Phew. Well, here we go, the last chapter. Sorry it took ages to update, this was kinda hard to write. But I really hope you enjoy it, and do let me know what you thought of the story as a whole, I'd love to hear all thoughts and opinions. Thank you millions to everyone who stuck with me from the very first chapter, and just thanks for the support - you're all so ultra-cool. Thank you for reading, thank you for reviewing, and enjoy this! lurrrve xox :D

Chapter Six

Three months later…

I opened my eyes, and the room was blurred. I stretched my arm out and fumbled for my glasses on the bedside table. My fingers connected with them and I sat up slowly, sliding them on.

My room was bright with the morning sunshine, a rarity for Forks, and it made me smile. Everything always seemed so much brighter on a sunny day. When it rained, I always felt depressed.

I pulled myself into a sitting position, and leaned against the headboard. I had about half an hour until my mother came bustling in and started her daily routine of fussing over me. I picked up my favourite novel, which had been discarded on the floor last night, and proceeded to read where I had left off. The binding was destroyed and the pages were crumpled; proof I had read it way too many times.

I couldn't concentrate on it, though. I found myself staring around the room, thinking, daydreaming. So I put the book down and just contented myself to listen to my own thoughts.

I was back home now. I was glad. I had grown to resent the hospital, with its sterile white walls and clinical smell and fussy nurses and disgusting food. I had never been more relieved to get home, to the familiar place I had grown up in, all my memories etched into the walls.

I wasn't bitter. I could have hated it here too. I mean, the last time I was here, I had the full use of my legs, and it wasn't even something I thought about. I had taken being able to walk for granted. But I was glad to know that I wasn't bitter about it, because that would have made things a lot more difficult. I had just accepted everything the best I could.

I didn't go back to school, and I had no plans on doing so. I didn't want it. I didn't want the stares, the whispers, the pity, the popularity. I would be That Girl In The Wheelchair. I didn't want to be labelled. Plus, I had never really fit in at school anyway, and my disability wasn't going to help matters. I didn't want the attention. I knew I'd just be paranoid all day every day, and staying at home sounded much more appealing to me.

My dad had hired a private tutor for me, so I wasn't behind in schoolwork. I liked my tutor, and I had managed to catch up on everything I missed while in hospital.

The last time I had seen the majority of people from school was at Darren's funeral.

It was horrible. One of the worst days of my life.

My biology partner stood in front of me, stuttering and mumbling his sympathies, as I sat in my chair, my hands clasped on top of my dead legs. The girl I sat next to in English came over to me and struck up a conversation, acting as though nothing was different, as though I wasn't in a wheelchair. That is, until she mentioned her feet were killing her. She clapped her hand over her mouth as soon as she said it, and came over all awkward and apologetic. I hadn't even picked up on it.

But it carried on like that for the rest of the day, the people I knew stumbling over words and treating me like I had somehow changed. I told people over and over again that I was OK, desperately trying to get the emphasis off me. I wanted to tell them it was Darren's funeral, not mine.

That, on top of my grief for Darren, was bad enough. But then there was Georgia. Oh God, Georgia.

I didn't even recognise her anymore. The Georgia I once knew had disintegrated.

She turned up at the funeral, having been released from hospital a few weeks earlier, like me. Darren's mother threw a fit, blaming her for his death and demanding that she stay away from them all. There was quite a large commotion, but eventually Darren's dad decided that Georgia could stay and say goodbye to him.

She had bravely limped up to the grave, supported by her crutches, to trickle a handful of soil over the coffin.

She had made a full recovery, with the exception of her shattered ankle, which had yet to heal. But she was far from well. Her brother had walked in on her trying to slit her wrists soon after leaving hospital. She said she couldn't take the guilt anymore, and she just wanted to end it all. Thank God her brother had found her when he did.

So she was in therapy now, and she was making progress. She was no longer suicidal, but I was still worried about her. She had her court case coming up soon, and she was adamant on pleading guilty to manslaughter, which was probably going to land her in jail.

I still kept in touch with her, but I didn't know her anymore. She was completely changed. It seemed that our conversation in the hospital, when she had come to visit me, was like my farewell to my best friend. I missed that Georgia.

All because of alcohol. I wanted something to blame, and that was what I had decided on. So many people died because of it, so many people's lives were changed forever because of it, and I wanted to blame it, because it was being abused by people and too many mistakes were being made. I was never going to drink a drop of it, ever.

