm not worth it."
He stepped toward her so quickly that she jumped in surprise. "Don't say that," he said with a growl. "Don't say shit like that about yourself or I'll…" He tried to think of a suitably horrifying punishment. "Or I'll tell Quil you have a huge crush on him."
"Oh my god," she said in genuine horror. "You wouldn't."
He walked on, grinning evilly over his shoulder at her. "The only reason you went to Jacob's house to study all those times was to catch a glimpse of that studly beast Quil Ateara…"
She hurried to catch up with him, and for once she didn't stumble over the rocky coast. "Paul! Don't you dare!"
He laughed, lighthearted for the first time in a long time.
As the sun dipped low over the water, soft mist began to fall, and Bella began to stumble on rocks and sticks she could barely see. Paul reluctantly walked with her back toward the trail that led back to the main road.
"I should—" she started to say when the road was in sight, but Paul interrupted her.
"Didn't you want to see Jacob?" It was the first thing he could think of that would keep her here, with him, just a little bit longer.
"I — yes," she said uncertainly. "If he doesn't mind seeing me." She searched his expression. "Do you think he will?"
Paul rolled his eyes. "Come on."
Baby Alpha was standing in his driveway, staring down morosely between a hunk of metal and plastic (Paul had never cared much about cars) in his hand to the open hood of his old Volkswagen.
He looked up when they started up the driveway, and his eyes immediately went to Bella.
Paul caught the flash of pain that crossed his face when he saw her, though she probably couldn't, but it was quickly replaced by a genuine smile.
"Bella!" He offered her the piece of metal as she approached. "I was hoping you could give this carburetor a stern talking to. I really thought I'd finally found one that would fit into the Rabbit."
She smiled back just as easily, and Paul fought back a flare of jealousy at how naturally, how effortlessly she behaved around Jacob.
"I can try, but I feel like it won't have much effect considering I don't even know what it does."
He staggered back in fake-shock. "I've probably explained this to you, like, three times now, Bells."
"In one ear and out the other, Jake." Her eyes lit up mischievously. "On the other hand, I understand Proust, and you flunked ninth grade English."
"I'm pretty sure if I knew who or what that was, that would be an awesome insult." He chuckled, and abruptly the rest of the coolness that had been lingering between them faded. "I'm really glad to see you, Bells. Really glad. I know I can be stupid about that, sometimes." He grinned self-deprecatingly. "Okay, a lot. But, you know..." He faded off, looking thoughtful. "Can I give you a hug?"
She blinked, and two sets of eyes darted to Paul's, like he had any say over what she did or who she touched. He fought back a surge of jealousy and gave the tiniest of shrugs. Maybe they were just worried he would phase on the spot if he wasn't prepared.
She stepped forward, and Jacob wrapped his arms around her easily, both of them sending off waves of contentment.
Paul grimaced and looked away as the annoying but undeniable awareness that she needed Jacob in her life flooded over him.
He wanted her to want him in her life, even if it was just a little, but he needed her to be happy, so he waited for his possibly-probably-future (dear god please let that day be far, far away) Alpha to let go of his imprint.
After a long moment, Baby Alpha still wasn't pulling back, and Paul tensed.
"Jake," Bella said worriedly, lifting her head off his shoulder.
Jacob stepped back from her slowly, not looking upset. "No, it's okay, Bells. I was just testing something." He bent down slowly and pressed his nose against her hairline, inhaling deeply.
Bella jumped. "Always with the smelling," she muttered.
Finally, Jacob nodded decisively, and Paul released a long breath as he let go of her. "Yeah, I thought that's what it was. You smell different to me now. Kind of like Kim and Emily do. Like a sister, almost. Like family."
Bella looked up at him, a look of wonder and shock on her face. "Not like…"
Jacob grinned and tousled her hair, shoving her playfully back toward Paul. "Yeah, not like that, you perv." His grin faded as he looked at her, something serious but still pleased in his expression. "It's kind of nice, actually. If we were never going to... I mean, it's a relief that it's gone. It's sort of–" A grin did break out on his face then. "Freeing."
Bella rolled her eyes, but she shot Paul a relieved grin, and his annoyance was gone as quickly as that. He couldn't help it; he was happy if she was happy.
"So glad to know I'm not a burden on you anymore," she told Jacob dryly.
He laughed. "You can make it up to me by hooking me up with your hot friends."
Her mouth dropped open. "Just because you're not in love with me anymore, Jacob Black, doesn't mean I'm going to be your pimp."
"Sure, sure, you say that now. But you'll find I can be very persistent."
She rolled her eyes good-naturedly, and just that easily the conversation turned to Jacob egging her on to go cliff-diving with him the next time the weather was good enough.
