I Won't Say I'm in Love

My eyes slowly fluttered open as I looked around the dim, unfamiliar room. My head was pounding, but I felt something cold moving around on it too. I looked straight above me and saw a toffee colored face above mine, gazing at me intently. I almost started when I saw the marred half of her face. It looked like she had been mauled by a bear. But I could tell that she was once amazingly beautiful, and still retained some of that beauty. She smiled at me and took the ice pack away from my head. “Well, look who’s up,” she said, sitting up straight.

I squinted my eyes at her and asked, “Where am I?”

“My fiancé found you fainted in the woods,” she said, now frowning at me. “What in the world were you doing wandering that forest at night?” she questioned suspiciously. “Don’t you know those woods are dangerous?” I rubbed my head tenderly and closed my eyes.

“Lara Croft would have done it…” was my only explanation.

“What were you looking for?” she asked me. I opened my eyes and looked at her, frowning slightly.

“I don’t really know,” I admitted. “I guess I just wanted some kind of adventure. But that probably wasn’t the smartest idea, huh?” The woman shook her head and grinned.

“Let me take your temperature honey,” she requested, reaching for the thermometer on the bedside table. I looked at her as she gently slid it under my tongue. She watched it intently as the numbers climbed. 84…92…99…

“101 degrees,” she said as the thermometer beeped and she pulled it from my mouth. “You’re going down,” she informed me, turning the thermometer off and placing it back on the polished wooden table.

“Going down?” I whispered hoarsely, sitting up on the bed. “How sick was I?”

“When Sam brought you in, you were at 107 degrees,” she stated.

“Oh,” I muttered. I looked down at my body and saw that I was in blue flannel pajamas, the gouge on my calf bandaged.

“I used to be a nurse, so I administered some medicine. You probably won’t remember though.”
“What’s your name?” the woman asked me after I didn’t respond.

“Calypso,” I answered. “Calypso Kinnear. What about you?”

“Emily Clearwater. How old are you?”

“I’m seventeen and from Brooklyn, New York. I ran away from home, but I’m not going to tell you why,” I said, answering several questions at once.

“Okay,” she said. “Now whaddya say to a shower and some breakfast, huh?” I grinned and nodded. We got up and she showed me to the bathroom.



After I had taken an hour long shower, and gotten dressed in some of Emily’s clothes. I walked downstairs, my head still pounding. I smelled eggs, bacon and pancakes and as soon as I sat down, a plate of breakfast along with a glass of orange juice was placed in front of me. “Eat up,” Emily said, waving the spatula at me as she went back to cooking some more. I ate like I had never eaten before. I started out cutting my pancakes, but before long I had placed the bacon and eggs on top of the pancakes, poured some syrup on, then rolled it up and ate it like a burrito.

Emily looked over at me. “You’re enjoying that breakfast, huh?” I smiled and nodded at her, my mouth dripping with syrup as I kept chewing. My stomach was churning a quite a bit, but I figured it was just because I was still hungry. She grinned.

“But don’t eat too fast,” she warned. Just as she said that, I felt a little bit of bile rise in my throat. My jaws began to tighten once again and my throat contracted.

“Oh god,” I muttered. I sprinted upstairs to the bathroom and got to the toilet just in time to shove my head in and puke up all my breakfast. “Ohhh…” I moaned as I crawled away from the toilet. I sat up against the wall, panting with my eyes closed. I sat there for a few minutes before I dragged myself up to flush the toilet and walk back downstairs. Emily placed a bowl of hot broth before me this time.

“How 'bout we start out light, huh?” I nodded and began to slowly slurp down the yummy liquid. I heard the door open and a big, very muscular man walked in, without a shirt on. He was the same color as Emily with brown eyes, and quite intimidating.

“How’s our guest doing?” he asked Emily in a kind voice while looking at me. She turned the stove off and put one hand on her hip as she turned to face Sam. She looked at me.

“Well, she recently decided to share her partially digested breakfast with the toilet.” The man laughed as he went to hug Emily. He held her tenderly and lightly kissed her lips, but even that small action seemed to fill the room with enough love to end a war. I had to look away, feeling like I was intruding on something sacred and special. I began to drink my broth once again as the man sat next to me. “Calypso, this is Sam, my fiancé,” she said introducing the man. “Sam, this is Calypso.” Sam reached out his big hand for me to shake.