Julie had made a full recovery. She rang me sometimes, to see how Georgia was getting along, to see how I was. I thought it was incredibly stupid, but she confessed to me that she felt terrible sometimes from being able to walk away from that crash with nothing more than a few broken ribs, while Darren, Georgia and I had lost so much. I told her that she was the lucky one, and this should teach her not to take anymore stupid risks like that. She still had her life, her freedom, her legs. She should appreciate them all, because we couldn't.

Harvey came to see me, not long after I woke from my spinal surgery. He said he was sorry he took so long to arrive, and I told him I was just glad he had decided to come. He had visited me every day after that, with a story he had cut out of a newspaper or magazine or a book that he found. A paralysed woman had climbed a mountain. A paralysed guy had won medals in sport, despite his wheelchair. They were all survivor stories, about inspirational people who were also without legs.

It was cheesy, and I wanted to tell him it was unnecessary, but it made me feel hopeful. Hearing things like that proved to me that my life was not over because of this accident, and that if I wanted to, I could do extraordinary things too.

Maybe I would. For now though, I was concentrating on adapting to this new life. Because it wasn't the same life. There was no way I could have come home and have things back the way they were, and I was getting used to the changes.

My bedroom had been moved downstairs. I couldn't get up the stairs, obviously, and my parents couldn't afford a stair lift, so it had been the easiest thing to do. I was OK with it, although I missed the pretty view from my bedroom window.

My mother, naturally fussy before, had become almost unbearable. I rarely got a moment to myself. When I recovered from surgery, my legs were still as numb as ever. My mom found it hard to accept the fact I was bound to a wheelchair. She cried a lot, and hugged me a lot. But she was OK now; well, as OK as she could be under the circumstances. We were both helping each other through this.

I would never forget the time we just sobbed together on the bathroom floor. It was forever imprinted in my mind. I didn't want her to help me go to the bathroom or have a shower, wanting to keep as much dignity as I possibly could. But all I succeeded in doing was falling out of the chair and knocking the breath out of myself. That, combined with my frustration, triggered a panic attack, and my mother found my on the floor, gasping futilely, the chair on its side.

It scared both of us, and was quite possibly the worst moment of my whole life. Well, it was up there with the worst of them, anyway.

After that, she had become unbearably helpful, running across the room to retrieve something for me so I wouldn't have to manoeuvre the wheelchair anywhere, and things like that. It didn't help with my frustration, and I had to remind myself constantly that she was only trying to help.

That blasted wheelchair.

It made me feel like I was a baby in a pram. I was pushed everywhere. I hated it. It was horrible; a navy blue seat (which I guessed would be hugely uncomfortable if I was in any way able to feel it), massive silver wheels, an annoying fiddly footstep at the bottom of it, for my useless, unresponsive feet. I really hated it. I hated what it reminded me of every day - my mistakes. But I grit my teeth and got on with it, because I had no other choice.

Another memory I would never be able to forget was the time it was first introduced to me. I was ready to leave the hospital, and they wheeled it in to me. I took one look, and it frightened me so much I had another panic attack. A really bad one. Of course, my mother and the nurse panicked too, although not to the same extent, and fluttered around me, unhelpful and useless.

But then Paul pushed them out of the way, and breathed with me.

Ah, Paul.

I hadn't managed to get rid of him yet. He hadn't left yet. He was still with me. My miracle.

He didn't like the wheelchair either. Whenever he came over, he lifted me out of it. I didn't mind; in fact, I looked forward to leaving the horrible thing every day. I'd sit on his lap, usually, and I would rest my face on his bare, scorching chest, and he would hold me and chat away to me and make jokes and ask me half a million times if I was OK. I always was, because he was with me.

If we felt the urge to visit another part of the house, he would carry me there. One extremely hot arm would support my torso, while the other supported my legs. I would stare sadly at the hand that I couldn't feel, the warm hand that gripped my numb legs, and I wished that I could feel it. Feel the touch, feel the warmth. But of course I couldn't.

He was with me almost all the time. He left when I was reluctantly falling asleep in front of him, and when I woke up, he was usually in the kitchen raiding the fridge. My parents adored him now, because they saw how happy he made me. How my face lit up when he entered the room, or even when they spoke his name. It was pathetic, really, but I couldn't find it in me to care.

I loved him. More than anything.

He was there, holding my hand when I woke up fully after the surgery, when I finally shook off the anaesthetic. He smiled at me, and I wasn't sure what made me say it.

"I love you too. And I adore you too, and I'm infatuated with you too, and you amaze me, too. If you weren't here with me now, I don't know if I could have ever opened my eyes."

