Chapter 14

There was an intricacy to breakups that Spencer had not yet grasped. She wanted to feel everything at once. Rid her memory of all things Cullen for once and all.

But this type of heartbreak wasn't like the others. It consumed you bit by bit. Chipping away at your very soul until there was nothing left but the shell of a person. It was the kind of heartbreak people wrote songs about, poetry about, books about. The kind that is forever etched into your mind as the one that altered the chemical composition of your being. The one that becomes a checkpoint for your life – there is you before the heartbreak and the you afterward.

Spencer didn't want to feel all of that. She needed her life to go on as if nothing had happened. Maybe this was the push she needed to go to med school. Maybe this was the reason she moved out of state and traveled. Maybe this was the point in her life where all the good things came.

Nothing works out as one wants.

She fell into a vicious cycle.

She would wake. She would go to work. She would come home. She would cry. She would sleep. Then, she would wake again.

And somehow a whole month had gone by.

She would wake. She would work. She would cry. She would sleep. Every. Single. Day.

At some point, Spencer was made aware of Bella Swan's similar status. The poor girl had suffered the same fate she had. It made her think they had been cursed. If there were vampires and werewolves, witches and curses didn't seem like such a fantastical idea anymore.

Maybe that's what the two Cullen men had done to them. Cursed them with their love. Their bittersweet love.

One thing kept playing in Spencer's head. Words Carlisle had used to make sure the wound never closed. 'Just like your father.' That sentence had been carved into her skin, sending shivers down her spine each time she remembered it. He was right. She had been resolute in the idea of leaving everyone she loved behind for him. For a simple man that cared more about his reputation than her heart.

It made her think too much of Joshua Uley. She had been very young when he left. With the years the image of him started fading from her memory. First, she couldn't remember his voice. Then, his face blurred. Finally, she could not even remember how it felt to be hugged by him.

She knew Sam resembled him the most in appearance. Their mother would often cry about how much he reminded her of him. But she always said Spencer had his eyes and his soul.

"If only you both could have met him when we fell in love," Allison would cry to them – inebriation aiding to her woes. "My little Spence, your heart is just like his was. But I know you are stronger."

The girl had never understood what her mother had meant. Until now. She felt she was all the bad parts of her father. She was going to abandon her family in a selfish search for a life that made sense to her. No longer could she recall the way her father would read her to sleep; how he would kiss her wounds after getting them clean and wrapped; how he celebrated each time she came home with an outstanding grade. Now all she could recall were the bad things he did. The way he acted when he would drink; how he would fight with her mother when he thought the kids weren't listening; how he left his family without a second thought.

Glimpses of her childhood flooded her mind. Her brain nitpicking at the specific bad moments she felt identified with.

That particular Saturday one memory stood out. She remembered every time her father would get angry, specifically the thing he would do right after. In the entrance hallway closet, there was a floorboard that was loose. Inside, Joshua would store a collection of liquor bottles hidden from the eyes of his family. Spencer had once investigated the hiding place. At her young age, she had no idea what the liquids were, but she knew it made her father act out of the ordinary and be led by his emotions.

Maybe that was what she needed at the moment, she thought. There could not be any other reason for her brain to concoct that memory now - Spencer had not spared a thought for her father in over a decade. Maybe what she needed was the liquid that made everyone speak their mind, even if unwillingly. The bitter nectar that could make her father shift from anger to sadness, to disappointment in a matter of minutes. That's what she needed. To feel everything at once and purge it all out of her system. Surely that was the way she would get over losing a life with Carlisle Cullen.

She was by herself that day. Her mother had pulled a double shift at work and would not be back until the early hours of the morning. So, she headed to the closet in hopes that she had been the only one to discover the secret hideout.

The door of the closet creaked as she swung it open, the sound hurting her ears. If someone else had been in the house, they would have most definitely heard it. The small room was unassuming. Good enough to store the thick jackets they would need for winter as well as some lighter ones for the rest of the year. Boxes were piled at the top on a shelf, and shoes and bags were thrown about on the floor.

