Katie

"I should check on the food," I say, disentangling my limbs from Seth's. Really? Of all the excuses I could have used.

Seth has to know it was a lie, but he doesn't try to press it. My heart's still racing, my muscles still tense as I slide to my feet.

It's the first time we've tried to be together since the accident. The first time I've actually allowed my attraction to him to affect me. I thought if I waited long enough, I'd be too full up on lust to remember what happened.

Obviously that's a load of garbage, because when my eyes were closed and Seth's hand slipped to my thigh, I was back in my car, panic choking out all sense of ration. It wasn't Seth's hand, it was Jordan's. Too cold and too grabby and too wrong.

I walk to the stove with wobbly legs. The food's not burnt, not even close, but I've lost my appetite. I stir it anyway. I don't realize my hand is shaking until I splatter sauce on my shirt.

"Katie, it's okay. You're fine." Seth's face ducks into my line of vision, which is almost funny because he's so tall he has to hunch and contort his body to make it happen. "You're safe."

"I'm safe," I repeat in a whisper.

He pries the spoon from my vice grip and sets it on the counter. Gingerly, his palms come to rest on my shoulders. "You're home. You're here. He's gone."

"I'm home. I'm here. He's gone," I repeat again.

This exercise is one Dr. Hutchison taught us at our last meeting. Seth and I have gone a few times to see her, and I can't say for sure whether it's helping or not. Only time will tell, I guess.

"I won't hurt you," Seth says gently. "I respect you and I love you."

I parrot these words as his thumbs rub circles into my tense shoulders.

He nods slowly, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. "Just you and me."

These last words aren't part of the exercise; he's said them solely for my benefit. But I still repeat them anyway. "Just you and me," I agree, leaning my cheek on his knuckles. "Thank you."

He smiles, picking up the spoon and stealing a sample of the sauce. I wait with bated breath, and when he groans in satisfaction, the fire in my belly is reignited.

But I think if I tried to touch him again, I'd lock up. I guess for now, we'll stick to the same routine where we're each wildly desperate for the other but too scared to make any sudden movements.

One of my high school boyfriends called me Bambi, I think because of my eyes. I've never felt more like a woodland creature than this past month: easily spooked and lead by hormones. It's like deer in mating season jumping over a roadside barrier to get to a potential suitor, only to realize too late that, oh wait, this might kill me.

I know Seth's been taking care of things on his end, despite him trying to hide it. There've been several times where I've woken up in the middle of the night, my name on his lips and coupled with moans and shaky breaths. When that happens, he's usually in the shower before the sun rises. It's not hard to connect the dots.

I've tried to do the same, but my body craves Seth's hands, not my own. One of Ashley's favorite sayings is "an orgasm's an orgasm, no matter who gives it to you."

I, Katie Prescott Clearwater, am calling bullshit. Foul on the play. Not all orgasms are created equal; I can't make myself feel half as good as Seth does. If only I could get my traumatized brain on board.

"Leah's picking you up tomorrow, right?" Seth asks, stepping away from the stove to peel off his shirt after his long day of work and packing Leah's attic.

I drop my gaze back to the stove as I nod. There's no need to torture myself any further.

Tomorrow is Leah's last full day in La Push, so I'm taking off from work so we can hang out one last time. The day after, she'll pack up her car and Jacob's truck and be on her way to Seattle, an entire four hours away from me – La Push, I mean.

It's a fact I haven't really let myself deal with yet, because I know I don't handle long distance well. I married the last person I tried that with. Somehow I don't think that strategy will work here.

Leah's been very tight-lipped about this entire day. I have no idea what she's planning, even when she knocks on our door bright and early Tuesday morning.

"Let's go," she says, thrusting a to-go coffee cup in my hands.

My laugh comes out as a bark. "I don't know whether to be excited or terrified," I say, locking the door behind me.

"Who says you can't be both?"

As I pour myself into the passenger seat of Leah's car, I try not to notice the boxes already shoved in the backseat. I must fail, because my eyes water. "I'm going to miss you."

She groans as she buckles her seatbelt. "Oh, we're doing the crying thing first? Okay." I shove her in the shoulder, and she laughs. What she doesn't do is put the car in drive. "Katie," she says slowly, turning in her seat to face me.

While she searches for words, I take the opportunity to study her face. It's sharp angles and heavy shadows, but in the most beautiful of ways. She is strong and fierce, but I know how to poke at her soft spots, too. It's a talent I take pride in.

She clears her throat, and her annoyed expression turns sentimental. "Katie," she says again, her voice just barely shaking.

"That is my name, yes," I sniffle.

She groans, running her palm across both her eyes. "No," she says, snapping back toward the dashboard. "Fuck this. We'll do this part after. Or never."

I reach for my seatbelt and slide it across my lap. I tug it tight, because seatbelts save lives. "After what?"

