A/N in·vec·tive[in-vek-tiv] :

–noun

1.

vehement or violent denunciation, censure, or reproach.

2.

a railing accusation; vituperation.

3.

an insulting or abusive word or expression.

"Learn that petulance is no sarcasm, and that insolence is not invective."

~ Benjamin Disraeli

Her truck sat alone in the driveway, nothing but an oil spot where Charlie's cruiser usually sat this time of day. Charlie was in La Push, with Billy, completely oblivious to an entire world that sat around him. It was evening; late enough for the air to chill, and the sun lose itself behind the tree line. I stood on her porch for too long a moment just thinking, Embry huffing loud and impatient in my truck

Knocking, I was resolute to at least apologize. It would have to be a blanket apology, for a laundry-list of truly unexplainable things. If anything, I was most sorry for letting her walk away when I should have followed. I should have followed her out of that kitchen after our mistake. I wouldn't take responsibility for the sex because it took to two tango and, not only did she not say no, she instigated it. I wasn't sorry about the sex, but I was sorry for what had come from it. I wasn't sorry for my treatment of her, though it ate at me, but I was sorry that it hurt her. It was all too precarious for my liking, and too messy to explain. 'Sorry' would have to do it.

Outside of that, I had no idea what I wanted to say, but I knew something had to be said. I also wasn't so dumb as to believe whatever I said would be enough for her. But accepted or not, I did want her to know that I was sorry.

She answered as I expected her to, but with her face flush and her lips red. Her hair was even more a mess then usual and I could smell teenage boy all over her.

"Sam!"

"I..."

"Jeeze, Sam! What happened to your face?" Red asked, eyes flickering a long my jaw. "It's not-" Vampire. Did it always have to come down to that?

"It's not." I had no idea what to say. She was with a boy. I felt my eye twitch and my stomach lodge itself in my throat. My tongue was thick against the roof of my mouth as I spoke. "I...I just came to say sorry." I had no idea how to deal with this. This...was all wrong.

"Sorry?"

"Bella?" An almost-masculine voice called from the living room, the living room.I heard the unmistakable sound of a zipper being drawn up; loud enough that even Red winced. "Who is - Oh. Uh...hi. Sam, right? From La Push?"

I blinked at him, unable to form words. Irrational and unwelcomed anger clouded any reason; I knew that I had no right to be mad, but I was. I was furious, the wolf was furious. It was all wrong, I was hers, but she wasn't mine, but in that moment, that did not matter. He had a fairly skinny neck; it wouldn't have taken much to remove his head. But that would be bad. Part of me, an alarmingly small part, knew that would be bad. It wasn't nearly as dominant as I would have liked to be. Embry was right, for all the good she'd done, Red really did bring out the worst in me.

"Sam, uh...this is Tyler," Red stammered out, blushing bright. "He um..."

She didn't finish, words tapering off into the tense air. I wasn't looking at her anyway. I was looking at him, possibly with a maniacal glint in my eye, I couldn't be sure. I towered over them until they both wore matching expressions of child-like guilt. Hand-in-the-cookie-jar; they'd been caught.

"I...I think I should go," Tyler managed to say, sidling out between Red and I, shoulders drawn up, tight and tense. "I'll ….I'll call you, Bella..."

I narrowed my eyes further, silent and scowling as he continued, voice breaking.

"...sooo-er. Sometime. I'll call you sometime."

Together Red and I watched him haul ass down the walkway like his balls was on fire. Climbing into his busted-up Prius, he made a sad attempt to peel out, but only managed to tear up Charlie's lawn.

"Oh my God, Sam! What the hell is wrong with you?" Red hissed, shoving me into the house as the neighbors began to peer out their windows. She slammed the door, rattling the old pictures, ones depicting a baby Red, on the wall. "Christ, we were only-"

"Only what?" I asked, sniffing. My eyes gravitated to the couch, the obvious scene of the crime. The whole living room reeked of sex and sweat, and it only served to piss me the fuck off. Internally I was screaming at myself; she wasn't mine, not really, not yet, not ever if she didn't want it. "You have come on your shirt. Yeah, go on, tell me what you were only doing."

"I..." Her face heated up, violent red against her pale skin. "He-"

"What? Did his ship drop anchor before it reached the port?" I asked with bitter sarcasm. "Christ. And here I was worried about what happened, but fuck me if apparently you don't drop your panties for anyone who shows interest. I know Jake turned you down Red, but seriously?"

It was like years of repressed-asshole was bubbling up and out of me all at once. My momma was going to beat the shit out of me, I was sure, just as soon as Embry, who I didn't doubt was listening, told her. That was, if he didn't beat the shit out of me too. Even hurting from the shit-kicking I just got, I couldn'tshut the fuck up. This time was different; there was no rightness about it. This was just me, hurt and cornered. This was wrong.

The red faded from her cheeks, leaving her frighteningly pale, and suddenly I wondered if I had just said something really very wrong.

"Showing interest?" She asked darkly. "Is that what you were doing?"

"Oh buck up, Red," I sneered down at her, leaning against the door in a casual pose. My knee was killing me. "You were the one who kissed me."

"I-" She took a deep breath, eyes closed tight. Opening them, she scowled. "What are you doing here? What right do you even have to run Tyler off like that? He and I were just-"

"Just fucking on your dad's couch? Or did you not make it that far?" I asked, with a raised brow. "What? Couldn't keep your legs closed long enough to make it to your fucking bedroom?" That wasn't really fair, considering what we'd done in my kitchen.