Her eyes quickly were transfixed on the wooden board from the corner that slightly stuck out. To anyone else, it would simply look like it needed to be pushed down, but Spencer knew the reason it never was.

She had taken a flathead screwdriver and used that to jam it into the space between the floorboard and the emptiness underneath, prying the old plank open. And just like she had remembered, half a dozen bottles of an assortment of liquor bottles were strung on the floor. Most of them were halfway done, the others only a quarter of liquid was left in them.

Spencer lifted one that she recognized. The label reading vodka reminded her of the one and only time she had had alcohol in her system. A stupid weekend afternoon in her school where her roommate had decided to sneak in a bottle after Christmas break. She had brought it back from her home and had told everyone that her parents had allowed her to drink whilst she was home.

It had been reckless and stupid, and she had ended up puking all night, promising she would never drink again.

But she also remembered how it was the first time that she truly felt homesick. Well, she had always felt a bit homesick, but that was the first time she outwardly expressed it. For her – at that time, at least – emotions were too much of a distraction. They kept her from striving forward, doing whatever she had to do to earn the best education possible. And so, she repressed everything. Until she downed half the bottle of vodka her roommate had brought back.

So, she drank.

And she would continue to drink for the next two weeks during the times she was by herself. The next weekend, she paid a guy twenty bucks to get her enough bottles of vodka from the store to get her through the month. It was stupid and reckless, but that was exactly how she felt.

She hid the bottles under the same floorboard her father would. Sneaking around to take a small swig before she would go to bed; hiding a drink after she came home from work; spending the days she was alone drinking and crying.

The next Saturday after the first time she found the bottles was no different. Spencer took hold of two bottles, placing the wooden floorboard down just as she had found it. She did not want her mother to find anything awry, not even herself.

So, at two in the afternoon she started to drink.

The first swig of the bottle always went down roughly. It burned all the way from her throat until it hit her empty stomach. She knew the feeling would be almost instantaneous. Without any food in her system and no water intake, her head would be swaying after the third sip from the bottle.

She didn't mind the burn. She welcomed the almost unbearable sting the alcohol left. It wasn't as strong as she had remembered the drink to be, but it was good enough for its purpose. She would feel it all. She would fill the vast nothingness she felt inside. She would drink until she forgot.

Four hours and two bottles completely drained later, Spencer lay on the ground, staring at the ceiling as it spun around her. Tears fell from her eyes, but she didn't necessarily feel like crying. They simply fell. She also felt tired, but not tired enough to fall asleep. She was tired of feeling dread. She was tired of grieving. She was tired of yearning for something that would never be hers.

"Did you know you could actually die from heartbreak?" Spencer spoke to no one in particular. She was by herself. Completely alone. "It's true. It's called broken heart syndrome. It's when a stressful event makes the body release a massive surge of adrenaline and noradrenaline causing the small arteries that supply blood to the heart to narrow, decreasing blood flow to the heart. It's rare that someone would die from this. But it doesn't mean it can't happen," she sighed for a pause and continued. "I never understood this until now. I questioned how anyone could care so much about something – someone – that their own body knows when that person hurts them. The heart becomes weaker when that person decides to trample all over it. Can you imagine? What would people say?!"

And then she laughed. She laughed until her stomach hurt. Because how stupid did she feel? Promising her future to someone so unpredictable, so volatile. Someone she had no idea existed until a few months before.

Then, she cried. Because she felt stupid. For considering abandoning her mother, and her brother. For considering spending eternity with someone that did not deserve it. Someone that had been so careless with her heart – with her love.

Her cries were so loud she did not hear the sound of the front door as it opened.

Paul had been walking down the street after coming back to Sam's house after a useless patrol. The Cullens were gone, he had thought, what was the need to keep on the lookout? He was bored. Sure, he detested the bloodsuckers, but he liked the thrill of threatening them when they walked too close to the treaty line, the adrenaline that rushed through him as he rushed after one of them when he smelt them from afar, the dreaming that one day one of them would step out of line and he could sink his teeth into one of them. Now, it was no fun.

