Bella couldn't think of a single thing to say, and so she settled for just blinking as a way of communication.
'Why?' She blinked, before rushing on with, 'How?' and then followed it quickly in succession with 'No'. As they lay there, each silently assessing the other, Bella realized she was holding her breath, praying for the moment when he would erupt in raucous laughter and tell her how gullible she could be. She would feign annoyance, but secretly she would feel the flutters of relief trickle down to extinguish the flames of horror that had engulfed her gut.
However Paul just watched her, his dark eyes hoping for anything other than a blank stare to take form on her delicate features. Anything would be better he figured, than the lifeless daze in her eyes.
"You?" She finally whispered, needing to hear him say it one more time before she gathered together her wits and made some sort of progress in her mind.
"Me." He responded clearly, nodding just to add further confirmation.
He opened his mouth again to speak, but as she reached out and pressed her fragile hand against his bare chest, he felt the pressure of her pushing him away. He could understand her reaction, but he needed to clarify everything, to explain that it wasn't something as cut and dry as she probably imagined.
He shifted backwards just slightly, but kept her within his reach and then moved to speak again. Unfortunately, time was not on his side, and just as her name fell from his lips, he heard the front door slam and Jacob's booming voice ring throughout the small, wooden interior of the cabin. "Hey Bells, Paul, can you come out here guys? There's someone I want to introduce you to."
Paul sighed as he rose to his feet, but as he watched Bella lift herself in an almost catatonic state from her own side of the bed, he knew he needed to speak to her first. Moving quickly to block her path, she didn't see him coming, so before she could think to look up, she was already stepping into his embrace.
His arms held their usual warmth, their blanket of comfort, and for the first time, she felt nauseous knowing that her body was uniformly capable of betraying her mind so thoroughly. It hadn't even been minutes since he'd looked her in the eye and confessed to murder, but she was still leaning in, stealing his strength as he knitted together wounds he himself had inflicted.
She couldn't pull herself away, the most she could manage was to stand there and force all her muscles to hang limply, unwilling to feed into the unnatural pull she felt for him. Her body twitched just slightly as he bent down to whisper in her ear, but what he mistook for fear was actually an instinct of pure pleasure that she had no capacity to control.
"You need to let me explain, just give me that much?" He growled gently, but she could feel the frustration ebbing into her skin, morphing her mood with his as he tried to rationalize his actions, and his proceeding choice to tell her about them.
What Bella didn't understand as she struggled to find a way to tell him that she just needed some room to think, to process what she'd learned without her desperate need for him taking over, was that her head was already solemnly moving from right to left.
"Please Bella, you need to know all the facts. Then if you still decide you hate me, I'll stay away from you." Paul's voice was so low, so intimate, that she felt it twanging against the chords of her deepest emotions. Lifting her head, she looked deep into his eyes and found herself drowning.
"Guys!" Jacob shouted again with a hint of irritation.
The external nudge was enough to throw Bella off course and without a word, or a hint that she would hear him out, she pivoted on the spot and left the room, leaving Paul to trail after her warring internally with his wolf over why exactly it had been necessary to reveal the truth to his imprint.
"Bells, this is Quil." Jacob beamed, not noticing the stunned look on her face, or the way her body was moving listlessly through the room to greet their newest members.
Quil looked positively exuberant as his eyes roamed around the room, and Bella couldn't help thinking that if he knew the life stepped into, perhaps he'd be running in the opposite direction instead.
"Quil, this is Bells." Jacob finished his introductions and Quil smiled openly at her, something she had to force her lips to reciprocate. "You're Paul's imprint, right?" He said eagerly, a hint of pride in his voice knowing he'd used the right terminology. She immediately swiveled her head around, expecting to see Paul standing protectively at her shoulder.
He wasn't there though, and she was forced to wander her eyes over the room, landing squarely in the corner where Paul was sending very pointed looks to Leah, who he seemed to have cornered during her distraction. Bella knew at once the message he was trying to impart to his old friend, but she couldn't pull her eyes away, not even when Jacob tugged gently on her arm, reminding her that she had been asked a question.
"Yeah, I'm his imprint." She confirmed with a drone, all hint of emotion gone from her voice.
"If you don't mind, I'm not feeling too well. It was nice to meet you, Quil." She said absently, not feeling the lingering sets of eyes on her back as she slovenly exited the room, returning to her bed where she promptly crawled into a neat, reassuring ball.
She'd been so sure that he would follow, so certain of it in fact, that when the door creaked open and clicked shut, she didn't move a single muscle. The bed rolled slightly as a new weight was lowered, but when a voice began to speak, it was not the deep apologetic tones she predicted.
"Bells, you need to give him a chance to explain, to understand him. It's not as simple as assigning blame and if you want to be angry or upset, then I deserve a portion of that too, as did Jared, and so does Sam. Not a single one of us was innocent Bella, and in my opinion, not a single one of us was truly guilty either." Leah hadn't lowered her voice, hadn't tried to disguise what they were discussing, if anything she had spoken clearly, welcoming all ears to her confession.
If Bella had the acute senses of those around her, she would have heard the whole cabin still, the eyes of her two friends turning accusatorily to her wolf, only the face of their newest looking perplexed and unsure.
"He killed her Leah, he said so himself. There aren't any shades of grey when it comes to that, and now I'm stuck with him forever." Bella spoke with as much malice as she could manage; knowing Paul was probably locked onto every beat of her heart.
