Eleven
Paul phased back to human in the woods outside Sam and Emily's house, pulling his shorts back on carelessly. He remembered how much he'd embarrassed Bella the first time he'd run into her room when she'd had a nightmare. He smiled at the memory of how horrified she'd been at him being naked. She was hilariously innocent in so many ways.
As he was approaching the front steps, he saw Jared making his way around the edge of the house, cutting across the unfenced backyards from the direction of his own house.
Jared raised his eyebrows at Paul as he approached. "Your face was doing something weird, dude."
Paul stopped walking. "What?"
Jared squinted at him. "It's like, a happy expression, um…what's the word? Oh, yeah, I think it's called 'smiling'! Weird, huh?"
Paul threw a half-hearted punch at his shoulder, but Jared stepped aside easily, laughing.
"You might even tell a joke one day, dude. I like to dream big."
Paul fought down and failed to suppress a smile. "Go to hell."
"Such language! Bella would never approve."
"Yeah?" Paul retorted. "She said 'fuck' the other day."
"No shit?" Jared sounded genuinely impressed. He pushed open the door to the house, and Paul followed him inside. "Maybe you're rubbing off on her, too, then."
"What do you mean, 'too'?" Paul asked suspiciously.
Emily stepped out of the kitchen before Jared could answer, wiping her hands on her apron and smiling at both of them. She wrapped her hand around Paul's arm and smiled up at him innocently.
"Jared means you may have become slightly... gentler since imprinting."
"'Gentler'," Jared echoed, snorting. "Try 'slightly less likely to kill on sight'."
Paul frowned as he followed Jared and Emily into the kitchen. He was pretty sure he hadn't ever been that bad.
Sam was sitting at the kitchen counter, his eyes tired as he glanced over at them, but his lips were quirked, and Paul knew he had heard their conversation.
Emily brushed past him and returned from the kitchen with a plate of sandwiches. "Thanks, Em," Paul told her as he sat down heavily in one of the barstools, Jared taking a seat on his other side. The smile Emily gave him in return seemed brighter than usual.
He and Jared finished their sandwiches in silence. It didn't matter that Paul had eaten the breakfast Bella had made just an hour before; he had learned never to turn down food. You never knew when you were going to called to patrol or watch out for the red-headed leech for hours. Vampires weren't very good at respecting mealtimes.
While Paul ate, he tried to formulate how he could ask Sam diplomatically to let him go to Port Angeles. It would be an especially tough task since he wasn't sure he'd ever tried being diplomatic before in his life.
"Sam," Paul said abruptly when he was finished. Sam raised an eyebrow at him, turning slightly. He had his arm wrapped around Emily's waist and was resting his head against Emily's side.
Paul tried to keep his expression neutral. He hated asking for permission for anything. This is for Bella, he reminded himself.
"I told Bella we could go to Port Angeles tomorrow, before we found out — about the leech." Paul swallowed hard, reliving that sickening rush he had felt when his imprint had first told him that she was the leech's target. "Someone from the pack will need to be phased and trail us, though. I need her to be safe, but she needs to go."
A wolf who hadn't imprinted might not understand the import of him saying his imprint needed something, but Paul was sitting with the other two imprinted wolves in the pack, and they both nodded without questioning him.
Still, Sam frowned. "I would, Paul, but I need to stay on the rez to coordinate our plans in case the leech tries to head here. And it doesn't seem right to add on an extra patrol to one of the pack when we're already running such long hours."
Paul hated that Sam's logic made sense. His stomach dropped as he imagined telling Bella that he couldn't do what he'd promised after all.
"I'll do it," Jared said from beside him, sounding uncharacteristically serious. Then he broke out into a grin. "Trust me, Paul's much less of a dick when he's with her. We're all better off if he can see Bella."
Sam actually smiled at that, and he and Jared seemed to share some unspoken joke at Paul's expense.
Paul refrained from saying anything with effort, since he was dependent upon both of their agreement to make his plan work. He drummed his fingers on the table, trying not to seem too impatient.
Sam examined Paul for a moment. "Fine," he said finally. "No more than a few hours though, Paul."
Paul nodded, relieved. "I think I can get her to come to the rez with me after. Thanks," he added.
Sam gave him the same faint look of surprise that Jared had a couple days ago. What was it with Paul's packmates being surprised by his behavior?
"You two look exhausted," Emily said, sliding free of Sam to examine both Paul and Jared. "Especially you, Paul. Do you want to sleep in the guest bedroom?"
Paul considered the offer, but then shook his head tiredly. He might as well make an appearance at his house. "I should head out," he said, rising from his stool. "But we'll come by tomorrow, if that's okay."