"I think I'd be better going the Evel Knieval route," she said. "At least that way I'm less likely to drown."
Jacob pasted on a dramatically horrified expression and launched excitedly into an explanation of the motorcycle ramp she had just inspired him to build. "You can't use it, of course, Bells. But I'll let you watch. I won't even charge admission."
"How generous of you," she replied dryly.
Paul wasn't excluded from their conversation, exactly, but they had made their own world that he couldn't break into, even if he'd wanted to. Bella needed Jacob. It was infuriating but true.
When Bella noticed how dark it was getting, Paul wasn't exactly regretful that she'd have to leave Jacob for now. She hugged Jacob goodbye, and Paul exchanged an awkward nod with Jacob (well, awkward for himself; Jacob was obviously still distracted by the thrill of having Bella back in his life).
Paul hesitated awkwardly when they reached her truck after a half-mile walk alongside the road. He wanted to ask if he could ride home with her, but surely seeing him two days in a row had to be suffocating for her.
"Hold on, let me back out a little," she said before he could fumble out the question.
Numbly, he watched as she climbed into the driver's seat and backed her truck a couple feet away from the scraggly bushes that brushed against her passenger-side door.
She looked at him expectantly once the door was clear. She didn't seem to have even considered the possibility of him not coming home with her.
Unable to form words, he climbed inside.
The ride was quiet, and Paul used the opportunity to let his head fall back against the seat. Bella was right; he was still tired. Sometimes he felt like he'd always been tired.
It was so hard to sleep, though, when he knew time sleeping potentially meant time not spent with his imprint.
He wished there was a way he could get both at the same time, but guarding her house while she slept would have to be close enough. She couldn't spend her life sitting near him while he slept.
"Thanks for letting me see Jake," she said quietly as they passed the border of the reservation's land.
It was almost full dark, and the only light came from her headlights on the rough road. She didn't look at him, but then, she was the most careful driver he had ever met.
Slow was good, though. Slow meant more time with her.
"I'm glad you were happy to see him," he said finally, conflicting feelings welling up inside him.
She glanced at him. "You didn't seem glad."
He closed his eyes. Paul knew his jealousy was clear to the rest of the pack. All of them had to deal with the uncomfortable experience of seeing themselves reflected back from the others' perspectives in the pack mind. It certainly was clear to Jacob.
Each of them was jealous of each other over Bella's attention, for different reasons. How fucked up was that?
But it wasn't obvious to his imprint.
He wasn't sure how that made him feel. Was she supposed to know? Would it help her to know? He wasn't sure about the first, but for the second — probably not.
"You needed it," he said dully, opening his eyes again and staring at the roof of her car. "You needed it, so I needed it."
"Oh." Her voice was soft, and she didn't say anything further.
He wondered if she had spent their entire afternoon together counting down the minutes until she could see Jacob, reluctantly adapting to the imprint like she had to all the other shitty parts of her life she had to deal with.
"Do you resent me?" he asked her abruptly. "For imprinting on you?"
"Resent you?" She sounded surprised. "It wasn't your fault."
"But you wish it had been Jacob."
A slight pause. "I don't."
He snorted. "Yeah, right."
She took her eyes off the road long enough to glare at him. "I'm not lying. I couldn't give Jake what he wanted from me. I never could have, imprinted or not." She shook her head in wonder. "Hearing him say that he's okay just being my best friend and meaning it... that's more than I could have ever hoped for."
Paul refused to let her reassure him. "Then for imprinting at all. You already had enough of your own shit to worry about."
"Trust me, I haven't been handling my life very well, anyway. You must resent me, though, right?" she said abruptly. "Is that why you're asking? I mean, you were probably perfectly happy before me. Free, and now you're tied to someone like me."
"Cut that shit out," he told her sharply. "I told you to quit saying shit like that about yourself."
"Well, it's true," she said, her voice sharp with despair. "You never would have even talked to me if you hadn't imprinted. You probably would have hated me — a human who fell in love with a 'bloodsucker'." Her lips twisted around the word.
"That's like saying I wouldn't be here now if I wasn't a werewolf, or if I'd never moved back to La Push. 'What if' doesn't matter. I am a werewolf, I live on the rez, and wherever we were the first time I made eye contact with you, I would have imprinted. End of story."
She opened her mouth, but he spoke over her. "And for your information, I wasn't happy before. I'm a fucking high school dropout with anger problems and I turn into a giant fucking wolf, sometimes whether I want to or not. The only thing that makes me feel better is you, at least when you're not walking around like someone tore your bleeding heart of your chest." He took a deep breath. "And even if I had never imprinted on you, I never could have hated you. Not in a million years."
She didn't say anything for a long time.
