Things weren't exactly the same after that, but they were still good. Despite his obvious defense of Leah in front of school, the Black girls never really trusted him again, and they didn't welcome him back to their lunch table. Leah protested adamantly, but Sammy told her that as long as they were still friends, it was okay. If he was still hers and she was still his, and he was, and she was, that was all that mattered. Not being allowed to eat lunch with her was his punishment for being such a jerk, so he deserved it. After all, she let him back into the treehouse, into her room, into her life, and it was enough. She even stuck cookies in his locker every time she made a fresh batch of double chocolate chunk (or any other variety, for that matter).

It also turned out that Johnny and Bobby had never really liked Austin to begin with, so they defected with him and the three boys found a new table for lunch. And if Roy and Austin didn't pick him during gym, well, that hardly mattered. The gym teacher hardly ever made either of the bullies captains. And even when they were, and he ended up on the opposite team, that was great. Because Sammy beat them at every game anyway, so who cared?

The end of fourth grade came quickly, and then they had the summer to themselves. Until Emily showed up again, anyway. Before then, they ran through the forest and along the beach like "feral beasts", as Harry dubbed them. The weather was nice enough that they could sleep in the treehouse again, sometimes with Seth, and once even with Seth, Jacob Black, and Charlie's daughter Bella. Sam was certain she didn't get a wink of sleep in her sleeping bag in the corner. She seemed scared, but little Jacob whispered to her and kept her company while he snuggled with LeeLee and ignored everyone else. Leah became Grandma Uley's strawberry girl once again, and more importantly, LeeLee was his girl again. He was pretty sure she always had been. After all, he had always been hers.

When Emily came, Sue made it clear that Leah wasn't allowed to ditch her cousin to play with Sam. She tried to get all three of the children to play together, but Emily just wasn't comfortable with Sam, which made him uncomfortable with her, and even Seth's exuberance and Leah's most dedicated efforts couldn't get them to click with one another. So he would leave the girls alone for the day and wait for Leah in her treehouse at night, and she would sneak out of the bed she shared with Em and join him in the sleeping bag, and something about the fact that she wasn't supposed to be doing it made it even better.

During the days, he found Bobby or Johnny while his mother was at work and LeeLee was busy with Emily. Sometimes they played on the beach, sometimes in the little community park, sometimes in one of their backyards. Sammy started to bring a football or soccer ball or baseball and bat, and they gathered a crowd of boys for whatever game they could manage with whomever had shown up. And Sammy was really, really good at anything that involved throwing or running or jumping or kicking, so that worked well. And when Emily finally went home after a month, Leah joined the games, so he didn't have to choose between her and his new friends. Her arm wasn't quite as strong as his, but she was a better pitcher than anyone besides Sam himself, and she could run faster than any of them, himself included, so each boy grudgingly and gradually accepted her before eventually clamoring to have her on his own team.

The last year of elementary school, sixth grade, established a pattern that would last for two years. Sammy walked LeeLee to school and then once again sat behind her in class, but at lunch she sat at the girls' table while he sat at the boys'. Austin and Roy either sat by themselves or snuck behind the gym with cigarettes. After school they walked back to her house together, where they did homework or sat in the treehouse or ran into the woods until his mother picked him up on her way home from the daycare to bring him home for dinner. More often than not, after Allison went to bed he quietly made his way back to LeeLee's.

Sometimes he would lie in Leah's bed and hear Harry and Sue laughing or talking amongst themselves, and he would feel bad for his mother alone at his house. Then he'd make sure to spend at least a couple nights in his own bed. But nothing and no one could keep him away from his LeeLee for long.

Junior high was shockingly unremarkable. He had heard that everything got more awkward and confusing and generally harder, but his experience was the opposite. It was the calmest time he had ever known. He missed his father from time to time, especially when dinner was so quiet that he felt his chewing was too loud, or he saw Harry sweep Seth into giant hug or kiss Sue on the cheek, but Harry would ruffle Sammy's hair and call him, "my third kid". And Allison never had bruises or broken bones anymore, so he shoved away any more thoughts about Joshua as best he could. Time passed and all he heard from the other man was resounding silence, and sometimes he fooled himself into thinking he had never had a father.

