Thank you for checking out Westbrook's Law. Before we dive in, this story is:

- Set after Fields Notes but can be read as a standalone

- Set in a fictionalised version of Forks in the late 2010s. There is no Bella. The Cullens moved to Forks at a later date and the children are still students. Jasper and Alice aren't dating.

- About platonic imprinting

- Rated M (please check the trigger warnings)

I want to add that this story explores only one possible outcome of sexual trauma on an individual's ability to form attachments, function, and interact with the world. This story will not portray Anna's lack of desire as a "flaw" that "needs to be fixed by a partner". Westbrook's Law is about Anna overcoming her fear of men and her reclusive nature in order to open her heart to vulnerable, meaningful and non-sexual connection. As always, I want to be respectful and do justice to the themes of the story, and am always open to feedback on how to do better.

TW: parasocial relationship, stalking, medical conditions/complications, mentions of past abuse by a parent, sexual harassment, indecent exposure, death of a partner, grief, home invasion, revenge pornography, attempted poisoning, violence, mentions of past sexual trauma/assault, PTSD symptoms

I

"I know you're forgetting about me, and there is nothing I can do to stop it."

Exhibit number 32: excerpt from a letter sent from the defendant, Noah Hall, to Anna Westbrook's old residence. Never received, but recovered during investigation.

1

Lust v. Chastity

"Do you still stay up all night watching those scary movies? I watched one with you a while ago. You didn't even notice I was there. It's like you don't want me. How can I make you see me, Anna? How can I make you see the perfect man is right in front of you?"

Exhibit number 47: excerpt from a letter sent from the defendant, Noah Hall, to Anna Westbrook's previous address.

-o-

Like blue dye, the glow of the television washed over Anna Westbrook's pale cheeks and sapped all the prettiest colours from the room. The yellow decorative cushions were rendered grey, and even the olive green couch seemed closer to black. Salted popcorn buried her left hand up to the wrist. Her right unconsciously combed through a nearby pillow's tassels. She stared, unblinking, at the movie playing on the large screen.

She watched the film with the subtitles on and the volume turned down very low. She didn't like to read very much, but she disliked being home alone far more. Every slight tick, creak, and groan the unit made had her ears twitching. She kept checking her phone after every few lines of dialogue, finding that only a minute had passed since the last time she turned it over. She knew Melissa would be home late. She was at the cinema with her friends. She needed to stop worrying. Everything was fine. Nothing was wrong.

But then, none of it was really about her sister. It wasn't the possibility of receiving an emergency text from Melissa that had her shoulders so tense, hovering up by her ears.

She sighed, dropping her shoulders and tucking her shoulderblades. She was being unreasonable. Everything was fine. Nothing was wrong.

She shoved another handful of popcorn in her mouth just as the film shifted. It was a horror film and, like all horror films featuring teenage characters, there was an obligatory they-sneak-off-to-have-sex-and-die scene. And here it was, as expected: two teenagers cutting through a cornfield to an empty barn where they all too-eagerly fell into the hay, urgently undressing.

Anna looked out the window. Spots of silvery rain dotted the glass. The sound of water pattering on the roof did little to combat the moans from the TV. Even with the sound so low, she couldn't help but hear the quickening of breath. Anna cleared her throat and swiped her palms over her thighs. It seemed like the scene went on forever.

Sex was a normal part of life, as Anna had been made well aware for all of hers. From the moment she woke to the moment she went to sleep, she was sold sex and frankly she just wasn't interested in buying.

When she was in school, her friends would giggle over sexual innuendo while Anna sat uncomfortably nearby. In her early 20s, she started getting targeted advertisements on her computer, companies claiming they had made new toys that would be game-changers for her sex life. Now twenty-six years old, she spent her nights in her living room splashed with blue light, watching as characters gave into carnal desire time after time. The sex wasn't even relevant to the plot. It was just that someone, a lot of someones in Hollywood, believed sexual relationships were so integral to the human experience that they couldn't be excluded from film. So Anna sat through it, through collectively hundreds of hours of sex scenes every year, and waited for the uncomfortable thoughts cycling through her brain to dissolve.

What was it about her that made her so different from everyone else? These scenes didn't turn her on. Her chest tightened at the sight of two characters kissing, scripted, fake. Why was her shirt damp? Her hands trembling? Why was her brain, some sick twisted little organ, forcing her head to always turn away from the screen and her mind towards an awful memory instead?

Anna curled her fingers, acrylic nails pressing into her palms. She tried to do as her therapist had taught her and gently redirect her attention to something else. Her eyes roamed the dark living room, settling on her desk pressed against the wall. She looked over her PC, her microphone, her headphones, her camera - all untouched since she had moved to the new place, eagerly waiting for her to return.