"Oh, so you're a 'we' now?" Jared said with a cackle.
Paul turned on him, which was usually enough to make most of the pack wary of what he would do next, but Jared just looked amused.
"Hey, you've got to take it until we come back from Port Angeles," his packmate said. "I've going to take advantage of this one chance I have to rag on you. Who knows when I'll get it again?"
Paul rolled his eyes, deciding he was too exhausted to even glare. He nodded his goodbye to his Sam and Emily before letting himself out the front door.
It was a mile walk back to his house, and he considered phasing and taking the longer route through the forest, but he decided that was too much effort. He could go ten times as fast as a wolf, but in his state he would end up ten times as tired, as well.
Now that it was late morning, Paul hoped his dad would have left for the day, but that was far from a guarantee. At this point in his life Paul just felt vaguely uncomfortable around his father. He had the uneasy feeling that they were both disappointments to each other.
With his father's depression and alcoholism, they'd never had anything resembling a close or even remotely normal relationship anyway, and now that Paul had to keep the wolf secret from his dad for the rest of his life, he felt like there was just too big of a chasm between them to ever truly fix their relationship.
As he passed the Atearas' tiny grocery store that was almost the halfway point between Sam's house and Paul's own, he had an odd moment of realization. Since telling Bella about what his father was gone through after Paul's mother had left them, his anger toward his father had faded, leaving just a tired kind of disappointment.
No, his dad wasn't dealing with it healthily, or even normally. Most people weren't still destroyed by a divorce that had happened nine years ago. Most people didn't become alcoholics after their spouses left them.
But Paul's dad wasn't a bad person, either. Paul knew exactly how cruel, how selfish alcohol could transform other members of the rez into, had seen women and kids with bruises that only came from being hit with fists. Paul had never felt in danger from his father or like he might be abandoned.
His dad didn't deserve his hatred. His disappointment, maybe. His pity. But not his hatred.
When Paul pushed open the front door of his house, he found his dad sprawled out on the couch asleep, whatever show he had apparently been watching the night before having long finished. There were only a few Ranier cans at his feet, which meant that his father hadn't drunk himself into oblivion the night before.
His dad grunted awake as Paul shut the front door behind him. He had clearly fallen asleep with the TV on, and the title screen for Days of Our Lives popped up as Paul glanced at the TV.
"Watching the soaps, Dad?" Paul asked dryly.
"Fucking show's been on longer than I've been alive," his dad said, yawning. His cell phone was in his lap, and he reached for it and quickly shoved it in his jeans pocket like Paul was going to sprint away with it.
"Because housewives like you watch this shit," Paul said.
His father snorted. "You'd better hope you find a woman who'll let you be her housewife, son, the rate you're going."
Paul knew his father was talking about him dropping out of high school, but the jab didn't bother him. From his dad's perspective, he was making an idiotic decision.
"Keep an eye out for a hot career woman for me, then, Dad," he said over his shoulder as he walked through the living room and opened the door to his bedroom.
He threw himself on his bed and was asleep before he remembered closing his eyes.
Paul awoke from an uneasy sleep, his first thought on his imprint, as it always was. He grabbed a granola bar from the kitchen and stuffed half the bar into his mouth, barely tasting it. He was starving again, but he didn't stop to look for anything else to eat. He didn't want to waste any time seeing her once she got out of school.
He noticed the beer cans on the floor on his way out the front door and stopped for a second, listening. The house was silent; his dad had left at some point while he'd slept. Probably with his friends at the community center, clutching his cell phone convulsively.
Paul shook his head and headed into the woods to phase. Priorities. Bella and the redheaded leech. That was all that mattered right now.
His timing turned out to be almost perfect, as he intercepted his imprint as she stumbled out of her truck in the driveway of her house, slipping on a patch of ice that hadn't melted during the day.
She caught her balance before he could try to catch her, but she almost fell over again when she saw him. "Can't you make a noise or something?" she asked grumpily.
He raised his eyebrows. "Is it my fault you live in your head so much?"
Right away he wished he could take the words back; even though he didn't mean it as a reference to her hallucinations, the words were too sharp —
"It is if you want something to eat," she said, raising an unimpressed eyebrow at him. She wasn't angry, but there was an undercurrent of something in her emotions. She was tense, almost wary.
"In that case I take full responsibility," he said automatically, trying to gauge her exact mood. Then it clicked. "We can go to Port Angeles tomorrow," he blurted out before she could respond.
She opened her mouth and then closed it again. To Paul's intense pleasure, a smile crossed her face, for just a second. "Really?" she asked.
