Chapter 21

Heaven smiled above me as I sat on the hood of Mom's car enjoying the warm sunrays the sky offered me in the mini-mart's parking lot. It was cold outside but the hood of the car was still toasty from the ride around town and when you mixed that with warm sunshine and layered clothing, it wasn't that bad out here and thus I sat there basking in the sunlight while I ate a chili-dog. Sam strode into the parking lot and headed directly towards my vehicle.

"Did you talk to him?" I asked while readying the dog for another bite.

"Yeah."

"How did he react?" I sipped from my green tea. Just because I was eating crap didn't mean I had to drink crap too.

"I think he took it well."

"Well? Well what did you say, exactly."

"I guess the same things I would tell my son if I had one."

I almost choked on my own spit. He knew exactly what to say to dig the knife a little deeper into me. If Sam had never imprinted, he and I would probably be having this conversation twenty years into the future.

"You ok?" he patted me on the back and I pulled away.

"Yeah." I cleared my throat and pushed myself off the car. "Thanks for talking to him."

"Now you need to hold your end of the bargain."

"I will."

"When?"

"When I'm more sort of in the mood." I got into the car and drove away.

.:

It's strange how things work out. When I had walked into Billy's kitchen and asked him to give Seth the talk, Billy had sat me down instead and given me my very own talk. The way he spoke to me, the things he said, he reminded me so much of my dad and though it saddened me, it also made me feel good in a way. He spoke to me in a manner which was not condescending or patronizing in any form. We conversed about Mom and Charlie, Sam, Seth, Emily and my place in the pack. He never judged and only interrupted to add information I had been lacking or simply chosen to ignore.

When I finally asked him to have a talk with Seth, he informed me of the way in which he'd had that same talk with his son, which was in fact, the same way his father had the conversation with him. They had tricked the offspring into a game of good cop/bad cop. The father would take the road of making the conversation as awkward, ridiculous and embarrassing as possible. Afterwards, somebody else would fly in to the rescue and use a much tamer, thought out approach but the second talk would only be perceived as tolerable if the disaster stemming from the first talk was successful. I couldn't help but be fascinated by Billy's game of psychological warfare and as I sat there in awe, it occurred to me to ask whom had given Jacob the actual talk. "Your dad." His answer had been simple.

Fate. Destiny. I hated the concepts but couldn't help but notice how the wheel of fortune had spun. Dad had given Jacob the talk and now Billy would be taking Dad's place in guiding Seth. I could feel a knot form at the back of my throat but Billy made no effort to soothe me, instead, he kept the conversation moving. He had asked whom would be taking up the other role in Seth's guidance and I had shrugged. The only other person I could think of was Charlie but I considered him as inept for the job as a clown in a surgery room so he'd nominated Sam along with a list of reasons. Armed with no counter arguments against Sam other than the grudge I still held against him, I had agreed to rope him into our little cognitive games and handed Billy the pack of condoms for Seth.

When I left the Black's home, I was armed with the knowledge of what I had to do. Sam had tried in vain to talk tome the day before and I knew that the conversation between he and I would need to take place sooner or later. If I had that conversation with him now, I'd not only clear up the whole kiss thing, I'd get him to talk to Seth as well. I'd get to set two things in the right path in a single try. True, I thought of talking to Sam as an inconvenience, but peace of mind always came at a price.

I met Sam by the beach because it was the place any of us ever went to when we wanted to think. The ocean and the cliffs had always been the pack's common ground even when we weren't a pack. Every single one of us eventually went there with the excuse we wanted to be alone and to seek solace and it always happened that we'd stumble into someone else claiming to be doing the same thing. So I went there, sat, waited, and eventually walked around when it got too cold to sit still. It seemed like I was there forever, growing increasingly frustrated when nobody showed up and I was about to leave when I spotted him walking onto the sandy shore.

He walked with his head down as he played with something between his hands. For a second I asked myself why he wasn't with Emily but I quickly pushed that thought out of my mind. As he approached, I stood my ground and waited for him to notice me. When he did, he probably thought I was going to leave but I sat down instead and watched as he made his way towards me.

"Are you waiting for Jacob?" he now stood in front of me.

"I was waiting for you." I looked up at him and used my hand to shield my eyes from the sun. "I know you wanted to talk yesterday but I was sort of in a hurry."

"Yeah, I could see that." he sounded irritated, "What's going on between you and Jacob."

"Not that it's any of your business but nothing is going on between us. He's Alpha and last time I checked I was still Beta. We were bored and went out. Do you also interrogate Quil and Embry when they go out together?

"Forget I asked." He pinched the bridge of his nose and sat down beside me, "I wanted to talk to you about us but it seems every time we touch on the subject we just get off on the wrong foot."

"Maybe because there's just no us to talk about, Sam." I smirked.

"Yes there is, Leah and there was that kiss to prove it."

"You've got to be kidding me." I was incredulous. "I kissed you to piss you off. It wasn't even a kiss. I merely pressed my lips on yours. You on the other hand rammed your tongue down my throat."

"You didn't complain."

"I also didn't kiss you back." I interjected. "Look, Sam. I honestly don't feel anything for you anymore. I don't dream of you, I don't think of you, when I see you absolutely nothing goes through my head except displeasure at what I'm about to be subjected to. If it wasn't because you guys continue to force me to be a constant part of your lives, if I didn't have to share a brain with you when I phased, I'd be completely over this by now but you guys just don't allow me to move on!"