So seventh grade passed without any significant events in his own life, although Becca and Rachel were absolutely devastated when their mother was killed by a drunk driver. While Leah did her best to comfort her best friends, Sammy was forced to recall his own absent parent. He tried not to think about Joshua, and many days he succeeded. Once his mother got rid of his father's things, there were so few reminders of the man. His parents were officially divorced, which Sammy never quite understood since he was confident that his mother had never managed to track down Joshua to sign the paperwork. He gave no word as to his eventual destination, he sent no child support, and absolutely no one seemed to have the slightest clue where he was, not even Grandma Uley. Sam didn't know how to feel about it. Was he supposed to be sad? Angry? Depressed? Thrilled? Giddy? He felt none of these things, only numb. Especially when he looked at Rachel or Rebecca's red-rimmed eyes and knew that they had permanently lost someone who had truly loved them. What had he lost? Joshua was still alive, presumably, and he meant his absence to be a gift. So if Sam ever looked at Harry hugging Seth, he ruthlessly smashed down the emotions bubbling in his chest, the ones that told him he missed his father and felt guilty for driving him away.

Then he would look in the mirror and see his father's eyes, nose, and chin, and he realized he couldn't fully escape him. He kept getting taller and more coordinated, which also definitely came from Joshua, although he wondered as he looked at his own bony elbows and knees if he'd ever grow muscles to match up with his height. Leah, too, grew taller and more graceful and ever lovelier, but there was nothing bony or angular about her. He could stare at her for hours, and truth be told, he often did.

The guys teased him about having a girlfriend, but this time he heard their friendly envy behind their words and took it in stride. Of course, he still got embarrassed and pretended he didn't like her that way and declared unequivocally that she definitely didn't feel that way about him (he was so sure it was true, there was no way she could possibly like him the way he liked her, although he wanted so badly for it to be otherwise).

He didn't know that she could hear him half the time he talked about not being her boyfriend, about not having a crush on her. It was the biggest lie he had told to date, and he clung to it desperately for fear of driving her away. He had nearly lost her once, and he absolutely, positively could not let anything jeopardize the fact that he had somehow gotten her back. Especially not his own stupidity.

He never saw her face fall when she overheard him fabricate a completely false crush on Lily Adams just to throw suspicion away from him and his LeeLee. After all, Lily was two full years older than them, a freshman in high school, and she was as liable to like him as she was to turn into a mermaid and swim off to sea. She was an object of affection for half the boys in junior high (while Leah was an object of affection for nearly all of them, although she had no idea), so this was completely plausible although wholly untrue. He had only ever wanted one girl in his whole life. Oh, sure he knew Lily was pretty. He had eyes, after all. He also knew Rachel and Rebecca were pretty, and that Megan Tate in the eighth grade had at some point turned from funny-looking to much-less-funny-looking, and that Olivia Liatha in his own class and that even Leah's cousin Emily would be considered pretty as well.

He just didn't care. Not one of them was half as pretty as his LeeLee, or a quarter as generous, or an eighth as strong, or a sixteenth as fiery, or a thirty secondth as adventurous... He was running out of fractions, but not of adjectives.

He was terrified she'd find out how he felt about her. Besides, he wasn't lying when he said he didn't have a crush on her. Because "crush" was a wholly inadequate word. Johnny had a crush on Leah. Bobby had a crush on Leah. Austin and Roy definitely had crushes on Leah. Not Sam. The word was petty and weak in comparison to his feelings for her. He was… He was… There wasn't a word in English or Quileute to describe how Sam Uley felt about Leah Clearwater. All the words he knew were just too small. Maybe he would have to learn Russian, Chinese, French, or even Latin or Greek before he found the right word to describe how he felt about her. But he wouldn't want to let her know even if he could figure out how, so he said that he thought of her like a sister. She believed him, but he knew that it was a lie.

X-x-x-x-X

It got worse the summer between seventh and eighth grade. Instead of Emily coming down to visit Leah, Leah was going to visit her instead. Sue was going to have her gallbladder taken out, so her cousin easily agreed to take Seth and Leah up to Neah Bay for a month instead of sending Emily to La Push.