His mouth had fallen open, and his own eyes widened. He was silent for ages. I wasn't sure if I should have told him that I had heard everything he had said while he thought I was out of it. It had been an incredibly personal confession, and I didn't know how much he would have said to my face. I was really glad I had heard it, though.

I could tell he wanted to discuss, and clarify, and explain, but I didn't want to hear it. I had heard what he said, and that was it as far as I was concerned. I didn't need to hear the facts. All I cared about was the fact he was there with me. Nothing else mattered.

So I shook my head at him, and he gaped at me for a long moment. But then he grinned and kissed me, and I found I really didn't care about all those things he had said, that I hadn't completely understood. I didn't need to understand. I just needed him.

We hadn't talked about it since that moment. Neither of us made any effort to bring it up, and that suited us both just fine. I think he was scared of my reaction, which was why he didn't bring it up himself. He didn't have to be scared. I didn't care what he was, what he could do. All I wanted was him, and everything that went with him didn't matter to me.

My door opened suddenly, and my mother bustled in.

"Good morning, love," she said, smiling at me.

"Hi," I said, still lost in thoughts of Paul.

"How are you feeling today?" she asked, approaching me to brush my hair off my face.

"Fine," I said. I made a face as she grabbed my chair from the corner of the room and wheeled it closer to me.

"Do you want to get up?" she asked, and I shook my head.

"No, not yet," I said. "I want to wait for Paul."

My mother sighed and nodded. I always wanted to wait for Paul. I think maybe she was feeling a bit left out sometimes, but I certainly didn't feel guilty. Every time she helped me in and out of that wheelchair, I felt absolutely horrible. Because I let her down. I got into a car with a drunk driver, even though she told me never to do that, and I let her down. I felt horrible for disobeying her every single day.

We were all paying the price for my stupidity, now.

Mom started chatting away about what was on the TV tonight and what the neighbours were planning on turning the attic into and how the nice weather wasn't supposed to last, and I tuned out. I thought about Paul some more. I ran my fingers through the gigantic mane which was my hair, trying to tame it to some proportion before he arrived. I knew it was already a pointless exercise; my hair refused to be tamed.

The doorbell chimed, and my face lit up.

My mother bustled out of the room to get the door, and I waited, incredibly frustrated at the fact I couldn't just hop out of bed and run and get the door myself.

"Hey, Lee," Paul said, strolling into my room and closing the door. And there he was, my personal miracle. Shirtless, gorgeous, grinning.

"Hello," I said, beaming up at him.

He approached my bed, nudging the wheelchair out of the way distastefully as he did so.

"God, I want to set that thing on fire," he muttered, as he did every single day. I always replied with the same answer.

"I'll provide the gasoline."

He sat on the edge of my bed next to me, and kissed me gently.

"How are you today?" he asked, running his fingers through my hair.

"Fine."

"Really?"

"Yes, of course I am."

I was always fine when he was with me.

"Good," he said, satisfied. He swung his legs up onto the bed and lay down next to me, putting his arm around my shoulders. I placed my head on his shoulder and we stayed like that for a long moment. I had noticed that we didn't always need to say anything. It was never awkward between us. We sat in the long comfortable silence, never feeling the urge to say anything at all, just revelling in each other's company.

After a while, he spoke.

"Leona," he said slowly, sounding hesitant.

"What?"

"I would really like to talk to you about something."

"Go ahead," I said, looking up at his face, curious. He was chewing on his bottom lip, and he took a deep breath.

"Well… I haven't brought this up before now, because I didn't really think it was necessary. I wanted you to recover first and foremost, and that was the most important thing to me. But you're OK now. I can't really say that you've recovered, because we both know," he said quietly, intertwining his fingers with mine and gazing into my eyes, "that you are as recovered as you'll ever be."

I knew what he meant. I knew what he was going to say.

"I want to talk about… what you heard… in the hospital…" He kept hesitating, and I wondered if he was nervous. Or afraid. Or both.

"We don't have to," I said quickly, not wanting him to feel obligated to talk about it. I mean, maybe I heard things he hadn't meant me to hear, but I didn't regret hearing them. It had been nice, to get inside his head, even without him realising.

"No, we do," he disagreed, his voice growing stronger with every word. He was gaining courage from somewhere. "There's stuff I need to explain to you."

I waited, trying not to fidget.

"Can you explain to me first though, what you heard, and what you made of it?" he asked, scrutinising me as he spoke.