He was silent for a while and made circles on the sand if front of him. Each sphere crossing into the path of the other before looping around the next. As he made circles, he let out a sigh before he spoke again.

"When Jacob carried you out of the lake, I felt a part of me die, it just disappeared. I can't even find the right words to describe the type of anguish I felt at that moment. When I hurt Emily, I felt hatred and fear like I've never felt before but when I saw your limp body... when you were lifeless on the ground, the skin around your mouth blue, I've never felt so desolate in my life."

He went to reach for my hand and I quickly withdrew it.

"Everything you said to me the other day, absolutely every part of it was true. I'm still not over you and I probably never will be because you haunt me. We had the perfect relationship and it fell apart suddenly, right at the climax. There was no climb down, no resolution. It simply vanished at the summit. Maybe the elders and their stories aren't right, imprinting is not the same for everyone. Emily is supposed to be my world and everything that's around it but fact of the matter is that you're still in that world. I still love you but it's a love I can't act upon. Maybe that's why I kept trying to keep you close by..."

Sam brought his legs up and rested his elbows on his knees as he ran both hands through his head before wiping them down his face.

"You were my first in every aspect and I meant every promise I ever made to you. Lee, you have to believe me when I tell you that I fought it. Emily fought it too. I've let you down in so many ways. I broke every single promise I made you and the worse part is that I never, ever in life thought I would or ever meant to do so. I've failed you in so many ways and I feel ashamed. Even back at the lake when we were trying to bring you back to life, I even failed you then. It was Jacob that succeeded in the end. He didn't give up when I did. He found the strength to go on when I couldn't anymore."

I was now doing the last thing I ever wanted to do in front of him, I broke down in tears and once the tears started it was impossible to stop them from escaping. Once again he reached for me and I pulled away.

"When I look at Emily's face and then when I look into your eyes and see that mix of hatred and pain... every day I get punished and the torment never gets any easier. Then you tried to kill yourself and I know that I'm partly to blame for whatever drove you to this."

He was quiet once again and I didn't know whether he was waiting for me to speak or to hit him or what he was waiting for but we sat in silence for a while, the sound of the crashing waves and the wind were the only things that could be heard until he spoke again.

"My imprinting, maybe it was a blessing in the end. You could have ended wearing Emily's face. My father's reputation would have always come into play and our kids would always wonder if Embry was their uncle or even how many of the Makahs were their relatives."

With tears staining my face, I digested every single word he'd said. I knew him well enough to recognize that he was being sincere and meant everything he'd spoken. I also knew it hadn't been easy for him to say them. He'd been obviously busy stirring his own pot of unresolved emotions. I also understood that this conversation was meant to bring some sort of closure to our relationship. Closure that had not been attained before because he was trying to deal with phasing into a wolf and had nobody to guide him. He'd broken up with me then and I was blindly trying to rebuild the relationship. After that, he'd imprinted on Emily and it was something I couldn't understand. Then I too phased and was assaulted with his thoughts until I left his pack. It seemed that up to this very moment, closure had always been far way, but now I had a deeper understanding and was relieved to move on.

"I'm sorry, Leah. I'm so sorry. I wish I could turn back time and explain things then. I wish I could make you understand or at the very least, I wish there was some way to make it all up to you."

"There is." I spoke as I wiped the tears from my face and explained to him the situation with Seth and asked for him to talk to my brother after Billy played his part.

"You protect him too much. You've got to let him learn from his own mistakes."

"No. Learning from your own mistakes is diving into the deep end of the pool in order to show off and then scaring the shit out of yourself when you can't keep afloat and start swallowing water. Learning from your mistakes is when you pick on a kid twice your size and he knocks you down on your ass on the playground. Learning from your mistakes is skateboarding down a ramp and landing on your head. Getting someone pregnant or catching a disease because you're ignorant is not an opportunity for learning from your own mistakes."

"He's not your kid, Leah. Let your mom handle it."

"Mom lost Dad and is now starting to piece her life back together. She's dating Charlie and is finally happy again. She deserves to be happy without having to worry about me or Seth for a while."

"You didn't think about that when you threw yourself into the la-"

"Are you going to help me or not?

"On one condition..."

.:

I played with the buttons on the car's dashboard while I drove. After the condition had been established and the talk had been given, I drove home thinking of the day's events and how things had played themselves out. All that was left to do now was to mentally prepare myself to carry out my part of the bargain.

The things I did for my little brother.

There you go guys. Billy and Sam's talk were both planned to be the exact opposite of each other. That's what I was hinting in the previous chapters. I like how some of you are picking up on where I'm taking this story. I'm having fun!

I keep getting Blackwater requests. Hold on guys, Leah has things to do! Unless you want me to just drop everything, have Leah throw her hands in the air and scream "Fuck this shit!" then run to Jacob's house and rape him. Twice. But that's SO NOT this story. Or this Leah.

Maybe.

Because I do plan on her doing something really ooc and then being all WTF, but I wonder if it's going to include Jacob or even in which chapter that's going to be... wanna guess?

Uh oh!

Reviews?