"Really," he said, enjoying the unexpected rush of doing something that made his imprint happy. "For a few hours. Jared will tail us."
She nodded and let out a long breath. "I think I've got enough butter," she said.
He blinked, thrown. "What?"
"For the brownies," she said, as if he was an idiot.
He couldn't stop a chuckle. "For the brownies," he repeated, and followed her into the house, sitting in a bar chair as he watched her step into the kitchen.
She pulled hamburger patties out of the back of the refrigerator, pushing aside produce and plastic bins containing neatly-labeled salads. "I have to hide them," she said. "Charlie doesn't need to eat too much red meat. But I have a feeling you don't need to worry about heart disease."
He snorted. "I guess not."
She stood on tiptoes to grab a skillet from an upper cabinet, and he was distracted by her t-shirt riding up enough to review a couple of inches of pale, perfect skin. She was still too thin, but he was fairly confident that she wasn't losing weight anymore.
"I should help you," he said belatedly. Of course he should have, reaching for the bowls in the cabinets, if nothing else.
She turned to look at him, seeming genuinely surprised. "You stay out all night guarding me," she said. "Let me do this."
Paul frowned, concentrating, trying to read both her expression and the imprint bond. She was being sincere, he decided after a moment.
"Okay," he said helplessly. "If you change your mind?"
Her lips quirked. "You'll be the first to know."
So she had a sense of humor, after all. He grinned as her back was turned.
Ten minutes later, she handed him a plate with four burgers and sat down next to him with a salad she had made while the patties were cooking. He fluidly reached over to deposit one of the burgers on her plate. "Bet you didn't eat lunch," he said, when she opened her mouth, looking indignant.
Good. Her mad was better than her emotionless.
"You're so bossy," she complained, but she didn't try to put it back on his plate. And she ate almost all of the burger.
When they'd finished eating, he hovered in the kitchen uncomfortably as she rinsed off their plates and put everything away. "Go," she said firmly. "I said I'd tell you if I wanted help."
"Now who's bossy?" he grumbled. He just wanted to take care of her, but more than that he could tell this was what she wanted.
He sat down on the living room couch across from the TV, though he didn't turn it on. He didn't want anything to make it harder for him to hear his imprint moving around the kitchen.
A few minutes later she came in and curled up on the opposite end of the couch with her head on the couch arm and reached for the remote to turn on the TV. "Do you mind if we watch this?" she asked him, stopping on a show he didn't recognize. "I just… I need to not think about anything for a while. It's been a long week."
Paul knew she wasn't just talking about school. It was him, the imprint, her hallucinations, her dad. So many things.
"The eighteenth century is my favorite century," he assured her, glancing away from her face just long enough to see the actors in period costumes reenacting a formal ballroom dance on the screen.
That half smile crossed her face again, and he did a mental fist pump. "I thought so," she said, turning to watch the show again. He barely bothered to follow it, staring at her profile, her hair spread out a little on the pillow in subtle waves.
He was uncomfortably aware of how little space separated her feet from his thighs. If she stretched out her legs a little more they would reach across his lap.
She wouldn't do that, of course. It was stupid to even think that.
"What?" she asked. He lifted his gaze from her bare ankles to meet her confused expression.
"What?" he echoed.
"You're staring at my feet."
"I'm… not," he said lamely. "I was thinking, and they were just… there."
She curled up on her side and drew her legs up further. "There, now they're not bothering you." Before he could protest, she raised an eyebrow at him. "What were you thinking about?"
"You," he said honestly. "Trying to understand you."
"I wouldn't bother," she said. "I barely even understand myself."
He snorted. Her sense of humor walked a fine line between self-deprecation and sarcasm, and she'd surprised him into laughter more often than he would have ever expected.
"You're being pretty calm about knowing the redhead is after you," he said carefully, hoping he wasn't pushing her too hard to talk. "I'm trying to understand that."
She shrugged, curling up a little tighter. "It's because it's better, I guess, knowing my dad's not a target. That's what I was so afraid would happen last year, when I left. And then I thought James had hurt my mom–" She broke off and glanced over at him, looking pained.
Paul hadn't heard this story. "What? When was this?"
"Last year. Spring of my junior year."
That would have been right around when Sam had phased for the first time, when he'd become an Alpha with no pack for months and months before Jared had phased, back when Paul had just been starting to get attacks of rage like he'd never had before.
"We ran into another coven of vampires," Bella said. "Ones that killed people. One of them – James – was a tracker, and he wanted to kill me. He pretended to leave, but E-Edward knew he was going to hunt me down. So I had to run."
"Wait a minute," Paul said. "How many leeches were in the other group?"
