I Never Meant to Start a War

It took all the strength I had to open my eyes the morning of the newborn battle and see the murky darkness of the stormy night. My hand slid over the covers questionably, but I knew Jasper wasn’t there—he hadn’t even been there when I had gone to sleep. I suppose I should have known better.

It has been a week since Jasper first taught the wolves to fight, and it seemed like a day and a half. The countdown to that day was kept by the mounting tension in the air every night Jasper appeared in the window, eyes stressed but his lips holding an easy smile. If I hadn’t been told the date, I would have known just by the way the smile faded.

When the morning of the fight came, I found myself more alone than I wanted to be.

Bella was hidden and Jasper was setting up the battleground for success, using his martial knowledge to add more reassurance to the confidence of their anticipated win. I was sitting alone in my room, useless and antisocial, as I looked to the window, at the dawn of another day.

As I sat, eyes closed, my phone began to ring.

I didn’t look at the ID, too anxious. “Hello?”

“Marie, why have you been avoiding me?”

I opened my eyes slowly, slowly, blinking at the glare of the sunlight off of the snow outside. The snow in June, however seemingly uncanny, felt perfect for this contradiction of a relationship I was in—I was wrapped in the arms of chill, but I looked off into the heat. I felt my lips begin to smile.

Despite the fact that he was a little angry and I was a little spiteful, I was smiling.

“I’m sorry,” I breathed into the phone as the stress came back. I reached up to rub my eyes. “I thought that you had a fight to be getting to.”

“Not until later,” Paul responded, his voice still a little icy, but he couldn’t stay mad at me for long. “Wouldn’t your boyfriend have told you?”

I scowled. “No.”

“Why have you been avoiding me?”

Why have I been avoiding a lot of things?

Why have I been sidestepping the inevitable that not everything in my life is going to stay the same?

Why have I been unable to accept the fact that, when life changes, sometimes we have to change with it?

Why have I been questioning feelings I thought was stronger than the chords that held my heart together?

I didn’t know why I had been doing a lot of things. I think it was because I was afraid of standing helplessly on the side and watching it all fall apart.

When, in reality, that was all that was going to happen.

“Paul,” I said, and my heart skipped a beat. “As you can imagine, it’s not been entirely stable here.”

“I want you to be able to talk to me, though!”

I stayed silent, looking away. I don’t even think that I noticed that tears ran down my face and stained my soul.

We didn’t speak for a moment. It was nearing nine.

I heard him take a deep breath. “Marie?” he whispered. “I just called to hear your voice before all of this, just in case. You don’t have to answer me. I just want to hear your voice. I just want to know that you’re okay.”

Still, I didn’t say a word, because, honestly, I didn’t think there was anything that I could say. Any word I spoke of my heavy heart would give him hope that I didn’t believe was fully rightful, and every word I would speak of my doubts and dreams would tie me closer to this werewolf, and I didn’t know if I had the strength to accept that yet. If I told him that I was sorry, I would be lying. And I was starting to build a nasty habit of lying.

Eventually, he talked for me.

Paul rambled on, “It’s been killing me, not hearing from you. Not seeing you. I guess it’s the imprint, but it doesn’t make it any better to know why I can’t breathe because I don’t know where you are, if you’re okay, if he’s treating you the way you deserve to be treated . . . You didn’t come to see me, and I know you haven’t told the leech what happened, and I didn’t want to make you hate me for coming to see you . . . Before all of this happens, I wanted to make sure that you know I’ll always be here for you. I’ll always be whatever you want me to be. Even if it kills me. I will always lo—I’ll always be yours. I just wanted you to know that.”

“Paul,” I said.

But he had already hung up.

~*~

I don’t know when the battle began, and nor do I know when it ended. I didn’t know if they were outnumbered, or if they had been taken by surprise. I didn’t know if the plans all worked out, and I didn’t know if it was justified to worry. I didn’t know a lot of things about what happened that day, but I knew I would always remember what I did when I sat there waiting for Jasper to appear, curled up into a ball on my floor and staring at nothing, thinking, thinking, thinking about who I was going to chose.

Was it fair? To love two people at once?

No, it wasn’t. It wasn’t fair for me, because I had to carry the burden. It wasn’t fair for the two I loved simply because one of them would end up with a broken heart.

Love wasn’t fair; love was hate, I finally realized.

Even though that was my outlook, when I sat there thinking about love, all I could do was hate myself.

I knew somewhere in my mind that I was going to have to chose between Jasper and Paul sooner or later, and that same sick part of my mind orchestrated the symphony of my collected consideration.

Jasper was described by Paul to be cold and unfeeling. A stone, a piece of marble. Where Paul saw a lost soul, I just managed to see someone who was lost and needed help finding their way back. When people saw emotional instability, I saw through all of that and saw that he was just overwhelmed. I was the calm in the ocean of chaos. He treasured me because I was everything that he had dreamed of and I loved him because he was everything that had made my Prince Charming.

It was until Paul came into the picture that everything had been set in stone.

Paul was described by Jasper as being violent and volatile. He was thought of as hot-headed and a disappointment and not worth the consideration of anyone, let alone someone who could frame a coherent thought and heal a considerate heart. Paul was thought of as being a rude jerk who took some kind of masochistic pleasure in making people feel lower in their self-respect. I saw someone who had been fooled by society, as many had been. Long ago he had been tricked into thinking that this was how he was supposed to act.

He covered up everything he truly possessed to become the person that everyone learned to tolerate. But that wasn’t really him.

