CATALINA, paul lahote

I THOUGHT THIS YEAR WOULD BE EASIER

[ alternatively : there's always next year ]

ROSALIE HALE HAD collected the girl from the treaty line, no car in sight as she tapped her always manicured nails against the jean that covered her leg. 'Ring me later?' Paul had murmured to her as the sat in silence for a second, the engine slowing until stopping as he turned the key. She hesitated as she glanced to him from the corner of her eye, only to find him staring forwards, his eyes on the blonde. His gaze, for once, wasn't filled with malice or anything akin to the emotion, just restless passivity that Cata hated more than anything when it adorned her boyfriends face.

Promise me. She had whispered one night, their skin flush against one another. Whatever happens, we can deal with it. We can fix it, I can fix it. You just have to tell me what there is to fix.

Paul Lahote had never quite learnt the lesson on reigning in his anger. He could be angry all day long (a fact many were accustomed to in La Push) But to actually explain that anger?  That was a whole different ballpark that Paul had yet to discover. Catalina Swan knew this, of course. Paul Lahote was a boy of very few words and that was what seemed so ideal about him when he was just a boy she kissed when she was drunk.  And so, she knew - that their only demise would be their stubbornness that had rooted itself into their veins, curving around their hearts and squeezing ever so slightly  (because lets face it, compromise was only a word they recognised in light of the other person).

I tell you everything. He has whispered back.

The car was hot with unspoken words that Catalina wished to have. Maybe she could yell at him until he looked at her, yell at him until he yelled back because she'd rather him be angry with her than serene stillness that rested over his face. What she'd do for them to be a normal couple who's biggest argument would be where they were going to eat that night, not the threat of blood that tumbled from her sisters veins - and the decades of treaty negotiations that it may wash away.

"Always." She whispered back as her fingers found the lock, pushing to door open as she lifted her head like a fish out of water for a breathe of fresh air. Yet, there was no gust of wind - no second where Catalina thought she might have been able to breathe, she half expected the tension from the car to flow out around her ankles, ebb away into the concrete and then maybe they could all forget it was ever there. She would ring Paul later, and he would come round to hers and soothe her hair until she fell asleep.

But it didn't, the tension was concrete in the car, Paul's hand forcing through it to wrap his fingers around her wrist. "I love you." He whispered, but even then it sounded so loud against the quiet of the night. Her shoulder's rolled back and though Paul could tell it didn't do much to lessen her fears, the small smile she turned and offered him was something that stopped him from thinking this was it.