As he walked, he kicked a pebble down the street. There was only one person he wanted to spend time with, but she was slightly preoccupied with getting over one of the cold ones. To him it was easy. He was a man that could never give her the life she deserved. Someone who would simply bring her into a life of hiding, a life she wasn't made for.

In Paul's mind, Spencer was made for grandeur. She was meant to save people, to make a name for herself in the medical community. She was meant to make it out of their little town and move on to bigger, greater things.

What Carlisle had done was be a coward in Paul's eyes. The man had it all. Money, power, a united family, and the best woman out there. He literally had it all. And threw it all away at the first sign of trouble. Paul knew his money wouldn't suffer; he would always have his standing between his people; his family would follow him wherever he went. But Spencer. Spencer was collateral damage to him. He had taken what he wanted and thrown her aside. If he hated the Cullens, this stuck the nail in the coffin.

It had been a month since he had spoken to her. A month and a half since he had seen her completely break down in front of him over a man that was not worth it. So many days had been robbed from them, their friendship. Days he could have used to rekindle their relationship, to transform it. So much time that had been stolen by Carlisle Cullen and his cowardly actions.

"If she'd give me a chance, I would make sure she knew how lucky I was to have her by my side," Paul had said one night at the beach to Jared, babbling on as he normally did when speaking of Spencer. "That bloodsucker has no idea what he's let go of. Either way, she deserves so much better."

"And that's you?" Jared asked between laughs. "I don't think I need to remind you, but she did choose him at some point in time. Even after your lousy attempt at swaying her to you."

"I could be everything she didn't know she needed."

Paul grinned at the memory, the same way he had grinned that night because he truly believed his words.

In his reminiscence, Paul heard sobs. A heart-wrenching sound that he had grown to know. He'd heard it but a month ago, and he would hear it every night he walked by her window. It was a sound he wished he could erase from his memory and take from her repertoire.

Many times, he'd listened to her cry until she would fall asleep, never getting closer under direct orders from Sam. This was her heartbreak to navigate, Sam had told her. There is not much they could do about it.

But this time was different. Her cries were mixed with a sharp smell, one he could not tie to Spencer, but one he remembered well from his times in high school. A dangerous weapon when in a state of sadness.

Paul walked up the creaky stairs of the porch, pressing his ear to the front door to confirm the cries that emanated from the other side. His hand checked the doorknob to find it unlocked, and without much preamble, he walked in.

Spencer was on the floor in the middle of the dark living room, clutching her chest and crying. Empty bottles of vodka surrounded the girl. The smell hit the wolf right away, burning his nostrils. It was a devastatingly heartbreaking scene.

"Why?" Spencer cried, not yet noticing Paul's presence. "I f-fucking loved you."

"Spence?" Paul called out startling the inebriated girl. She sat up quickly and clutched her head as she clearly felt the wooziness from the alcohol. "What're you doing?"

"W-why 'r you here?" she slurred. "W-why?"

"I could hear and smell you from outside, Spence." He was worried. Not only was he hurt to see his friend like that, but it surprised him to the lengths she was going to forget that Cullen man. It was reckless. "What's going on,

"I'm a fucking mess, Paul." She looked defeated. Completely and utterly defeated. "I-I wanna forget him. I wanna rip every piece of my skin he touched. I wanna incinerate every single memory I have of him. I wanna rid my body and my soul of anything I put his name on. I wanna fucking detest him."

"This isn't the way to do it, Spence. It's barely six in the afternoon and you are drunk out of your mind. How long have you been like this?"

"Why do you care? I can do whatever I want," she continued to slur her words. "I'm going to feel everything I need to feel and forget him. Forget he ever existed. Forget anything that he made me feel."

Spencer crashed onto Paul's chest as she continued to cry. Her emotions quickly flipped between anger and sorrow, unable to control the fast switch. She felt completely out of control, unable to moderate how her feelings came out. But it was better than feeling a suffocating nothing.

Just like the first night, she cried on Paul as he rubbed comforting circles on her back to calm her down.

"Tell me what I can do," he whispered into her ear. "What can I do to help you through this, Spence? I can't stand to see you like this."