"Three. James and Victoria – the one you're chasing – and Laurent, the one the pack killed a couple months ago."
"And there were seven Cullens," he said.
"But they don't drink human blood," she explained. "So they weren't as strong."
"Drinking animal blood makes them more than twice as weak as other leeches?"
She frowned, fidgeting with the frayed edges of the hole in her jeans. "No, I don't think so… But Carlisle and he… they didn't want to kill unnecessarily. They always tried to be… civilized. And they would have had to kill at least Victoria, and maybe Laurent, too. Not just James."
Paul considered it a great personal victory that he didn't try to start a debate over whether killing something that was long overdue for a coffin and killed humans besides was really murder in any meaningful sense, but he couldn't stop himself from saying, "But the Cullens were willing to risk your life. So that they maybe wouldn't have to kill any other leeches. Right? They sent you away, unprotected––"
"I had Alice and Jasper," she protested, looking him full in the eyes for the first time since she'd started telling him the story.
Paul was undeterred. "Okay, so they send you away with two of the leeches, which turned the fight from seven on three to, what, two on however many of the three managed to evade the rest of the Cullens? All to try to avoid a fight with a leech that they all already knew was going to kill you or die trying, and two other leeches that would probably help him do it. How did that help anything?"
"No," she said, shaking her head in denial. "No, I'm sure there was a good reason for it. I just never thought about it."
He laughed mirthlessly. It was so obvious to him, and yet she still couldn't see it. "The reason is that your precious Cullens didn't value your life as much as theirs. They didn't even value it enough to risk theirs in the slightest."
Tears filled her eyes. "They valued it!"
There he went, making his imprint cry again. But he felt the instinctive pull of the bond tugging him on still, and he knew that she needed to have this conversation.
"But not enough," he pressed, watching her until she reluctantly made eye contact with him. "Like you would care about a puppy's life, or something. You care, but not as much as you would about a human's life."
She shook her head again, tears sliding down her cheeks now. "Why are you saying these things? Why are you doing this?"
"Because you need to realize the truth. They weren't good, Bella. They were nice to you because one of them decided he was in love with you. Then when he decided he wasn't, he left. They all left. Not because of anything you did. But because you're human, and to them, that means you just don't matter that much."
She buried her face in her hands, her shoulders shaking. Feeling horrible, Paul shifted a little closer to her, though not quite close enough to touch. He wished there was a way she could hit him without almost certainly hurting her hand in the process. Maybe he could offer to let her kick him in the balls.
And even though he hated himself for feeling it, that niggling instinct was still there, driving him toward – something. Something bigger than himself.
So he pushed on, hoping she would still listen to him. "I'm saying this because I want you to realize that you do have value. And that even if you weren't my imprint, even if you weren't pack, even if everyone in the pack hated you – which they don't – every one of us would still risk our lives to save you from a leech. Even if it was all three of those leeches, and still just the six of us. We might not all walk away from that fight, and we'd know that going in, but every single one of us would do it anyway."
She lifted her hands to stare at him, her eyes red-rimmed and her face wet with her tears. "Why?" she said hoarsely.
"Because you're human, and you're innocent, and you're worth saving."
She closed her eyes for a long moment, as if the words were causing a physical impact, and stayed that way for several minutes.
Paul waited in agonized silence for her to tell him to leave, to tell him she never wanted to see him again. "You can hit me, if you want," he offered finally, flailing for something that could repair some of the damage he'd done.
"I'd probably break my hand," she said, opening her eyes. "The pack doesn't hate me? Victoria is chasing me because of…" Him, she didn't say. Paul hated how that leech's fucking name still tore her apart.
Of all things for her to focus on. "Of course not," he said. "We want to protect you, want to keep you safe. Especially you, as an imprint. It's hard to explain."
She tilted her head, really focusing on him for the first time since she'd started crying. He was glad; anything to get her mind off the leeches. "Why is it hard to explain?"
"There's… the rational explanation, I guess. We'd protect any human, no matter what. But with you, with the imprints, it's deeper. They're our priority. There's no conscious choice like there is to protect another human. With you, Kim, and Emily…" He shrugged. "It's just different. The other guys couldn't be mad at you if they wanted to be."
"You were," she observed quietly.
"I was mad because you needed me to be mad at you," he said. Paul had never thought about it consciously, but he knew as he was speaking that it was the truth. "Sympathy from your friends and Jacob wasn't getting through to you before I imprinted on you, was it?"
She bit her lip. "I guess not." She rubbed her eyes, still red-rimmed.