Kim had told me not long ago that I had changed him even in just a small amount of time, changed him for the better. It went to show that not everybody is as they seem on the outside.

But who would I chose if the time came to it?

Would I pick Jasper for forever?

Or would I pick Paul for as long as I live?

Just when I was sure I was going to lose the small piece left of my sanity, Jasper’s frame appeared in front of my window, tall and casual, as his eyes fell on me.

I gasped only because he hadn’t looked like anything had happened at all. It looked like every other day.

“Jasper!” I gasped as I locked my arms around his neck, having moved faster than I thought a human was possible. I buried my head in his chest—a putrid scent of smoke clung to the cloth of his shirt. I pretended not to notice as he chuckled heartily, wrapping his arms around me as well.

“Shh, Marie,” he cooed, and I realized I was crying. “Everything’s okay, everyone’s fine. Calm down, beautiful. It’s all over.”

I nodded into his shirt, but I didn’t pull away. I clung to him like he was edge of my mind, and I was about to fall into whatever lay beyond. I breathed in the smell of burnt timber for a long, long moment before I controlled myself enough to step away, looking up at him. By the flit of panic that flickered across his face, I assumed that I hadn’t put my guard up, and I looked just about as lost as I felt.

He reached for me but I didn’t notice.

“Is everyone okay?” I asked in a small voice. I felt his cold fingers brush over my face, taking with it a tear.

“Yes,” he whispered, putting his arms tighter around me. “No one that mattered was hurt.”

I didn’t like the double-meaning to his words. I pulled back. “What do you mean?”

A slight snarl pushed into his lips, a slightly crazed smile accompanying it. “Animals may have been harmed. No one that mattered, as I said.”

Rage washed through me, sharp and hot, and I pushed myself out of his arms with a fury I couldn’t quite explain except with my sudden plunge in sanity. I almost felt my eyes spark. “Don’t talk about them like that,” I hissed at him, as much as a human could hiss. He looked so taken aback that he actually took a step away, his eyes widening. But then his thoughts kicked in, and his eyes were narrowing.

“Where did your logic go?” he demanded of me, fists clenching. “Not five months ago you were agreeing wholeheartedly about the wolves being a dangerous breed that couldn’t be trusted, and now you are taking their side? What have they done to brainwash you?”

“They haven’t brainwashed me!” I exclaimed. “I can’t hate someone who doesn’t deserve to be hated!”

“They’re abominations!” Jasper boomed in a scream. Later, I would find it a good thing that my parents managed to be absent at all the right times. I couldn’t imagine the fight that would have escalated if Jasper would have been discovered in my room.

I felt my face burning with the heat of my temporary hatred. Everything was boiling over at the wrong moment, but there was nothing I could do but stand there and let it overflow. I couldn’t do anything but watch helplessly as the world around me fell apart.

And I hated that I had seen it coming.

“You’re so biased!” I screamed at him, losing control. “And because of nothing! You hate them because they’re there, not because of what they’ve done!”

“Are you choosing sides?”

The screamed statement scared me more than he could ever imagine.

“No!” I shrieked, desperately wanting to believe it myself. “What happened to the wolves?!”

“Why does it matter?” He smirked evilly. I had never seen him look so distant, so hateful. So much like a monster. He purred, “What’s one less four legged protector?”

I think I became a little hysterical. Flashes ran through my mind of the joy in Paul’s eyes as he looked at me after we kissed, the only kiss he ever got, and reminders of the way he spoke on the phone, reserved and sorrowful, like someone had already died . . .

The panic spiked up inside of me as I frantically wondered if he did something that would tear me apart, inside out.

“What happened?” I suddenly gasped, unable to take in the air I needed to breathe. Jasper didn’t notice—a wicked spark showed in the back of his eyes.

“A werewolf got caught from behind by a newborn. A couple walked away with scrapes and bruises and bumps. I think one was having trouble breathing—ribs must have punctured his lungs. ”

“Who?” I demanded.

My voice must have given something away, because out of nowhere, the whole entire emotional climate changed from tense to burning. Jasper’s demeanor never changed.

“Does it matter?” he asked.

“Does it matter?!” I had to have been gob-smacked. “Would it matter if it was one of your family? Would you want them to parade around sneering on how it was just another one gone, no big deal, life goes on? Would you want people to refer to them as just a sort of collateral damage?”

His eyes flashed, but he answered. “Jacob Black is half dead. The woman has minor injuries. And they had to drag the silver one away. They had to leave quickly.”

He said more, but my heartbeat was too loud in my ears for me to hear him.

The silver wolf.

Paul.

“I have to go to La Push!” I announced in a frenzy, moving quickly to my nightstand for my phone and keys, to my closet for a jacket. Jasper’s hand caught me gently before I could reach the door. And he looked furious.

“No,” he growled with finality.

I tugged my hand away. “Yes.”

“This is exactly what I didn’t want to happen,” Jasper announced. “I didn’t want you to make friends with that damn wolf pack. I didn’t want you turning your back on me.”

I didn’t answer. He didn’t wait for one.

He was gone in a blink before I made it to the front door, slamming it immaturely behind me before stomping down the path, teeth clenched into a snarl. The freezing nip of the air outside felt like Jasper’s touch, and I shied away from it. Jasper and I were walking away angry from our first fight, the first hit against the concrete barrier that kept our hearts exempt from rebellion. Slowly, that wall was beginning to crumble.

And as I slammed the car door behind me, I wondered fleetingly what was going to happen now.