There were tears in her eyes, but I was too blind to care. "What do you care?" she growled, slamming her fist hard against my chest. I grabbed it into my own hand before she could do it again. "You're not my dad! You're not my...my boyfriend! You're ruining my life!"

So petulant. Always so petulant. This time we both were. But God, it hurt. It hurt so bad for her to call us a mistake, even if it was, only to find her with some guy who would never love her like I did. I hadn't realized it for what it was, but seeing her with some guy, it made it all clear. I hurt, but mostly I was scared. Scared of losing her; scared enough apparently, to send her screaming before she could abandon me and claim as if I'd never existed

What a pair we made, with only our abandonment issues in common. I'd admit I had my fair share of them. It was obvious to any one with eyeballs that Joshua Uley affected me in ways I would forever deeply repress. Perhaps not so deeply because my mouth wouldn't stop talking even though my head screamed for me to just stop.

But like all else things in my life, I couldn't shake the momentum long enough to pull the brakes. I had always needed to keep going, so when it came to stopping, I never knew how.

"Would that be so bad?" I growled, hands wrapped around her wrist as she tried to pound her little fists against me; she'd hurt us both like that. "Am I so bad a fucking person, that the idea of me being anything to you is just disgusting? Have I done nothing for you? I know I'm hard, but I am there for you, Red; have been, and will be. You keep asking why I'm there, why I'm always there. When the fuck will you get it? You think I hate you? You think I do all this shit because I hate you? Are you fucking stupid? I could never hate you. I l-"

The unbidden words seized up in my mouth, cut off by her own rising anger.

"You don't...you can't possibly know what I need. I don't need you! I don't need anything from anyone!" Her fists were balled in my shirt, clinging tightly as her body rebelled against her words and she fell apart. She swallowed hard, and I knew before she spoke that whatever she had to say, it was going to hurt. "You're just some loser kid on the rez who will never go anywhere. You practically live with your mother, Sam! You're just some asshole bully who has nothing better to do with his time than fuck with me. Do you ever think of anyone but yourself? What gives you the right to tell me what to do? You're no one. You're a nobody and it's all you'll ever be. You're nothing, you're fucking nothing. You're worthless."

If ever there was a straw that broke the camel's back, it was this. The culmination of everything, all crumbling down between us. They say those who know you best can do the worst, but she didn't know me and she'd just killed me. She'd crushed me with all the delicate brutality of an angry woman. Worthless, fucking worthless...

Snarling, I crushed her against me, her small breasts flattened against my chest. She wasn't wearing a bra again, but from the corner of my eye, I could see it hanging off the end of the couch. It only made me want to kiss her harder, and so I did, licking my way into her mouth without permission or hesitance. One last kiss, before I let her win. God, how could one little woman hold the power to break me so thoroughly?

It didn't matter that my world was falling to shit; she kissed back, hands curling tighter into my thin shirt. My chest ached where my ribs were bruised but I welcomed the pain; it grounded me, protected me from the other hurt. She tasted like what I imagined was him, and I hated it. A nobody; that was what I was to her. A nobody, a nothing. I kissed her deeper, filling her with the taste of me instead.

But when her hand slid to the waist of my jeans, it just made me angry. I was in her eyes nothing but fucking scum, and yet here she was, desperate and clinging. I didn't want easy. If I had been meant to have anything easy, the gods would have never landed me with her. I didn't want her hands on me when she smelled like him.

And I'd tell her too, tell her I didn't want her to be like this, that I didn't want her to just give it up to anyone. Especially to a nobody-nothing-loser like me. That she didn't need to spread her legs for whatever man showed interest. All the words were wrong, unfair, too cruel and unlike me, fueled by sheer and unhindered hurt, but I couldn't stop them from coming to mind, couldn't pull them off the tip of my tongue. I'd have given anything to keep from speaking in that moment. Drawing back, I breathed in, deep and panting, only to find myself with a lung full of sickly-sweet bleach scent.

Any cruel thought in my mind evaporated.

"Sa-"

"Shut up," I hissed, cocking my head to the side. I couldn't hear a thing, but that didn't surprise me. "I smell leach."

"The Cullens?" she breathed, and there was just too much fucking hope in her voice.

"No, not the fucking Cullens!" I snapped, holding her against me in a protective cradle, for even though I was fucking hurting all over inside and out, I'd never let her be hurt. By anyone but me, apparently. "But it's familiar. It's the same one we trailed during the fire."

I sniffed her, nosing along her neck and forcibly ignoring the way she shuddered so pretty against me. I would do better to remember it what I was, came to her; remember that I was shit to her and not let myself get lost again. Nothing. "It's your shirt. Whoever it was...they touched you."

"No one's touched me, um. Except for-"

"Yeah," I snapped, bending to sniff at her shirt again. Without any real thought, I dropped to my knees, body screaming in agony and protest, until I was nosing at her stomach, where the scent was condensed, like some one had just picked it up off the floor or from a dresser. "They must have been in your room. And they were touching your things." It wasn't good. I pushed myself to a careful stand, biting back any expression of pain. She didn't need to see it right now; even in my anger, I needed to be strong for her. I pushed away Sam the Imprint and focused on Sam the Alpha. That was who I needed to be now; Sam the Imprint had no place. "Would the Cullens send any one to check up on you? Did...were there any other Vampires?"

"The nomads from last year. Victoria," she whispered, burying her face into my shirt. She clung like she didn't know she was doing it, so desperate and touch-starved. "Oh God, Charlie-"

"Quiet," I said less harshly, freeing one hand from her, to dig in my pocket. Peeling my phone out of my jeans, I called Embry.

tbc