Hello everyone! Sorry it took me so long to post this chapter. I've been mulling over posting it since Thursday because I'm not sure if I like how this chapter unfolded. I've edited and toyed with it for the last two days and I'm not so sure it's my best work. A lot's been going on lately and I haven't been able to focus on my writing as much as I like to. Please let me know what you think. Oh, thanks for reading and for all of your reviews. Like I mentioned, I'm going through some rough real life stuff and they always manage to make me smile. Thanks again!

Disclaimer: I own nothing associated with the Twilight series.

Chapter 20

I was standing in Sam and Emily's guest room drying my hair with a towel as I sat on the bed dressed in a pair of sweat pants and an old t-shirt that we had stopped to pick up from Paul's place. When we got there Emily had ushered me upstairs and into the bathroom where I promptly washed myself as thoroughly as I could to make sure to clean the vampires' scent from my skin. Emily had taken my clothes to put them in a bag so I could rewash them at home. While I had been in the tub, Paul had gone somewhere with Sam and I had been too on edge to be any sort of company for Emily and DJ, so, I settled myself in the small guest room that held no more than a twin size bed, a small nightstand with a lamp, a tall dresser, and a wood dining chair in the corner of the room.

When my hair was as dry as I was going to get it, I sat down on the bed and played with the damp towel in my hands. Paul had been quiet from the moment we had left the Cullen house. I didn't know what had been going through his head, but I had come up with various scenarios that had me on edge. Sighing, I stood from the bed and draped the towel over the back of the chair for it to dry a little while I kept myself locked away. I glanced out the window as I started back towards the bed and saw that the rain hadn't started yet. It had stopped raining shortly after we left the Cullen's house, but there was still overcast so the rain could start again any minute.

I had no more sat back down when the bedroom door opened. I practically held my breath when I saw Paul walk through the door. He was fully dressed now in a pair of loose fitting blue jeans and a faded dark blue t-shirt. His short hair wasn't wet anymore and his face looked far more tired than he had when I saw him almost two hours earlier. He closed the door gently behind him and I watched him for a second as he leaned back against the dark wood before I looked away from him.

"How are you feeling?" he asked.

"Fine," I said softly as I turned my eyes on the wood floor at my feet. I heard him walk over to me and sat down on the bed next to me, settling his large frame on the right side of me and his body heat instantly started to fight off the chill I was still feeling despite the long hot bath I had taken.

"Look, Harper, I need to talk to you about something," Paul said and I looked at him then. My worry must have shown on my face because he gave me a small smile before he reached out with his hand and tucked my hair behind my ear.

"What is it, Paul, because I've been worrying myself sick thinking of the various things you'd want to talk to me about," I said, my voice sounding tight and stressed even to my own ears. He lowered his hand from my face and took my right hand into his left, lacing our fingers together and holding my hand tight.

"I talked it over with Jacob when we were at the Cullen's and then Sam to get their thoughts on the whole thing but neither one of them was much help," he said and I was starting to get annoyed. "I just have to figure out the best way to go about this."

"Paul, I swear if you don't tell me what the hell you're dancing around I'm going to scream," I said and he sighed before he gave my hand a squeeze.

"I don't know if I'll make it through it, but we have to try until Jason calms down about everything," he said simply, as if he was excepting me to understand what he was getting at by that sentence alone.

"I don't understand," I said when he didn't expand on his declaration.

"We need to stop seeing each other, at least until after your birthday," he said and my eyes widened while my heart sunk to my feet.

"You can't be serious," I breathed, feeling like everything was coming undone around me.

"It won't be for long," Paul said quickly as his grip tightened on my hand. "Your birthday's in three and a half weeks and we can pick up right where we left off."

"Why do you want to do this? Why?" I asked. It was bad enough just going a few days without seeing him in person. Talking to him on the phone when I didn't see him didn't do much to fill the hole that always seemed to settle in my chest lately when he wasn't around. Paul sighed as he shook his head and shifted on the bed so his left leg was bent and resting in between our bodies. He pulled my hand closer to him and rested it on his bent leg.

"I don't want to do this, Harper, but it's the only thing I can think of that will get Jason off your back for a while," he said. His reasoning was stupid. I could handle Jason, but I was pretty sure I wasn't going to be able to handle not seeing or talking to him until the end of October.

"It's only going to end up hurting both of us. I don't care what Jason, Clarissa, or anyone else thinks. All that matters is how we feel about each other and that we know the truth," I said, tears lining my eyes and readying to make their descent down my cheeks.