He could tell she needed a break from talking about the leeches, so he decided to let her think about what he'd said on her own terms. He leaned forward to grab the remote from the coffee table and changed away from the reality show that was now playing. A few channels later he saw Kiera Knightley stomping through a field in the rain. "Look, here's one of your books," he told her.
"You've seen this?" she asked, sounding surprised.
Truthfully, Paul had always thought the actress was hot, but he knew better than to say that out loud. "Part of it," he said. "Come on, you know you want to watch. You'll feel better."
"Fine," she said, but she sounded a little more alert, and they watched the rest of the movie in silence.
They lay on the couch for the rest of the evening, until Paul could see Bella's eyes trying to drift closed, before she started awake and glanced at him guiltily.
"You need to sleep," he told her the third time it happened.
"I know," she said quietly. "It's just that sleeping… sucks, sometimes."
He hesitated, wanting so very desperately not to upset her again. "I know, but the... things you see... it's better when you get a decent amount of sleep, isn't it?"
"I guess," she said reluctantly. Her fingers strayed to her chest, but they didn't clench convulsively. That meant something, didn't it? "But how am I supposed to sleep while I know the pack's out there risking their lives for me?"
"For everyone," he corrected immediately. "We're not going to let the leech kill any human. You or anyone else."
She nodded slowly. "And you'll stay?" she asked.
"Until midnight," he said, hating that he couldn't be here all night with her.
"You're not getting enough sleep, either," she said, frowning. "I can tell. I can… feel."
"I… have a hard time sleeping if I don't know you're on the rez and safe." Just a few days ago Paul never would have admitted that to her. "We could go see Emily after we get back from Port Angeles," he suggested in what he hoped was a casual tone, trying not to get his hopes up.
"That's why I have to fight you to get you to sleep?" she asked. "Paul, why didn't you just say something?"
He shrugged. "You already blame yourself for enough shit that isn't your fault."
To his surprise, she didn't look angry, and she also didn't argue the point, which he considered a sign of progress. "I go see Emily tomorrow, and you'll sleep?" she asked.
He wondered what it said about them that every decision they agreed on was a negotiation.
Probably that they were both too stubborn for their own good.
Still, he nodded. "Deal."
She rose from the couch, and he followed her upstairs, waiting in her bedroom as she brushed her teeth and changed into her pajamas.
She went to her bed immediately, curling onto her side and facing him. In the dim light her skin was flawlessly pale, and her eyes looked even darker than usual. She looked beautiful. Innocent. Paul dragged his thoughts away from that direction, and watched with regret as she closed those lovely brown eyes.
He'd thought she was going to try to sleep, and he just sat there watching her for a few minutes, trying to let the calm of the moment pull him under, too. Her breathing slowed, but it hadn't yet fallen into the deep breaths of sleep when she opened her eyes and reached out, her fingers spread apart as if she was feeling the air.
Paul scooted over until he was sitting on the floor against the edge of her bed. "What's wrong?" he asked.
Her hand came down to rest on his shoulder, and his breathing stuttered as he registered the fact that she was willingly touching him. While she's awake, he amended, remembering the night before when she'd been half asleep.
She didn't sound much more awake this time. "Feels better when we touch," she murmured. "Warmer, too."
"Yeah," Paul agreed. It really, really did.
She was quiet again, and Paul didn't move from where he was leaning on the floor against his imprint's bed frame, waiting to see if she would fall asleep this time.
But she opened her eyes again a few minutes later. "Come on," she said sleepily.
Paul looked at her, confused. She was clearly tired, but her eyes were steady on his.
"Come here," she amended. Paul's heart skipped a beat when she let go of him and scooted backward so that her back was almost touching the wall her bed was pressed against. "'M too tired to fight it," she said.
Moving slowly in case he was misunderstanding, Paul rose and slid onto the bed with her. The bed frame squeaked under his weight but held, and his legs stuck off the end as he lay lay down on top of the sheets facing her, but the discomfort barely even registered.
"Like this?" he asked unsteadily. Being in his imprint's bed was more than he had hoped. He fought to keep his breathing steady.
Her eyes closing, she slid her hand up so it rested palm-down on the mattress between them. Still moving deliberately, terrified that he was going to do something wrong, Paul set his hand next to hers, then let their little fingers cross over each other.
The warmth spread out over him again. This was right. This was where he should be — with his imprint, her smell and warmth surrounding him, ready to defend her even while she slept.
She let out a long exhale. Her fingers tightened, almost squeezing down into the mattress, and then relaxed. Less than a minute later, she was asleep.
Paul stayed awake for long minutes, just watching her. He wouldn't be able to shift or turn without dislodging her hand, and there wasn't enough room for him to stretch out on the twin-sized mattress, but with his imprint's hand in his as she slept there was nowhere else on the planet he'd rather be.
