"We're giving you a makeover."

"Come anywhere near me with that bloody makeup back of yours, and I'll chop your hair off in your sleep."

"YOU WOULDN'T."

"Try me, Kim."

I could practically feel her rolling her eyes over the phone, and I smirked, although I knew she was an opponent I couldn't ward off for long. Kim had been trying, literally for days, to turn me into her own personal Barbie doll. She'd kill to let me give her free reign over my face, but I was not having it.

"Haley Purser you are quite possibly the most horrid person I've ever met."

It was my turn to roll my eyes this time.

"Give up, KimmyPoo," I smiled victoriously, plopping down on the couch. "Makeup and I just don't go hand-in-hand."

"You suck at being adventurous."

"Yeah, I don't get along with adventure too well either."

"Which is WHYYYY…."

"Why what?" I groaned.

"Why if you don't let me give you a makeover, I just might have to talk to YaYa, and Lord knows the kind of power she holds over you, what with being your legal guardian and all…"

"You wouldn't…" I hissed, sitting up on the couch with wide, fearful eyes.

"Oh I would," Kim coaxed devilishly. "If you won't let me do it the easy way, Yas and I will just have to jump you the hard way."

I flung myself back on the couch and whined like a dying whale, Kim snickering on the other end of the phone. Adam raised his eyebrows as he walked past me and grabbed the keys to the truck off the hall table. AHA! ESCAPE!

"AHHH, KIM, I'D LOVE TO GO WITH YOU, I REALLY WOULD, BUT ADAM AND I WERE JUST ABOUT TO HEAD OFF TO THE GARAGE." I cried, shooting Adam a pleading look as he tried to stifle his booming laughter.

"WHAT? NO FAIR, NO WAY THAT'S SUCH A LOAD OF SHI-"

"SORRY KIM GOTTA GO." I hit the end button quicker than I ever had before, grinning apologetically at my Uncle.

"Blackmailing you into a makeover again?"

I nodded and pouted , sticking my bottom lip out like a child as Adam laughed again. "You better actually tag along then, Lord knows Kim's gonna call YaYa so they can start making battle plans."

"Really?" I beamed, raising my eyebrows. Adam nodded, leading the way to the truck.

The leather seat was freezing underneath my legs as I sat down.

"You'll have to get used to the cold, Cali-girl, or else you'll end up freezing to death. Learn how to dress."

"Pfft, me, dressing inappropriately for this weather?" I smirked, staring down at my Nike shorts and sneakers.

"Hales, you're wearing a tank top."

"You're wearing overalls."

"Overalls are warm."

"But ugly, so perhaps we're both doing something wrong here." I chided, giggling at Adam's expression.

"Whatever, I can still get down, you know I' still hip, I'm still fly."

"Adam I love you but you're about as fly as tacky cowboy wallpaper."

"You're killin me, kid."

I grinned, watching out the window as we sped down the slick roads. La Push was something to look at. When people think of small towns, all that flashes across their minds are people with yellow teeth and cows everywhere you look-but that was far from the case. Yes, the town was boring, but it was flawless. Lush green covered almost everything, only contrasted by the thick, dark brown trunks of trees as tall as skyscrapers. The sky was usually cloudy, but if you looked hard enough, the gloomy overcast became a sheet of silvery light that bathed everything on the Earth.

"How have I never been to this place?" I whispered in awe, watching the waves lap at the sand as we passed the beach.

"You have," Adam corrected. "You probably just don't remember. You were actually born here."

"You're kidding." I tested, eying him.

"Nope, lived here for two whole years until you moved to California."

"Why'd we leave?" I asked, wondering if he'd answer honestly. I'd been asking Mom since she told me I'd have to come here, but she never gave me the full story.

"That's ahh….that's a pretty long-"

"We have time." I interrupted, before he could finish his excuse.

"Well….alright, so basically-" The next few words were interrupted with a long string of curse words and Adam slamming on the breaks. "Sorry, sorry," he panted, regaining control of the truck. "There's a horrid pothole along this road, it's killer."

"What happened to the road?" I asked, trying to calm myself down.

