chapter twenty-five

"Remy, you are busted the fuck up."

Bobby emptied a plastic water bottle on my face, stinging my cuts and washing the wet blood of my face. I choked, spitting out the blood, spit and water that pooled up over my tongue. I didn't know where the blood was coming from or who's it was but it was on my face and my shirt and I kept swallowing it. "Whatever," I replied, water dripping down my face. "I'm fine," I lied. And it wasn't even the blood or the soreness on my face but the dizziness and banging in my head. My vision was blurred and I didn't know where Bobby standing or even where I was. And the gaping hole in my chest that made it hard to breathe was growing and expanding and the pain was spreading.

My head rolled back, but Bobby's hand was there, forcing me upright. "You cracked your cast, your nose is broken, your lip is busted, your knuckles are bleeding, and you probably broke your other hand. We have to go to the hospital, Remy. Like, you need stitches," she said, voice distance but her fingers tracing along the injuries on my face.

She tried to dump more water on my face but I snatched the bottle out of her hand, crunching the plastic in my fist. "No," I said, trying to sound strong but my voice came out as a breathless and tired. "The only people who go to the hospitals after fights are the people who lose. I didn't lose. I don't lose."

I couldn't tell if my eyes were opened or closed but I couldn't see. I could remember, though, the little girl with her hair in big pigtails who thought it would be cute as hell to start throwing slurs at Bobby before I slammed her head against the wall. "Oh my god, you knocked her out. You knocked her out and you still kept punching. Everyone knows you won, so can you just like, drop your weird code of honor and just go the fucking hospital so we can get stitches on your lip? Like, please? You're bleeding like crazy."

Bobby's face appeared in front of mine, blurry and glossy. Her features were wide, full lips slightly gaping as she took in the details of my face. I blinked, looking into her eyes. "No," I said.

She groaned. "Alright, you know what? I'm calling Embry," Bobby snapped, digging through her purse.

"No!" I protested, trying to stand, but the dizziness knocked me back on my ass again. "Bobby, fucking stop. I'm serious. Don't fucking call him. Bobby!"

"Well, I don't know what you want me to do here!" Bobby said, voice rushed and exasperated. "You're drunk and belligerent and honestly? I'm a little bit scared of you right now. You almost killed that girl. Embry could calm you down better than me right now. And, I mean, if he couldn't he's like the only person in the world who I think you couldn't kick the shit out of right now."

I spit out more blood on the ground. My hands rooted in the grass and the dirt under me and I started to think that maybe Bobby dragged me out to someone's yard but I couldn't figure out whose house party it was and I wondered if we were even close to home. "No Embry," I repeated, voice raspy and head heavy. "We'll lie out in this grass all night if it means we don't have to call him." I hadn't seen Embry since he stormed out the door almost a week ago and I didn't know what the fuck his problem was but the further away from him I was the heavier the hole in my chest.

But I thought that if Embry would walk out of my life with no warning and no explanation, then he really didn't care about me. And that was fine. Because if he didn't care, I could care less about him. If he decided I didn't matter to him, than he would be less than nothing to me. I didn't need him more than he didn't need me.

Bobby groaned, sitting across from me and taking my hands in hers. She leaned in close to me, her forehead almost touching mine, and she said to me, "Remy, you know I love you more than anything in the world, so I need you not to take offense when I say this right now. You are being a giant dick right now."

I rolled onto my back, lying down to stare at the stars. The night sky was the only thing I could imaging looking at. It was clear cut and simple and I didn't have to strain my eyes to make out the details. "Why don't you just leave me alone then? If I'm such a dick then just leave me here."

"Don't be fucking stupid," she snarled at me. "I'm not gonna leave you here drunk off your ass. I'm calling Embry and he's gonna take you home and you're gonna stop being a fucking brat about it."

Bobby's words sent me into a panic and I shot up, blackness in the corners of my sight stretching out and spreading. I glared at her. "Bobby, don't you dare fucking call Embry. I'm not fucking around. Don't call him. I don't care, call Quil, call Leah Clearwater, call my fucking mom. I don't care. Don't you dare call Embry fucking call."

"Can you just," she started, and then sighed, rubbing her face with her hands, "can you just stay here? I'm gonna go get some more water and I'm gonna call Quil or someone, alright? Just stay here."

I fell back onto the grass, a sort of heavy sadness rising up to my throat. "Yeah, fine."

