AN: Thank you again for your everlasting patience. And thank you in particular to Anony, your enthusiasm helped motivate this update.

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Chapter Fifty Four: Come Outside.

Weeks went by in a blur after that. My life no longer felt like it had any meaning, but I kept moving through the motions of time. A week after my disastrous birthday, Sam decided he wanted me to be home schooled with Jared and Paul. I knew it was so he could keep an eye on me more than any of the other excuses he made. But I couldn't blame him for his protectiveness. I knew I must look a wreck, my appearance slowly deteriorating to match my dismal mind, but I could not find any energy in my body to care. He would check in at least three times a day to see how I was doing and I knew he sent Jared and Paul to check up on me too. Neither boy seemed to mind, not just because their Alpha asked it of them, but because they both were strangely concerned about my wellbeing too. It felt incredibly odd to have the Pack grow into my family, yet still feel like an outsider to them all.

Emily tried, she tried so hard, simply to make things easier for me. She encouraged me to help with the cooking, a pastime I used to enjoy as much as she does, and she made a pointed effort to ensure I was involved in conversations and pack events. Every day, she would greet me with a cheery tone and set out our plans for the day, asking for my opinion on each thing, even though I never gave her a response more elaborate than "that's fine…sure, sounds good to me…whatever you want to do." I knew my passivism worried her, as she pushed again and again every day, but my mind was too addled to respond any more enthusiastically. But she never lost her patience with me, content on simply buoying me along until I was able to keep myself afloat through life, or so she hoped I would at some point in the future. I wasn't so sure I would ever find that feeling again, a drive to life outside my drowning thoughts.

It was a Saturday and Emily had left to see her parents for the day over in the Makah Tribe. She had been putting off leaving me alone at home since September, frightened I would fall back into a sleepy depression if she wasn't there to occupy my day. Jared's parents had taken him away camping, leaving Paul and Sam to patrol, meaning no one was free to babysit my fragile mind. But I had assured her I could manage, knowing how desperately she wanted to visit her family. Neither of us were entirely convinced by my words, but she reluctantly left. I knew I would have company soon enough; Sam would probably check in every hour during his patrol, and Paul would appear at some point in the afternoon under the pretence of food and boredom.

So, I found myself laying out my textbooks and notepads on the small dining table, precisely aligning each item with another. I could feel the darkness of my nightmares still lingering in my thoughts, as they always did, and I tried to function around them. If I couldn't prove I was capable of caring for myself for a few short hours, I knew Emily would never leave me alone again, and I would extend my selfishness further into everyone's lives.

Hours disappeared and I found myself staring at my textbooks, my pencil poised to over the final question of my homework, as the clock ticked by the two hour. My mind had frozen moments before, unsure what to do now I had no other questions to complete. I had made my way diligently through my English and history assignments, both lengthy essays, but was now stuck for something else to occupy my mind. The next topics for all of my classes weren't going to be delivered until Monday. Unable to resist, the darkness snaked in and stole my motivation to remain active.

That was how Jacob found me, paralysed by my own memories.

"Bells? Bella? Hey, what's wrong? Bells?" He crouched by side, pulling the pencil from my grasp. My eyelids closed in a slow blink, before opening to stare at his scuffed sneakers, "Bella, you okay?"

"Jake?" It felt weird for words to form on my lips and I blinked again.

"Hey." Closing my notepad, he slid it away, "I think you've had enough of that for one day."

"No." I shook my head, trying to pull my thoughts back into a coherent pattern.

"Bells, if you do any more, you're going to Graduation before Christmas." His shoes shuffled in my eye line, as he adjusted his position, "Come on, honey, time for a break."

"No." I repeated, but there was no conviction in my tone.

"Come on, Bella, I haven't seen you for weeks." He stood and chuckled awkwardly, "You avoiding me or something?"

"No."

"Then let's hang out now." Jake suggested, "We can go for a walk down the beach, see if our old tree was finally swept away in last week's storm." When I didn't move, he covered my small, cold fingers with his own and tugged me out of my chair, "Come on, pale face, time for some sunshine."

He pulled me out of the door, barely stopping for my coat and shoes. After I locked up, he walked alongside me, as I shuffled up the path to the road, watching my shoes crunch stones and send them tumbling away again. Chatting merrily, he told me how much he missed me being a school, grunting unhappily as I recited the excuses Sam had given the school as to why I was suddenly being home schooled. He updated me on how Quil was still trying to unsuccessfully flirt his way into bed with anyone that wore a skirt, earning himself a few hilarious rejections, and surprisingly a few positive propositions of his own. As we reached the main road that ran parallel to the beach, he told me of his concerns for Embry, who had become more brooding and surly in the past week. I tried to offer some assurances to him, but he brushed it off, joking that Embry was going through the 'manopause'; he wasn't exactly sure what that meant, but he said he'd heard one of his classmates say it. Walking across the shale beach, he talked about Billy and his sisters.

While Jake talked, I listened to his easy patter, and watched his feet move with gangly ungracefulness across the rocks. He seemed to know that I didn't want to talk much and was happy simply to be with me. Several times, he expressed missing me at one time or another over the previous weeks, and rubbed his thumb over my knuckles. His hand felt warm in mine, nice, but not inhumanely hot. Since leaving my house, he hadn't let go of my hand, but it felt natural. It was always this way with Jake and me, easy and comfortable, with no pressure to keep pretences and act a certain way. We were just two friends who could spend time together doing nothing and everything, something I oddly missed. It was the first, real, flitting pang of emotion I had felt in a long time, as we settled on the bleached, marooned tree we'd named our own a long time ago, and I found my fingers holding his slightly tighter in my own; trying to keep his reassuring warmth for a little while longer, before the cold darkness descended inevitably once more.