She finally backs the car out of the driveway. "You'll see. It's our tradition."

Our tradition, apparently, is for Leah to drive to Port Angeles and drag me to a shady-looking tattoo parlor (are there actually any tattoo parlors that don't look shady?).

She plants her feet on the sidewalk in front of the window. "Here's the deal," she says, crossing her arms. It's sprinkling, but she's not wearing a jacket. The droplets evaporate as they touch her skin, making her look like a hazy, glowing Amazon.

"I know you're all messed up still," she starts.

"I'm back to normal! I got cleared weeks ago," I protest.

She groans. "I didn't mean here," she says, knocking me on the head with a gentle rap of her knuckles. She gestures to my chest. "I meant in there."

My mouth falls to an O.

"Exactly. So here's what I'm offering. I will break one of my relationship rules if you promise to try harder."

I roll my eyes, matching her posture of crossed arms and cocked hip. "I've been trying, Leah. I've been working. I've been sleeping better."

"That shit isn't living, Katie. Life is about being breathless and moving to a new city even though you're terrified. Letting someone in even though you know they could wreck you. It's about laughing until your abs hurt and getting too drunk and having great sex and feeling so alive you want to burst out of your skin."

A man passing on the sidewalk tries to hide his expression, but Leah and I both clock the way his eyebrows shoot up in surprise. I wonder if it was the 'great sex' part or the 'bursting out of your skin' part.

"And you know who taught me all that shit, Katie?" Leah continues. "You did."

Wait, what? I did?

She takes another breath. "Didn't you tell me that you should 'do life scared'? Well, news flash. You're not. You haven't picked up your camera in a month."

I swallow down the hurt her words evoke. Because she's right.

The truth is I'm not doing life scared right now. I'm not doing much living of any kind. I go to work, and I come home. I don't take pictures. I keep my office door closed, my camera perched on the desk. I haven't turned it on since the accident; I don't even know if it still works.

It serves as a bitter reminder, a sad fact of the American legal system. Nothing's happened. No charges. No case. No anything. Jordan has all but disappeared – Leslie told me last time we talked that she heard he dropped out of school and skipped town.

I think it may have been Seth's doing. It took me a while, but I eventually got out bits and pieces of his conversation with Carlisle and Edward. I think he thought I'd be mad at him. Maybe I was at first. I'd made him promise he wouldn't react in the way he wanted to, and asking our vampire friends to kill Jordan off fell somewhere within that category.

But the longer I sat with it, the more I understood. I wanted him dead too; how could I fault Seth for that? He was doing what he thought he had to in order to protect me. Protect us.

And if last night's couch escape is any indiciation, I'm more fragile than I originally thought. I need all the help I can get right now.

I don't say any of these things aloud. Instead I ask, "What relationship rule are you going to break?"

She studies my face long enough for me to have to pull up the hood of my raincoat; the rain is coming in heavier now. "If you promise me that you'll try harder, I will let you pick our tattoos."

"We're getting matching tattoos?" I say, my eyes brightening. I push back my hood to see her face more clearly.

"I'll even do those stupid sister ones if that's what you want. But you have to promise. No more half-assing this shit. It's too important. We can't lose you."

I don't ask who we is. I don't have to. I'm already reaching for her hand. "I promise."

The guy behind the counter is grizzly and rugged, and there are twin flames reaching up around each side of his neck.

"I don't do virgins," he says immediately, his eyes scanning all five feet one inches of me with pure amusement.

Despite the rush of blood to my cheeks, I don't drop my gaze. "Who said I was a virgin?"

Leah chuckles as the man guffaws. "I meant tattoos," the man clarifies.

"I know what you meant," I say. "But it doesn't matter. My sister is moving to Seattle with the love of her life tomorrow, and I want the cheesiest tattoos you've got to commemorate it."

Which is how, an hour later, Leah sits cursing in the chair I just vacated as she gets No matter where etched on the skin above her left elbow. I run my fingertips over the bandage that conceals my matching one – No matter what.

"I can't fucking believe I let you talk me into this," Leah grumbles as the guy finishes with a flourish of the gun.

I scoff. "It was your idea!"

"You guys look nothing alike, you know," the artist says, wiping Leah's fresh ink clean with alcohol. "Are you guys half or somethin'?"

Leah jerks her arm away as he tries to cover the area with gauze. Even I can tell it's already starting to heal. If I healed half as fast as a werewolf, I'd be getting tattoos every week. "You can't just ask people that. And what do you mean? I taught her everything there is to know about that resting bitch face she's wearing."

"Anything else while you're here?" he asks next, standing. "We do piercings, too." His gaze flicks to Leah's chest.

"Fuck off," Leah says with her signature eye roll.

"Actually," I say, and both of their eyes go wide. Now his gaze travels to my chest, and I instinctively cross my arms. My cheeks flame. "No, not that. I was thinking about another piece."