"Construction accident a long time ago, left a HUGE hole in the side of the street. After a couple years, it iced over ya know, but Lord knows that stuff is gonna crack one of these days."

"What's in the hole now?"

"Nothing but icicles I imagine." Adam huffed. I nodded, the both of us staying quiet for the rest of the ride.

When we finally pulled up to the garage, a sense of calm had washed over me. I'd learned over the past two weeks that La Push had a way of doing that to me-calming me down without even trying. There was something about the trees, something about the thick, frigid air that was so clean it made me feel pure and whole again.

Adam's garage was cozy. It was about the size of a gas station, with wide double doors that always looked like they were open. There was a small, neat, modern waiting room with an intern's desk behind which a small, tan woman sat. She had pointy features and small, beady black eyes, but her lips were full and the perfect shade of pink. Her name was Amanda, but her snide tone brought about my decision of not liking her already. In the actual shop, there were four large platforms, two of which were already occupied with some of Adam's men hard at work underneath the cars. Tool benches were scattered about the room, with thick large wires coated in rubber draping across the ceiling, a few of them swinging free. I smiled. This felt like a safe place.

"You gotta be kidding." An annoyingly familiar voice chided behind me. I turned, Paul Lahote smirking at me as he rolled from underneath a black Toyota.

Even when wearing nothing but blue jeans with soot smeared across his right cheek, he was still flawless.

"Happy to see me?" I teased, crossing my arms. Adam rolled his eyes and lumbered away.

"Be right back." He grumbled, shaking his head as he walked.

"Happy to see the Princess in a grease shop? Of course I am, who wouldn't want to watch you make a fool of yourself?"

My face twisted up in offended annoyance.

"Me, make a fool of myself? Coming from the one wearing no shirt while underneath an exposed V-12 engine? Mhmm, I'm the dumb one."

"So you've Googled a few things," Paul smirked. "Doesn't make you a mechanic. Besides, it makes me feel more in tune with the engine."

"Everybody knows you're supposed to wear a shirt when working underneath the engine. Spark plugs burn like Hell, you don't need Google to figure that out."

Paul slid farther out from underneath the car and sat up, resting an arm on his knee, a wrench in his opposite free hand.

"So maybe you do know a thing or two…" he mused, staring at me as if I were a book, filled with words he didn't quite understand.

"Of course I do, I'm not reta-" I started to snap, before Adam walked over.

"Alright, alright, alright. Enough of your bickering, Paul, no stealing my helper for today. This way, Hales."

I stuck my tongue out at Paul before walking off behind Adam.

"This here," my Uncle mused with a triumphant grin, stopping beside a large vehicle hidden by a thick tan sheet. "Is my baby." Adam whipped off the cloth, revealing a black glossy Corvette.

He laughed as my jaw hit the floor.

"There's no way…is this a 2011 ADV1?" I exclaimed, half the garage turning towards the sound of my excited shriek. Adam roared with more laughter.

"Yes Ma'am!" he cheered proudly. "Saved her from a junk yard after she was in a bad wreck, been workin' on her for a year now."

"Holy crap…." I murmured in awe, running my fingers over the shiny hood.

As Paul opened another one of the garage doors so that a man in a black Jeep Wrangler could drive through, something caught the light in the corner, glinting and catching my gaze.

"What's that?" I asked, pointing to another hooded vehicle.

"That thing? Bad news." Adam huffed, rolling his eyes.

"Bad news?" I asked him again, moving towards it. I ripped the sheet off, revealing a dingy grey busted up 2009 Mustang. The windshield was shattered, and it was missing three tires. As I popped the hood, I came to realize that it was missing an engine as well. "This poor baby…." I grimaced, looking at it with pity. "What the Hell happened to this thing?"

"Ronald here thought we could save her as well, but Lord knows none of us have any idea where to start. It's more of a, uh….hold-off project, for when everything else is finished." Adam explained, a short, stocky, blonde haired man waving to me. That must be Ronald.

"I got tired of her!" He shrugged innocently. "What can I say, my hands only enjoy the same surfaces for so long." I had a feeling he wasn't just talking about cars anymore.

