Fever

I could feel my blood turn to ice as her voice seemed to echo in the air surrounding the two of us. The ice reached all inches of my body and seemed to stop my heart for even a few seconds as I tried to register her presence. I had worked so hard trying to conceal all traces of Jacob, yet not even all of my hard work and precise planning could have prepared me for my mother’s unexpected presence. How could I have known that she would leave work early? How could I know that Jacob would finally come to take me to safety?

“I expected better, Kayla,” my mother hissed as she opened the car door.

I turned to meet her, cringing at the look of hurt and anger muddled on her face. I searched for some kind of excuse, but standing next to a half-naked Jacob wasn’t something I could explain. I couldn’t explain why I was so close to him, why we looked at each other the way we did. I couldn’t hide it any longer; I had finally been caught.

“M-Mom, I-“ but not even I could form a suitable response.

“Get in the car, we’ll talk about this when we get home,” she ordered, looking past me at Jacob. “And you – stay away from my daughter.”

I could feel a slight tremble from Jacob’s body as he spoke, “I’m afraid I can’t do that, Mrs. Harris.”

“Oh, you will. Mark my words, I will make sure you two never see each other again.”

“Mom-“

“I said we’ll talk about this at home; get in the car, Kayla.”

“Don’t do it,” Jacob addressed me, his hand encircling my elbow gently. “You can’t.”

I glanced back at his hard, yet worried face. Beneath his heavily set brows, his eyes pleaded to the pits of my soul, begging me to stay with him. But I glanced back at my mother whose face had never known such anger before. Although betraying her in the beginning had been hard, having to face that betrayal in the midst of this moment hurt far more than any heartbreak could induce. I could feel my chest tightening painfully and the surge of emotion threatening to explode.

“I’m s-sorry, Mom,” I sputtered helplessly.

“You don’t understand the situation, Mrs. Harris.”

“I understand it just fine. You couldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer the first time, and then you corrupted my daughter,” she growled.

“It’s not that simple,” Jacob argued, “there is far more here than just you and your daughter, and what you have to realize is that we are-“

“You think this is love?” she directed her question at me, more than at Jacob.

My eyes began to burn slightly, and the emotional build up was becoming unbearable. I wanted to cry and sob if it would make things better, but I knew that my tears would only escalate the scene. Instead, I trembled and wiped at my eyes pathetically.

“It’s so much more than just love, I have finally found the one,” his hand slid down my arm towards my shaking hand. “She is my soul mate.”

His final words hit my mother far different than the rest of the argument, and her face fell blank for a moment before rage returned to the surface. Her anger seemed far worse than before and fire seemed to blaze within her eyes.

“Don’t you dare use that word,” she stormed forward and grabbed my arm roughly, tugging my hand out of his grip. “Stay away from my daughter or I’ll get the Sheriff involved.”

As my mother dragged me back to the car forcefully, I turned to watch the defeated look on Jacob’s face. He stared back, deep into my eyes, as if trying to convey a secret message. But that message was lost as I was pushed into the backseat and the door slammed loudly beside me. I looked sadly at Jacob, my heart crying out in pain. All I could do was murmur, “I love you” right before she tore off down the street, leaving him alone on the curb.

When we arrived home, she commanded me to shut myself in my room until she could get her head straight. I obeyed silently, relishing in the moment of being rid of the disappointment that filled her eyes. There was nothing I could do now to save myself or my relationship, it was over. She would never let me out of her sight again, which meant I couldn’t sneak off to see him. She had eyes everywhere and I couldn’t hide from any of them, not in this godforsaken town.

Lying on my bed, trying to nurse my wounded heart, I could hear my parents’ voices starting to rise steadily as the heat of the argument began to grow. At first they could be heard as no more than a muffle, but slowly and slowly I could hear the anger in her voice grow until their conversation was being played for the whole neighbourhood.

“She lied, Ed, to both of us! How can you be so compassionate?”

“She’s our daughter, have you forgotten?” my father shot back, his voice at a level I have never heard before. “What has gotten into you, Denise?”

“Don’t act like I’m the bad guy here! She betrayed both of our trust!”

“Only because you refused to let her live her own life!”

Both of my parents fell silent as my father’s words hung in the air. I couldn’t hear anything, not even the continued pacing of my mother’s feet or the heavy words that were being exchanged. The only sound that I could hear was that of my own breathing. In and out, in and out, I could hear that I was still alive. I was still lying there, on my bed, waiting for my punishment to be carried out. But wasn’t this punishment enough? She had told both of us that we were never to see each other again, or else she would involve the law.

I had had moments of thoughts of Jacob coming to my window and smiling down at me, coming to take me away. I kept waiting for his light knock on the glass or his wolfish smile to bear down at me. But those moments escaped me when he didn’t come, when I knew he wouldn’t. He wasn’t foolish enough to get the police involved, no matter how thick the Sherriff really was. And Sam wouldn’t let him, either. He had some kind of hold over him, something that kept him in line. Sam wouldn’t let him come; they had to protect the other mates.

For a split second I imagined the wolves coming to tear me apart while Jacob sat, unaware, watching over someone else. But that image dissolved as soon as my door creaked open, the light from the hallway cascading into my dark room. I expected my mother to be standing there, glowering at me, but instead it was my father, a sullen look on his face.

“Can I come in?” he asked softly.

I nodded weakly, sitting up. He closed the door behind him and the two of us plunged back into darkness. He sat down next to me, the mattress sinking under his weight. He sighed ever so lightly and then peered out of the corner of his eye at me.

“I’m sorry, Kay,” he started, “but you really hurt your mother.”

Tears started to well into my eyes again, but he saved me the trouble of speaking by continuing.

“I know exactly how it feels to go against your parents for another person, look at your mother and I for example. But you have to realize that she hasn’t gotten over what happen because of our relationship. Because she chose me, over her parents, the whole clan disowned her. And that’s not something that anyone would get over quickly.

“I don’t have much experience in teenage girls, but I used to be young once. And when you’re young, all you feel like doing is experiencing the world and forgetting about everything else. That’s exactly what your mother and I did, and falling in love had its consequences, especially you.”

I looked over at him, “What?”

“Your mother and I were seeing each other when she got pregnant, that was when we decided to get married. But that was also when her parents found out. They told her that she had to abort the baby or she was banished. She didn’t just do it for me, Kay; she did it for you too.”

“So she can fall in love with whoever she wants, but I can’t?” I felt the emotion start to surge into my voice. “The only guy that has ever shown that he cares for me, and I can’t have him?”

I couldn’t stop the tears from coming as they began to leak steadily out of my eyes, followed by a chest clenching sob. My father wrapped his arms around me, holding me just as tightly as he used to when I was younger. I felt like a child, needing my father to make me feel better.

“I think you and your mother have some talking to do. The problem here is that you remind her too much of herself, the one she tries to forget. And the last thing she wants you to do is leave her, especially for a boy. She loves you, Kay; we both do.”

If anything, he just made me cry harder. But the more I cried, the worse I felt. Because I knew that no matter how much I cried, it wasn’t going to make things right again.