A/N: I don't own Twilight. This chapter features a little bit of everyone, which explains the length. It should honestly be cut in half, but I just couldn't do it. This chapter also features some nice quirks about the characters, as well as some drama. I had a good time writing it.

Enjoy.

LXXII.

love is not just a verb
it's you looking in the mirror

Paul was able to go a week without telling anybody about his winnings. He didn't want to brag—he just wanted to figure out what to do next. On his next day off, he decided he needed to call the smartest person he knew: Leah.

It was early and Bella had just been dropped off at her job when he dialed a number that he hoped still worked. But from one shitty flip phone to another, it was perfect.

Paul had to call Leah's cell phone twice before she even answered. He was pretty sure she had answered for a second the first time only to hang up again.

Her voice wasn't even tired when she finally picked up, though. She actually sounded sort of livid. It took him by surprise while it really shouldn't have.

"Who is this?" she asked.

"Damn, Lee, you deleted my number?"

"Oh my God, hold on."

Paul thought he heard her say, "Give me a minute" to him, but her tone was too distant and way too nice for that to be directed at him. Who the hell is that? he wondered.

It had been a moment before Leah returned to the phone. "What do you want?" she asked him. Her voice was quiet, but not quiet enough to negate her obvious annoyance.

"I wanna talk to you," he told her, and he could swear he saw her rolling her eyes through the phone.

"Well, guess what?" she asked impatiently.

"No, no, in person. It's kinda important. Is Kim there?"

"She's working out."

"Do you know when she'll be back?"

"Give me forty-five minutes. Oh, and bring me a coffee."

"A coffee?" he asked. "Why?"

"You called me up at nine in the morning on my one day off from school and work just to say you wanna talk. Bring Kim one, too."

"I didn't wake either one of you up," he pointed out.

"You said it's important, right? Just bring us each a coffee."

Paul sighed. "Shit, okay. Forty-five minutes. Two coffees."

"Cream and sugar," she added. "Just for one of them."

"Cream and sugar," he repeated. "I'll see you then."

"Okay, bye." She hung up before he could say bye back.

Paul was over in forty-two minutes instead of forty-five, but to make up for the time, he found himself parked meters away from Kim and Leah's condo, waiting for the only available parking spot to open up. He wasn't looking to get anyone in trouble for parking in the "incorrect" spot, which he found to be absolute bullshit. The people in charge of the condos were real sticklers about guest parking, and the only parking spot allowed for guests of Kim and Leah's condo was currently occupied by a vaguely familiar, red Volkswagen Rabbit. He ran through all the times he'd seen the car in his head and then finally remembered it belonged to—

Jacob.

Being trailed by Leah, Jacob Black was walking down the stairs and over to his car. Paul really didn't know why he was so surprised to see them together, but he was nonetheless.

Jacob began to get into the car, but Leah pulled him by the sleeve of his sweatshirt. He leaned in and kissed her. Paul wanted to die—it looked like something out of a cheesy movie—but he couldn't look away. He just didn't know why, either. Jacob squeezed Leah's ass and Paul, parked relatively far away like a creeper, couldn't take his eyes off them.

It was like when they had talked in the Thriftway, except Leah and Paul had switched roles. Even though he didn't want her back, he couldn't help but wonder what Jacob could give her that he had lacked. He wanted her to be happy, he really did, but the thought of his inadequacy burned constantly in the back of his mind when he thought of her and Jacob. Paul knew that he had treated Leah badly, and he knew that he had played her, but how bad could it have really been?

Really bad, dumb-ass, he told himself. That's why she's with him instead of you right now.

Paul had witnessed probably the longest parting ever once Jacob backed out of the space and drove away. When Paul looked at Leah, who stared at Jacob until he was out of sight, she looked genuinely happy. Paul still loved Leah like family, of course, and while he loved her impeccable, classic, sharp attitude, he loved seeing her happy, too. She looked so happy in this moment, wearing pajamas at ten in the morning, watching her boyfriend drive away. Happiness was a good look on her, Paul could admit, but he still felt a pang of improper jealousy.

Leah began to make her way up the stairs, and then Paul swerved into the parking spot, tires squealing. She stopped in her tracks and turned around, smile long gone, and started to come down the stairs again.

Paul got out of his car and started to walk over to the passenger side. "Come get your coffee," he called to her.

"Cream and sugar in one of them?" she asked, taking the cardboard carrier from his hands.

"Just like you said."

"Nice, Lahote. I knew you could do it. C'mon, Kim just got back."

He followed her up to the fourth floor, making small-talk like they didn't even know each other. Once they got up there, though, he couldn't help but say, "So you've got yourself a revolving door of guys this morning, I see."

Leah snorted as she opened the front door. "Yeah, right," she said, letting them in. "Jake's a guy; you're just a dog."