I didn't hear her leave but I waited long enough until I was sure she was gone, and then I stood. My feet were unstable but I didn't fall over and I thought that was good enough motivation to leave. Everything around me was clouded and Bobby was gone and wherever I was was the last place I wanted to be. I started walking in a direction that I thought was away from the forest and towards the street and when my feet hit the gravel, I just followed the road, knowing eventually I would end up somewhere.

Blood was spilling from my lip down my chin and all over my shirt and I thought about ripping it off and walking around in my sports bra but I was already cold enough as it was and at least the blood soaking up in the cotton of my shirt was warm enough. I didn't have a plan on how to get home; I just figured that my sense of direction was good enough to get me back home, though there was no proof to really back that theory up. I just went wherever my gut told me to go and spit out the blood in my mouth every couple of minutes. I chuckled, thinking of how funny it would be for whoever lived along this street to find a path of splattered blood wherever I walked.

I didn't think Bobby would be mad at me for leaving, since I was such a dick, and I figured she would be glad that she didn't have to babysit me for the rest of the night and she could go off and talk to her friends and flirt with pretty party people and I would just stumble down the street and she wouldn't have to worry about me. And I thought that maybe since Embry decided to walk away from my life that it wouldn't be long until Bobby followed and my whole life would just consist of wandering streets covered in my own blood.

And more than anything, I thought it was stupid for me to even depend on them in the first place, because I knew this shit would happen. Because when I didn't care about anyone or anything, no one disappointed me. There was no one there to leave. I didn't mind being alone, it was never something that bothered me, but being alone felt different now than it did before.

I kicked rocks into trees, watching them slam into the base of the bark and bounce into the ground. I didn't know why Embry left. I didn't know why he slammed the door and ignored my texts and calls and I didn't know where he was. No one would tell me anything and no one would look me in the eye when I asked them what the fuck imprinting is and why it made Embry freak. I spent days pouring over books and stupid online forums but I couldn't find anything relevant. There was nothing in legends about it and there was nothing I could do to figure it out.

Thinking about it made me lose every part of me I had gained-the softness, the empathy, and the care. All those parts of me Embry had spend smoothing out and sanding down were jagged once more, and that's why I my hands were covered in pigtail girl's blood and why she was knocked out with ice on her busted face on some stranger's couch. I didn't care anymore. I had to go back to being ruthless and untouchable. I had to go back to who I was before Embry tangled his fingers in his my hair and tightened his arm around my shoulder.

I didn't know how long I was walking for and I didn't know where I had ended up but the blackness was creeping up from the inside of my skull to the center of my eyes. My arms were covered in goosebumps and the coldness as sunken from the top layer of my skin to the soft center of my bones. There was darkness everywhere and the I felt like I was on the verge of toppling over.

I thought about finding a nice rock to sit down on and considered just settling there until I could move without tripping over my own feet and figured that even if there was some bloodthirsty monster there then hey, at least they'd get a body with a high blood alcohol content. Vampire body shots. But while I was thinking about all the places I could collapse and sleep, bright headlights speed down the road. I squinted my eyes as the car approached and slowed.

The window rolled down and I leaned in, eyes focusing and unfocusing until I could see who was on the inside. "Quil?"

Big Brother Quil frowned at me. "Get in the car before you die, please."

I kept my eyes closed, forehead pressed against the cool window of his truck. The heat was turned all the way up and it didn't take long for me to go from freezing cold to overheating. And the higher than average temperature radiating from Quil didn't help. I would've complained but I thought that if I opened my mouth I would puke all over his truck.

"What the hell were you doing out there?" Quil asked suddenly.

I rolled my head in his direction. "Walking home, " I mumbled, and burped suddenly. "I had a super fun, super cool night," I told him with a bloody smile.

He looked over at me and shook his head. "You're gonna get yourself killed, Remy," Quil scolded. "Seriously. If Embry knew that you were walking around at night alone, covered in blood-"

"Well Embry doesn't know, does he?" I shot, feeling to weak to muster the anger up in my voice. "And why's that? Oh, because he's been ignoring me for sixteen fucking years. Why is he ignoring me? I don't know, probably because he hates me," I shouted, and then I realized that saying it out loud felt like shit and I wished I hadn't let the thought leave my lips.

Quil looked at me, expression perplexed and enraged. "Are you serious? You think he hates you?"