Her feelings were odd, she thought, given her job. Streaming was a type of entertainment and, like all entertainment, it was ruled by attraction. Even more so, since she was a woman. Anna liked to think some of the people who watched her just enjoyed what she did or the things she talked about, but she wasn't stupid enough to think that at least part of her viewership didn't hold strange fantasies that made her uncomfortable.

Anna was attractive. She knew this because everyone told her so. And while she didn't understand what people meant when they said they could take one look at someone and want to jump their bones, she understood aesthetic beauty. She understood that people liked to think about pretty people, and she understood that she was one of them. This was not an arrogant or entitled thought. She had the letters to validate the conclusion, tucked away in her desk drawer, out of Melissa's sight. Every single letter from one particularly devoted fan.

A cold chill swept over her. She shuddered. Turning back to the television, she was delighted to find that the sex scene had ended. Now the killer was chasing the two teens with a hatchet. Somehow, their gorey end was easier to watch. Just as the killer caught the girl, hatchet swinging down, her horrified face flashing on screen, moonlight glinting on the blade-

Click.

The tiniest of sounds.

Anna's heart leapt to her throat. She scrambled for the remote, muted the television. She held her breath, stayed still. Listened.

Footsteps shuffled over the floor downstairs, quiet, light. He found her. He had found her. Somehow, he found her new address. He was here, creeping into her home. Anna cringed at the hollow sound of his feet on the stairs, approaching. Thump. Thump. Thump.

She turned her head to look behind her, towards the landing.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

Orange hair, muted and greyish in the dark, popped up from over the balustrade, quickly followed by Melissa's face. Her sister froze under her attention, like a rabbit caught sneaking into a fenced farmer's field.

Melissa smiled sheepishly. "I thought you would be asleep."

The tension melted from Anna's body. It was only Melissa. Only her little sister coming home after a night out with friends. Her hand fluttered over her chest. Her heart hammered wildly, and a sharp pain spread through her chest. She lightly rubbed the skin between her breasts with the heel of her palm.

Everything was fine, she reminded herself. Nothing was wrong.

"You scared me," she said. "Call out next time."

Melissa's eyes flicked from Anna to the TV. She smirked. "Maybe you're not old enough to stay up watching scary movies without supervision."

Anna threw a popcorn kernel at her.

"Hey!" Melissa laughed. "That's only fair if I have ammunition, too."

Anna shook her head, yanking the bowl of popcorn away from her as she approached. "If you want ammo, make it yourself."

"Whatever. I'm going to bed." Melissa stomped off upstairs, but her white teeth glowed in the low light refusing to hide her grin.

She was happy for her. She seemed to be doing much better now that she was out of the old house. Melissa had never told her exactly what happened that final day between her and their father, and sometimes Anna found herself robbed of breath thinking about it. She regretted so many things. Why hadn't she gotten Melissa out of there sooner? Why had she let herself be brainwashed into obedience? Why had she let herself learn how to keep quiet and take a beating?

Why had she been so dedicated to being a victim for so long?

Anna shook her head. These weren't helpful thoughts. She'd made mistakes, but there was no way to go back and correct them. She reminded herself that people were taking care of her sister, that she was still seeing Dr. Cullen. Melissa seemed fine, but that was no consolation. Anna knew more about false appearances than anyone she knew. She worried about her little sister very often. It was easy to fake a smile. Sometimes, if all of your smiles were false, nobody could ever tell the difference.

Seconds after her departure, the shower started up on the third floor of the unit. Anna moved to her desk. She unlocked and opened the top drawer. Inside, dozens of letters sat in their envelopes, all standing up on their sides. She dragged a manicured fingernail over their tops the way she did files in the back room of Westbrook's. She found no pleasure in it. This ritual was not for her enjoyment. It was to remind herself that she needed to stay vigilant. It was to remind herself that she wasn't crazy, that while she was away from her father the danger had not yet passed. It was out there, waiting for her. The letters proved it.

Nothing was fine. Everything was still very, very wrong.

-o-

The phone at Westbrook's, the tiny bookstore in Forks that Anna now owned, wouldn't stop ringing all Friday. It seemed to choose the worst possible times to rattle in its cradle, calling out into the shop. The first time, Anna was in the middle of brewing herself a cup of tea. The second, it interrupted her processing a payment. The third, she had been cutting open a package with a box cutter and was so startled she nicked her finger.