"Sometimes you act like you do."
"That's because you don't understand a single fucking thing," he snapped.
Another pause, and then she ran one hand through her hair shakily, and he heard her take a sharp breath, then another. She was on the verge of crying.
"Christ, I'm sorry," he said, hitting his head hard against the headrest. "I'm such a fuckup. I'm really sorry. You didn't deserve that. I'll get out."
Before he finished the sentence, he was already planning how he could get as close to her as he needed to be without having to inflict his presence on her, how much he could tamp down on the pull of their bond while hurting her as little as possible. It would have to be as little as possible, not none at all, since he was already hurting her. He was the world's shittiest person.
"Then tell me," she said in an even voice. She didn't sound on the edge of tears anymore. "I don't want you to leave; I want you to tell me the truth. All of it."
Ho wondered if she'd finally figured out the power she held over him.
"I want you," he said finally, giving in to her command but closing his eyes so at least he didn't have to see her horrified expression. "Every minute of every day. I need what you need and I want what you want and I'd do anything to give you what you needed or die trying and I think you're so, so stupid for letting the bloodsucker tear your life apart and I want to make it better and I don't want to sleep when you're not around and I don't want you ever to be not around and I can't fucking function when you're in danger. And I'm the worst person in the fucking world for you and I've failed at basically everything I've ever tried and I still want you anyway because I'm that fucking selfish."
Her foot had slowly released the accelerator while he spoke, and they were approaching idling speed in the dark, empty road, but she didn't seem to notice.
"I don't think you're selfish."
He laughed without humor, but it sounded sort of hysterical. Of all things to focus on. "Trust me."
She shook her head slowly. "I do trust you. With anything but this. Especially to yell at me when I'm being stupid." She said the last with the faintest smile.
He continued to sit stiffly, waiting for her to kick him out of her car, out of her life. It would hurt more than anything that had ever happened to him, and he was pretty sure it would keep hurting until the day he died. He deserved it.
When he didn't respond, she glanced over at him. "I'm not mad," she said quietly, seeming to sense the fear radiating off him. "I asked for the truth, and you gave it to me." Her hand clutched convulsively on the gear shift. "I think sometimes the truth is supposed to hurt. I've... messed up a lot of things. Fucked up," she clarified, and he looked at her in surprise. "Because that's what I did. But I don't know what I can do about it right now."
"You don't have to do anything at all," he said quickly, his heart slowly returning to a slightly more steady beat. She wasn't going to kick him out, at least not yet. "You can do whatever you want. I'll do whatever you want."
"I don't want you to," she said, frowning. "I want you to do whatever makes you happy."
"I told you, anything you want—"
"No," she interrupted, and then turned it into a command. "Tell me what would make you happy right now."
"I want to sleep with you," he said before he knew what was going to come out of his mouth.
She jerked in her seat like he'd shocked her.
"Not like that," he said desperately. "I want to sleep in your bed, with you. Or even just near you. That would be fine, too. It's kind of a wolf thing."
Not that getting as close to her as she would let him, for as long as she would let him, would be a burden to the human male part of him, either. But even more than that, being in a position where no one could get near her without him knowing, where no leech could touch her without him there to kill it first, would be beyond what he had ever hoped for.
"You asked," he added pleadingly when she didn't say anything. "Don't ask me questions you don't want to know the answer to."
She bit her lip, and it almost seemed like her pale cheeks had a flush of pink on them, though it was difficult for even his eyes to make out in the dark.
"Charlie would murder me if he found out," she said finally. "And then he would murder you painfully."
Paul didn't doubt it. "I know, I was just answering your question, obviously I wasn't—"
"So you'll have to be quiet."
All the breath went out of him, and he sat frozen in the seat.
"Just like that," she said.
Paul clenched his fingers into his thighs, digging crescent moons into his flesh, trying to decide whether this was really happening or not.
Bella finally picked up speed again, shifting gears until she reached fifty again. Her shoulders were relaxed, her breathing even, as if now that she'd decided on a course of action she was at peace with it.
"I feel better when I'm with you," she said softly. "And you said you feel better when you're with me. And I like you, even when you're being a jerk. And you must like me okay, even though I'm a nutcase."
"You're not a—"
"And I think we're both better when we're together," she continued calmly. "We probably bug the rest of the world a lot less, if nothing else. It's not a sacrifice to be with you." She glanced at him from the corner of her eye. "I know that's what you're thinking—" he was "—but it's not. I don't know how being around me can make anyone happy, but if it works for you, I want to do it."
Paul's heart was beating very fast again, and he couldn't seem to look her in the eyes. "Okay," he said succinctly. "Yes."
Thanks, as always, for reading.