"Nothing is going to change between us, Harper. We're still going to be together; we just won't see each other every day or talk until your birthday." I shook my head as my tears finally fell from my eyes. "I love you," he said in a heavy breath as he brought our joined hands to his chest and rested them over his heart.

"Then why are you doing this?" I asked him as my sadness turned to anger. I jerked my hand from his grip and stood from the bed, my hands balled into fists at my sides. "Fight for me damn it!"

"I am! Harper, don't you see that I'm doing this for you?" he asked with a frown on his face as he stood from the bed.

"How is breaking up with me fighting for me?" I asked. My voice was raised so loud that I heard it echo back at me in the small room.

"I'm not breaking up with you!" Paul roared his face a mask of surprise at my words.

"Then what do you call what you're doing?"

"I'm trying to help you," Paul said.

"Give me a straight answer, Paul, because nothing you've said to me in the last five minutes is making any sense!"

"I don't want your relationship with Jason to change because of me!" Paul shouted. "I don't want you to lose that bond because I came into your life. He's your brother and he should be one of the most important people in your life. He's all you've got in this world, Harper."

"He's all I've got?" I asked and Paul nodded. His words deflated my anger and left me feeling small and unwanted. I knew then that I had been right in the beginning to question everything between us. I didn't understand how or why he would think that taking a break in our relationship was going to save my relationship with Jason. It wasn't even broken. We had only argued and it wasn't anything that normal families didn't do on a regular basis. However, Paul was pushing me away. He was pushing me away without a care because he realized that I really wasn't worth the trouble, and it took him four months and an argument to figure it out.

"I . . . I thought I had you, Paul. Don't I have you too?" I managed to ask rather weakly. His face turned unreadable as he looked at me, and he didn't even bother to answer my question as he just stared at me. "Right," I said softly before I grabbed the bag that held my clothes from the floor and walked out of the room. Sam and Jared were standing by the front door and talking quietly when I reached the foyer and I wiped at my tears as I looked at Jared. "Can you take me home?"

"What happened?" Sam asked, but I ignored him and kept my eyes on Jared.

"Jared, can you take me home; please?" I begged and he glanced at Sam before he nodded and gently took my arm. He led me out to his truck and I climbed in feeling numb to everything around me. Nothing was ever going to be the same again.

The radio was playing quietly and other than the hum of the engine that was the only other noise in the cab of Jared's truck as Jared drove me home. I couldn't talk if I wanted to because I felt like if I opened my mouth, I'd either throw up or break down into unrelenting sobs. I was looking straight ahead and out the windshield. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Jared's hands gripping the steering wheel so tightly that his knuckles were turning white as he drove. I knew he had probably heard most of Paul's and my conversation and that he had a million questions; but he kept them to himself and I was glad for it.

We pulled into the driveway and thankfully Clarissa's car wasn't in the driveway any longer, but Jason and my truck were. Jared pulled his truck up next to Jason's and put the truck in park before he looked at me. However, I kept my eyes ahead. I couldn't look at Jared properly without thinking about Paul, and I wouldn't be able to hold back the tears from falling if I did.

"Are you all right?" Jared asked and I nodded.

"Fine," I managed. "Thanks for the ride home." I grabbed my bag from the seat between us and started to open the truck door only to have Jared's words stop me.

"He loves you, Harper, and he's just trying to protect you," Jared tried to assure me, but it was a load of crap.

"If he loved me, he wouldn't push me away because I got into one stupid fight with my brother," I said tightly. My throat was closing in and the tears were getting harder to hold back.

"I know," Jared said, "and this is definitely at the top of the list of the stupidest things he's ever done, but he means well. I bet you that you'll hear from him before Monday and everything will be right again."

"I don't ever want to see him again," I said forcefully as I finally gathered my courage and looked at Jared. "You can tell him that. If I'm so easy for him to throw away, then I'm not going to give him another chance to do it again."

"Harper, you don't mean that," Jared said.

"Yes I do," I said before I climbed from the truck and slammed the door loudly behind me. I ran to the house and up the porch steps before I busted into the house, slamming that door behind me. Jason stood from the sofa and dropped the television remote onto the coffee table as I leaned against the door to support myself since my legs felt like jelly all of a sudden. I looked at my brother and my tears started to fall. He looked haggard and like he had been through hell. His short auburn hair stuck up every which way, like he had been constantly running his hands through it, and he was wearing different clothes than he had been that morning.