I was a little scared to shake it, thinking he might break my hand, but he turned out to be quite gentle. As soon as our hands touched, I found that it was a little warmer than mine, even with my abnormally high temperature. “So you’re the one who found me in the woods, huh?” I asked him. He nodded.

“Yeah,” he answered. “I was hiking when I found you lying on the ground in the mud. Luckily, you were breathing, but only barely, so I carried you back here. Emily’s been caring for you since then.”

“How long was I asleep?” I asked him.

“About twenty-six hours,” Emily answered, now sitting on the other side of me. I raised my eyebrows. I slept a lot, but I had never slept for over a day before. I finished off my broth and laid my head down on the table, closing my eyes.

“Are you tired?” she asked me. “Do you wanna go to your room and sleep?”

“My room?” I said, opening my eyes and looking at her.

“Well yours for now, yes,” she answered, smiling.

“Huh,” I muttered. I closed my eyes again. “No. Not really. I actually kinda wanna do something today.” I heard Sam get up and walk somewhere.

“What did you have in mind?” she said as I heard cereal being poured into a bowl.

“Clothes?” I asked. “I don’t have any clothes,” I told her, closing my eyes again.

“Didn’t you pack anything when you left?” she asked me incredulously. I shook my head.

“No. It would’ve been too loud and taken up too much time. I just had to get out of there,” I explained.

“Get out of where?” Sam asked as he sat back down next to me and began eating his breakfast.

“Her home,” Emily said, answering for me. “She’s a runaway.”

“Not my home,” I corrected, opening my eyes and sitting up to look at her. “The place I lived with the people who are related to me. Not my home.”

Emily scrutinized my face, obviously trying to decipher whether this was me being a teenage drama queen or if I had a real problem in that place. “It was that bad, huh?” Sam asked from beside me. I looked at him and sighed.

“Can we go shopping today, or what?” I asked, turning back to face Emily. I didn’t mean to be rude, but I was a little upset that they seemed to be brushing off my running away as typical teenage behavior.

“Yes,” Emily finally answered. “Go get some shoes and a coat out of my closet, and we’ll be on our way.” I nodded and headed up the stairs to Emily’s room and got ready to go.



Jacob’s Point of View

I watched as Paul rummaged through the wooden cabinets, looking for food. “Paul, why are you such a pig?” I asked him from the table, eating a large blueberry muffin.

“Shut up! You have food, I want some too!” he retorted as he went back to scavenging.

“Sam, where’s Emily?” Quil asked from the counter next to the sink as he munched on a piece of toast and jam.

“Shopping,” Sam answered simply without looking up from his crossword puzzle.

“For food?” Embry asked, looking up from his bowl of cereal. Sam placed his pen down next to the crossword puzzle and looked up at Embry.

“No, Embry. For clothes. In Port Angeles,” he specified irritatedly.

“Since when does she go shopping for clothes?” Paul asked, sitting down in a chair backwards, eating an un-toasted S’mores Pop Tart. Sam sighed and looked up from his crossword puzzle at Paul.

“Not for herself. For our guest,” he said, trying extremely hard to restrain himself from yelling at all of us.

“You guys have a guest?” Jared asked, coming out of the bathroom. He grabbed a block of orange cheddar cheese from the fridge and began to devour it. Sam let out a big huff and looked up from his crossword puzzle yet again. I was watching him get more and more frustrated with much more enthusiasm than should have been occurring. I had to hide a smile behind my hand.

“I could have sworn I just said that,” he said, glaring at Jared. Jared just blinked at him and kept eating his cheese while staring at Sam with a blank face. I had to stifle a laugh with my hand. Seth was opening his mouth to say something else when Sam threw a nearby fork at his head with such force that when Seth dodged it, it stuck into the wall behind him.

“No more questions,” Sam whispered under his breath. He didn’t say anything out loud, but we could all hear his thoughts. Stupid kids…eating all my food…too curious…they need to mind their own damn business, Sam thought.

