The Consequences {Jacob Black}

Chapter XLII: Jacob's Point of View

"I'm ruining our date," she said thickly. "Sorry." Only Annie would apologize for worrying about the people she loved.

"Why are you sorry?" I asked, tilting her chin up to meet my eyes. "The whole point of this is to convince you that I love you. If talking about this is what it's going to take to convince you, then let's talk about it," I said. I pulled her over to me so that she was straddling me, her hands resting limply in her lap.

"I don't want to ruin this night," she said. Oh no, she wasn't going to avoid talking about this.

"The only way you could ruin this is if you tell me you don't want to be around me anymore. She was staring down at her hands, avoiding my eyes again. I wrapped a hand around each of her wrists, pulling them up until they her forearms were resting on my shoulders and her hands were hanging limply behind my neck. Slowly, I put my hands on her hips, watching her carefully for her reaction.

"Talk to me Annie," I begged. "Tell me what goes on in that beautiful head of yours. What are you afraid of?"

"You keep saying that this can work," she finally began. "But we've never done anything like this, Jake. Neither one of of us has done a relationship before."

"Or maybe we've always been in one and not realized it," I suggested. According to everyone else, we'd always been together.

"Or not; we don't know what we're doing." Was that really what she was concerned about? We had always learned together. We grieved my mom together. We learned to cook together. We learned to drive together. We dealt with the fear together.

"So we figure it out together." It was as simple as that. "I mean, isn't that what we we always do? That's how we learned to climb trees, to ride bikes, to fix cars. We've always figured everything out." I grinned a little.

"It wasn't always easy. Remember when you almost cut through the tip of your finger when we were making a bird house?" She giggled a little, probably remembering her fight with the saw. "We struggled, we fought, but in the end, Annie, we succeeded."

It was the truth. The things that we had gotten ourselves into could fill a dictionary, but we had succeeded at every single one of them.

"What's so different about this?" I asked. We had done everything together. Why should this be any different?

"I know that I'm being a baby." She looked down again. "But I'm afraid of what will happen if we keep trying this. What if I lose you?"

Silly girl; I was here for her protection, for her love. She was the only thing that held me on this planet any more. When I'd heard the legends, when they described it as a shift in gravity, I thought it sounded strange and wrong. But now that it was happening to me, now that I was able to hold her in my arms, I could see that's exactly what it was. No mortal force, human or natural, could force us apart.

"I don't know how to tell you this in any other way, Annie, but you can't lose me." There was no way to prove it to her, no way to show her how serious I was. Except, maybe for time. "It would take a force stronger than nature to make me leave you."

"You know, a sibling rivalry can be pretty strong," she whispered. What was she on about now? Hadn't we covered the fact that I didn't love her sister?

"Well then I guess it's a good thing there doesn't need to be a rivalry," I said, scooting her hips closer to me.

"But what about-"

"I hope you're not about to ask me what happens when Bella wants to come back," I interrupted. She better not do that to me. We had been through this. I thought she understood.