in the same boat

I couldn't breathe inside that house anymore.

It was suffocating—the air thick with silence, heavy with words left unspoken, the walls pressing in as if they held all the weight of my unsaid thoughts. Every step I took felt like trudging through something invisible but suffocating, an oppressive force that made it impossible to think, to move, to exist without feeling like I was drowning. Bella avoided me, slipping through the house like a ghost, vanishing before I could say anything about that night, about Jacob, about the way she had looked at me like I was the problem. Like I had done something unforgivable by simply feeling the way I did.

And Jacob? He hadn't spoken to me since my confession. No visits, no calls, not even a damn text. He had erased me. As if I had never been anything to him in the first place. As if the bond I thought we had was nothing more than my own illusion. That was the worst part—not anger, not heartbreak, but the cold indifference of it all. The way he had looked at me, or rather, the way he had chosen not to. Like I wasn't even worth an explanation. Like I had never mattered at all.

So I left.

I didn't know where I was going at first, only that I needed to move. Needed to get out before the thoughts swallowed me whole, before the silence in that house carved its way into my skin and settled in my bones. My feet moved before my mind could catch up, driven by something deeper, something desperate. And somehow, they carried me somewhere familiar, somewhere I hadn't even realized I wanted to be.

La Push.

It wasn't the best idea, and I knew it. The last thing I needed was to run into Jacob, to stand in front of him and be met with silence, to hear an apology I didn't want, or worse—nothing at all. But some part of me, the self-destructive part that wanted to claw its way into his life again, hoped he would be there. Maybe I did want to fight. Maybe I just wanted to be seen. Or maybe I was just so tired of being alone with my thoughts that I didn't care where they led me.

The beach stretched out before me, vast and endless, waves crashing against the shore with a kind of violent indifference that I almost envied. The wind howled, sharp and relentless, tearing through my hair and filling my lungs with the salt of the sea. It smelled like cold water and something ancient, something untouched by time or human hands. And further down the shore, I spotted them.

The pack.

They were huddled together, loud and untamed, their laughter carried by the wind. Roughhousing, teasing, existing in a way that made it look easy. Normal. Like none of them had ever had their hearts torn from their chests and left on the ground, still beating, for someone else to step over. It was a cruel illusion, and I hated how much I wanted to be a part of it. How much I wanted to forget, even for a second, what it felt like to be discarded.

But apart from them, sitting just at the edge of it all, alone, was Leah Clearwater.

I hesitated. Everyone knew about Leah. The only female in the pack. Sam Uley's ex. The girl left behind. A tragic story whispered about in hushed tones, passed around like an urban legend, but rarely ever spoken aloud in front of her. I had always wondered how she did it—how she carried all that anger without letting it consume her completely.

Except, from where I was standing, it looked like it had consumed her. She was stiff, arms wrapped around her knees, shoulders drawn tight. She wasn't looking at the pack. Not really. But I caught the way her gaze flickered, just for a moment, toward Sam and Emily. And the way her jaw clenched, like she was bracing for an impact that never came.

That, I recognized instantly.

Because it was the same way I looked at Bella and Jacob.

Before I could stop myself, before I could decide to do something less catastrophically stupid, I was already walking toward her.

Leah noticed me immediately. Her head turned sharply, eyes narrowing as I sat down beside her without invitation.

"What the hell do you want?" Leah asked flatly.

I considered that for a moment. "Dunno. Maybe I just like sitting in places where I'm not wanted."

Leah let out a sharp, humorless laugh. "Oh, great. Now I'm attracting strays."

I smirked faintly. "If I wanted to be around people who liked me, I wouldn't have come here."

Leah studied me for a long moment, assessing, like she was trying to figure out if I was worth her time. Then, surprisingly, she huffed out a breath and turned back toward the ocean.

We sat in silence, both watching the waves crash, the laughter of the pack growing more distant. The quiet stretched between us, neither of us rushing to fill it. And then, I saw it again—the flicker of Leah's gaze toward Sam and Emily, the way her hands curled into fists against her knees, the way she looked like she wanted to scream but couldn't.

I hesitated before speaking, voice barely carrying over the wind. "You know, I know exactly how you feel."

Leah scoffed, but there was no real bite to it. "Oh, really? Enlighten me."

I nodded, staring at my hands. "Yeah. Being replaced. Watching someone you love pick someone else. Feeling like you don't even get to be angry about it because everyone acts like it's just how things are supposed to be."

Leah was quiet for a long time. I wondered if I'd pushed too far, but then Leah exhaled, slow and measured, voice low. "It's bullshit."

I let out a short, humorless laugh. "Yeah. It really is."

For a moment, we weren't two strangers. We were two girls who had lost something irretrievable, who had been left behind, who had to wake up every day knowing that someone else had taken the place that should have been ours.

Finally, Leah spoke again. "You know, for a Swan, you're not nearly as unbearable as I thought you'd be."

I smirked. "I'll take that as a compliment."

Leah shook her head, but the corners of her lips twitched upward, just barely. It wasn't a friendship. Not yet. Maybe not ever. But it was something. A shared understanding. A quiet, bitter solidarity.

And for the first time in days, I didn't feel like I was drowning.