"Can it, Ron. You might like the young ones but she's off-limits." Paul called from underneath his car. He slid out and greeted the man with the black Jeep Wrangler, pointing him to a platform where he could fix his shift gears.

"Please, with all the tail you get around here you've got no room to talk." Another man called, smirking. Paul turned bright red, rolling his eyes. I raised an eyebrow at him, but he looked away quickly.

"You can't just keep ignoring this car," I murmured to Adam, raising my eyebrows at him. "It could be beautiful."

"If you fix her up, you can have her." Adam shrugged. My jaw hit the floor again.

"YOU MEAN IT?" I cried, wide-eyed. Adam smiled and nodded.

"What's all the commotion?" Mr. Lahote asked, strolling in like an older version of Paul.

"Adam just handed off that heap of junk to Haley here." Ron called from underneath an olive green Toyota.

I looked down at the car and frowned. It was not a heap of junk, and nobody was handing it off to me. I WANTED it, I loved it, and I felt some sort of connection with it, like we were two unwanted items that just needed passing down until we finally landed in the hands of the right person.

"Good luck with that." Mr. Lahote laughed as he kissed my temple, although I could tell he thought my attempts at fixing the poor thing would be fruitless.

"She'll need all the help she can get with that damn thing." Paul sighed, shaking his head.

"Then why don't you help her?" Mr. Lahote asked coyly, raising an eyebrow and smirking.

"No," I protested immediately. Mr. Lahote looked at me, and as Paul opened his mouth to say something, it looked like I'd punched him in the face. "I can do it myself." I said in a softer tone, trying not to hurt his feelings.

Paul didn't have a cocky retort this time, and instead turned to a pale, stocky man who'd exited the Jeep. He had deep golden eyes and a baby like smile, with dimples as deep as that pothole in the road. He was mesmerizing, but the tension had shifted in the room, as if someone was about to get their throat ripped out.

"Anyways," I murmured half to myself. "I'm gonna need to learn before I even attempt to get near that thing." I told Adam, who nodded understandingly. He slid a rolling board in my direction, and reluctantly, although it looked dirty and quite possibly diseased, I laid down on it and slid underneath the car with him.

The massive tangle of cords and copper wires looked like some sort of magical Labyrinth. I spent the next two days learning everything I needed, and by the time we were done, I could've fixed a God damn army tank. Changing oil, shifting sparkplugs, Hell, I could even recognize any engine known to man by the time the week was over.

Paul was there almost every day. Although I was sure he had to be somewhere else, (his phone was ringing so often that he opted to simply shut it off), I didn't mind him being there one bit. My platform was to the left of his, right smack in the middle of the garage, meaning I had a perfect view of his sweaty, glistening chest whenever I felt the need to glance in his direction.

One day, Adam called me under the Corvette.

"Hand me that wrench, will ya? And hold that plug down."

I did as I was told, watching as the pale man shook hands with Paul and drove out of the shop in his Jeep like usual. I'd learned that his name was Emmett Cullen.

"How come they don't like him around here?" I asked quietly, looking at my Uncle.

"It's not that they DIS-like him," he started, sounding a lot like Kim. "It's just that there are a few complications between kin."

"Between kin?"

"Their families don't get along too well. The people of La Push are a little closed-minded, but so are the lee-…people of Forks."

"Then how come him and Paul are so close?"

"There was a bit of a, uhm….scuffle, of sorts a few weeks ago. It was for the good of La Push, really, they were both allied towards the same cause, it's just that Lord knows they're both the most temper-mental of their groups-"

"Scuffle?"

"Look," Adam sighed, dropping his wrench on his forehead and wincing. "The point is, they both eventually realized that they were stronger together than apart. They're nothing close to best friends but there's a lot of respect there."

I nodded as if I understood. Huh. Seemed like Paul had friends everywhere, but what was really bugging me was the idea that the people of La Push would hate another family just because of the geography. Something wasn't right about a family feud that seemed to sprout out of nowhere, and I wanted to know the truth.