When Paul showed up at his imprint's door the next morning after yet another night of patrols, he was exhausted, but at the same time wired as fuck, jittery over getting to do something that might make his imprint the tiniest bit happy for once and worried that she would regret letting him share her bed.
"Are you sure you want to go?" were the first words out of Bella's mouth when she let him in the back door. Most importantly, she didn't look she felt uncomfortable about the night before, so he decided not to bring it up. "You feel — I mean, you look — you know what I mean. Really tired."
He nodded. As if anything would keep him from that. "Just give me a couple hours," he said, taking a seat at the kitchen table, where a plate piled high with breakfast sausages and biscuits was laid out.
He looked over to Bella, who had walked over to wipe down the kitchen countertops, for verification that the food was for him.
She gave him a look like he was the dumbest person she'd ever met, and he grinned before narrowing his eyes. "And you already ate?" he asked her, ready to detect if she was lying.
"Two sausages, one biscuit, and a glass of orange juice," she said, raising her eyebrows at him defiantly.
"Good," he said, and reached for his fork.
While he ate, she pulled ingredients for brownies from the fridge and pantry, and pretty soon he smelled them baking. He was absolutely positive they would be delicious.
When he was finished eating, he rose to take his dishes to the sink and maybe try to help her clean the kitchen, but she took the dishes and pointed into the living room. "Couch. Sleep."
He raised his eyebrows at her, amused despite himself, just to see if she would back down. He was pleased to see her posture didn't change at all, and he finally let himself grin. "Yes, Mistress," he said.
He was delighted to see her blush, but she raised her chin all the same, and he collapsed on the couch, resting his head on the armrest so he could still see her in the kitchen. "Wake me up whenever you want to go," he said, his eyes already closing.
"I will," he heard her soft reply, and then he was out.
He woke on his own, sitting up and immediately, fearing the worst that she hadn't been around to wake him up, but Bella was sitting in the room's dilapidated old recliner with her knees pulled up to her chest, looking lost in thought.
"It's only been a couple hours," she said without prompting, looking over at him. She'd changed into jeans and deep blue t-shirt that complemented the bright brown of her hair and eyes.
"That's all I need," Paul said, even though he could have used about half a dozen more hours. He hated having a sleep schedule that didn't align with hers, that he had to sleep through some of his time with her. "Ready?"
She gave him a look like she could tell that wasn't true, but she didn't call him on it. Rising, she walked into the kitchen and pulled three plastic rubbermaid containers out of the refrigerator and set them on the counter.
One had about a dozen sandwiches in it, another had brownies, and the last one had some sort of salad. "I wasn't sure how serious you were about the picnic thing," Paul said, a little surprised that she'd gone to so much effort.
She looked over at him and bit her lip. "Is that dumb?" she asked uncertainly. "It's just, the weather's nice for once…"
He felt bad for worrying her. "No, not at all," he said honestly, barely stopping himself from saying something stupidly sentimental about how he'd never been on a picnic or some shit like that.
He grabbed one of the reusable grocery bags that hung off a hook next to the pantry and held it out for her so she could put the food inside.
"Good?" he asked, nodding toward the front door.
She hesitated, and then nodded firmly. "Yes."
When they climbed into her truck and she started the engine, he watched her, trying not to be obvious about it. She looked almost nervous, but she didn't feel upset to him.
"You're looking forward to this," he said slowly, sorting apart his vague awareness of her feelings. "To get out of Forks?"
"I… yes," she said, backing out carefully. When they pulled onto the road, she glanced sideways at him. "The rain doesn't bother me so much anymore, but I still miss living in a city. I grew up in Phoenix."
Paul already knew that — after months in the pack he knew everything Jacob knew about her, but he didn't say that. He knew the pack mind creeped her out, that it bothered Kim a little, too.
"I've never left Washington," he told her, feeling almost embarrassed about that fact. He'd gone to the mountains on family vacations, to the beach once. But he'd never left the state. "Tacoma, though, where, you know —" he cut off at the reminder of what his life had been like before his mom had left. "Where I used to live. It felt… alive. It was nice. Well," he amended. "Tacoma was shit. But Seattle was cool."
He caught the edge of a smile from her. "I'll bet. I landed in Seattle, you know, coming to Forks. It never occurred to me to explore the city, though. I'm… I guess I'm not adventurous enough."
"Motorcycle riding's not enough for you?" he asked. "And I know Jacob's said you want to go cliff diving."
"That's… different," she said, sounding almost flustered.