"Oh grow up, Bella!" Leah snarled, and for the first time since she'd entered the room, Bella turned to glare at her intruder.
"You weren't there, and if you're going to be so small minded then you're right, you are stuck with each other, but personally I think it's Paul I'll feel sorry for in the long run." Leah stood and turned to the window, her confidence and bravado piquing Bella interest to such an extent that she heaved her cold body up into an upright position.
"Well pardon fucking me, Leah. Forgive me for not falling at his feet just after he tells me that he killed a girl! After all I've been kept so well informed!" Bella threw out sarcastically. "Please, by all means, enlighten me as to why I should change my opinion of a man that has displayed time and again exactly how caring and compassionate he is towards me. Please explain why I should listen to him when he just confessed to murder."
Leah's back was still turned to her when she began to speak again, the power of her assertion gone as her cadence took on something of a dreamy reverie. "I tried to tell you before, to explain to you what it was like being with Sam, but I think maybe you weren't ready to hear it then.
When he left me, for the last time I mean, he'd already met Emily. She'd come to my house to visit during the summer, just a quick trip to say hi to the family. I had no idea what it would do to Sam. I told you before that he'd given up any thought of an imprint. I know for a lot of the guys it's a burden, something they see as both a weakness and a strength, but after so many years alone, and after finding me, I think Sam understood it as a curse. He'd lived alone for so long, Bells, that it had taken everything he had left to love me, to see a future that wasn't just an existence of watching everyone around him die. And then along came Emily, and she just threw a fucking spanner into everything." Leah shook her head, and Bella could feel her body pulsing forward, longing to hear more.
"Paul might tell you what it was like to be in his head, Bells, but I wouldn't count on it as I seriously doubt it was a pretty place to be." Leah paused with a sigh, and when she turned around to sit on the window ledge, Bella saw the streaks of silent tears coursing down her face, and she couldn't help but wonder how she'd spoken so assuredly without faltering.
"Emily left after a few days and I never thought to check with her family, to see if she made it home. I think they probably assumed she decided to stay on… but what none of us figured was she'd found Sam instead. I don't know what happened between them, Bells; I don't like to think about it. But I hope that Sam didn't hurt her, that he didn't take out his anger over the imprint on her. About a week before Sam was 'found'…" Leah said, using her fingers to wordlessly emphasize her meaning. "... I was walking through the woods when I heard them. They were all bickering about something, so I guess they didn't hear me coming. I was pissed off when I saw them all; Sam, Paul, Jared and Emily, all sitting around like fucking musketeers, like I hadn't even existed. I know it was the wrong thing to do, but I took it out on Emily. I mean, how could she just be sitting there with him when she'd known how upset I was after he'd gone missing? At least that's what I thought at the time. But looking back, she didn't know, she'd been gone too."
Bella didn't turn her head when the door cautiously opened, and Leah didn't even flicker her eyes from where they were locked with hers.
"Paul and Jared tried to get me to calm down, but Sam didn't know what to do. He just stood there watching as we fought over him, but then I pushed her and she hit me. They were trying to hold me back, but I guess it was something to do with his anger, with protecting me, because he was too close, too close to both of us and I found out what they'd all been hiding when he phased."
The silence that engulfed the room was deafening, and as Bella dropped her eyes from Leah, she found herself skimming the floor, finding a familiar pair of bare feet and then she slowly worked her way upwards.
A dark mask had settled over his features, and she longed to walk to him, the tell him to just stop hiding and let them in, but she couldn't bring her legs to stand.
He only had eyes for her as he spoke, but what he said was chillingly succinct. "I broke her back, slashed right through her spine before I could even think to pull myself back." He didn't linger, and just as he turned away, Bella was certain she saw a flash of abject guilt in his eyes.
They all stared at the spot where Paul had stood, wondering just what more could be said to make this something that belonging somewhere between guilt and innocence.
"She could have survived; she would have been paralyzed, but if Sam had accepted her, I think maybe she could have been happy." Leah sighed miserably and for the first time since entering the room, Jacob made his way to his imprint's side.
"Sam made Jared and Paul take me away, and I never saw Emily again. I wasn't stupid, I knew that he'd killed her, but I told myself that I believed she was still alive, that he was taking care of her somewhere. Until, of course, they found her body." Jacob wrapped his arms around her, pulling her into his chest before sending a pointed look at Bella to leave, as his imprint collapsed into uncontrollable sobs of anguish.
Numbly she rose to her feet and followed Embry's wide back until they were standing dazed in the living area of the cabin. She could tell from the look on Quil's face that he didn't know what to do with himself, and if she was honest, Embry didn't look like he was holding up much better.
"Bells?" Embry asked guardedly and she simply shook her head. He left her to her own thoughts and she looked to the open doorway, seeing Paul's form slumped down on the top step. She couldn't process everything she'd heard, everything they'd said and confessed to. But she knew that there was a choice to be made. Her eyes flickered from the doorway to Embry and back again, uncertainty and confusing marring her thoughts as she saw the life she'd once chosen and the life that had chosen her, unknowingly waiting for her to make up her mind.
a/n: ... ahh I have about twenty seconds to post this and run. Thank you to my oh so wonderful beta Twiticulate, your additions were superb hun... I'll see you all again soon... xxx