Author's note: I can't believe I forgot to include this before, but THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU to my AMAZING betas Stacey and Tori!
Leah is halfway to her house when she sees her cutoff shorts in the middle of the road.
She slows her sprint, contemplating how bad it would be for her to come home bloodied and naked. The image of her mother fainting crosses her mind, so when she nears the shorts, she stops to put them on, figuring it's better to just be bloody.
Two hundred feet away, she spots her tank top laying across Jacob's front yard. Leah runs to it, kneels to grab it, and when she is standing straight up again, she notices Billy Black in the front window. He's just shaking his head back and forth. Embarrassed, Leah hurriedly pulls on the shirt, and runs toward her own house.
She opens the door, and the first thing she sees is Seth sitting at the kitchen table, working on a sudoku puzzle. He glances at her briefly then returns to his puzzle. She crosses the kitchen, walks to the sink and turns on the faucet. Leah bows her head in front of the sink, and holds her hands out to cup the water. Out of nowhere, Seth whips his head around to face Leah.
"What the fuck happened to you?!" he says.
Leah splashes her face with the water and grabs the dish towel from the stove. She wipes her face with it, staining the whole towel light red. She reaches over to turn off the faucet and mutters, "I got in a fight."
She catches her reflection in a spoon and sees that her face is still red. She groans and turns on the faucet again. Seth puts his pencil down on top of the newspaper and walks over to her. She splashes her face with water as he leans over her and asks, "Who with?"
Leah turns to him and glares, water still dripping down her face. Seth shrugs and watches as she towels herself off once more. "Well did you at least win?" he adds.
She looks down at the spoon again and takes a look at her face. Several pink gashes run down either side of her eyes, and continue down her neck. She grunts, realizing how much she now resembles her cousin. Leah's upper lip curls into a sneer, before she spits right onto her reflection in the spoon.
"Hello-oo?" Seth calls. Leah snaps back into reality, shaking her head. She throws the bloody dishtowel on the counter, grabs a dirty cup, rinses it out and fills it with water.
She stays frozen in her position, just holding the cup in her hand for a second. Seth waits with bated breath. Leah puts the cup to her lips and downs its contents in less than five seconds. She places the cup back into the sink and exhales deeply.
She turns to face him, looks him straight in the eyes and says "No," before turning away and walking to her room.
Leah closes the door behind her and begins taking off her clothes. When she lifts her arms over her head to take off her shirt her elbows make a disgusting "crack". Leah grunts and flings the bloody shirt onto her bed. Just as she begins to undo the button of her shorts, there's a knock on her door.
"Leah, what should I do with that dishtowel?" Seth calls. Leah groans. "Mom will be home soon."
"Seth, you're a grown boy, figure it out yourself," she replies, wrapping a towel around herself. She opens the door to find Seth standing right in front of her. "Move," she demands, "I need to take a shower."
He reaches one of his hands out to touch her shoulder, then decides against it. "Leah, seriously, are you okay?" he asks. Leah shoots him the death stare. Seth shrugs and heads to the living room.
Leah locks the bathroom door behind her and drops her towel. She sees herself in the mirror for the first time. Leah studies herself closely. There are scars on both sides of her cheeks. One of her eyebrows has a slash right down the middle of it. On the left side of her neck, there are three long gashes. Her chest and shoulders are decorated with an array of red lines.
She reaches her right hand up to touch the cuts, and her whole arm aches. When she looks at her fist, she notices the knuckles are bloody and peeling in some places.
Leah looks back in the mirror, and though her face essentially looks the same, she can hardly recognize herself. Despite the scars, she looks almost nothing like her school portrait from last year. Her hair is much shorter, her face much harder. She has a wrinkle in her forehead that wasn't there before, and her eyes look so much more tired than they used to.
Leah sighs and reaches to slide the mirror over, revealing a medicine cabinet. Her fingers search the shelves for the scar cream, but she can't find it. She tries again, her eyes frantically sweeping over the contents of the cabinet, but it's not there. Frustrated, she swipes both her hands over the shelves, knocking all their contents into the sink and onto the floor.
Leah can feel her skin trembling, so she takes a second to contain herself. She takes one very long, very deep breath, and balls both of her fists up. When she closes her left hand, she feels a sharp pain. She opens her hand and brings her palm closer to her face to look at it.
A piece of glass is sticking out from her hand, and there is another cut a few inches from it, from when she balled up her fist. Leah yells out, "Goddamn it!" tearing the shard out of her palm. "All I need is another fucking cut!" she yells, before stepping into the shower.
In the living room, Seth's ears perk up at this, but he decides to pay it no mind. There's a knock at the front door. Seth looks up from his sudoku and yells, "It's open!" The door creaks open slowly, and Jacob steps in.
"Seth," he says. "Where's Leah?" Jacob is wearing only cargo shorts, as usual. Seth notices he is holding his left arm in an odd position, and that his lip is bloody.
"Aw, don't tell me you got in a fight, too," Seth says.
Jacob, taken aback, shakes his head. "No, no, no," he says. "I fell off my bike." Seth looks at him skeptically, but takes it.
"Leah's in the shower." Jacob nods his head a few times, eyes wandering around the room. "Do you want to wait for her?"
Jacob's eyes lock on Seth's. "No," he says quickly. "I, uh, actually gotta go."
Seth narrows his eyes at Jake. "Are you okay? Did you hit your head or something?" he asks.
Jacob lets out a nervous chuckle, and looks to his feet, before slipping out the door.
