Jared's POV
After school, I went back to La Push and directly to Sam's. That was where I spent most of my free time. A, we tried to spend as little time around those outside the Pack as possible due to the possibility of shifting accidently and hurting someone, though my control was pretty good. I didn't phase often due to anger. And B, I really couldn't stand my mother most of the time, so I stayed away from the house as much as possible. I would move out, but I didn't have the money to do it right now.
I walked into the house without knocking. None of us knocked. It wasn't needed. We were as close to family as it came, so we all just walked in. If I'd tried to knock, Emily and Sam would probably bite my head off.
When I got in, I found Sam seated at the table with a sandwich. "Hey, Sam. Where's Emily?"
"Store. Something about you guys eating us out of house and home," Sam said before taking a bite of his sandwich.
I laughed and headed towards the fridge. "Yeah, and I'm sure you have nothing to do with that."
"So how'd it go?" Sam asked.
I pulled out a bottle of water and walked towards the table. I sat down across from Sam. "Better than I expected. She didn't slap me this time. It was far from a happy reception though."
"It'll get better, Jared. She's your imprint. That works both ways, even if it's not quite as strong for the imprint. She will start to feel something soon," Sam said.
"But I don't want that. I don't want Bella to love me because of the imprint. I want her love me because she love me and forgive me because she remembers what we had and realizes that we belong together, not because of some wolf thing," I said. That was why I hadn't told Bella about the imprint. I didn't want her to choose me because she felt she had no choice. I wanted her to choose me because she realized she loved me.
"She probably already does. It's like you said to Jake. She wouldn't be so mad if she didn't love you," Sam said.
"That's what I'm counting on. Now I just have to get her to forgive me. I'm willing to do anything I have to for that. Speaking of that, I need to ask you something. What happened when you found Bella in the woods?" I wasn't sure I really wanted to know the answer, but I had to. Cullen was a part of all this. He had left her to. I needed to know exactly what happened so I could help Bella work through what he did to her and what I did. It was the only way she'd be able to move forward. I knew the basics, but I didn't know much as far as details went.
"Are you sure, Jared? You will not like what you hear," Sam warned.
"I know," I told her.
Sam took a deep breath. "Well, you already know I found her in the woods. She had been out there for hours. She was cold and wet. She was conscious, but she wasn't really there. I don't even think she registered my presence. She was broken."
I shuddered as I thought about the girl I loved being so broken. I pictured her laying there in the woods. She could've died. The very thought made heart ache and made me wanna murder someone at the same time. God help him if I ever met Edward Cullen.
"Jared, calm down," Sam said in a soft but firm tone.
I looked down at my hands and saw that they were shaking slightly. For the first time in months, I was showing signs of phasing out of anger. I forced myself to calm down by thinking of all the good times Bella and I used to have. I remembered us playing together when we were children and holding and kissing her when we grew up. "Sorry."
"Don't be. If it were Emily, I'd be just as upset," Sam said.
"Go on. Tell me the rest. I'll do my best not to lose it," I told him.
"Well, unfortunately, it gets worse. I heard from Billy that the first few months were really bad, worse than even Jake probably knows since he wasn't in the picture until later. Apparently she was practically catatonic for months. She'd go to school and eat and everything, but that was it. She wouldn't so much as speak unless spoken to. She was practically a robot. Her parents even considered committing her for a while.
All thoughts of calm were out the window. I felt a rage that I'd never experience before. I knew there was no stopping it this time. There was no amount of memories that was going to stop me from phasing.
Sam apparently realized this as well. "Go."
I was out of my chair and out of the house within seconds. I barely stopped off the porch before I phased. I took off running, all the while thinking of all the things Bella had been through. I kept picturing her in the woods and then later seeing her so broken that she was barely functioning. I was going to kill that son of a bitch leech if I ever saw him.
Next I thought about my breakup with Bella. I was the first guy to leave Bella, and while I didn't do it out of malice, I knew that I'd hurt her. I had to wonder if I was part of why Bella lost it so badly. Was it just losing Cullen that caused her so much pain or was it the combination of losing the two of us? I'd told Bella that I believed she still loved me. If that was true, and I believed it was, that meant that she still felt the pain of our breakup and probably did that day too.
I stopped running and collapsed to the ground as I thought about my part in the pain Bella had been through. Bella was right. I was just as bad as Cullen. I hadn't left her in the woods, but I'd still left her, and doing so had almost definitely added to her pain. I helped do this to her. I prayed to God she could forgive me for it, but even if she could, I doubted I'd ever forgive myself.