She hissed and dropped the blade. Red blood bubbled up from the cut. Biting out a swear, she quickly found a roll of paper towel in the kitchenette cupboard. She pressed a handful of sheets against the wound, hissing through her teeth when it stung. Still, the phone rang and rang, rattling in short blips.

She huffed, and snatched it up. She pressed it to her ear and snapped out a greeting. "Hello?"

Slow inhales of breath crackled down the line. The caller didn't say a word.

"Hello?"

After a few long, agonising seconds, a man spoke but the accent wasn't local. "Sorry," he said, in a languid drawl, "I must have called the wrong number."

Her stomach dropped immediately. It couldn't be, could it? She didn't wait to find out, slamming the phone back in its cradle. Purposefully, she drew a deep breath and pushed her dark hair away from her face. With shaking hands, she took her phone from her pocket. She needed to think of a lie to tell her sister. She wanted to protect her from the truth.

Dad's calling the shop from jail. Don't pick up when you're at work, she texted.

The response was almost immediate.

Okay.

Anna let herself slump onto the floor of the backroom, holding her bleeding finger to her chest.

That evening, it took her twice as long to drive home as usual. She kept making turns, taking the most convoluted route possible back to the unit, just in case she was being followed.

-o-

Anna didn't sleep that night. She stayed up, her pillow wrapped around her head, tossing and turning. Melissa would have told her it was all the energy drinks she drank throughout the day, but what did her little sister know?

No, Anna couldn't sleep because next door the neighbours were fucking. Their bed kept hitting against the shared wall, again and again and again. The sounds they made horrified her, like two wet animals slapping up against each other, moaning.

"Ugh!" She stuck her hand out and grabbed at her bedside table, groping in the dark. Her hand closed around something - a stack of comic books - and she wasted no time in flinging them at the wall across the room. They fluttered through the air before smacking into the wall, then dropping to the carpet with a muffled thump.

Quiet.

Pleasant, peaceful, quiet.

Anna sighed, body melting into her bed.

Her neighbours weren't all bad. They kept their garden in order; the bushes outside their house were always trimmed back and their flowers well-watered. They never forgot to put out their rubbish, never asked to sneak their trash into the Westbrook's bin. They didn't have big parties, or steal her parking spot, or have frequent and noisy home renovations on the go.

They were alright, as far as neighbours went. Tidy. Polite enough. Rachel smiled and waved when they crossed paths outside. She played music a little too loudly sometimes, but that was fine. Paul dipped his head in acknowledgement when he saw her. He left for work early most mornings - she heard he worked security or something - and whoever picked him up had the loudest car she'd ever heard in her life, but that wasn't really his fault.

Best of all, they didn't know who Anna was. To them, she was just one of their neighbours next door, the older sister, the bookstore owner. She was just another person who checked their mailbox in fluffy slippers, fresh-faced, hair unbrushed. They didn't know about the false version of her that lived online, the hours spent putting on makeup to appear in front of a camera. They didn't know about the cooking streams, or her obsession with scary video games.

To them, she was just another human.

And they were usually quiet, which Anna appreciated very much, with the exception of sex. Their greatest transgression against her was being in love. Anna understood that romance and sex were fundamental to a lot of people's relationships, she just didn't understand those emotions on a personal level.

But somewhere there had to be a line drawn. It couldn't be that Anna was always wrong about these things. Just because she didn't feel those sorts of feelings didn't mean her thoughts were automatically wrong. There had to be some etiquette about it all. Was it so difficult to turn one's face into a pillow, to shove a clothing item into a mouth?

She didn't think so. It wasn't difficult for her, the first and only time she had been touched. Images flashed behind her closed lids. Suddenly she was very cold. Her skin prickled. A wave of dread swept over her at the memory of warm flesh, of heavy breathing, of wet kisses. She had been perfectly silent when-

No. It was time to sleep. She shouldn't think about that now. She drew a deep breath, counted to four before exhaling, just like she had been taught. Placing a hand on her chest, over her rapidly-beating heart, she reminded herself she was home. She was safe. She was in her own bed, in her own house, far away from him.

-But it was different for other people. It had to be. She couldn't believe that anyone would have sex or touch someone if it was the way it was for her. They liked it. They had to like it. There was no other logical explanation. And so, she figured it wasn't the fault of her neighbours for liking sex, or for liking each other enough to want to do it.

Thump… Thump… Thump. Thump. Thump.

But it was their fault that their bed kept hitting against the shared wall.

She huffed and turned over, folding her pillow over her head once more. Next time she was in town, she would buy a pair of industrial grade earbuds. And the next time she saw Paul and Rachel, she would tell them to invest in a spare pillow to wedge between the wall and their bed frame.

-o-