I kicked my feet up on his dashboard and closed my eyes. "If he didn't hate me he, he wouldn't be ignoring me. He wouldn't have just randomly cut me out of his life and stopped talking to me. I feel like this is a fair assumption to make. Cause like, normally when you like people, you talk to them."

"Embry's not ignoring you because he hates you," Quil explained. "He's ignoring you because he's afraid of you."

I sucked in air and blew it out of my cheeks. "I really don't think that's true."

"I don't know how you haven't noticed it. Embry's like, dumb stupid scared of you."

I looked over at Quil. "Why the fuck would Embry be scared of me?"

He titled his head, pretending to think about it. "Probably because he loves you and you're like the single most terrifying person in the Pacific Northwest, possibly the entire western half of the United States. You hold his heart in your blood-covered man-hands. Damn, you're really covered in blood. Who's blood is that?"

"I dunno. Mine. Some blonde's. Who gives a shit?" I asked, shrugging. "Embry doesn't love me."

Quil flicked his blinker on and pulled over to the side of the road. He twisted, looking at me with his hand on the wheel. "Remy, we've all been shitty towards Embry lately. Okay? Me and Jake fucked up when it came to the whole half-brother dad thing."

"Yeah that was a pretty dick move."

"I know," he agreed quickly. "And Seth really fucked up when he brought up the thing you weren't supposed to know about yet."

"I assume you're not gonna fill me in."

"Nope, so don't ask. And honestly, I know him avoiding you isn't really your fault, but he feels like the world is kinda turning against him right now, and nothing's really going right. And it's really, really important to him that things go right with you, because he loves you. But he's convinced that things aren't gonna go right and he's gonna lose you forever, because you're scary and mean like a goblin. So he's avoiding what he thinks is the inevitable," Quil explained, and I leaned my head back against the fake leather headrest. "You really gotta go easy on him here, Remy."

I stared at my feet. My sneakers were old and ratty and had old blood stains and new ones and I wondered if I had a pair of shoes that weren't a biohazard. I said to Quil, "Have you talked to him?"

"Yeah. He misses you."

I nodded, looping my fingers around my dirty shoelaces and tangling them up together the way Embry used to knot his fingers in my hair. "Whatever. Can you just please take me home?"

With a sigh, Quil shifted his car back into drive and speed off into the street. He didn't talk much the whole drive home, just looked my way whenever the pained howl of a wolf cut through the silence.

Bobby chewed me out. She chewed me out a lot.

"Did you even think about how I would feel when I realized you were gone? Do you ever think? Ever? No, I'm serious Remy, have you ever had a thought in your entire life?"

I groaned, rolling my forehead over a frozen bag of peas. "No."

She was pacing back and forth in her room, steam basically pouring out of her ears. The sun had barely risen before she raised her voice at me. "I mean, honest to god Remy, I know you're upset and this is your first time being dumped and like, I get it, I'm furious too. But you can't just stumble around town alone and drunk! And in the middle of the night! What if you had gotten kidnapped? What if you had gotten murdered? Do you even think about any of those things? Oh right, you don't, because you don't think. Zero thoughts! Your head is empty."

"Okay, first of all," I started, resting the peas on the top of my head, "I didn't get dumped. I couldn't have gotten dumped, because I've never dated anyone. A relationship can't end if there was never a relationship to begin with."

"I'm not in the mood for semantics right now," she said with a huff, crossing her arms and glaring at me.

I stood, peas falling, and made my way over towards Bobby. I put my arms on her shoulders and looked into her eyes. "Bobby, I am sorry that I have zero cognitive thinking skills. I'm sorry I acted like a dick." I sighed, dropping my arms by my side and I felt tears prick at my eyes. "I thought you didn't wanna be around me because I was a dick, and that maybe you'd be better off if I wasn't around. I just don't know what the fuck is up with me lately." I inhaled sharply. "Don't tell anyone I told you this, but it kinda feels like I actually got dumped."

Bobby's face softened, and she placed a hand on my cheek. "Remy, I'm still super goddamn annoyed and I'm gonna make you watch at Jennifer's Body with me at least three different times tonight to make up for it, but I get it. Ending relationships always sucks, no matter the relationship. And like," she shifted, collapsing on the edge of her bed and holding my hands in hers, "I really don't know what happened with Embry, but I know that he left and it really hurt you. And you don't have to pretend to not care. At least not around me."

