Hi so here is another chapter. This one delves a little bit more deeper into Rachel's past than before. I will keep this update short and sweet but rest assured she does still want to make things work with Paul, unlike the books she has an actual relationship with him. Also this is cannon in regards to some aspects of the books so expect some Breaking Dawn spoilers before we go all AU.
I know this is very slow burn but stick with me. All events lead up to another.
Next Chapter-Paul's Point of View
Please read and review.
Disclaimer-Nothing but Shay is mine.
I Would For You
Paul/Rachel Fanfiction-When Rachel Black left La Push nearly four years ago to go to college she was carrying a secret. When she returns to pick up the pieces in the aftermath of her brother's disappearance she has no idea of what fate has in store for her and the effect it has on her life.
Chapter 5-All That You Rely On
Rachel's Point of View.
The confrontation with my father, brother and the father of my child wasn't planned. Neither was the going out with the father of my child for a beer. Neither had been lying to any and all of them about Shay. But it had happened. It was difficult to describe how lonely I felt when had come to the pregnancy. Even after the car accident (which had left me with more scars than I was prepared to admit, both mental and physical) I was lonely. Going through something like that was hard especially when the only support had been from my sister.
Don't get me wrong, Rebecca had been fantastic. She had fed me, clothed me, let me move in with her and had lied through her teeth for the better part of four years which I knew kept her up at night. I had asked too much from my sister and I knew what I had asked could potentially damage my father and my brother's trust in her for ever.
But there was something about being home, Shay would love it here, she would love the green and the rain and the wooden houses that my father and her father lived in. I knew my daughter and I knew that she would soon realise that she didn't have a father around even if she didn't realise it now.
My lip was now so chewed that there was a cut on it I pressed into it with my teeth revealing in the pain. It helped keep me grounded. But Paul was still Paul…he was still the same man that I had fallen in love with, the puppy fat was gone and the attitude and I could see him, I could see him playing with Shay, helping her with homework, taking her out to the beach, scaring away all the boyfriends. I could see him with her.
I had struggled with depression both before and after Shay was born, it had been I believed a combination of guilt and the accident. Shay had been struggling in her incubator for nearly a month before I'd been allowed to take her home. That feeling of crippling helplessness had nearly suffocated me.
The next morning I woke up staring at the ceiling of my own room. It had what I'd spent hours doing after I'd realised I was pregnant. I couldn't think like that anymore.
"Hey" I said to my Dad as he watched with an expression of mild disgust as Jacob began chomping his way through what looked like a baby piglet trapped between two loaves of bread.
"I'm gonna go for a walk on the beach before it gets to cold" I said. My Dad's face lit up obviously thrilled that my tone of voice and expression were back to normal, that there was something I could do in this small town.
I pondered to myself as I walked down the path. Say Paul did want to know about Shay, what would I do? I had a Civil Engineering Degree, I had been one of three girls in my class and that had been in Hawaii, what could I do here, even if I was in the next town over?
But could I ask Paul to move to Hawaii with me? He had a life here to, he had friends and I had denied him so much that I wasn't sure if It was possible for him to grant me any leeway?
What if he decided he didn't want me but he wanted Shay? Granted I had never put his name on the birth certificate but a DNA test would easily prove that he was Shay's father, what judge would deny him part time custody, if not full custody?
And then there was another path, the path where he didn't want to know either one of us.
Well, I thought grimly. If that was the road we went down then all the secrecy would have been for nothing, if I went down that road then the only people that I was hurting then would be my father and my brother.
I reached the beach, it was a cooler day than the one before and the sea was a darker grittier shade than the ones that I had come to love in Hawaii but I shut my eyes and breathed in once again revelling in the fact that I could smell salt and hear waves crashing.
"You look nice" said a voice that I instantly recognised.
I opened my eyes to see Paul standing there watching me. He was wearing jeans and a blue v neck that clashed with his eyes and God he looked delicious.
"You don't look so bad yourself" I said before I could stop myself. I looked back down at my fingers, I was in a shirt that was old and frayed in dark red but there was blue paint at the edge of the hem from Rebecca's gallery when she allowed Shay to paint on one of the blank canvers.
Paul for the most part looked unnaturally thrilled.
"You wanna sit?" he asked and for lack of something better to do I nodded.
"You still wanna go out for that beer?" he asked as we sat on the sand and watched the waves. I snorted. "I think it might need to be something stronger."
Paul laughed his voice loud and confident.
"Can I ask you something" I said still not looking at him because if I did then my resolve would fail.
"Of course" he said comfortably watching me rather than the waves.
"Did you…do you ever think about that night after prom?"
Paul blinked no doubt surprised that I had brought it up again.
"All the time" he confessed in such a way that I knew it to be truthful.
I nodded looking down again. Paul hesitated.
"Do you?" he said carefully.
