A/N: Happy Tuesday, friends. A little heads-up for heavy swearing throughout whilst Leah deals with the aftermath.

forty-three.

(Leah)

She slams the garage door on Quil and Bella with such force, such finality, that she is surprised it doesn't splinter on impact.

The act might be childish, and wholly undeserved on Quil's part, but for a moment . . . just for a moment, the thought of Bella flinching and cowering on the other side is completely and utterly worth it.

Fucking Bella Swan.

Her head bent and breath heavy, Leah leans her weight into the wood, splaying her still-tingling palm over the panels. If only she had two functioning hands — not one that is still healing and bandaged to the nines lest her mother and Jacob have a fit about infection — because her only regret is that she hadn't been able to pummel Bella into the fucking ground.

That fucking bitch. That fucking bitch and her fake offer of friendship. It isn't exactly as if anyone with half a brain had believed her in the first place; only a fool would've believed the shit Bella came out with the last time she visited La Push — maybe Bella even believed it herself, at the time — but to actually try and . . .

That fucking bitch.

Jacob shuffles behind her. "Leah, I—"

"Don't. Don't say you're sorry."

She presses her forehead against the cold door, closing her eyes. She's pretty sure it is the only thing keeping her upright. The only thing keeping her from charging that little backstabber off the Rez and all the way to Forks.

"I had no idea. I didn't think that she—"

"Just don't, Jake. Okay?"

"Okay," he echoes quietly. He allows a few beats of awful, heavy silence to pass them by, during which he does not dare move. And neither does she. "You're not about to go all wolf on me, are you?"

His attempt at humour falls flat, but — oh, how she still wishes she could. Jacob knows it, too. He knows she would give just about anything to have the right genes, the right chromosomes — whatever it is that would grant her the ability to split her skin and release this pressure. And he understands.

Taking a deep breath, Leah lowers her hand, flexing her fingers (if they feel sensitive, then God knows how Bella's face feels), and she slowly peels herself away from the door. It's not Jacob's fault. It's not Jacob's fault.

It's not his fault, but still, she stands by what she said about him and his own damned stupidity. One of these days, his incessant need to do right by people all the goddamn time, to keep them alive (even when they don't deserve it) is going to end up with him seriously hurt — or killed.

"Leah?" he asks tentatively, inching closer still. She can feel him, and yet not. That is to say, she doesn't have to look over her shoulder to know he is reaching out for her — her freaky radar is on high alert. "Can I — . . . Are you going to bite my hand if I touch you?"

It's not his fault. He's not Sam.

And yet, she can't help but cringe. This is her worst nightmare, everything she had first feared when she'd accepted the imprint. Her and him. Him and her. She had said as much, after finding out about the imprint, hadn't she? 'I don't like the girl acting like she's got some claim on you.' That's what she'd told him, right after she'd said she didn't want it to feel like he was competing against Sam, or she against Bella.

"Leah, honey, please. If I thought for a second that she was going to . . . to do that, I wouldn't have—"

She turns to face him. "When are you going to realise that Bella only ever looks after Bella? It was never about you, Jacob. Can't you see that?"

The words spill from her mouth like poison, tasting just as bitter as they sound. Ordinarily, her thoughts on Bella are shelved in favour of dishing out meaningless platitudes about Jacob having the right to choose, but for just once when it comes down to it, she wants him to choose her. Without her needing to beg for it.

Because, unlike Bella, she would never stoop that low.

His mouth opens and closes as he stands there watching her, his hand still hovering mid-air as if undecided on whether she will rip into him as she did Bella. His trepidation stirs whispers of regret, surely some violation of the sacred imprint bond they're said to share, but there's an indignant part of her that wants him to feel just as hurt as she does.

"I'm sorry," he says raggedly, and his hoarseness comes with a strong stab of more regret. "I know you don't want me to say it, but I am. It happened so fast and — and I am so tired right now that I can see three of you and they all look pissed. But I deserve it."

