Author's Notes: For Caribbean Nights visiters, this is completely different. For the usuals, enjoy MY usual!! Also, thanks to Nicholh2008 for the beta. She's amazing!!

Disclaimer: I disclaim!

Warnings: Excessive use of the word "fuck."

For Zach. Fuck you. I'll write my own happily ever after.

Maybe she’ll go to Seattle.

Take the pieces left of her life and run run run in the other direction, leave this all behind, forget she ever saw any of this, forget she ever knew him.

Oh, yeah right, like she could ever forget Sam Uley. His name rips a hole in her Swiss-cheese heart, punches her in the gut, knocks the air clean out of her.

She’d love to go to Seattle, to settle down with her pieces of normal she holds in her hands and find a nice guy and have a family. She’d love to cut herself off from this world and its twisted, awful magic.

Leah Clearwater hates the fairytales, because they never tell the ‘other’ story. Because there has to be someone left behind, there always is, and you never hear the story about Cinderella’s step-sisters who got Prince Charming snatched out from under their noses. You never get to hear that side of the story—because there has to be a reason, why they were such bitter little bitches.

Leah has the art of being a bitter little bitch down to a T and she knows that you’re not born that way. The world changes you. Love changes you.

Fuck Love, she says. Fuck Love and fuck fairytales and fuck Jake and Nessie, Embry and Clair, Jared and Kim, Sam and Emily. Fuck them, Leah will write her own happy ending. She doesn’t need them.

She doesn’t need them.

It’s one of her particularly pathetic days, the ones that she feels especially ugly and broken, when he finds her. Are we supposed to know who he is? I assume it’s sam, but it’s not clear

She’s stopped phasing as much as she can. She figures the sooner she dies, the sooner she’s done.

God, she’s morbid today.

“Hey.”

Leah nods. “Hi.” She scuffs the ground with her tennis shoes.

“You ever feel like you’re a freak?”

Leah looks up at him. “You mean the whole changing into a wolf when I get mad? Um, yeah, I feel like a freak all the time, you douche. Don’t you?”

He laughs and shoves her playfully. “No, I mean, like there’s something wrong with you, more than turning into a giant dog. Like…with the imprinting.”

And then Leah remembers that he hasn’t imprinted, either. She looks out across the creek. “All the time,” she whispers.

And Quil throws and arm around her shoulders and kisses her cheek. “We can be freaks of freaks together,” he whispers and this side of the universe is a little bit brighter.

It’s not perfect.

Hell, it’s not even close. It’s not love and it’s not beautiful and there are no fireworks and it’s not even fucking close to perfect.

But it still is…whatever it is.

And there’s passion and lust, but mostly there’s frustration. Frustration at a world, that turned its back on them when magic took them and then screwed them over. Frustration at their so-called savior, that left them out in the cold when he saw a pretty girl.

A pretty baby, because that’s what Nessie is. She’s a baby.

And they could both find perfectly nice, normal people (that’s what Kim and Emily and Claire are, after all), but they won’t have that bond.

And, god, they want that bond.

But they pretend. They pretend, for a few short hours every week, that they are normal and they have normal lives and they love each other and they’re just two teenagers taking a shot at love.

Then it’s time to move on and go back to magic and myths, leave normalcy behind.

It’s nice, Leah decides. It’s nice to have Quil and whatever they are, whatever they do. It’s an escape. An interlude. It’s nice, even though the sex really isn’t nice at all.

It’s like breathing without air.

His hips against hers are an age old dance they know by heart. His hot, hot kisses against her neck and her collarbone leave behind bright red bruises and traces of fire that burn straight through to her soul.

They’re lying in his room, watching the sunrise. They are silent, listening to the melody of their breathing, basking in this moment, in the silence, the stillness. The peace...

And then he shatters it, stroking a hand down their intertwined bodies, as he breathes out three little words that change everything.

How can girls wish for this? How can people want and wait and fucking hope for this?

“Don’t say that,” she whispers. “Don’t say those words.”

Because those words are hateful and broken and painful and she hates those words, because those words were the ones he told her, that was the promise he made her and he broke it and broke her and broke those words for her.

And she knows exactly how those ‘evil’ step-sisters feel—like someone jerked the rug out from under your feet, jerked your chance at normal away. Fairytales suck. They’re unrealistic and they’re stupid and they promise every little girl that she’ll get her Prince Charming on a white horse and a castle and you don't. That’s not how it works, not for everyone.

There is no riding off into the sunset, not for Leah Clearwater. It’s more like standing by the wayside as the sinking sun blinds you.

“I'm sorry,” he says, pressing his lips to hers. “I'm so, so sorry.”

Leah pushes him away, but smiles. “It’s okay. The sentiment is the same, but don’t say those words.”

And he doesn’t say those words.

“Let’s go away,” she whispers, her voice a part of the night and the moon shining on the covers and painting the room in shades of black and blue and grey.

“Where to?” he asks, rolling over. He hadn’t known she was awake; her breathing is even enough to fool him.

Leah shrugs, her silky russet skin painted black by the silver moonlight. “Away.”

Quil runs his hands over her shoulders and presses a hot kiss to the nape of her neck.

“Seattle,” she says suddenly, then changes her mind. “No never mind, Seattle’s not far enough. Let’s go to Florida; it’s sunny there. Let the sun break our darkness.”

“Florida?” he repeats, still not taking her seriously.

Leah rolls over in his arms and he kisses her nose. “Seriously, Quil. What’s keeping us here?”

Quil sighs and presses his nose into her hair.

“Please?”

And he agrees. He agrees because he’s never felt like this before, as cliché as that sounds. Because she’s Leah and she’s beautiful and she’s wonderful and he loves her, even though he’ll never say it out loud. He loves her.

Florida is sunny, much sunnier that Washington was.

The sun hurts her eyes, but she lets it in, lets it in to clean her out and break her open and scar over the wounds Sam left behind.

She’s not healed and she’s not perfect. She’s still broken on the inside in some place, still hurting because you never get over someone who breaks your heart and the promises they made.

They dream.

They can dream in Florida, now that they’re far, far away from their broken dreams. She goes to school. He gets a blue-collar job. And they dream.

They dream of a little girl with her eyes and his smile. They dream of a little boy with dimples and gaped teeth. They dream of a puppy and a picket fence.

Oh, they dream of that picket fence.

They get married and don’t tell anyone from La Push. They’ll send pictures later, when the wounds have fully healed, pictures to their parents, but they’ve got their own slice of paradise right now and it’s too good to ruin with their past.

Things get better.

They have the little girl and they name her Susan, for Leah’s mother. Their son they name Harry, for her father. And they’re happy. The dog they call Jacob (their own little joke), and things are so, so good.

They love each other.

They never speak of it, because those words are still broken and ugly and hurtful. But there are different ways to say “I love you.”

Like notes in a teacup, or a massage after work. Early-morning cuddles and late-night talks. Kisses and hugs and babies. It doesn’t matter that they never say it—it’s said enough in their actions and their glances. It’s said enough and in so many ways, it means that much more.

Everyday couples that met under everyday circumstances and lived everyday fairytales, they say those three words and it’s empty, because they’ve never had those words snatched away from them, they’ve never had to face broken promises in the morning and a bed at night that feels bigger than it’s supposed to.

In a way, Sam’s decisions have strengthened their love. They know how words and broken promises hurt and they vow to keep the other from that kind of pain ever, ever again.

They will write their own happily ever after.

Thanks for reading!