"Harper, what's wrong?" he asked and a loud sob escaped my lips before I dropped my bag and ran to him. I threw my arms around his neck as I sobbed into his shoulder. His arms were around me instantly; his left hand settling on my back and his right on the back of my head. "Hey, it's okay," he breathed into my hair as he started to gently rock me. "Shh," he said before he started rubbing small circles on my back, but I couldn't stop crying. I was lost in my broken heart and I wasn't finding my way back.

I wasn't sure when I had crawled into bed, but I hadn't been there for very long because my face was still damp from my tears and my head pounded like a drum as I sat up and ran my fingers through my hair. I sighed and looked around the room. The sun was still up because the cloud filtered light shined through my open curtains, and when I looked at the clock I saw that it was just after four in the afternoon. I climbed from the bed then, determined to get something to stop the pounding in my head and a glass of juice to get rid of the cotton mouth I had going on. I had just reached the living room when I heard Jason's raised voice coming from the kitchen.

"I don't know what happened, Sam, why don't you tell me? Harper hasn't said a word, all she's done is cry in my arms for twenty minutes before she passed out cold," Jason's voice boomed and I stopped short and listened as Jason yelled at Sam. "You know what; I'm tired feeling like I'm being kept in the dark about things and now it's involving my sister. I don't need this shit and neither does Harper. I quit." I heard him slam the cordless phone down so hard that I was pretty sure we'd have to get a new one. I took a deep breath before I walked through the living room and into the kitchen to see Jason standing at the counter, gripping the granite for dear life as he glared out the patio window.

"Jason?" I asked and his body relaxed a bit as he turned to his left and looked at me.

"How long were you standing there?" he asked and I walked further into the kitchen.

"Long enough to know that you just quit your job," I said before I went to the fridge and grabbed a bottle of apple juice before I moved to the cupboard where we kept the pain relievers.

"I'll get another one," he assured me and I nodded my head as I poured two pills into my hand and took them with a swig of my juice. "Harper, what happened?"

"He broke up with me," I said simply, not wanting to think too much of it.

"Why?" Jason asked. I really didn't think he wanted to know, so, I saw no foul in not telling him the truth.

"I don't really know," I said as I looked at the bottle of juice in my hands. I took another drink to try and swallow the lump that was forming in my throat. I looked at Jason and he looked just as confused as I felt, but he offered me a sympathetic smile before he walked over to me.

"I'm sorry, Harper," he said as he put an arm around my shoulders in a half hug. I laughed bitterly as I turned my face into his shoulder and willed away the tears that were threatening to fall. "Looks like we're both back on the market again, huh?" he asked before he kissed the top of my head and I frowned as I raised my head and looked at him.

"What are you talking about?" I asked and he sighed as he slid his arm away from me and leaned back against the counter, his hands in the front pockets of his jeans.

"I broke things off with her after I got back from . . . when I got back to the house this morning after I realized you ran off into the woods," he said as he looked at me. That left me speechless. I had absolutely no clue what to say to him, so, I just stared at him with my surprise clear as day on my face. "The more I thought about it on the drive back home the more I realized that even though Clarissa had been fun, she wasn't right for me. She was always saying something about you, and I'd brush it off. I'd ignore her because I never took anything she said seriously until she started talking about your relationship with . . ., well about your relationship." He was refraining from saying his name and I appreciated that. It was hard for me to even think it right then.

"Which she had no business meddling with in the first place," I finally managed and Jason gave me a tight lipped smile.

"No, she didn't," he said. "And I'm sorry for letting what she said get to me. I think both of our days would have ended a lot differently if I hadn't." I nodded and took another drink of my juice.

"I'm going to go to bed now, Jason," I said. "I'm tired and I've got a bit of homework to do tomorrow."

"Aren't you hungry?" he asked and I shook my head negatively.

"No, I'm fine," I said before I walked out of the kitchen, through the living room, and into my bedroom. I pulled down the covers of my bed and crawled in, snuggling around my pillow. It was then that his scent washed over me and I remembered that I was still wearing Paul's clothes. The tears started to fall again as I brought the collar of the shirt up to my nose. It smelt just like him, and I had no plans on taking those clothes off until Monday morning when I had to get ready for school.