Sam hated the very idea, but there was nothing he or anyone else could do about it. Leah hated it too, but less than he did. For some reason he couldn't fathom, she liked spending time with boring, dumb old Emily. So she was looking forward to that part of it. But she wanted to be separated from him as little as he did her. From the night she told him to the night before she left, he didn't sleep in his own bed a single time. His mother didn't even try to make him, because he was so obviously heartbroken.

But he could do this, right? It was only for a month. He had gone longer during their estrangement, had slept in his own bed instead of hers, listened to her talk to others but not to him, watched her carefully as she navigated a life without him, for an entire three months. Only that time she was close by. She was there for him to stare at, he heard her voice nearly every day, and if he could've worked up the nerve, he could have reached out his hand and touched her. This time she might as well be going to China, she was going so far away. Of course, in miles it wasn't that far. But he couldn't bike to the Makah reservation, and neither one of them had their own phones, so he couldn't call her either, and he didn't have a computer. His only method of communication was to send her old-fashioned letters.

So he did. Every day. He told her all the things he had seen and done, making sure to go into detail about anything she would have wanted to do together (which was nearly everything). He told her all the things she'd have known if she was there. It was strangely easy finding the words even though he always seemed to have difficulty being eloquent in person. Then again, he had never needed to find the words before; she always seemed to know what he meant to say even if he couldn't figure out how to say it. But now he couldn't rely on her to figure it out from his stuttering and his body language, and with time to sit and think about what he wanted to say before dumb things flew out of his mouth, he found he could put on paper what he really meant.

And part of that was achieving the awkward balance between telling her how much he missed her without revealing how he really felt about her. It was a good thing he could throw away his paper and start from scratch.

After he dropped the seventh letter in the mail, his mother gave him terrible news. Leah wasn't coming back in three weeks; she was coming back in ten. Apparently Sue was still in the hospital; her surgery had been more complicated than anticipated, and her recovery was expected to take much longer. Allison kept talking, but he didn't hear much of the rest. All he heard was that he wasn't going to see his LeeLee. All. Summer. Long.

The worms were back, the ones that crawled in his stomach. Thankfully it wasn't so bad that he felt them under his skin. He clutched in his hand the first letter he had received from Leah, still unopened. He actually couldn't bring himself to open it. He knew he was being foolish, but he felt like it was all he had of her, and he wanted to savor it. He stuck it in his pocket, keeping it close, ate a mechanical dinner, watched a couple sitcoms without any idea what had happened on either, and sat down to write her his nightly letter. He tried not to sound too despondent about missing her, but he was pretty sure he failed.

That night, he quietly crept out the front door after his mother had gone to bed. He carefully picked his way to the Clearwater house, empty for now since Harry was probably still at the hospital with Sue, and climbed up the trellis. He slid open Leah's window and climbed into her bed. It still smelled like her. He grabbed her flashlight out of her dresser and read her letter over and over, especially the part where she said she missed him and couldn't wait to see him again. Then he slept on her newer, fluffier pillow, but he grabbed the old purple one (now more gray than purple, and actually covered with a striped lavender pillowcase) against his chest and pretended it was her.

The next morning, he woke up early and went home before his mother came to gather him up. Harry must have come home at some point and probably knew he was there, but he didn't bother him. He felt a bit pathetic when he spotted Roy in the backseat of his mother's car as he was walking along the street, and he was really glad that no one caught him going into or coming out of Leah's bedroom.

He didn't go back again until she was there to meet him. In the meantime he waited impatiently for her letters (she wrote to him every night just like he wrote to her, but she didn't have enough postage to mail them every day, so she sent them in bundles once or twice a week). They were long, rambling, and hilarious. It made him feel better that she apparently missed him every bit as much as he missed her, although this also made him even guiltier for the months he was being a jerk. And she complained good-naturedly about Emily not wanting to play sports or explore the woods of the Makah Rez, but he heard the general happiness of her tone and knew she wasn't upset about anything other than being separated from him. Not to mention that she was half tomboy and half girly-girl, and she was probably thrilled to indulge her inner princess around Emily.

The rest of the summer was kind of boring, and he missed her acutely. But there were football or basketball games to play, and Bobby's dad bought an Xbox, so he and Johnny were happy to congregate around it. And best of all, his mother got him a used surfboard, so he split his time between pickup games on clear days, video games on rainy ones, and learning to surf. He even somehow managed to impress some of the high school boys with his persistence in trying to teach himself how to manage the board, so they started giving him tips and instructions. By the end of the summer, he kind of looked like he knew what he was doing.