"Okay, tell you what — when this shit with the leech is over, we'll go to Seattle, see the fucking Space Needle and…" Just like he'd done when he was a kid. Paul broke off again, swallowing hard. He'd never talked about his life before his move to La Push with anyone. Even Zach had never pushed him.
"…and whatever else you want to see," he added after a belated pause.
"I might only want to go to bookstores," she warned him, but he was pretty sure she was joking. He was getting better at telling; when she was joking her tone didn't change at all.
"Maybe that's all I wanted to do anyway," he retorted, and she snorted.
"Yeah, right."
"Trashy 'Indian' romances, are my favorites, remember?" he told her.
This time she did smirk for real. "How could I forget?"
They didn't talk much after that, Bella seeming lost in thought as they neared Port Angeles, but Paul knew she wasn't angry or even especially sad. As always, the silence between them wasn't uncomfortable, and Paul tilted his head against the window, forcing himself to relax a little without falling asleep.
He caught flashes of Jared's fur on the right side of the road every few minutes, and he knew Jared was making sure Paul knew he was there. He was grateful for it. He would need to make it up to Jared. He'd fucked up his friendship with Zach; he'd try not to fuck it up with his packmates any more than he already had.
They made it to the park half an hour later. A soft drizzle had started up, even though the sunlight was still visible. The weather seemed to have kept most people away, as Bella pulled into a spot that was surrounded by other empty parking spaces.
He grabbed the bag before she could, smiling when he heard her huff behind him as the got out of the driver's side.
"You're almost as bad as Mike," she complained as she reached him at the head of the walking path into the park. "I have to fight him off from carrying my books to class."
"Tell him to fuck off," he told her. "You're too nice to him. I'm also gonna ignore that insult, you're gonna hurt my feelings."
She hit his shoulder, and it felt like barely more than a tap. "I don't want to be mean to him, but he won't leave me alone," she said. "I've said no to going out with him at least a dozen times."
"A punch in the face would probably do it," he told her, gesturing off the path toward a thick copse of trees.
Her lips twisted. "I think I'd be just as likely to break my hand, and then he'd want to carry me to class or something."
Paul snorted at the mental image. "Actually, you do need to learn self-defense," he told her as he set the basket on the ground. He wished he'd though of it sooner.
"Why?" she asked as she came to a stop next to him, sounding genuinely perplexed. "It's not like there's anything I can do that would hurt a vampire."
He sighed at where her mind always was. "There's more out there than just vampires. There are a lot of humans in the world who would hurt you, and I can't be with you all the time."
"Oh." She said it like she honestly hadn't thought of that. "I'm clumsy," she said, and he rolled his eyes. He was so tired of her criticizing herself.
"You'll learn coordination."
"I'm weak."
"Yeah, and you'll get stronger," he fired back. "Are we done with objections yet?"
She opened her mouth and closed it again. "Don't I get any say in this?"
He raised his eyebrows at her. "Okay, tell me what productive thing you were gonna do this weekend, and I'll help you with that instead."
She glared at him but didn't say anything.
He went on like he hadn't been interrupted. "Okay, so when they see you, what they're seeing is a short, thin girl. Knowing you, probably alone. Easy target. But the plus side of that is that they'll think they know exactly how you're going to act. You're going to back up or turn around and run, probably in a straight line. If you try to hit them, you'll aim at their chest or maybe try to kick them in the balls."
"No, I'm not," she said dully, and he suddenly noticed she'd gone tense, her lower lip trembling. "I'm going to stand there like an idiot and just stare at them. I'm not even going to scream."
He froze. "What?" He gripped her shoulders and leaned down to look into her eyes. "Has this happened before?"
She closed her eyes. "In Port Angeles. Right after I'd moved here. I ditched my friends to go to a bookstore and it was dark when I came out. I was so stupid. I wasn't paying attention. And then suddenly there were four guys just…surrounding me. Yelling at me. They were drunk." Her voice hitched. "And I… I knew what was going to happen."
He pressed her to his chest without thinking about it, clenching his jaw as he fought not to start the hunt right now for each and every one and rip his head off. "It didn't though, right? You got away?"
If they had hurt her, they would be dead before nightfall. Paul could probably handle at least two or three humans on his own, and he knew he'd be able to talk Jacob into helping, if not the rest of the pack.
She shook her head, not pulling away from him. "He…Edward came. He followed their thoughts and found me."
Paul had never thought he'd be grateful to the bloodsucker for anything.
"I was so…helpless. They were just going to take what they wanted, and they didn't care that I'm a p-person too, that they were going to hurt me just because I was weaker."
"Bella–"
"I hated it." She pushed back from him. Her eyes were bright, and it was the closest thing to anger he'd ever seen from her. "I hated being so helpless and scared. It's not going to happen again."
