Chapter Two
As per usual, her scent slammed into him before she came into view. Over the past month, he'd grown almost accustomed to it. The rest of the house hadn't; Rosalie was forever complaining that she could smell dog on his clothes even when Leah wasn't around.
She came bounding through the trees in wolf form, the handle of a red and white cooler grasped between her teeth. Ignoring the instincts that screamed at him to keep his eyes on her — to crouch and prepare to defend himself — he turned to let her phase and dress.
"Hey," she said, popping the lid on the cooler before he could face her again. A heap of plastic-wrapped sandwiches rested on a bed of ice packs, apples, pudding cups, and bottled water.
Garrett wasn't overly familiar with human eating habits, but her mountain of food looked like enough to see a football team through a day-long hike.
"Hello." He chuckled. "How long are you staying?"
"Just until sunset. Gotta get back in time to patrol." Sitting cross-legged in front of what had become her tree, she helped herself to one of the sandwiches. "Don't look at me like that. Forks to Tillamook is a long-ass run. I work up an appetite."
"No, I know. But... you don't have to bring that stuff. Esme would be thrilled if you let her cook for you."
"Mm." A quarter of the sandwich disappeared with one bite. "You'd make her do it instead of cooking something yourself?"
"I'm not sure you'd want to try my cooking. I have no memories of attempting it as a human."
She grinned at this, leaving Garrett wondering if she would've felt compelled by the imprint to accept the offer if he'd been the one preparing the food. Before he could ask, an all-too familiar chorus of moans assaulted his ears.
"Damn," he said. "Sorry. I didn't realize Rose and Emmett were on a hunt."
"Huh?" Craning her neck as if to see over a fence, she paused in her demolition of the sandwich to listen. "Oh. Are they...?"
"Afraid so. They tend to get a bit, err, affectionate after they feed. Fairly standard among mated couples of our kind, which is why I hunt with Edward. Or Jasper, when I can make him leave his cabin."
Leah snorted. "If either of them get handsy, just let me know. I could take 'em."
A fistful of pine needles was all he had to toss at her in retaliation. She dodged, giggling in a way he'd seldom heard from her, and leapt to her feet.
"Come on," she said, offering him a hand. "Let's head down to the river. Maybe the sound of the rushing water will drown them out."
He picked up the cooler before she could, ignoring her half-hearted attempt to take it from him. As they walked, he swung her enormous lunch at his side, trying to remember some time-fogged vision of his human life in which he carried a girl's books home from school.
"Maybe we should set up some sort of signaling system in case this happens again," he said. "A way for you to know if you should meet me by the river or at the usual place. Lights or something that the others could put up when they go on a hunt."
"Like a 'one if by land, two if by sea' sort of deal?"
"Ha. Yes. Two lights on top of Jasper's cabin, and it means Rosalie and Emmett are coming."
"Eww."
Upon reaching the river, Leah devoured the remainder of her food while Garrett attempted to skip rocks. In between bites, she studied his technique and offered what she called "constructive criticism."
"I kinda like that you suck at this," she said, throwing her last pudding cup into the cooler as if shooting a basketball, then holding her arms up with a triumphant grin when she hit her target. "I mean, sure, you can speak sixteen languages—"
"Seventeen."
"But you can't skip a rock. What else can't you do?"
"Oh, I've hundreds of shortcomings. I've spent over two hundred years cultivating them." Crouching low to the ground, he tried another rock. It sank as though he'd walked out to the middle of the water and dropped it there. "I did mention that I can't cook, if you recall."
"Doesn't count. You haven't even attempted it."
"Fine. If you're going to take that view of it, I suppose not being able to play the oboe doesn't count, either. Hmm. I can't whistle."
"Yes! Perfect." Holding her spoon like a baton, she conducted herself as she whistled a few bars of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star."
Another rock landed in the river with a plop. Garrett scowled at it. A dusty memory piped up before he could hush it, drawing his attention to the fact that he had been unable to master rock skipping as a human, too.
"I probably couldn't beat you in a race," he said. "Not when you're a wolf."
"You think so? We'll have to test that sometime."
"Don't need to." A breeze carried her scent across the distance between them and swirled it around until his head was full of her. "You couldn't be inferior to me if you tried."
Glancing back over his shoulder, Garrett decided his wolf was at her most beautiful when rendered speechless: parted lips, wide eyes, the ghost of a smile just beginning to take shape. If at all possible, he'd make her look like that at least once a day.
Of course, it wasn't often that she found herself without words. Almost never, actually. He smirked. What an excellent challenge.
-oOo-
For the first few months, sleeping at the Cullens' meant a night spent outside for Leah. Refusing the bed in Garrett's room, she made a pillow of her folded hands and stretched out on the forest floor. While she snored on, she kept her back to Garrett, facing the main house as if preparing to defend him from his new family.
Unlike Edward's former flame, Leah didn't talk in her sleep. What she did was kick. On one such night, Garrett began experimenting, placing yards of space between them and then moving as close as he could bear. The further he got, the more restless she became.
Interesting.
Without warning, a cabin door creaked open. Emmett's voice boomed out, coaxing a black-eyed Jasper to join him for a hunt. If those two were prowling the woods, Garrett didn't want Leah anywhere nearby. These days, Jasper left it too long, let himself grow thirsty and desperate enough to lunge at anything with a pulse, no matter how unappetizing it smelled.
But how to wake her? Touch her hand? Shake her shoulder? No, the temperature of his skin would likely startle her and send her tearing forward as the wolf. Saying her name didn't work; she was too exhausted to be disturbed by anything quieter than a foghorn.
Breaking a twig off of a nearby bush, Garrett used it to prod her arm. After several repetitions, plus a shout of her name, she finally opened her eyes.