It’s kinda hard to mind our own damn business when you’re thinking so loud, Paul said.

I wasn’t thinking too loud; you kids are just NOSY! Sam retaliated.

Now, now Sam. No need to get so upset… I cautioned tauntingly. Sam looked from his crossword puzzle to my grinning face. He let out a small whimper as he broke his pen in two, the black ink coming out all over his hands. He put his head against the table and rolled it back and forth.
The pack had just recently discovered how to read each other’s minds outside of our wolfy forms. It didn’t stretch as far as it did when we were changed; it only went up to about 400 feet. But one bonus of it was that we could actually turn this little function on and off as we pleased. It was hard at first, the same way keeping ourselves from phasing was hard too. Eventually, though, everybody got the hang of it.

“I wish Emily were here,” he groaned aloud, getting up to wash his hands in the sink. Just then, Emily’s car pulled into the driveway and everyone glanced out the window, then looked back at Sam.

“Ask and you shall receive,” Jared said. Emily was the first one to come in, carrying a large Nordstroms bag, a Claire’s bag, a JCPenney’s bag, a Macy’s bag, a Victoria’s Secret bag and a Cinnabon bag. She set them all down on the small yellow table that almost seemed to buckle from the weight.

“Ooh! Cinnabons!” Quil said, starting to reach for the bag.

“Ah!” Emily said, smacking him hard on the hand. He withdrew it.

“What?” he asked, rubbing his poor, stinging appendage.

“These are not for you! These are for me and Calypso,” she said to him. Sam came to give Emily a hug and kiss which she gratefully accepted. Afterwards, she looked up at him and said, “Calypso and I are gonna have a girls’ night tonight. I’m so excited! You know I’ve always wanted a daughter and now here she is!” Emily gushed.

She began to take a peek in all the bags. “She just comes out of nowhere, practically falls from the sky like a freaking angel,” she ranted. She was obviously very excited about this girl. “Oh! And her mother’s like, completely out of the picture for whatever reason, so she needs a motherly figure in her life and I’m just the girl to do it! Isn’t it great? God, she’s just so wonderful, Sam. Once you get to know her, you’re going to love her,” she said, turning to Sam once again. He just laughed.

“It’s perfect, honey,” he agreed. Just then, the girl walked through the door carrying tons of shopping bags…

...and she was the most magnificent creature to ever walk the earth.

Emily was wrong. She wasn’t like an angel. She was an angel. The rest of the world ceased to exist as I watched her glide to the table to set her bags next to Emily’s. Suddenly all my worries about that one girl I used to like became insignificant. All I wanted to do was make all of Calypso’s troubles and fears go away with a kiss.

What was that other girls name again? Britney? Benita?

Bella, Seth thought. Her name’s Bella/

Bella. That’s right. But she no longer mattered. I had to stomp on my foot to stop myself from getting up to go whisk Calypso away from everyone else. I wanted her to be mine and only mine. I wouldn’t share her with anyone. Not even Emily.

Jeez, Jake. Don’t get so overprotective. Just about every other person in this room wants to bang her just as much as you do, so… Quil teased. I whipped my head towards him and glowered.

If you even think about touching her, I swear to you, you will be running past the Mexican border hairless with three paws, one ear and your mangled tail between your bloodied legs, I threatened menacingly. Quil just raised his eyebrows, smirked and went back to looking at my future wife.

“Oh, wow, there are people in here,” she said aloud. Her voice was the most beautiful thing to ever touch my ears. It was like a perfect symphony of bells and birds and each word was sacred and worth keeping with me forever.

“These are the annoying kids who follow me everywhere, like puppies,” Sam said, glaring at all of us. She smiled and it seemed to fill the room, making her happiness reach everybody. I could’ve sworn even Paul sat up a little straighter when he saw her smile, and I realized that that had become my new goal in life. To make Calypso smile.

“I’m Calypso,” she said with a wave, her mellifluous voice once again filling my ears. Everyone went around the circle and introduced themselves. I didn’t even notice when it was my turn, I was too busy memorizing every detail of her flawless face.

“Hey!” Embry said, now throwing a spoon at me. I didn’t dodge it however. It hit me in the head.

