A/N: So this chapter is kind of slow, but I think you guys will like it. Please let me know what you think, or what you suspect will happen, or anything at all.

Crushing Gravity

Chapter 21

Her heart still beats faster than could be considered normal. I can feel it's strong stuttering against the tips of my fingers, and I drag them slowly across her skin, up to the curve of her neck, and then back down past her collarbone.

I shuffle closer, for the first time not liking the carefulness she holds me with.

"Leah," I hesitate, feeling her head pull back to look down at me resting in her arms. We had been just lying on the couch for almost a half hour now. "How can you still love me, after what you just learned?"

Her eyes widen at the question. "Nothing I will ever learn about you will make me love you any less. You are my entire world, Sam. I love you more than anything; more than I've ever loved anyone."

"But why?" I ask, looping my arms around her waist as if I could hold her there. As if, with just that question, she will come to her senses and see what I see. "I'm not a good person for you to love. I can't give you what I want."

"You already have," she insists calmly, removing her arm from behind my head to grab my face with both hands. "This. This is all I want. To hold you. To touch you." Her fingers splay across my cheeks, thumb absently brushing over my lips. I kiss it reflexively.

"I can't have sex with you," I warn her. "I wouldn't be able to."

Her frown is disbelieving and accusatory. "You think that matters to me?"

"It matters to everyone. Everyone wants it."

"I want you, Sam. You're the only one I want because you're the only one I'm capable of wanting. I love you, and I don't care if this, me holding you like this right now, is all we have, because it's enough. Because it's you. Do you understand?"

Her saying that she wants me- it terrifies me. But I already knew that somewhere in the back of my mind, didn't I? I knew that it was a possibility before I even kissed her. And even though what she said scares me...something else is there too. Some strange happiness stirring in my belly and making me feel warm.

"...I think so," I cover her hand with mine, holding it to my face and nuzzling into her palm. "I like to touch you," I murmur, "I like it when you touch me, too. But only you. Only you are allowed to touch me. I don't want anyone else."

"Exactly," she whispers, and slowly leans forward to place a gentle kiss on my nose. I kiss her chin, the only part I can get to at the moment, in response.

Her arms settle back around me and my hand falls back to her chest to continue mapping out the exposed skin.

"I..." My heart speeds up. I drop my hand to her stomach and clutch the fabric as my cheeks burn in a blush. Leah's shifting lets me know that she's listening. "Why do people have sex? It hurts so much; why do they want it?"

She does that high whine that I've only ever heard her do a few times. Her arms flex around me.

"Normally, when people are together like that, it's consensual. Both people want it, and it feels good. It's not supposed to hurt. It's supposed to feel good. It's supposed to be special."

I clench my hands tighter, locking my jaw.

"Have you..."

"Yeah," she sighs. "I was with him for years and I loved him. I don't regret giving myself to him; it was real at the time."

I don't understand her words. She talks of love and pleasure, but I just feel sick when I think of anything going down there.

I lean forward to rest my forehead against her chest.

"What happens now?" I ask.

"...I don't know," she answers honestly. "I don't know what I'm supposed to do, or how to help you. But I do know that I will do whatever you need me to, be anything you need me to be. You have to let me know what you need, because this is something that I can't screw up; you are the one person that I can't loose."

I kneed the tense muscles of her stomach, hoping for her to relax again.

"I've known that I haven't been well for a long time. And I don't know how to be well...but Edward told me that I should talk about it. I guess we're on the right track."

She nuzzles my hair with a sigh.

"Okay. I just can't loose you."

I wonder if I'd be able to handle loosing her. I've never had someone like her in my life before, never cared for someone like this before.

I know that I love her now. I'm certain of it. So how much will it hurt when she's gone?

...

"She found out," I sigh, pulling my knees into my chest as I examine the mingling supernaturals and humans.

I turn my head to the trees, and Edward silently slips out from between them. "I told her."

He stuffs his hands in his pockets and looks at me in that uncomfortable way that he has.

"I know," he says. "How do you feel?"

"God, you sound like a therapist."

He chuckles. "Really," he insists.

I watch as Leah glances back with a half full plate. She smiles softly at me.

"I don't know. I feel different, but I'm not sure how."

He nods, like I told him something he already knows. It's odd that I'm having such a casual conversation with him; I still don't know him any, but it seems like something so mundane. Something so normal.

"Keep talking to her; she'll listen."

"I know," I smile as he walks away.

Leah starts over carrying half the food on the table on her plate.

I giggle at her concentration as she slides down the bark of the tree next to me.

She offers the tower to me, and I carefully pluck up one of the hotdogs to snack on while she devours the rest.

After that, I just stare at her a while. Her shadowed face, the slight orange glow of her skin from the fire, the golden flecks visible in her eyes, all makes her a thing of beauty. A dark masterpiece that should be hung on the walls of a museum.

I've changed so much since coming here to this reservation in this tiny town, and I honestly don't know what I'm supposed to do from here- who I'm supposed to be.

I don't know anything at all because my feelings are so contradictory to what I know they are supposed to feel like.

It's almost worse, because everything before was so simple. I knew what I knew.

I hated everyone; I was always angry because of my situation; when I was alone with the darkness, I was pretending not to be scared- pretending not to feel the empty void of self that overtook my entire being.

I was always so cold, even as a sweaty body with poisonous hands stretched me out beneath it.

Leah glances down, meeting my eyes, and gives me a curious smile.

I'm almost unaware of my hand reaching out and brushing her jaw, mesmerized as her eyes fall closed and she leans into my hand.

She's so warm. Always. Always wrapping me up in those arms with a heat that starts from inside my chest and spreads out.

There's that paradox again, flickering and stuttering and clenching my stomach.

Her eyes lazily slide open again, looking at me with an unintelligible weight that stutters my heart.

"I love you," I breathe, even as that crippling ache spasms in my chest.

It's a painful thing, this emotion that I feel. Maybe I am a masochist, because I say it again. "I love you." It hurts so much, so why is there this desperate need for her to know it, to believe it? Why is there this desperate need to feel it again?

"I lo-"

Her hand fists in my shirt, and with one firm tug, our mouths clash together with an urgency of lips and tongue and a low moan.

My chest constricts again with the noise and the need doesn't lessen any at all. If anything, it's even more painful. Again, I must be a masochist.

Her fisted hand slowly flattens out on my chest, forefinger caressing the hollow of my throat, before she hesitantly pushes me back.

Our lips detach with a small reluctant sound, and it takes several seconds before I can find it in me to pry my eyes open.

Leah's hand slides up from my collar to cup my neck and her eyes bore into me like a live fire. Her other hand leaves my knee to caress my other cheek, and I grip both her wrists tightly to hold her there.

She kisses me again, softly this time, and presses her forehead into mine.

"I love you too, Sam. You're everything to me."

Something in me seems to release, or maybe break, and I don't know what it means or what I'm supposed to do about it.

So I do nothing at all.