I Never Meant to Start a War

It had been a week since that fateful visit to La Push, and I found myself alone in my room wondering how dramatically my character had changed. It felt as though it had, with the way I looked around when Jasper touched me as if it was wrong, and the way my heart pounded when I thought of Paul and everything in La Push that I didn’t allow myself to think of unless I was surely alone in my mind. My thoughts had become a dangerous place where one slip up could cost me everything.

This last week was an endless headache.

Thoughts constantly plagued me when I was alone in my mind. I constantly found them straying toward the moment where Paul imprinted on me, dissecting all of the things I could have done differently and should have anticipated and everything I couldn’t change. Jasper had begun to notice my restlessness and asked about it earlier today, before he left for a hunting trip with Emmett. I had smiled and told him that everything was okay as I screamed inside.

It killed for me to keep any kind of secret from him, but this was the kind of secret that I had to keep. If a word of it was uttered, there could be a war. And I couldn’t let that happen because of me.

This last week has been my personal hell. Demons and all.

I couldn’t even put my thoughts to words now, as I think and stare up at my ceiling alone in my room tonight, the midnight moon shining through the windows. It was all just a jumbled buzzing in the back of my mind as the inner workings of my brain attempted to figure out this puzzle that had become my life. Should I acknowledge Paul? What about Jasper, should I tell him? Should I keep to myself and hope that this doesn’t become anything major? Will I be able to keep this from Edward forever?

My life and mind had become a constant question with no answer. I had a feeling that my life would stay on the path of that analogy.

Tonight, I had been laying and staring up at the ceiling for a long time, my thoughts keeping me awake as my eyelids drooped. Jasper had left hours ago with a kiss to my forehead and a bright smile before he disappeared into the evening mist. I was alone, and I didn’t know how to cope with that.

My emotional stability was gone for now. There was no one here to feel what I felt, to understand what I felt, anything—and that was why I was alone.

I squeezed my eyes shut, but sleep never came.

My phone buzzed from the nightstand.

I opened my eyes in surprise and moved my hand to it. Would Jasper be calling me? Not this late, not even if it was of the upmost importance. I pulled the phone closer to squint at the number, to frown. I didn’t know it, but it was a local area code. To my surprise, I found my hands working all on their own and answering it.

I pressed it to my ear. “Hello?”

The other side of the line was silent for a moment. “Oh,” a familiar voice said. “I thought you would let it go to voicemail.”

I sat up. “Paul?”

“Yeah.” He sounded slightly more cheerful that I had remembered his name. “Were you asleep? I’m sorry, I mean, I was pretty sure you weren’t going to answer so I was going to leave a voicemail or something just to let you know it was me, since I didn’t expect you to answer and all. Um . . .”

I found the corners of my mouth tip up into a smile as he ranted nervously, not being able to help how I saw it as adorable or what have you. I bit my lip, glancing around the room as if this was forbidden, like talking to this boy meant something so wrong that it should have been right. My heart beat with the thrill of it, though I didn’t quite understand why. Did I just like to make myself over-think things?

“No, no, it’s okay. I wasn’t asleep,” I heard me say as if from the other side of a tunnel, the smile smoothing onto my lips not me. A blush crept onto my cheeks.

“Oh,” he said, “are you alone?”

I felt a flare of annoyance—he so quickly assumed that someone would be with me—and a flicker of exhaustion—no, I wasn’t, and this wasn’t right. I didn’t let it show in my answer: “Yeah.”

“Just making sure.”

“Wait a second,” I suddenly said a little too loudly, lowering my voice before continuing. “How did you get my number?”

Paul laughed nervously, and my stomach flipped with the sound. I hoped it was just because I knew we held this strange bond together. “Uh,” he said. “Well, Jacob got it from Bella, and he gave it to me.”

“And how did Jacob get it from Bella?” I was smiling.

“You know, it’s the darnedest thing,” Paul bluffed, and I felt his smirk shimmering through the line. “Word has it that he kind of obtained it illegally.”

“Ah, the old pick-pocket trick?”

“Exactly!”

“You damn wolves,” I laughed, and he laughed along with me.

“Us damn wolves,” he repeated to himself, feeding off of the feeling of comfort that the conversation was bringing. I couldn’t help but to feel that the comfort should not have been welcome. “It’s worse to say that we’re all great thieves, stealing hearts and whatnot.”

I burst out laughing despite myself, my laughter echoing off of the walls of my room and rebounding back, reminding me just how long it has been since I have laughed like this. Long before Jasper, I knew that. Despite my happiness, I hadn’t really been happy, if it made sense to anyone other than myself. And it scared me to death to think that it took this werewolf boy that imprinted on me to bring that back in me.

Just the thought of it made me fall silent, and move to bite my lip. I didn’t like this.

This wasn’t right.

It wasn’t right.

Then why did it feel that way?

Why did it feel so normal and easy to talk to Paul when I could hardly talk to my best friend without holding back? The atmosphere felt so open, and this was the first time I was ever having a proper conversation with him (if openly flirting counted as a conversation). But it was as easy as breathing with him right now. I think that was what scared me the most.

Despite my inner dilemma, we talked forever. We talked through the night, stopping only when we had lost hold of the topic at hand, only to bounce right back in when a new conversation arose. It was close to two and a half hours later that the silence built up comfortably between the two sides of the line, leaving me straining to hear the sound of his breathing, the one thing of comfort to me at that sole moment in time. I closed my eyes and felt my heart beat and let myself breathe just like him—like there was no conscience, like there was no consequences, and like there was nothing that could tear him away from this moment.

For a while, I knew what he meant.

While I usually fell asleep to the reassurance of Jasper’s chill, that night I fell asleep to the reassurance of Paul’s heart.

~*~

I felt like I was in a wild disarray that morning. I woke up with the phone pressed into my cheek, still at my ear even though the line had been cut off by Paul sometime in the night, and the panic that ran through my veins with the memories of last night turned into a frenzy. I slammed the phone shut and got ready in a hurry, breathing a sigh of relief once seeing that both my parents and Jasper were still missing. No one deserved to see me before I could control myself.

Even now, I could hardly control myself from where I stood in front of Bella, my hands twirling nervously with one another like I needed a fix, my eyes wide as I watched her watch me, my breath feeling too uneven even though she regarded me as normal. I took a deep breath. I needed someone to know.

“What’s wrong?” Bella asked. “You look freaked.”

“I am,” I answered honestly, rubbing my hands over my face. I took a deep breath. “I have a problem.”

“What?”

I looked her in the eye as I confessed the one thing I thought no one should know: “Paul imprinted on me.”

A long silence, Bella staring, my heartbeat pounding. What was she thinking?

Finally, she blinked, looking dumbfounded. I waited, watching. She took a slow and steady breath, letting herself think of her response even if it came out very naturally, very pleasantly—something that I agreed with completely.

“Uh-oh,” Bella said.