I looked out Bobby's window, where the sun was shining between the trees. "I'm gonna go for a run," I told her, not looking her way. "I've been too distracted to work out lately. That's why that bitch in the ponytail got my lip good," I said, pointing to my busted lip. There was a deep, dark red cut that ran down the center of my bottom lip.

Bobby rolled her eyes at me. "Are you sure? It's like seven in the morning and you're still hungover as shit."

Shrugging, I slipped a hair-tie off my wrist and looped my hair into a ponytail. "I dunno. Maybe I'll sweat all the toxins out. Running always makes me feel better," I said. The past few weeks I was so fixated on Embry and Bear and the supernatural shift in my reality that the muscles in my arms started to fade off into the fat and when I threw punches my arms felt heavier. I didn't wanna be weak.

The morning air was wet and cold and it pinched at my skin. My lungs pumped down Bobby's driveway and I picked up speed as I turned onto the street and ran through the res, passing the shore and the cliffs and all the places I had spent time with Embry. My legs kicked a little bit faster at the thought of him, like I could outrun the memories. It didn't take long for my lungs to start screaming once more, burning and gasping for air. I was out of it.

There was no battered and busted punching bag at Bobby's, and there was nothing around for my to throw myself into. The rage just bottled up and unleashed at random and I thought about the morning my dad leaned against the counter and told me that he wasn't gonna let it go unchecked. And when I thought about every that had happened since then, the drinking and the fighting and the screaming and the running, I wondered how my dad felt knowing he failed two out of two of his kids.

Running, I wished that my mother was actually my mother. I hadn't talked to her since she called me that once, demanding I return home. And it wasn't her that I wanted, it was the fantasy of what she could be: caring and loving and understanding. I guess I had tried to supplement that with Bobby but Bobby could be just as reckless as me and her advice was often harsh and cutting and I thought that, even though I loved her more than almost anyone else, she couldn't replicate that maternal care I craved.

I was gasping for air by the time I turned down a familiar street, and I slowed, staring down at the one-story little house I hadn't been to since I whipped my hand across Jared's face. I thought maybe that my legs brought me to Kim's house before I could even think about it. I stood at the edge of her driveway, staring down at her car with my hands up on my hips and my lungs gasping for air. This was were I always went whenever I was in turmoil, and I guessed that instinct never really went away.

I took small steps towards her front door. There was no game plan and I had no idea what I would say to her. My back and face were slick with sweat and I was still worn down from the hangover. But when I arrived at her front door, I knocked without a second thought. No hesitation, and no doubt.

Kim opened the door, hesitantly, looking up at me with wide eyes. She was drowning in a grey sweater and her eyes were bloodshot. She was always crying. "Remy," she said, pronouncing my name like it was foreign to her tongue. "What are you doing here."

"Um," I started, leaning against her door frame and looking into her eyes. "I just thought we could talk, if that's cool."

"What about?" she asked, eyeing me skeptically, stepping out onto her front porch and closing the door behind her. I figured Jared must've been in there. And I had no idea where I stood on that front.

There was this thickness between us I felt like I had to swim through. "I dunno. I'm kind of in a crisis, I guess."

She chuckled lightly. "Well, I guess some things just don't change."

"Can you tell me what imprinting is?" I asked her, voice rushed and desperate for answer and not interested in forcing any small talk.

"Remy..." she started.

"I know you know, Kim."

Kim sighed, crossing her arms and shifting her weight between her legs. She was defensive, round face scrunched and ready to stand her ground. "It's kind of fucked up for you to come to me for answers when you said you didn't wanna be my friend anymore."

Her words make me take a step back, leaning away from her and her house. I reeled them over in my head but I couldn't make sense of them. "What are you...what do you..."

"Don't play dumb. You know you were my only friend," she said, voice low and hurt but without any trace of anger. "And you know I miss you all the time. You came here cause you thought I'd tell you everything you wanna know just because I miss you."

I looked down at my feet. "You know I don't think things through that much."

She let out a low laugh. "If you wanna actually talk about what's going on then that's one thing, I guess. But I'm not just gonna tell you shit that's not my place to speak on."

I smiled. Kim was emotional and erratic and she was hardly ever predicable but sometimes, when the tears settled and she caught her breath, her words made a lot of sense. "I guess I'm just tired of losing people, I guess."