"How is Jacob, anyway?" he wondered.

They set the coffee cups down onto the dining table. "Why?" she challenged. "You know you don't give a fuck about him."

"Gotta make sure he's treating you right," he explained.

Leah just rolled her eyes to the moon and back. "You should just take your own advice and not worry about it," she told him. "And anyway, you're not my boyfriend, you're not my mother, and you're damn sure not my father."

"Okay," he replied, "but you've definitely called me 'daddy' before."

"That's irrelevant," she said. "And wildly inappropriate."

Kim suddenly entered the dining area, approaching Paul and Leah. She was fresh out of the shower and clad in a cotton bathrobe. "So what's so important?" she asked. "I mean, besides daddy issues."

"Morning, Kim," Paul said.

"Good morning, Paul." She pointed to the coffee cups. "Is one of those for me?"

Paul nodded, and Kim picked up a cup. She took a sip and immediately set it down, making a face. "Gross," she said. "That one's yours, Lee."

"Sorry," Paul told Kim. "She only asked for cream and sugar in one of them."

"Nah, it's cool. I take mine black."

"She's not with that frou-frou shit," Leah said to Paul, picking up the cup that Kim just set down, taking a sip. "So what's important?"

"I won the lottery."

Kim and Leah looked at each other and just about exploded with laughter.

"No, for real," Paul said. "Last week, I matched all six numbers on the CashBall."

"No way," Kim said. "It's impossible to even match, like, three numbers on those things."

"Well, I did." He took the signed ticket out of his wallet and handed it to Kim.

She looked at the numbers and quickly looked up the winning numbers for this CashBall prize on her cell phone. She glanced at the ticket again and handed it back to him.

"He matched all six of them?" Leah asked, her eyebrows raised.

Kim nodded, still looking at him. "You're one lucky motherfucker. So what do you need?"

"You know money, right?" he asked.

It was all she knew besides physical fitness and pop music. "Mm-hm."

"What do I do, then?"

"Well, first, you have to thank God that me and Lee aren't crazy," she told him, "'cause you can't just go telling everyone you won the lottery. That'll get you kidnapped—or killed."

"I've only told you guys," he assured her. "And Bella."

"Lucky bitch," Leah muttered.

"You're gonna need a team of legal and financial advisers," Kim told Paul, "but you're also gonna have to be quick about it. When you collect the money, the news will probably announce that some guy from La Push won, and after that, every one of your 'long lost cousins' is gonna be calling you up asking for shit."

"Okay, so how can I get these advisers?" Paul asked.

"I have some uncles over in Seattle that can hook you up," she replied, "but they like to work fast. If it's alright with them, we can head over there today and work something out with them."

"That's fine. What do you have uncles in Seattle for, though?"

"They're Tulalip. Dad's side."

"You're not full Quileute?" Paul asked incredulously, getting sidetracked.

"Paul, do you want her to call her uncles or not?" Leah asked before the topic of Kim's racial ambiguity could come up. "Because she totally can if you would just pay attention for two minutes."

Kim nodded.

"Yeah," Paul said. "Yeah. Call your uncles."

Kim and her coffee cup went to the other side of the table, pulled out a chair, and sat down. She began to dial a number, and Leah and Paul retreated to the couch.

"Why'd you come to us about this?" Leah asked him, her voice hushed.

"Easy—you two are the smartest people I know," he explained.

"That's real nice of you," she said sarcastically. "Usually, it's the millionaire who has to be sweet-talked."

"Multimillionaire," he corrected her. "What, you want something out of this?"

"I'm not gonna make a fool out of myself to get some of your money," she told him. "I'm not like that."

"I know. I would—I could—help out your family. I mean, it's basically my family, too." He was careful not to mention the fact that Leah would be an aunt in a little while, and not to Seth's kid.

"We're doing fine," Leah assured him. "Thanks, anyway."

"No problem. Just don't tell anyone about me winning, okay?"

"I'm the smartest person you know, remember?" she reminded him. He smiled in return.

Kim got off the phone. "Done," she called.

"That was quick," Leah said. She and Paul returned to the table.

"What's up, Bambi?" Paul asked.

"My Uncle Ron and Uncle Mo can meet with you today," she said. "He wants to talk with you and set some things up, and then we'll move on from there."

"Cool. Let's go." Paul got up from the couch, and then he paused. "Wait."

"What?" Leah asked.

"There's no guarantee that my car will make it to Seattle."

Kim got up from the table. "No one said you were driving," she said.

Leah bolted from the couch and went to the bedroom to quickly get dressed. Kim followed her and closed the door behind them. The condo was only so small, though, that Paul could still hear them.

"You didn't know about any of this?" Kim asked Leah.

"No way," Leah replied. "I was literally in the middle of getting my pussy eaten when he called me."

