I swallowed hard.

"I'd better get back there," Sam mumbled, and he ducked hastily out the door.

Billy pulled his hand away from Jacob, and then he rolled himself through the kitchen toward his room.

Jake stared after him for a minute, then came to sit on the floor beside me again. He put his face in his hands. I rubbed his shoulder, wishing I could think of anything to say.

After a long moment, Jacob caught my hand and held it to his face.

"How are you feeling? Are you okay? I probably should have taken you to a doctor or something." He sighed.

"It seems like she's okay, but you should have given kept her hydrated," Carlisle said.

"Don't worry about me," I croaked.

He twisted his head to look at me. His eyes were rimmed in red. "You don't look so good."

"I don't feel so good, either, I guess."

"I'll go get your truck and then take you home – you probably ought to be there when Charlie gets back."

"Right."

I lay listlessly on the sofa while I waited for him. Billy was silent in the other room. I felt like a peeping tom, peering through the cracks at a private sorrow that wasn't mine.

It didn't take Jake long. The roar of my truck's engine broke the silence before I expected it.

He helped me up from the couch without speaking, keeping his arm around my shoulder when the cold air outside made me shiver. He took the driver's seat without asking, and then pulled me next to his side to keep his arm tight around me. I leaned my head against his chest.

"How will you get home?" I asked.

"I'm not going home. We still haven't caught the bloodsucker, remember?"

"Just don't do anything rash," Edward said, not wanting the pup to go looking for a fight since he was feeling so down at the moment.

My next shudder had nothing to do with cold.

It was a quiet ride after that. The cold air had woken me up. My mind was alert, and it was working very hard and very fast.

What if? What was the right thing to do?

I couldn't imagine my life without Jacob now – I cringed away from the idea of even trying to imagine that. Somehow, he'd become essential to my survival. But to leave things the way they were…was that cruel, as Mike had accused?

"Right now, no...you're still healing...or starting to. Just worry about that," Edward said.

"You just don't want her to like the pup," Emmett teased.

Edward answered with a growl.

I remembered wishing that Jacob were my brother. I realized now that all I really wanted was a claim on him. It didn't feel brotherly when he held me like this. It just felt nice – warm and comforting and familiar. Safe. Jacob was a safe harbor.

I could stake a claim. I had that much within my power.

"You already have a claim... staked or not," Alice said. And she's going to be hurt now when you return too.

Edward raised an eyebrow slightly in question to that.

There's no way that you'll let her see the pup, Alice thought. You'll think it's too dangerous...and it will hurt her not seeing him, though it won't be anywhere near as bad as it is now, of course.

Edward sighed at that.

I'd have to tell him everything, I knew that. It was the only way to be fair. I'd have to explain it right, so that he'd know I wasn't settling, that he was much too good for me. He already knew I was broken, that part wouldn't surprise him, but he'd need to know the extent of it.

I'd even have to admit that I was crazy – explain about the voices I heard. He'd need to know everything before he made a decision.

"I don't think that will matter to him," Emmett said, "even if it does make her sound crazy."

But, even as I recognized that necessity, I knew he would take me in spite of it all. He wouldn't even pause to think it through.

I would have to commit to this – commit as much of me as there was left, every one of the broken pieces. It was the only way to be fair to him. Would I? Could I?

Would it be so wrong to try to make Jacob happy?

"But if things stay the way there are, he won't be happy... not in the long run," Esme said, "not while you're still completely in love with another man."

Even if the love I felt for him was no more than a weak echo of what I was capable of, even if my heart was far away, wandering and grieving after my fickle Romeo, would it be so very wrong?

Jacob stopped the truck in front of my dark house, cutting the engine so it was suddenly silent. Like so many other times, he seemed to be in tune with my thoughts now.

He threw his other arm around me, crushing me against his cheat, binding me to him. Again, this felt nice. Almost like being a whole person again.