Actually, before he knew it August had arrived, and she was back.

X-x-x-x-X

She came home with shiny lips, sparkling eyes, longer hair, and... and... Whoa.

Sammy got his first embarrassing erection the afternoon she came home a day early and surprised him. She jumped out of Harry's car without bothering to shut the door or go inside, although she briefly hugged her mother standing on the porch. Then she ran straight into the backyard and through the woods and burst through his back door. She shrieked with excitement and threw herself at him where he stood by the counter making a sandwich, wrapping her arms tightly around his neck.

Oh, oh, oh, she was finally here! Finally back! Finally in his arms, right where she was supposed to be! He crushed her tightly around her little waist and inadvertently lifted her off the floor. His body and brain disconnected and then linked back together. He breathed her in and felt the vibrations of her laughter before he even heard the joyous, wonderful sound interspersed with gleeful repetitions of his name. He found himself chanting, "LeeLee," breathlessly, over and over and over. Mmm. She smelled good. Really good. Did all girls smell so good or was it just LeeLee? How had he not noticed this before?

She giggled and rested her cheek on his shoulder and murmured, "Hmm. That's just how it used to sound when you said my name when we were kids. But you're a bit bigger now. Did you grow?"

And that's when he realized that he wasn't the only one who had grown. But she didn't just grow taller, she grew out. Something soft was pressing against his chest. Something wonderful and perfect and touchable and squeezable and oh god he was getting hard and oh crap could she feel that and oh no she was going to kill him and he should put her down but he didn't want to put her down he wanted to be closer he wanted to be so close he wanted to be as close as humanly possible he wanted he wanted he...

He dropped her, and she landed with a squeak and a chuckle. "S-S-Sorry," he stuttered. He stepped back and looked at her, and well, that was worse. Because she had turned from incredibly pretty to flat-out beautiful (or maybe she always had been; he was just so used to seeing her every day that maybe he hadn't noticed). Her dimples had never been so tempting, and that was really saying something. Emily must have gotten her to use makeup because her cheeks were pink under her usual tan, or was she flushed? Was she blushing? Because of him? No, idiot, she probably just ran here. That's all. But her cheeks and her dimples were pink and really pretty for whatever reason. And her eyes were deep brown and wide, and her eyelashes were thick and long and even they were pretty too, and her lips were even pinker than her cheeks, and glossy and soft looking and plump and... and...

Crap. He was staring at her, wasn't he?

And even though she wouldn't feel his hard-on pressed against her stomach, now she might be able to see it, and if that happened, he'd have to die of embarrassment. Which was a shame since he'd just gotten her back. Crap. Crap. Crap. It felt like it was getting as big as cucumber, and he was worried it was pointing right at her under his shorts and it was throbbing and please don't let her look down and he needed to look down and check himself to see how bad it really was but if he looked down then she'd look down and then she'd know and he'd die and...

His eyes flicked down to her chest. Shit. She was wearing a modest, boring Mariner's tee shirt, but the "Seattle" part at the top was all stretched out because of what was underneath, while the "Mariners" part in the middle was folding in on itself because her waist was so little, but the bottom of the shirt was spreading out again because she had hips that were perfect for grabbing onto, but wait, what?

Now he felt like the size of a damn baseball bat! (Okay, fine, he was being a little overly generous). But if he wasn't careful, he was going to smack her in the gut with the damn thing!

Harry was going to kill him, or Sue was going to kill him, or she was going to kill him, and it would be a slow and painful death. And the worst thing about death was that he'd never again be able to see her again, hear her laugh, eat one of her chocolate chunk cookies, or kiss her dimple or kiss those soft looking shiny lips or touch her boobs or...

Crap.

He looked at her face again, and yep. Still so damn pretty she was positively beautiful. He was a dead man. She grinned at him and her eyes sparkled. Thank god she was still looking him in the eye, and she didn't appear to be laughing at him. "Hi, Sammy."

"Hey, LeeLee. I'm so glad you're home."

He leaned forward very carefully so as not to brush his hips against her, and he hugged her more gently than he ever had before.

X-x-x-x-X

A/N: Thanks again to Babs81410.