If Paul didn't need to figure out how to handle the money, he would have just up and left.

"Well, I guess we're going on a road trip," Kim said. "I'll need to get gas, though."

"Are you sure you wanna drive?"

"We both know you can't handle the aux cord and drive at the same time."

Within twenty minutes, Kim, Leah, and Paul were on the road to Seattle. Leah rode shotgun while Paul felt his legs being slowly crushed as he sat in the backseat of Kim's car.

The car ride from Forks to Seattle was long—about three-and-a-half hours since Kim preferred to not break the law—but Kim and Leah remained hyped the entire time. Kim's phone was plugged in, and in between giving directions, it bumped the music that Kim and Leah had grown up on. The girls moved at the same time, in the same ways, as if they had routines to the various songs. They also belted the songs passionately, holding nothing back. It was all actually kind of funny, and it went on in a light spirit until a certain song came on.

They were both singing along until Leah abruptly paused the music.

"Is something wrong?" Kim asked.

"You're singing Beyoncé's part," Leah said. "I'm Beyoncé."

"You've been Beyoncé since 1999. And the contemporary girl group did not die so you could be Beyoncé all the time, Leah."

Leah just scoffed and played the song again. They both sang Beyoncé's part, and the road trip resumed.

Even though Paul had once claimed to hate the badlands and everyone in it for simply being boring, he wished he had stuck around long enough or gave enough effort to form a friendship similar to that of Leah and Kim's. They really were best friends—they could insult each other one second only to laugh it off and continue singing 90s R&B songs the next. Bella was his best friend and his girlfriend all wrapped in one, but it wasn't the same.

Stuck in the backseat, Paul admired Leah and Kim's historical, everlasting friendship all the way to Seattle.

Getting his financial situation together in Seattle was easier than Paul had expected it to be, even if it took a while. Kim's uncles were cool about everything and made things simpler to understand. He had opened up a few accounts, created a timeline for the important things he would invest in, and made plans as to not going bankrupt. Paul found it nice to just be able to talk to other natives like it was nothing. They didn't make him feel any smaller or dumber than them, and he appreciated it.

They had spent practically an entire day in Seattle by the time they started to head back to Forks. They had to take a ferry back (just as they'd had to take a ferry there), and because the wait would be a while due to traffic, the three of them sat in the lounge. Paul just got off the phone with Bella, apologizing for not being detailed with her in his text messages—it had been a long, busy day that he would tell her about once he finally got home.

Earlier in the day when Paul had been in his meeting, collecting the lump sum, and going into another meeting, Kim and Leah had ventured off to see what downtown Seattle could offer them. They had also taken many aesthetically pleasing photos of each other with the city background. In the lounge of the ferry, they went through the pictures on Kim's phone now.

Leah pointed at a photo of Kim. "That one is flawless," she said. "Your hair looks so good there."

They swiped to another photo. Kim pointed at it. "This is the really good one of you that I was talking about," she said. "You really fucked it up here. This is, like, hood-rat glamor realness."

Leah smiled. "It is, huh?"

There she goes with that happiness again, Paul thought. I can't be mad at her.

And he really couldn't be mad at her. She knew what love was. The good, real love. Love wasn't just hugs and kisses and pet names, and it sure as hell wasn't just sex. Love wasn't a mere noun at all, but it was more than a verb, too.

When Paul looked at Leah smiling at Kim, smiling at herself, smiling at Jacob, he realized that love was the capacity to look at one's self in the mirror. It was the capacity to search for what they liked about themselves in someone else, and to always remember the importance of self-respect.

The reason why Leah and Paul hadn't worked out was glaringly obvious to him now: he hadn't shown her anything remotely close to love. In fact, she had found it without him.

He couldn't even be mad.

The following day, Bella was stuffing her travel toothbrush and toothpaste in her purse as she returned from the bathroom at her job. She was nearing the end of her shift, and because she just couldn't deal with morning sickness in the morning, she made sure she was prepared to not have puke breath at all hours of the day.

Paul was supposed to pick her up soon, but when she went around the corner and looked up at the front desk, the man talking to her coworker, Angela, was not Paul. It was Edward, clad in a black suit.

It caught Bella completely off guard to see him, and she stumbled back. It would have been really embarrassing if anyone had seen her. All the kids had finally been picked up, and the only people left at the daycare were her, Angela, and of course, Edward.

Angela turned to Bella and waved at her. "It's about time you let me meet the lucky guy," she said to Bella teasingly. "You had me thinking the father was a mystery. I'm so excited for you two."

"Thank you," Edward said courteously.

It just now occurred to Bella that while she had told her co-workers that she was pregnant and engaged, she had never actually introduced them to Paul. Angela mistook Edward for Paul, and Bella wanted to throw up all over again.