I wanted to laugh, of course I thought about it, I had a child because of it. We had a child because of it. It was all on the tip of my tongue to say but I couldn't force the words out, couldn't force them and what came after them to take flight.
Instead I swallowed them like the coward I was.
"Yes" I said finally. It was perhaps the most diplomatic answer that I could give him.
"I think about it"
Paul's hand found my chin then, he lifted it up his brown eyes finding mine.
"Are you really going to leave?" he said finally. I bit my lip the flesh catching between my teeth, and something about that movement made Paul's pupil's darken.
"Yes" I said finally. "But…" God I had to throw something out there, he had to know that I was willing to work even if he could never forgive me, he had to know that in this moment I was willing to try.
It was all I could rely on.
"If I was to go to Hawaii, if I wanted a future far away from here, would you come with me?"
It was open now, the question, the debate, the struggle. Could Paul fold his cards in early or could I? Could either one of us allow ourselves the courage to love each other again or would our past forever make it difficult for us. Because I did love Paul, I had loved Paul before Shay and I had loved him afterwards. And I wanted so desperately to tell him but I couldn't until I was sure he couldn't break me.
Paul blinked at me his mouth falling open and I realised with a sense of dawning horror that he'd never intended for me to ask his question. He'd never intended me to be interested. He worked his jaw furiously before he managed to speak.
"If you gave me some time…to get my affairs in order" he said sounding so much older than he was, his words so much older than he was. "I would" my eyes closed of my own accord the water burning at my eyelids.
I opened them wiping under my eyelids. Paul was still watching me his eyes gentle and warm and so brown. The exact same shade of his daughter. I wanted to cry. I wanted to tell him about Shay, what I had done, about the accident about…about what came after…
I needed to tell him about what came after,
He needed to know how selfish I had been, that if he choose to stay with me Shay was all he was going to get all the missing pieces and all.
"Miss Black?" Doctor Alexander said slipping into the ICU I was in, it was the same one Shay was in her little body tucked into a blanket and hooked up to more tubes than I could bear, I had come out with three broken ribs and if it wasn't for the fact that I had escaped from my bed three times now I wouldn't be allowed near my daughter.
"Is something wrong with her?" I said sitting up. I was in loose sweats and a jumper and my hair was loose, lank against my head. I hadn't slept in days so therefore my temper was a little short.
Doctor Alexander shook his head. "No Baby Shay is doing fine" he said gently sitting down on the nearest seat. "It's you I wanted to talk about"
I stared at him.
"Rachel" he said gently "When we operated, as you know there was a large chunk of glass in your uterus, it pierced through the skin and punctured a vessel that lead to the right ovary"
I shook my head, I knew what was coming and yet I didn't want to admit it, didn't want to listen to him but he was still talking.
"Rachel" he said gently "The chances of you having another child and safely carrying it to term is very slim. Given that the right ovary had to be removed, the right fallopian tube damaged and the left one effected it will be dangerous for both you and the baby"
I couldn't take my eyes of the baby in front of him. All I could think about was that she had to survive, it wasn't until much later that the horror of the Doctor's words seeped into me. Shay would be an only child, she would never have any more siblings, I would never have any more children.
"I wish you would" was all that came out.
Something flickered across Paul's face.
"There's some shit I'd have to tell you before I went" he said finally.
I laughed bitter broken and hollow.
"There's some shit I'd have to tell you before you left with me" I said finally. "And if I did tell you…there's no guarantee that you'd still want me"
This time it was Paul laughing tilting his head back the same broken, bitter laugh that I had given him mere seconds ago.
"Somehow Rach I think I'll always still want you, the question is whether or not you'll still want me after all this shit comes out into the open"
I stared at him then, what secret could Paul, be hiding that he didn't want anyone to find out about, what secret was so terrible that it outwitted my own.
And suddenly he was kissing me. His mouth was on mine for a split second before he realised it. It was feather light and soft and still it burned. Still it managed to invade all my senses. His sent was still the same, the smell of the sea and fresh grass and all things fresh and bright in the world.
For a second everything seemed to hang suspended before it all came crashing down.
There was a single wolf howl in the distance and I jumped backwards my hands clenching into fists in the sand. Paul jumped like he'd been scaled in his seat watching the treeline his eyes straining.
"Shit" he muttered under his breath. "You should go back to Billy" he said urgently. I wanted to ask, desperately what was wrong. But there was something about the way he was looking at me, the way his eyes were wide and his expression tight and the way he was gripping my hands that made me listen to him at least in that moment. There was something about him in that second, the boy I had fallen in love with was stripped away to be replaced by a man that seemed older than I had ever predicted him to be even in my wildest imagination.
I nodded scrambling to my feat.
I was walking along the path when I heard what sounded like wolves plural howling out their anger against whatever the world was throwing at them.
I shook my head, the sooner I got out of this place and home to my daughter (preferably with Paul in tow) the better.
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