“Ow!” I yelped, rubbing my temple where the spoon hit me. I took my eyes from Calypso’s wondrous face to glare at Embry. I then looked back at her, still rubbing the spot on my head.

“I’m Jacob,” I said simply.

“Nice to meet you,” she smiled.

Yes! I thought. She thinks it was nice to meet me!

Calm down, loverboy, Paul ordered. I think she was saying that in general.

“Well, these Cinnabons are still hot,” Emily said. “Wanna grab us a glass of milk?” she asked Calypso.

“Sure thing,” she said as Emily tromped up the stairs with all the bags she carried in, minus the Victoria’s Secret bag. Calypso glided to the refrigerator and opened it. She had to bend over to get the milk and I couldn’t help but notice her perfectly shaped backside.

Oh...well isn’t that nice…I thought to myself.

Sam smacked me upside the head, knocking me out of my trance. I know it’s hard at times like these, but try thinking with the brain that’s in your head and not the second brain that resides between your legs, Sam advised. I nodded and rubbed the back of my head, averting my eyes to the table. When I heard the refrigerator door close, I looked up one more time. She poured the milk into two glasses and then put the milk away again. This time, I admired her behind from the corner of my eye taking care to temporarily turn my thoughts off so Sam wouldn’t hear me.

She then grabbed all the Hot Topic bags, but forgot the Victoria’s Secret one and went up the stairs, two at a time. As soon as we heard her door close, everyone grinned at me.

“Aww…” Embry started. “Wittle Jakey’s finally impwinted …” he teased in a mock voice.

“Shut up,” I ordered him.

“Sam! Jake threatened me!” Quil whined, pointing at me and frowning at Sam.

“Yeah, Jake, that was kinda scary,” Seth said, smiling at me. Paul was staring at the pink striped Victoria’s Secret bag.

“What are you thinking about?” Jared asked Paul.

“I’m thinking we should find out what’s in that bag…” he said aloud.

“Paul, no,” Sam ordered. “They’ll be back down for it in just a second.”

“Whose do you think it is?” Paul wondered aloud. “Emily’s or Calypso’s?”

“Paul…” Sam warned.

“I think it’s Calypso’s,” he said. He then looked at me and narrowed his eyes, smirking evilly. “She seems like she’s willing to get a little freaky if you know what I mean…” My blood pressure seemed to sky rocket as my heart began pumping extremely fast.

“Paul, I swear to God…” I hissed at him. He just grinned at me, then got up to look in the bag. Just as he was beginning to open it, a brown hand darted out and snatched it from the table. Calypso clutched it tightly to her shapely chest, smirking at Paul.

“That would be mine,” she said as she backed away. She then turned and walked up the stairs once more, her lovely rear switching back and forth as she walked.

“Well, that answers that question,” Paul said, smirking.

“Go screw yourself, Paul,” I told him.

“Is Calypso allowed to come help me?” he taunted, cocking an eyebrow. I shot out of my chair, the sound of the legs screeching across the floor and echoing around the room.

“Watch it, Paul!” Sam ordered. Paul just smirked at me but obeyed. Nobody could defy the command of the Alpha. I stared him down as I sat slowly in my chair. “And Jacob, you’re gonna have to stay fairly level-headed about this whole thing,” Sam informed me.

“Yeah, raping is not allowed,” Jared teased. I smirked and looked down at my hands. I wouldn’t rape her, but I definitely wouldn’t mind doing something consensual…

Sam sighed. He had obviously heard my thoughts. “Look, I know you’re eighteen now and you're gonna start having some…uh…how do I say this…” he muttered.

“Feelings,” Quil contributed.

“Those,” Sam said. I chuckled and shook my head. “But you need to learn to control them.” I nodded. “You boys all go home,” he ordered uncomfortably. We all got up from where ever we were sitting and began to walk out the front door.

“Oh, and Sam?” Paul said before he left. Sam looked at him. “Guys don’t have two brains. We only have one. And that’s the one that resides between our legs.” Sam smiled, rolled his eyes and headed upstairs while Paul earned a round of high-fives from everyone, including me.