"That is the shittiest excuse I've ever heard from you, and that's including when you told Mrs Holt in ninth grade that you couldn't come to school because you ate cat food instead of tuna."

His mouth twitches despite himself and the heavy air of exhaustion still following him. "I can't believe you remember that."

"Of course I remember it," she says, her anger evaporating just as quickly as it had percolated. "Who else is going to keep you humble, if not me?"

(What she doesn't tell him is that all her memories of him, from the day he was born until now — memories that she didn't even realise she still possessed — have all become strikingly clear during these last few months together. Exactly as if the imprint has unlocked them, gathering them from the furthest reaches of her head with the sole purpose of placing Jacob — or the imprint, or both, however indistinguishable the two might be — front and centre of everything she knows, everything she does. She has spent untold quiet hours sorting through those particular memories, pondering their significance, wondering if the imprint has had a similar effect on Jacob, too.)

He reaches out again. This time, she doesn't shy away. His hand curls hesitantly around her shoulder, likely bracing himself for her to lash out — or flee. "I suppose this is the wrong time to ask you how your Calculus final went."

"Don't change the subject."

He draws himself closer, his other hand brushing stray wisps of hair from her face as he openly stares down at her. "I bet you aced it."

"If you must know," she says, stalwartly ignoring the kisses he begins to rain upon her, "I felt like I spent the whole time staring out of the window, worrying about what I was going to come home to."

There had been an innate sense of wrongness prickling over her skin as she'd sat in that classroom — and not just because Alex Dunne had been burning holes into her back, still seething that he hadn't been named valedictorian. She'd been out of her seat and handing in her paper the moment the invigilators had called time. Then she had run into Quil who was dithering about by the school gates, waiting for her, too chicken-shit to go back to the Blacks' house without back-up. And she had been so relieved to see him that she hadn't even teased him about it, because she hadn't wanted to come back on her own, either.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry," Jacob murmurs, his lips against her ear. "She won't be coming back."

It is becoming impossible to remain impervious to his touch. She feels herself weakening, but has enough strength left to scoff. "I thought I'd made that pretty clear."

"You did. You were amazing, honey," he tells her, still showering her with his apologies. His heat is almost stifling in the confines of the garage, of his arms. "I don't deserve you."

"No," she agrees flatly, "you don't."

"Guess I didn't really expect you to argue with me on that one." His breath washes over her cheek, his laugh somewhat nervous. He's still waiting for another explosion, she realises distantly, and he's distracting her the way he knows best. He is too tired to fight.

But despite his distractions, Leah is not yet ready to forget what's happened. Why they are here.

"What did you expect, Jake? Even a blind man could've seen what she was gearing herself up to do, but you . . ."

She pulls away from him, and the sudden loss she feels roiling through him — through them both — is almost too much for her to bear. It almost makes her step right back into his arms and let him win.

Almost.

"I meant what I said earlier," she continues, standing her ground. "You can't keep everyone happy, so stop trying. I'm done watching that girl weasel her way back in. She's not your responsibility anymore, Jake."

"She's still human—"

"Not for much longer, if she gets her way. You said it yourself: it's a matter of when. Not if. Why keep fighting the inevitable? It's like one minute you've accepted it, but the next you're still trying to change her mind. And you wonder why she thinks it's okay to keep you as her backup plan!"

Jacob's mouth twists into an uncomfortable grimace. "Muscle memory, I guess," he says after a long, torturous moment. "I promised myself that I'd keep trying until her heart stops beating. The closer it gets, the more I feel like I've failed her."

"Short of giving her a brain transplant, I don't know what else you could have done," Leah mutters, picking at her fraying bandage. "She's made her choice."

"I don't think she has," he says quietly.

Though Leah knows he does not mean to say that he's changed his mind either, she cannot fight the sting his words leave. She scowls to hide the hurt she feels, to stop Jacob from detecting even a single hint of it. "No, it looked like someone who is trying to have the best of both worlds when they don't even deserve the one that they've got."

Not even Jacob has an answer for that. He looks breakable. Like another word from her will end him.

And yet . . .

"I tried to change her mind, too, you know. For you. That day when we had Collin and Brady's bonfire, I told her that I didn't want her to die. I told her what it'd do to you."

"I . . . I didn't realise."

"Because I didn't tell you. Because she didn't take it seriously, and, clearly, she still doesn't. I wasted my breath. She has made it clear time and time again that doesn't care about you — about any of us. Not really. And I am done," she says again, fingernails digging deep grooves into her unbandaged palm. The pain does little to clear her head. "Done. Let her do what she wants. As long as she stays the fuck out of our lives, then I don't care either. I never did."

His eyebrows lift. Not in surprise, but with an unspoken question.

Leah lifts her chin. "I don't. I care that it's going to hurt you, that you're going to blame yourself even though you saw it coming a mile off. I hate her for that. I hate her for a lot of things. I hate her because it's going to destroy Charlie." Her throat tightens. "Because this is going to kill him, too, you know. When she . . . changes—"

"When she dies," Jacob corrects.

"When she leaves, it'll be the rest of us picking up the pieces. And if I know selfish — which she is, don't deny it—"

"I wasn't going to. I was going to argue that you're not," he says, but Leah is hardly listening, her mouth running a mile a minute.

"I care Charlie is going to mourn her, Jake — her own father. I care that your father is going to have to look Charlie in the eye every day for the rest of their lives and he's going to have to lie. And we are the ones who are going to have to sit there, offering our condolences and comforting him and saying things like, 'Harry's looking after Bella now, Charlie. She's in a better place.'"

Her voice catches on her dad's name, heart slamming against her chest, but she pushes on. She has to.

"And what about you?" she demands. "What happens after?"

Despite the tightness around his eyes, Jacob holds her stare. "I'll have to kill her, I suppose," he says, not a whisper of remorse about him.

"But that's the whole point!" she explodes. "I don't want you to! It's not on your shoulders whether she lives or dies!"

"But it is," he insists, impervious to her outburst. He doesn't even flinch. "The treaty will have been broken, and that makes her a threat." He takes her hand, threading their fingers and holding on tightly as his eyes bore into hers, dark and compelling. "I'd kill Bella and every single one of her bloodsuckers on my own if I had to. If it keeps you safe."

Her breath leaves her, pushed out by the icy dread that rushes in at the thought of burying him, too. "I don't need you to keep me safe, Jake. I need you alive."

"Yes, boss," he says as if chastised, pressing a searing kiss to the crown of her head. "Please, don't be mad. I can't stand it."

"I'm not mad at you."

He noses at her cheek, his relief palpable. "Does that mean I'm still invited to dinner tonight, or will I be eating in the yard?"

Leah pauses in mock contemplation. "I'll consider the dining arrangements. Right now, I've got a hot date at my kitchen table with a very strong drink." Coffee, and her Government textbook. "I can't be late."

Jacob smiles at her, a real eye-crinkling one that she's missed beyond reason. "We're good, then?"

"Oh, I'm still fucking pissed. I'm just not in the mood for fighting about it anymore," she says, opening the garage door. They have both said what they needed to say, and they have been heard. Those are the rules. "I'll see you later."

The translation is crystal clear, and though it's expected, seeing Jake's forlorn expression moments before she turns away hurts just as badly as she'd feared.

Fucking Bella Swan.

.

A/N: As of 17th March 2022, BWYA is now a series(!) on AO3 and I have added our very own Hyacinthed as co-creator. Unfortunately I cannot do the same on FFn or Wattpad, but credit where credit is due on all platforms, please.

H has written and edited thousands of words for the last half of this fic, not forgetting all the time she has invested in helping me whip this story's timeline into shape and kicking my butt into gear more times than I count. Recognition is long overdue. She claims her new status to be the modern version of Bertha Mason escaping from the attic to inflict chaos upon a cruel and bitter world, but fact is that this story would have died a long time ago without her. She deserves her equal share of all the kudos, comments, reviews and love.