"Oh, um," Bella began slowly. "This—this isn't Paul."

Things became as awkward as Bella expected them to be.

She turned to Edward. "Can I talk to you outside?" she asked him.

"Of course," he said. They began to head to the parking lot, and he turned to wave goodbye to Angela as if this was even remotely funny.

Edward just laughed and laughed and laughed when they made it to the parking lot.

"You're a fucking psycho," she told him angrily.

"You're pregnant," he said, still laughing a bit too hard for someone whose brother had just been murdered. "I always told you to stay away from the rez, but you really are an idiot. You're fucking pregnant. Even better, your coworker thinks I'm the father." He was doubled over laughing now.

"I should call the fucking cops on you for popping up at my job," she said. "You had no right to do that."

"What, to visit a daycare?" he asked, gaining his composure. "Get over yourself. I was in town—I thought I would pay a visit."

"Don't you have some reporter to be crying to?" she asked, her arms crossed over her chest. "Why the hell are you continuing to harass me instead?"

"Jasper's funeral was today," he informed her. "It was a big production. I talked with my brother, Emmett—you remember him? Anyway, he thinks it was an Indian who killed Jasper."

"What makes him so sure about that?" she asked. "Besides the fact that all of you are racists."

"Jasper was always involved in sketchy situations," Edward told her. "I bailed him out, too, when you and your girls were all in trouble in Venice."

The Venice gig seemed like ages ago. Bella didn't even feel like the same person.

"So tell me one more time," Edward continued, "are you sure you don't know who could have killed my brother?"

"Leave that to the police," she said. "I don't know anything or anyone having to do with this." Bella tried to turn away, but Edward grabbed her tightly by the arms and closed the space between them. His breath smelled of whiskey, and he began to question her again.

Paul's car suddenly came speeding into the parking lot of the daycare. He shot out of the car and shoved Edward away.

"Wow, if this ain't the guy from TV," Paul said, pulling his fist back to sock him in the face.

Bella jumped between them. "Paul, stop!" she yelled. "Don't do this."

"Oh, so you're the father?" Edward asked, regaining his balance.

"Damn right, I'm the father," Paul replied.

"Paul, calm down," Bella told him, her hands on his chest.

"Get the fuck outta here," Paul hollered at Edward. "You wanna beat and rape my fiancee and then have the nerve to show your face around here? I should fuck your whole world up."

Before Edward could even respond, Bella pushed Paul back with all the force in her body. "Stop!" she shouted. "Paul, don't make this into a scene."

"He made it into a scene first," he said, the anger clear in his eyes and his clenched fists. Then he screamed at Edward, "What the fuck do you want?"

"I want to know how the hell shot my brother," Edward replied, "since Bella just seems to be protecting everybody around here."

"Look," Paul said, his voice more calm, "I don't know who did that to your brother, and I sure as hell don't even care, but if you wanna keep bothering me and my fiancee, then I'll make sure the same thing happens to you."

"Let's go home, Paul," Bella said quietly.

Paul just kept his eyes on Edward as he and Bella headed back to his car. Paul spat hard and fast right on to Edward's shoes. "Fuckin' pussy," he muttered.

Edward gave him the finger, and Paul drove away.

Just a few minutes away, Quil was trying really hard not to fall asleep at his register at the Thriftway. Embry had spoken to his boss, so Quil worked two jobs now. Real jobs. He spent his days at the Thriftway and his nights at the diner/coffee shop in Port Angeles. The exhaustion was hitting him hard, but at least he was off the streets.

The entire store was pretty dead until a tall ginger wearing a black suit and nice shoes with fresh spit on them came storming in like a maniac. Quil recognized Edward immediately—the guy had been one of his first and most loyal weed customers—and then he froze up.

I killed that guy's brother, he thought. I killed that guy's fucking brother.

Edward went straight to the spirits aisle of the store. Quil dreaded his return. Quil was one of two people with cash registers right now, and he didn't even know where his co-worker was at the moment. He quickly took off his name tag and chucked it to the side of the store, just so Edward wouldn't recognize him by name.

Quil's heart raced in his chest once Edward came out of the aisle, a bottle of whiskey in hand. He marched over to Quil's register, and Quil swore to God that he would never do anything bad ever again as long as he got to live right now. Yes, he had killed Jasper, but to be killed at his job would be downright awful. What would his mom think?

What would my mom think?

Edward didn't even greet Quil. He hardly looked him in the eyes. He just presented him an ID that looked fake (Quil had one just like it) and paid for the bottle. The receipt took an agonizingly long time to print, and Edward became so impatient that he just left the store without it.

Quil's heart didn't slow down until Edward was totally out of sight.

He was the luckiest bastard in the entire world.

A/N: Thanks as always,

HS