The guy – he still hasn't offered his name, and Leah's too proud to ask – cocks his head. "Two at once is a bit much to take care of."

"It'd be small," I say, taking the liberty of grabbing his scratch pad from the tray and scribbling my life mantra on the paper. I slide it back across to him.

"'Do life scared'," he reads, shrugging. "Alright. Whatever. Pick a font and a spot." He pauses, chuckling. "You learn that from your sister, too?"

I untie my tennis shoe and slip off my sock. "She helped, but you really have to learn that one for yourself."

I spend the entire next day not thinking about Leah or how she's moving to Seattle. I do a bad job.

When I get home after work, I'm expecting Seth to be here, but he isn't. That's odd, considering he took off today to help Leah load up the last bit of her furniture this morning. One of the benefits of the pack is never having to pay for movers.

I'm scrolling through television channels, too bored to find anything satisfying, too sad to bother cooking, when Seth scrambles through the front door.

"Katie." He's got the telltale signs of just having phased – mussed hair, his only article of clothing slung low over his hips, slightly sweaty, and dirt smudged in that one particular groove on his neck.

It sends my heart into overdrive, and not in the way I'm expecting. He hasn't phased since the accident, because I hadn't wanted the pack to know what happened. Maybe it will make me panic in a minute.

But right now, I could care less. Because Seth is hot.

"Katie, I have to tell you something," he says, letting the door slam shut behind him. I track his movements with hungry eyes as he settles next to me on the couch.

I'm fully ready for him to close the gap between us. Surely he's about to say I've thought about you all day, and I don't care how long it takes, I won't be able to sleep tonight until I make you come.

"I'm leaving the pack."

I blink twice. "What did you say? I don't think I caught it right."

Seth swallows, and I force myself to focus on his words instead of his bobbing Adam's apple. "I said I'm leaving the pack."

I slump into the back of the couch, and no, the words still aren't any clearer the second time. "Why? Did something happen?"

He nods. "With the Cullens leaving town, Jacob doesn't seem to think there's any reason for such a big pack. Nessie's staying, but we don't need twenty plus wolves when there's only one untouchable half-vampire. So Jake offered us a buyout, kind of? A mass exodus or whatever.

"And I just got to thinking about that job you turned down in Oregon, the one for the paper? I bet if you called them, they'd find an opening for you. I think this will be good for us. For me, too. I did okay tonight, but if I have to keep the accident a secret every time I patrol…" Seth clears his throat. "It's not going to work out forever. Jake's given me solo shifts ever since but that luck's going to run out."

There's so much information to unpack. Seth told me a few weeks ago the Cullens were considering leaving town, and I hadn't pressed him for details because I knew it was hard for him to talk about. But they're actually leaving now, which changes the game.

Jacob's reasoning makes sense, but I don't understand why Seth's considering it. He loves the pack. He told me he never wanted to leave. What's changed?

Is this all my fault?

I open and close my mouth a few times, searching for words. Seth waits, perched on the edge of the couch as he desperately searches my eyes for approval.

What I choose to ask first is, "Would you be honest about why you left?"

He studies my face with an intense gaze, warmth lighting his eyes. It stokes the embers in my belly. Dear Jesus, this is a life-altering conversation and I'm thinking about licking him. Please send help.

"I could say I have to get another job. We could have a car payment soon…" He trails off, eyebrow lifting in suggestion.

I can't even be mad at him for it this time. With me working on Port Angeles and classes starting back up at the end of August, I really should be in the market for a new car. Seth's old truck was already high in mileage to begin with. Plus it's manual. I nearly pass out every time I have to shift gears.

But right now, a new car, manual or automatic, is the last thing on my mind. "But you love the pack, Seth. You love being a wolf. They're your family."

Seth nods. There's tension tightening his shoulders, and I want to reach over and smooth it out with my thumbs. He swallows. "You're my family more."

My breath hisses out of my lungs, like a deflating balloon. I think that's the sweetest thing anyone's ever said to me. Who needs those flashy declarations of love in those stupid rom coms when a guy says something like that to you?

"I want you back, Katie," he continues. "I want to see a light in your eyes again, hear your real laugh, the one where you can't breathe. See you pick up your camera. And I think this is what it will take."

"No." The word flies out before I can stop it, but I don't want to. It feels good on my tongue.

His eyebrows shoot toward his hairline. "No?"

I run my toe over the fresh ink on my other foot. This is life, and it's scary. "No. I'm not letting you give this up for me. I'll find some other way to find my light or whatever."

"Katie," he pleads. "Let me do this for you."

His eyes are ablaze with passion, with the plea to just let him love me in this way he knows so easily. He's told me countless times he'd do anything for me, and this is him proving it. He thinks this will fix me. Of course he'd leave. If he saw the chance to make me happy, he'd stop at nothing to bring it to fruition, even if I didn't ask him to.