Just as the front door closes, the door to the bathroom opens. Leah walks out, wrapped in a towel.
"Jacob came by to see you," Seth yells to her.
"Ugh!" Leah grunts, slamming her bedroom door behind her.
"Okay," he says to himself, rolling his eyes.
Before he has time to set his pencil back onto the newspaper, he hears the kitchen door open.
"I'm home!" Sue yells. Seth hears her putting down her bags on the counter. "What the hell is this?" she says.
Seth looks over to the kitchen. His mom is standing in the archway, holding Leah's bloody towel in her hand.
"It's, uh," he stutters. He glances over to Leah's room, and just a second later, Leah emerges, wearing the same clothes she came home in.
Sue looks at Leah, sees that the collar of her tank top is covered in blood. Her eyes travel upward to the marks and gashes on Leah's chest, shoulders, neck and face. She looks at her dishtowel, then back at her daughter, quickly connecting the two in her mind.
Leah looks up to see Sue in the archway. Her expression changes from annoyance to that of a deer in the headlights.
"What's with the shirt?" Sue says, more angry than worried.
Leah swipes her palm across her forehead. "It's my last clean one," she mumbles.
"Do you care to explain how it got so 'clean?'"
"I got in a fight."
Sue scoffs. "That much I can tell, Leah." She sighs and crosses her arms. Her face softens. "You need to keep it together," she says, faintly.
Leah narrows her eyes and purses her lips, trying so hard not to lash out at her mother. Sue shakes her head and crosses Leah, heading into her own room. Leah lets out a loud sigh and heads for the front door.
"Wait!" Seth yells. "Where are you going?"
"Out," she grunts. She looks over to Seth, who is staring back at her with puppy dog eyes. She sighs. "I'm going to the store to pick up some smokes," she says, stepping out of the doorway.
When she turns to face her front yard, she sees Jacob sitting on the top step of her porch. Leah groans, tilting her head back and hunching her shoulders. Jacob looks back behind him, and jumps up to face her. She covers her face with her hands and sighs. "What do you want?" she says, dragging her hands down her face.
"I'm sorry," Jacob says. Leah sneers and pushes past him. He turns and follows her.
"What do you want?" she repeats, power walking down the sidewalk.
"I... I just wanted to say that I'm sorry," he stutters.
"Well you already did that," she bites, not stopping.
"Leah," Jake says, desperately. She ignores him, continuing down the block. Jacob quickens his step and finds himself right behind her. "Leah!" he says again, grabbing her by the elbow.
She turns around to face him. "What?" she barks, pulling her elbow away from him.
He takes a step toward her, closing the space between them. "Listen," he says, his voice low. "I know you feel the same way I do." Leah sneers at him. "I know it, Leah." She continues to stare him down, but Jacob is not phased. "I'm not going to take no for an answer."
"I don't know what you're trying to accomplish, Black," Leah hisses. "I don't know what you think you saw. But whatever emotion or action you're trying to milk out of me, just know that I will not melt for you." She turns away from him and begins to walk away, but stops after a few steps and pivots to face him.
Jacob is caught again by her unfamiliar expression. The look on Leah's face is a mix of agony and exhaustion. "I don't know who you take me for," she breathes. "What happened there was a fluke and that's it."
Leah stares Jacob down for one second more, before marching off down the block.
Jacob stays standing where he is. He lets her get further away, before calling after her, "You can keep pretending Leah." His statement doesn't phase her as she continues stomping away. "But don't forget that I will find out, eventually."
At first, Leah continues on her march, but within five seconds she stops completely. Her shoulders hunch as she brings her hands up to her bowed head. A pang of guilt rushes through Jacob, realizing that he just hurt her. The obligation that he's had for the past two days to help her takes hold of him again.
Jacob sighs, then starts off toward Leah. When he is ten feet from her, he can hear her sighing deeply, almost as if she is sobbing without the tears. He takes four steps closer to her and reaches his hand to her back. "Leah," he breathes.
She drops her hands from her face and turns around to face him. They catch eyes and Jacob's heart sinks. Leah wears the look of the mercilessly defeated. She looks so much older and so much worn than Jacob has ever seen her.
Leah lowers her eyes and whispers, "You have no idea how hard these past few days have been for me."
Jacob opens his mouth to say something, but nothing comes to mind. Leah looks like she might start to cry at any second. This Leah is so vulnerable, and so completely foreign to Jake. It makes him feel ashamed for any wrong he's ever done against her.
For the first time in his life, Jacob feels as if he can relate to Leah.
He sighs and wraps his warm hands over hers. "I do know," he breathes. Leah looks up at him. He rubs his thumb along the top of her raw knuckles "We can help each other," he says.
Jacob takes his right hand and gently touches the cut in Leah's eyebrow. His thumb traces along the line of her face, stopping to feel the apple of her cheek. His long fingers settle behind her ears, tangling themselves up in her hair.
Jacob closes his eyes, and Leah does the same as he leans his head down to hers.
Their lips touch, it's barely enough to be classified as a kiss, but for some reason both Jake and Leah are left breathless.
Leah's eyes flutter open and lock onto Jake's. There's something sweet and accepting in them, a look she only recognizes from when he would talk about Bella Swan. The corner of Leah's mouth curls up into a tiny grin.
Then, out of nowhere, a cry of "Hi-yi!" fills the air. Both Jake and Leah look up and around to find its source.
There, on the other side of the street, stands Embry Call with his eyebrows knitted in confusion.