She didn't know how to answer. There wasn't much she was sure of those days. Still, she felt an overwhelming feeling creep into her. As she lifted her head and stared into Paul's eyes, she couldn't help but lean forward, crashing her lips onto his.

It was warm, she thought. Unbearably warm. The kiss was sloppy and unskilled, messy, and hungry. Maybe it wasn't what she wanted but it was what she felt she needed at that moment. Because she needed to forget. And with just enough distractions she could maybe do just that. Forget.

Spencer moved her body until she was on top of Paul, straddling his lap. Her hands grasped at the short hair on the nape of his neck, pulling him closer to her. It made her whole body ignite with a fire she had not felt in a while. She craved physical touch, intimacy, and sexual desire. And Paul could give her that. She wanted to forget how comforting the cold had become to her. She wanted to be warm – burning hot. Spencer wanted the complete opposite of who and what Carlisle was.

She wanted more.

Her hands dropped to the hem of Paul's white wifebeater, pulling it off his torso, then landing on his toned chest. She ran them through his muscles, her fingers tracing the Quileute tattoo that adorned his arm. She felt intoxicated by something stronger than the alcohol running through her body. Something that edged the bad decisions on, tempting her to let her intrusive thoughts win.

Feeling unsatisfied with how slow everything was going, Spencer dove her hands down as she kissed Paul's jaw and neck, fumbling for the button on his pants. That was until Paul took hold of her shaking hands.

"What're we doing here, Spence?" He was breathing hard, unable to stabilize his breath properly. "You're drunk."

"I'm sober enough to make my own decisions," she retorted. "Plus, they say to get over someone you should get under someone else. So, that's exactly what I'm doing."

"So I'm just your rebound."

"Gods, Paul! When did you get so sentimental?" Spencer said exasperated. Getting up, she threw his shirt at his chest trying in any way to let out her frustration. "I thought this was something you wanted."

"Not like this," he said. His response was unnaturally soft. Paul could see how much Spencer was hurting, and as much as he wanted nothing more than to be this close to her in any way possible, he could not do it this way. "Spence, you're drunk and emotional. I can't do this when I know you're not in your right headspace."

"Why do you care where my head is? It's just sex."

"If tomorrow you feel the same way, then we can talk. But I simply can't," he responded. "I care too much about you to let you do something you might regret when you're in this state. Let's get you to bed, Spencer. What you need is to sleep."

"What if I went somewhere else to get what I want?" It was clear that she wanted to hurt him, push him to the edge until eventually, he broke. Her subconscious mind told her it was wrong. To manipulate his feelings this way was the worse thing she could do to someone she cared about so much. But her alcohol-subdued mind spat whatever it could to get what it wanted. "Maybe I'll call up Jared. Maybe even Jake might jump at the request. I honestly could not care less."

His eyes softened at her as she spewed those empty threats. Paul knew where they were coming from a place of pain and need. Even if they did hurt him, he understood that this Spencer was not the one he loved. She was a mask put on to hide her true feelings.

"Look, Spencer. I would bring down the fucking moon for you if you asked," he whispered as he closed the distance between them. His hands landed softly on both sides of her face, shifting her lowered gaze to meet his. "If you want to go sleep with the first guy you see, that's your prerogative. But I can't let you do that when your decisions are being made when you are absolutely fucked up. As your best friend, I won't allow it."

Spencer stared into Paul's eyes, defeat slowly taking over. He was right. Completely right.

Then, the waterworks came once more.

"I just want it to stop," she cried. "I want to get over him. I want to go on as if nothing ever happened because it hurts. It hurts so fucking much."

"I know," he said. "And it will keep hurting for some time, but this is not the way to do it."

"It's a way," she whispered. "I'm tired."

"Let's get you to bed and we can try and talk tomorrow. How about that?"

Finally giving up, Spencer allowed Paul to guide her to her room. She snuggled herself into bed as Paul set a glass of water and two aspirins on the bedside table. It was a nurturing side to Paul she had not seen before, or simply had not noticed. He cared for her just like she had cared for him when they were little.

"Make sure you drink this as soon as you wake up." She nodded in response. Too tired to talk anymore. "And, Spencer. Don't make any bad decisions while I'm not around."