Kim was probably the last person I should've been complaining about being alone to. Because even though she had Jared, she didn't really have anyone else. Kim was always alone, but it was never really by choice. She didn't care for silence the way I did, and when Kim was alone with her thoughts for too long the tears would start up. And even though I lost Embry and Bear and Kim, I still had Bobby and Quil and fuck it, I even had Bella and Jacob. And Seth Clearwater annoyingly made me like him. I had lost more but I had more to start with. "It sucks. I know," she paused, looking in my eyes. "I just think you should know that every person you think you lost really does care about you. People love you more than you think they do, Remy."

Her words didn't comfort me. They were ankle weights of guilt that weighed me down for the rest of the day, drowning me. And I think that was what she wanted.

I smoked cigarettes for a month. After Bear went missing, I found a guy over in Forks who would sell them to me even though I wasn't old enough because he felt bad for me. I didn't like the way they smelled but there was something about the smoke flooding my lungs that I thought was therapeutic. I didn't really care about anything other than the motions of inhaling and exhaling and I figured that if I couldn't have Bear and I couldn't have Embry then I could have a cigarette. I couldn't even remember why I quit.

The bells rung when I stepped out of the gas station with a new pack in my pocket and one cigarette dangling from the corner of my mouth. I walked off the curb and headed off towards the dirt road that led me back to the res. I missed having a car but I liked the long walks. I liked the way I got to be alone for my thoughts and the peacefulness of everything around me.

I didn't appreciate the land as much as I should've. It was like everything around me was alive, buzzing with an energy I couldn't understand. But the smell of the pine and the wet dirt and leaves grounded me.

I dipped off, turning off into the mouth of a hiking trail and settled on a large boulder, leaning my back up against the bark of a tree and lighting the cigarette in my mouth. There was never any concern about a forest fire. Everything was wet. The whole place was soaked, like the trees and the ground absorbed a few inches of water permanently.

Smoke flooded in my lungs and I coughed. It had been a while, and I struggled to regain my breath. Still, I brought it back up to my lips, right above the cut, and inhaled. My eyes watered and my lungs burned but I exhaled the smoke easier this time. The smell of it floated in the air, so different than the the freshness of the woods around me.

Everything was shit. Everything was shit and I didn't know what to do. And even though I worked so hard to not care about Embry, in the stillness of the woods, I could admit that I really fucking missed him. When he left, the cuts he left in my chest were so jagged and deep and irregular, it was like a pain I had never felt before. It was something completely out of my control and unfamiliar and even when I thought I had felt loss before it was nothing like the way I felt without Embry.

I figured it was some sort of karma, for all the times I had snapped and turned my back on him and for all the times I broke his heart. But even when I was so mad at him I thought I would snap his neck in half, I never stayed mad for long. I never ignored him for a week. And there was something about the way he slammed the door that had an air of finality to it. I knew that Quil said Embry cared about me, but it didn't feel like he did. It felt like he was gone for good for no other reason than he wanted to be. I tried to think of everything I could've done to get him to stay or even what happened that made him leave in the first place.

I flicked the tip of the cigarette into the ground and wondered what Embry would say if he knew I was smoking. I liked to imagine he would care; that he would scold me and lecture me on all the health dangers of smoking. But every time I pictured the way his eyes would widen and he reach over and snatch it from between my lips, I said to myself that if he cared enough about me, I wouldn't be smoking in the first place.

"You know that shit's gonna kill you, right?"

I jumped at the low and smooth voice. Goosebumps spread on my skin and I didn't know how anyone could sneak up on me without the crunching of leaves under their feet giving them away. And when I realized that I knew that voice, my heart shot up to my throat and every part of me knotted up. Slowly, with wide eyes and shaking hands, I turned around.

He was standing there, closer to me than I thought he would be. He was there. Perfect and smiling and smooth skin free of any of the scars I had grown used to. His crooked, sharp nose was straightened out. He looked the same, with his dark skin and wild hair, but different. My mouth went dry at his bright red eyes.

"Bear?"

"Hey Rem," he said, easily, like it was nothing. His smiled grew. "I've missed you, kid."

jfisgjsihgdh i LOVE this chapter i think it honestly might be my favorite so far. sooo! bear's back ! our thoughts? our opinions? idk why this makes me so nervous and exicted sdjg ive been waiting so long to write this chapter.

bobby: have you considered thinking things through?

remy: i will never consider that