I thought about it briefly; I had already thought about his words so many times already, and I somehow already knew what I was going to say.

"I'm not sure what exactly you are. A boy, a werewolf, a miracle - I don't know. And I don't care. Whatever it is that is supernatural about you, doesn't affect the way I feel about you in the slightest. All that matters to me is that you are here, and you helped me through the darkest days I ever had to live through. I doubt I would have survived at all if it weren't for you. I heard words that I didn't really understand, like imprint, but you know what? I don't need to understand them. I don't need to know exactly what they mean. It doesn't make a difference to me, what you are, and what you can do. I love you for who you are, even though that sounds incredibly cheesy," I blushed, looking down at our intertwined hands.

"You're really quite incredible, you know that?" Paul inquired, and I looked up to see him grinning at me. My blush only got worse.

"Shush," I admonished.

"But you are," he insisted. "Any normal girl would be freaking out right now."

"You could hardly call me normal, could you?" I said, a little sadly. "Normal girls can walk. Normal girls can-"

"Leona, don't start," he interrupted. "I don't want to hear all that dejected crap coming out of your mouth. You are normal. You were just in a bad accident, but it hasn't made you into someone else. You're still the sweet, gorgeous, strong girl that I bumped into on the beach, and there was no way something such as paralysis was ever going to keep me away from you, or change the way I felt about you.

"I loved you from the very first second," he said simply. "You're my imprint. That means there's nobody else but you for me. If you think I would rather be with some boring, ordinary, normal girl, instead of you, then you're insane. And you should have realised how much you meant to me when I burst into the hospital, roaring and screaming for you."

I thought my face might burst into flames, but my heart was singing.

"You know, I was lying in that bed thinking about you, and I was thinking about how you weren't going to like me because I couldn't stand," I said, feeling stupid for saying it out loud, because it sounded stupid even to me, but I needed to say it.

Paul looked visibly shocked. "How could you think something like that?" he demanded. "I don't love you for your body, and what it can or can't do. I love you for who you are," he quoted me, his eyes burning with sincerity. "Even if you had three eyes, I'd probably still be just as infatuated."

I blushed. I think I believed him. What on earth had I ever done to deserve him?

But was he completely certain of what he was getting himself in for? I couldn't stand, which meant there was so much else that I could do. He would need to be my legs for me, and surely that was too much for me to ask of him?

"Realistically, Paul, I'm probably going to be useless forever. You're going to have to run around after me all the time - literally," I said sadly.

"Leona, I do not care," he said vehemently. "If you want to go to the other end of the world, I will run all the way there for you. And I won't stop for breath."

I froze, as I suddenly realised something.

Oh my God.

"Leona?" he asked, anxiously. "Are you OK? Did you hear what I just said? Why are you looking at me like that…?" With every word, he looked more and more nervous. My expression was still frozen on my face.

I couldn't believe it.

I started to cry.

"Leona," Paul said urgently, squeezing my hand. "What's wrong? Tell me!"

"Paul," I said, wiping at my face with shaking hands. "I can move my toe."

He froze. "What did you just say?"

"I can move my toe!" I repeated, and I pulled the covers off my feet so that he could see. We both watched, wide eyed, as the big toe on my left foot wiggled. I could move it. I could feel the air on it; the rest of my foot, along with my other foot were as numb and dead as they always were, but I could move this toe.

"You can move your toe!" Paul said, looking up at me with shining, awestruck eyes.

"I can move my toe!" I said, laughing and crying at the same time.

"You can move your toe!" Paul yelled joyously, and he started kissing me vigorously; my cheek, my forehead, my nose, my lips. "Oh my God. You're moving your toe!"

We both just kept repeating it to each other, over and over until it began to sink in.

There was hope. Maybe I would never walk again, but just the fact that I could feel something, something I had resigned myself to never experiencing again. It was the best feeling in the world.

Maybe I wasn't completely broken. Maybe there was a chance I could mend.

I didn't know what the future held for me, but that moment right there, wrapped up in Paul's arms, both of us high with giddy relief, I had never felt better in all my life.

Paul was going to stand by me, even though I couldn't stand myself.

And it didn't matter, that I was paralysed, that I was in a wheelchair, that I had been stupid and reckless and that I had thrown so much away by not thinking, and it didn't matter that the rest of my life would be spent with people running around after me, and it didn't matter that I would always be known as That Girl In The Wheelchair, the paralysed, stupid Leona.

All I needed was Paul.

As long as I had him, I was OK.

And I was just Leona.

The end.