Seth has always known what I needed, more than I've ever known it for myself. His heart, so big and so open and so giving, belongs to me. It has always belonged to me, even when I didn't know what to do with it.

"You haven't already told Jacob yet, have you?" I finally ask.

He shakes his head, taking a breath I can tell from here isn't deep enough. "No. He said we could have until the end of the month." An idea lights his face. "Katie."

"What?" I ask, a little bit exasperated and still also a little bit hot and bothered. Why does he have to look so good shirtless? I can't concentrate.

"Let's go somewhere," he suggests, leaning forward.

My breath catches in my throat at his scent, but he's so wrapped up in whatever's racing through his mind he doesn't notice. "Where?"

He rises to his feet, and I realize I was leaning forward to him. I correct my posture. He starts pacing, throwing his arms out. "Anywhere. Everywhere. Let's figure it out as we go along. We've got a month before this is set in stone."

"We also have jobs," I remind him, standing. I like us to be as close to eye-to-eye when talking about Important Life Things. It's somewhat of a challenge with our height difference; I draw myself up taller.

He laughs, holding up a finger as he disappears into the hallway. He returns with his laptop, something I only ever see him on once a month when he does the budget.

"Have you actually looked at our savings account lately?" Seth's voice is fierce and nearly hysterical as he plops down on the couch and flings open his laptop screen. "Come sit with me."

Tentatively, I settle back down next to him. "You know I haven't."

He chuckles, leaning over to give me a quick open-mouthed kiss on my temple. I watch as he navigates to our banking website, and with a few more clicks, the balance loads in all its commas-and-decimals glory.

And there's more than one number in front of the comma.

"Where did all of that come from?" I yelp, grabbing the laptop and trying to zoom in on the balance to make sure I'm reading it correctly. "I thought we were broke!"

"It came from living like we're broke," he says humorously. "And your insurance check from the accident didn't hurt, but it wasn't that much, because—"

"Because I've been driving a piece of crap for years. Yeah, yeah," I say, waving him off so I can continue to gape at the screen.

Even if I divide the number in half (because it is a joint account, after all) it's still the most money I've ever had in my entire life. It shouldn't excite me so much. Money can't buy happiness, but it can buy freedom. Just ask any political figurehead.

I take a deep breath. "This would cover a new car basically outright," I say, trying to keep my heart from bursting out of my chest. My eyes can't even focus on the screen anymore.

Seth slips the computer from my grasp and sets it on the coffee table. "It would. Or…" He takes my hand, rubbing his thumb over my palm. The shock factor of our account balance has waned some of my desire, but that little motion has the potential to stir it right back up again.

"Or we could take a break from our jobs for a while," Seth says. "Visit some national parks. See mountains and go hiking the old-fashioned way. Backpack and camp. You like to camp."

I nod. "I do."

"And you could take pictures again, if you wanted." He gives me a soft smile and pulls my feet into his lap tenderly. "I'm not asking you to do this forever. Just a month. And we'll see what else is out there for both of us. See if I can stomach the thought of leaving the pack." He blows out a huff of laughter, studying his hands on my feet. "See if I can last a month without phasing."

"You almost already did that," I remind him. I can't tell if I'm trying to talk myself out of this or into it.

He chuckles, rubbing his thumb around the raw edges of my new ink. "We'll rent an SUV. We'll borrow Charlie's camping gear and bear spray like normal humans." We laugh together, but his gaze turns serious as his hand slips over my calf and starts to massage the muscle.

My laugh dies in my throat, and half of me tenses while the other half melts. I want him. He has to know that. It's probably why his voice is husky as he says, "We'll figure out our new normal." His hand slips higher, almost to my knee now. "It will be us, all alone in a forest, and we'll have nothing but time on our hands.

"I'll learn new ways to make you tick," he says, his thumb sliding up the backside of my thigh. I might moan. "I'll learn where to touch you again. Where to kiss you. How to hold you. How to drive you crazy."

My head falls to the back of the couch as he continues to massage my leg. "You always drive me crazy, Seth. Even right now."

"I know," he murmurs, and he shifts my free foot so I can feel the hard bulge in his lap. "You drive me crazy, too."

"Seth." It comes out in a breathy moan, and he growls in response.

It's too much, because what he's offering? I want it, crave it. We sleep in the same bed, inches apart, and I'm scared to touch him. Scared for him to touch me.

A few weeks ago, we bumped into each other in the bathroom doorway when I was wrapped in towel, and I was so hot I thought the fabric would fuse to my skin. Last weekend, he ate a burger, and the sounds he made as he chewed had my heart skipping beats.

But if Monday night on the couch is any indication, we still have a long way to go.

I rip myself from his grasp. "Call Charlie. Call your boss. We're leaving in the morning."