"The hell?" she said through a yawn. "Did you just poke me with a stick?"
"I didn't want to startle you."
"Oh, well. That makes perfect sense. Because it's not at all startling to wake up to a vampire hovering over you with a twig." Stretching her arms overhead, she winced at the cracking and popping symphony provided by her back. "Ugh. Okay, I've had enough of this outside crap."
"You want to go in?"
"I would sleep in Dracula's house right now if it had a bed."
"Isn't he supposed to use coffins?"
"Whatever. As long as it wasn't the ground, I would kick him out and sleep in it."
She wobbled when he helped her up, dragging her feet as though she hadn't slept in a week. On impulse, Garrett wrapped an arm around the waist to steady her. He endured the burn of her skin through her clothes, half-expecting her to jerk away at any minute.
She didn't.
-oOo-
"Welp, Jake imprinted," Leah said, sniffing the overflowing tray of food that Esme had left for her.
Two years of meeting in the forest, and this was the first time she hadn't brought her own food.
"Oh?" Garrett said. "On Bella?"
"Nah, that was never gonna happen. It's always at first sight. Then again, the legends have been wrong before. Jake's the fifth one of us to imprint, and Sam's the only one who fell in love right away."
"Maybe it's an Alpha thing."
"Maybe it's a 'Sam is a freak of nature' thing." Pausing, she let out a breathy laugh. "Anyway, it was one of Bella's friends. Fate has a cruel sense of humor, doesn't it? He hasn't told either of them yet. He's being all mopey and hiding in the woods. Swear to God, if he gets as emo as Bella, I'm going to kick his ass."
Apparently, Leah deemed Esme's offering to be worthy. One by one, she took bites out of each of the simple dishes Garrett had helped to prepare: strawberry shortcake, potato salad, hot dogs. He wondered if his scent was less off-putting than Esme's, or if Leah gravitated toward him without realizing it.
"I kind of feel bad for her," Leah whispered, as though she didn't want to hear the admission herself. "A little. Enough to wish I could warn her, I guess."
Of course she would want to tell Bella. She'd been cut by that heartache, dived into that grief. He knew the bones of her past with Sam, but he'd never asked for details. Never wanted to. Had she been struck speechless when Sam left her for her cousin? Something buried within Garrett rebelled at that thought. Scooting closer, he ran a finger above the branching blue veins in her wrist — almost touching her, but not quite.
"Why can't you say something to her?" he asked.
"Alpha's orders. You're an exception, since you're my imprint. I can tell you anything, but I'll be physically unable to form the words if I try to tell Bella. Stupid Sam. Jake didn't even ask him to make the order."
"He forces you to obey him?"
Forget nature. Sam Uley was now Garrett's enemy for reasons beyond species.
"Yeah." Leah swatted the air as if shooing a mosquito. "It sucks ass. Why do you think Seth never told Bella about Alice? He couldn't. Jake got around an order once, though. Hmm. Maybe I could do that. If I could get her to guess what I was trying to tell her..."
"Do it."
To his surprise, this made her laugh.
"Are you getting all pissed off on my behalf?" she said.
"Absolutely. It's not right. He shouldn't treat you as if he's your master."
"You totally want to break Sam's face for me, don't you?"
"The only thing keeping me here is the knowledge that he can't fight back against an imprint. I might abandon my principles and hit him anyway. Haven't decided yet."
He knew then that he had been wrong when he thought he'd seen her at her most beautiful. When she was speechless, she was pretty, sure, but that smile — the bright one put there by him — made her radiant.
-oOo-
"You're quiet today," Garrett said.
Leah nodded. Rather than the breathless, stunned sort of silence that he liked, this one was weighty, brimming over with thoughts.
"Jake's imprint changed," she said, at last. "It's like Sam's now. He kissed her, and bam. Insta-love. He's known her all of two weeks."
Two weeks. It had taken longer than that for Leah and Garret to be comfortable touching hands. Kissing... they'd never attempted it, but Garrett couldn't suppress his curiosity. What would it be like?
He backed her up against a tree, fingers hovering over her hips. This close, her pulse sang to him in spite of her scent, warming his skin as much as the heat of her body.
"Do you want to try it?" he asked.
"Try what?"
"A kiss."
Her choice. She'd stumbled into this bond against her will; it was her decision to deepen it or leave it as it was. The imprint wasn't, after all, a two-way connection.
Her nod was so slight, he almost missed it. Garrett swallowed the shudder that rattled against his spine as he slid one hand up to her neck, over the hammer of her pulse. His instincts annoyed him; they should have long since stopped sounding the alarm in Leah's presence.
"Mouth closed, okay?" she said with an attempt at laughter. "I don't care how good your kisses may be; they can't be worth dying for."
"You say that now, but give me a second. You may change your tune."
"I've given you several seconds already. Chickening out?"
"Not a chance."
Holding his breath, he touched his lips to hers — cold to hot, enemy to enemy. A corresponding warmth spread through his chest, settling there like the spring thaw. Her mouth felt like flames, charring his skin, but he tried to relax his stiff posture and give himself over to it.
It wasn't until he pulled away that he noticed the tears.
"Hey," he whispered, swiping his thumb across her damp cheek. "Was it that bad?"
"No, no. Of course not." Sniffling through a laugh, she settled a hand over his quiet heart. Her fingers twitched out an unsteady rhythm, as if trying with each tap to restart his pulse. "I'm sorry."
Maybe she would always be stuck at this in-between place — this rest stop where they were almost friends. Maybe she would spend the rest of her life bound to a vampire she couldn't love, unable to be with anyone else.
Garrett sighed. "Me too."