"Don't take this the wrong way, Harper, but you look like shit," Trevor said when I sat down next to him for first period on Monday. I'd been running late that morning and had just made it into class before the bell had run. "Too much celebrating this weekend after your brother broke up with the Wicked Witch?" he asked with a big smile on his face. Clarissa may have been his cousin, but Trevor wasn't her biggest fan and he knew that she treated everyone like dirt.

"No," I said with a humorless smile before I started to pull my things out of my bag for class. I knew I looked awful that morning. I hadn't bothered to shower that morning since I had taken one before I went to bed and I had threw my hair up rather messily in a bun on the back of my head and my outfit that day wasn't exactly the most flattering since I was wearing one of Jason's old USC sweatshirts and black yoga pants. I hadn't felt like trying very hard that morning, especially since Paul hadn't even tried to call me on Sunday. I was starting to regret telling Jared to tell him I never wanted to see him again.

"Hey, Harper, what's wrong?" Trevor asked as he gently grabbed my wrist and stopped me from reaching into my bag to get my notebook. I looked at his face then and felt completely defeated. I hadn't wanted to get out bed this morning, but I had a test later in the afternoon that I couldn't miss.

"Everything," I managed before the tears started falling again. Panic flashed across Trevor's face before he quickly pulled me closer to him and wrapped his arm around me as I started to quietly cry. I had thought I ran out of tears, but no such luck.

"Mr. Harrington!" I heard Trevor say quickly. "I need to take Harper to the nurse. She's not feeling too well." I hadn't heard the reply, but Trevor gently pushed me back. "Come on, Harper, get your things," Trevor whispered and I nodded before I did as he said. The two of us walked through the emptying corridor. "Okay, we'll walk real slowly on our way to the nurse and you can tell me what the hell is going on."

"My boyfriend broke up with me," I said as I looked at the tiled floor beneath our feet and wiped at my eyes. I heard Trevor's sharp take of breath.

"Paul broke up with you?" he asked and I winced at his name but nodded all the same. Trevor grabbed my arm and brought me to a stop before he put both of his hands on my shoulders. I looked up at him and frowned when I saw the serious look on his face. "Did Clarissa have something to do with it?" he asked.

"She said something about our relationship on Saturday morning, which led to Jason and I getting into a fight," I said. "P-he broke up with me because he felt he was getting in between Jason and me. At least that's the reason he gave, I think he just came to his senses and figured he could do better." I'd come to the conclusion that maybe he had finally taken my earlier advice from when we started our relationship and decided to try and ignore the imprint pull.

"Harper," Trevor said with a deep frown on his face. "I'm a guy right?" he asked and I scoffed at the obvious question and he smirked but pushed it away. "He's not going to find anyone better than you," he said with such authority that it surprised me. "I really like Anna, and I wouldn't trade her for the world, but you're a great girl too. The way he was with you at that cook out, it was pretty obvious that the guy is in love with you. I think he was telling you the truth."

"Well, since you're a guy can you tell me why he thinks that breaking things off is going to solve anything? Why didn't he fight for me?" I asked, hoping that he would be honest with me. He sighed as he lowered his hands from my shoulders.

"If I know my cousin, she probably had Jason convinced of some pretty twisted things," he said. "Clarissa's a jealous bitch and will do anything to knock someone down a step or two. You'd think with her being twenty-four she'd have grown out of the high and might faze, but she's been that way since she was twelve and hasn't looked back." I nodded, but remained silent while he continued. "To answer your question, I'm going to guess that he loves you enough to let you go so you don't lose the relationship you have with your brother because of the crap Clarissa probably fed him. I don't think he plans on letting you go for forever, but here's a question for you. Why don't you fight for him?"

"What?" I asked and he laughed.

"The guy doesn't have to be the one to fight for the girl all the time," Trevor said. "Sometimes the girl needs to fight for the guy. You let him let you go didn't you?" Trevor was right. I just took what he said and ran with it. I didn't fight for him when I should have. He would die for me, I knew he would, and I was stupid enough to just walk away.

"Are you sure you're only seventeen?" I asked and he laughed.

"Yeah, I can show you my birth certificate if you want," he said and I smiled a true smile since Friday. "Come on, act sick and we'll get the nurse to send you home so you can get your guy." I chuckled and nodded my head before I slumped against Trevor and we continued on to the nurse's office. I hoped my acting skills were up to par to fool the nurse, but I think my disheveled appearance would probably help with the illusion. After all, I hadn't eaten or slept very well since Saturday and I definitely looked the part.