He grinned, pure joy at seeing the core of strength he hadn't been entirely sure was there. "No, it's not," he agreed. "You're not going to be an easy target ever again."
Something in his stomach swooped at the realization that for all the horrible things he had done fighting as a kid, it was worth it if it meant he could teach his imprint how to protect herself now.
He closed his eyes and concentrated on the sounds in the park, the smell of humans, but the closest ones were far enough away that he doubted Bella would be able to see them. He didn't want self-consciousness overwhelming her already barely-there sense of confidence.
"Then let's do this," he said.
"Now?" she asked in surprise
He stepped away from their picnic stuff so they wouldn't trip on it. "No one's out here, and I want both of us to be able to go home today knowing you'll be able to hold your own if something happens until I can get to you."
She looked like she was going to argue, but she bit off whatever she was going to say and lifted her chin. "Fine," she said. "Teach me."
When Bella put her mind to it, she turned out to be a surprisingly quick study. In the end Paul was the one to put a stop to it an hour later, when she grew too tired to hold up her fists without her arms trembling.
He was pleased that she had wanted to keep going, though. Something bright and intense shone in her eyes, like she hadn't had the energy to focus on being sad and learning how to throw a decent punch at the same time.
"I'm going to be sore for a week," she said, sitting down on the blanket heavily.
"Worth it, though, right?" Paul asked her as he dropped to the blanket and reached for the sandwiches, setting one in front of her and grabbing another for himself. He was suddenly worried that he'd pushed her too hard.
"Yeah," she said, and he breathed out in relief. She held up her hands, which were swollen and red. "Charlie's gonna think I was in a street fight, though."
"One that you clearly won," Paul said.
He was rewarded with a small smile. "Damn straight I did."
"He's gonna have to hire you down at the station," Paul added. "The fierce, brownie-baking enforcer girl."
For the first time, Paul heard her laugh, the sound pure, clear, and lovely.
He grinned at her shocked expression, but her expression abruptly turned to one of horror. Covering her mouth with one hand, she struggled to her feet, and Paul was too surprised to move for an instant.
Then she was running away, leaving their picnic lunch and him behind.
His heart racing, it took Paul a second to register what was happening, and another to make his legs move.
He caught up with her ten seconds later, as she was stumbling across the grass until she completely lost her balance. He reached her just in time to break her fall, but she still ended up on her knees on the ground, sobbing.
Paul knelt next to her. It was hard to breathe. He knew something was awfully, horribly wrong, but the bond, as always, only told him the what, not the why.
"What's wrong?" he asked, fear making his voice sharp. "Why did you run?"
She shook her head miserably.
Not good enough. "I'm serious. Tell me what the fuck just happened."
She was breathing too fast now, like she was having an anxiety attack, and just shook her head. "I can't."
He fought down a burst of anger. He couldn't help her if she wouldn't talk to him. Uncertainly, he reached out and squeezed her arms. She looked at him through tear-streaked eyes, her shoulders still shaking with sobs.
He didn't speak again, just waited her out, trying to let her know he was here.
Finally, she gasped out her response between shallow, hiccuping breaths. "I just thought – what if – what if he came back to check on me today, and he decided he wanted me again, only — only he saw that I looked happy, so he decided I was better off without him? And that was my one chance and now he's really, really gone – forever?"
Something inside Paul went very still.
"Get in the truck," he said, rising and stepping away from her. He almost didn't recognize his own voice.
"W-what?" she choked out, staring at him, her pupils still dilated and her breath coming fast.
He hauled her to her feet (carefully — never hurtful, never that) and pushed her toward the parking lot.
"But the food —" she protested, like she could think about that, like that mattered.
"Leave it," he said, and she stopped fighting him.
"Okay," she said in a tiny voice.
Neither of them spoke on the drive back. Bella curled up in the passenger seat without arguing, tucking her knees up to her chest as Paul drove her truck for the first time, pushing it to fifty-five precisely and staring straight ahead.
"You'll have at least one wolf on you at all times," he told her as they finally pulled up in front of her house, and he was again amazed at how cool his voice sounded. He was filled with something cold and untouchable, not the fiery rage that normally fueled him when he was upset. "I'll be in the woods outside your house at night, when we need to be close."
"Paul…" she whispered uncertainly, like she didn't know how she was going to finish that sentence.
It didn't matter, because he was already jumping out the driver's side door. He thought he caught the scent of the red-headed leech as he phased.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Hi, guys, we have hit the lowest low we're (probably) going to hit in this story, so don't panic! We, Bella, and Paul are all going to get through this together. :heart: