Chapter Forty-Four
The very first time Jared phased, it terrified him. He'd been arguing with his parents about something stupid and—in one of his rare extremely immature moments—he stormed out of the house. The plan had been to go walk off his anger in the nearby woods, but he only got a few feet into the cover of the trees when he tripped over a protruding root—thank you very much recent growth spurt that downright laughed in the face of coordination.
As he fell, he had just enough time to stick out his arms in an attempt to break his fall.
He landed on two paws instead.
In retrospect, Jared was probably lucky that Sam also happened to be phased when Jared did so for the first time. It took him a matter of minutes to track Jared down—and that was even with the fact that Jared's first instinct upon seeing furry paws where there should be hands was to run as far and as fast as he could.
From then on, life as Jared thought he knew it changed forever.
After Sam gave him a minimal explanation and basically talked Jared down and got him to phase back to human, he first took him back to his house for some much needed clothes and food. And then Sam took Jared to meet the tribal elders.
Jared knew who Old Quil Ateara, Billy Black, and Harry Clearwater were, of course—everyone on the reservation did. But it wasn't until he became a wolf that he really had any reason to interact with the three men in any type of official capacity. Put simply, they were a godsend to the young pack. Sure, they didn't have the first-hand experience of being a shape shifter, but what they lacked in skills they more than made up for in knowledge. And between them, they knew absolutely everything about the most sacred Quileute legends concerning the wolves. Quite frankly, Jared was a little bit in awe of them.
Of course, then Sam's whole imprinting debacle happened and Harry limited his public involvement with the pack members to official tribal elder meetings only. Ever since Jake phased a few weeks ago and the pack grew even more, though, Harry had been making more of an effort to be the mentor he'd been way back in the beginning. Jared was happy to have him back.
And now he was gone.
He wished he could say that everything between getting the call that Harry had a heart attack and showing up at Kim's door was a blur, but he unfortunately remembered every moment in startling clarity.
With Leah's feelings about Sam being what they were and Jake off somewhere with the Swan girl, it fell to Jared as Sam's Third to get Seth and Leah Clearwater—and hadn't the latter phasing been the biggest shock ever—to phase back, suitably attired, and brought to the hospital, where they were promptly told their father was dead. While Charlie Swan helped Sue make arrangements with the hospital and Billy sat with Seth and Leah, who were both too numb at this point to be in immediate danger of phasing, Sam sent Paul and Embry to relieve Jared with instructions to take the next twelve hours off.
And that was how Jared finally found himself on Kim's front step—because he may be going on nearly thirty-six hours without sleep right now, but he sure as hell wouldn't be able to even think about sleeping anytime soon without Kim by his side. He was too wound up right now, and too upset, to think clearly about much of anything, but he trusted Kim to know exactly what to do.
Sure enough, no sooner had he spoken those fateful words (a part of him was still finding it hard to accept—Harry Clearwater is dead), than Kim was ushering him inside, one arm wrapped around his waist as she led him through the darkened house to her bedroom.
Kim made short work of getting him out of his shoes—where had he gotten shoes? It must have been before the hospital…did that mean he'd walked here from the hospital without phasing? Maybe he wasn't remembering things with as much clarity as he thought—and then into her bed, where she pulled him down so that his head was pillowed in her lap; he wrapped his left arm around her waist while she began carding her fingers through his hair. (In the farthest corner of his mind, he tried very hard not to juxtapose their current position and why they were in it with the entirely playful way they'd ended up in an eerily similar position just a handful of days ago.)
After several minutes of the soothing, repetitive motion, Kim finally spoke.
"Do you want to talk about it?" She asked softly.
Only now realizing that his eyes must have slipped shut at some point, Jared cracked his eyes back open to see Kim looking down at him with the most heartbreaking expression on her face.
I don't know what I ever did to deserve her, Jared couldn't help but think to himself. Out loud he said, "It was a heart attack. He was arguing with Leah and…well…"
Kim let out a small gasp. "How awful…"
"That's not all, though," Jared continued wearily, "Leah got so angry that she phased—that's what put Harry over the edge. And then Seth phased, too. I…I saw it all through their eyes…it was chaos."
"Poor Leah and Seth," Kim murmured. "Poor Sue. Who's with them now?"
"Embry and Paul. Charlie Swan was at the hospital, too. Old Quil and Billy will have to explain to Sue that the legends are true, too, now," Jared recited, his eyes slipping shut once more as Kim continued to run her fingers through his hair.
That clearly didn't slip past Kim though, because the next thing out of her mouth was, "When was the last time you slept?"
"I don't even remember," Jared admitted, and he could feel his words beginning to slur together, his body finally beginning to shut down, safe here in Kim's embrace.
"Sleep now," Kim commanded gently. "We'll have plenty of time to talk later."
Jared couldn't be sure, but he thought he managed to get out some sort of garbled reply before he finally allowed himself to slip into blissful blackness.
When Jared next became aware of his surroundings he had no idea what time it was or how long he'd been sleeping, but he was positive it hadn't been nearly long enough.
Sure enough, when he worked up the energy to crack a single eye open, it was just long enough to ascertain through the gap in the curtains that were just in his line of sight, that it was definitely still night time. And although he was still half-asleep, he was without a doubt still lying on Kim's lap with her hand in his hair—clearly he hadn't been sleeping long enough for her to fall asleep as well. And as he inched closer to full consciousness, he realized he could hear Kim speaking. Maybe that was what woke him?
"—I can explain!" The words themselves were panicked, but Kim's voice was barely louder than a whisper and her hand hadn't faltered in its pace through his hair. Was she on the phone?
"Oh, I am definitely looking forward to your explanation for why your boyfriend is asleep in your bed with you at one in the morning."
Oh, well, that solved that problem, then. It was one a.m., which meant he'd been asleep for about twenty minutes and—shit.
That was Kim's mom's voice. It was not a phone call. She was in the room. She was in the room where Jared was, for all intents and purposes, technically sleeping with her teenage daughter. Shitshitshit.
Before Jared could react beyond the panic in his still-sleep-addled brain, Kim began speaking once more.
"First of all, this has never happened before, I swear. And these are definitely extenuating circumstances right now," Kim spoke in the same hushed tones as before, and Jared was beyond proud of the fact that her voice didn't waver even once as she straight-up lied to her mom's face.
There was a moment of silence, then…
"Well you've never lied to me before," Katie said slowly. Jared definitely didn't miss her begrudging tone, but she had also finally adopted the same hushed tone as her daughter—clearly they both still thought he was sleeping and had no immediate intentions of waking him. "What makes this circumstance so extenuating, then?"
And so Kim explained—making minor adjustments to circumvent the secret of the pack—how Jared witnessed Harry Clearwater having a heart attack firsthand earlier. And how he'd had to comfort the Clearwater siblings while their dad died. And how Jared had gotten very close with Harry recently—how he thought of the older man as a cherished mentor—due to all of the volunteer work he'd been doing for the council, so this was also a huge personal loss for Jared.
How when his awful day finally ended, all he'd wanted was a hug from Kim and that he'd cried himself to sleep in her arms and she didn't have the heart to wake him up and send him home when he finally looked so peaceful.
Well he hadn't cried earlier (at least, he didn't think so), but hearing Kim re-hash it all now certainly made Jared want to. It really had been an awful day.
"That's horrible news about Harry…" Katie finally said when Kim finished speaking. "He came into the diner every few days and it was no secret his wife wanted him to eat healthier…but a heart attack…"
"I've never seen Jared so upset," Kim confided in her mom.
Katie sighed heavily. "I see what you meant about extenuating circumstances…" She trailed off and Jared could feel Kim tense up in anticipation of Katie's next words.
"Do Jared's parents know where he is?"
"Yes." Kim's lie was immediate and firm. Well…actually, he didn't know for sure that it was a lie. For all Jared knew, Kim had called his mom in the twenty or so minutes between him falling asleep and Katie getting home.
There was another moment of silence, during which Kim remained tense, and then,
"If this boy ever breaks your heart, no one will ever be able to find his body," Katie stated firmly. "He can stay. But sleepovers are not going to become a habit, are we clear?"
"Yes, of course, thank you, mom," Kim let out in a rush, clearly only remembering at the last second that she should be keeping her voice down so as not to disturb Jared.
"I'm going to shut your door," Katie said now, and the creaking of the floor boards told Jared she was making her way out of the room. "But that's only so Kylie won't bother you in the morning."
"Thanks, mom," Kim said again. "Good night."
Jared waited until the light was turned off and he heard the door click shut behind Katie, and then, for good measure, even longer until she was down the hall and safely in her own bedroom getting ready for bed, before he said anything.
"I don't deserve you," he stated, his voice scratchy with exhaustion.
Their intimate proximity meant that Kim had no chance of hiding the way she jumped in surprise when Jared spoke up.
"How long have you been awake?!"
"Pretty much the whole time," Jared admitted, twisting just enough so that when he cracked a single eye open again he was looking up at Kim in the dark room. "Thank you for convincing your mom to let me stay."
Kim smiled sadly down at him. "I don't want you to be alone tonight."
"I really don't deserve you," Jared repeated.
Then, through sheer willpower alone in his exhausted state, Jared shifted off of her lap so that he was now lying beside Kim.
"You need to sleep, too," Jared reminded her, lifting his arm up in invitation.
Kim didn't need to be told twice. Within seconds, Jared and Kim were cuddled front-to-front, their arms wrapped around each other.
"I'm not going to school tomorrow," Kim whispered resolutely in the darkness. "Whatever you need, I'm going to be right there for you."
Ever since imprinting nearly a year ago, Jared had been thankful each and every day for Kim's presence in his life, but never more than he was tonight.
"I love you," Jared whispered softly, and then he finally succumbed to the pull of sleep once more, wrapped tightly in Kim's embrace.