Quil Ateara and the Impossible Claire
Chapter Sixteen: Choices
Claire's POV

A/N: I'm posting this a day or two after I meant to, but I wasn't happy with it. I'm still not sure about it, but...we'll see. Please leave a review and let me know what you think. Thanks!

I was frozen in Quil's lap, trying to get my brain to work. My thoughts skittered upon, "Pretend it didn't happen, it'll go back to normal," and refused to move beyond that.

After several long minutes, Quil cleared his throat, startling me out of the circuitous thinking I'd been doing.

"So...what now?" Quil asked.

I removed my hands from my face to look at him. "What do you mean?"

He blinked. "What do you mean, 'what do you mean?'"

Productive conversation. "I mean, what are you asking? Are you asking about whether we're going to move and go back to the party? Are you asking -"

"Claire," he deadpanned, shutting me up. "You know what I'm asking."

I sighed and plunked my head back down in my hands. "I don't know," I muttered.

Quil tensed. "You don't know," he echoed, more of a statement than a question.

I shook my head.

"Claire, stop covering your face and look at me," he said in a low voice.

My head shot up at his tone. "Are you mad at me?" I asked, feeling a twinge of indignation.

Quil gently pushed me off of his lap so that he could stand, but he might as well have shoved me forcefully. It would've felt the same emotionally. He began pacing, looking agitated. "Please explain what you mean by 'I don't know,'" he said, his voice both restrained and pleading.

I stood up as well, brushing my costume off. "I mean that – that I don't know what comes next. I don't know what to do."

"How do you feel about me, Claire?" he demanded, waving his hand in dismissal at my statements.

My eyes seemed intent on looking at the ground. I scuffed my toe in the dirt awkwardly. "You know how I feel about you," I said quietly.

It wasn't a real answer, and Quil knew it. "No, I really don't know how you feel about me. You think you're confused? You have no idea," he said rapidly.

"That's not fair. I really am confused," I retorted. "I don't know what I want."

He stopped pacing to stare at me. "You don't know what you want. That just happened, and you don't know what you want?" he exclaimed incredulously. "You know what isn't fair? Seeing all my friends imprint on women their own age and being happier than anything. And then I imprinted on a toddler. You know how you felt when I told you about that? Imagine how I felt when it happened. I was so disgusted with myself that I almost ran away. But I couldn't. I couldn't run away from you, even then." As he spoke, his voice slowly devolved from anger to a kind of hurt sadness.

I couldn't have formed words even if I'd tried. This side of Quil's imprinting had never been revealed to me, and hearing it made me feel queasy. I thought maybe he was done, but he wasn't.

"So I stayed. And pretty soon, I started to get over it. Sam helped me see that I wasn't a bad person for imprinting on you, and I realized that he was right. All I wanted was to be a big brother to you. I just wanted to spoil you and make you laugh and protect you from everything. I had to talk to your parents, which, I bet you can imagine, was just...awesome. Emily wasn't too pleased with me either at first. And every time I shifted, I had to listen to Leah call me a pedophile. It really sucks when someone as angry as Leah used to be knows just what to say to hurt you, since she's in your head all the time." He shook his head, trying to shake off the memories. "So yeah, I stayed. But then I had to wait. Which I was willing to do, remember, but that doesn't mean it was easy. I had to wait and wait, and all the while, everyone around me was changing and experiencing new things, while I was frozen in place. I didn't want to leave you behind, so I almost stopped living. I feel like I haven't really grown in over ten years because I've been waiting for you to catch up."

I shut my eyes against his words and felt several tears spill down my cheeks. I hadn't even been aware I was crying.

Quil ran a shaky hand through his hair, and continued, "And I did all of it because I loved you so much. If I never went to college like Leah and Jared did, it was okay, because I got to be there on your seventh birthday. If I never went on dates and stuff like Embry, it didn't bother me, because I got to take you to the beach. If I never traveled like Jake, who cares? I had you. And I knew – I was positive – that someday, we would have adventures for ourselves."

Finally finding my voice, I opened my eyes again and squeaked, "Quil."

"I mean, even when you were a kid, you were a pain in the ass," he interrupted, barreling on as if he didn't hear me, "so I was kind of prepared for some difficulties. But nothing like this. I never expected you to just reject me. And see, I feel it so strongly, I don't even get how you don't. So that, and then you kiss me like that, yeah, I'm pretty sure I'm at least as confused as you are." He stopped speaking abruptly.

Silence fell between us as I unwillingly absorbed everything he had just said. After a while, I whispered, "I didn't realize you had given up so much for me."

Quil lowered himself into a crouching position, with his elbows propped on his knees to cradle his face in his hands, much like I had been doing. "I would give everything for you, Claire. I just don't know if I have much more to give. It kills me every time you say you don't know what you want."

"I'm so sorry," I murmured, unable to think of anything else to say.

He stood up again, visually struggling to get himself under control, and changed the subject a bit. "Ashley is nothing, by the way. She's a friend of Jake's. We recruited her just to make you jealous."

I couldn't even get angry that he'd tried to manipulate me. "It worked," I acknowledged quietly.

"Carly was in on it, too. That's why I've been talking to her so much. You don't have to worry about that," he said.

No matter how concerned I'd been about Carly and Quil before, it failed to make me feel any better to hear this now. I was still reeling over all that Quil had said, and it was making me feel like the lowest life form on the planet.

"I'm sorry we did all that," he added, looking at me with damn puppy dog eyes. "It was wrong."

I shook my head. "Please. Don't apologize."

Another silence fell, this one awkward. I felt like I ought to say something, ought to do something, but I couldn't move. I wanted to hug Quil and hold him and let him hold me until everything was better again, but I felt like I no longer had the right to do so. I didn't deserve him. A new wave of tears constricted my throat, and a small sob managed to escape from me.

In a heartbeat, Quil was by my side, cupping my face in his warm hands. I looked up into his concerned face, feeling more undeserving than ever. "Quil, I'm so sorry," I said, my breath hitching.

He still looked concerned, but he also seemed to brace himself. It took me a moment to figure out that he was preparing to be rejected again.

Another wave of hurt rocketed through me at that realization. "I ruined your life the moment you met me," I sobbed, my vision blurring to the point that I could no longer clearly distinguish his facial expressions. It didn't matter anyway, as he pulled me into his arms, letting me cry into his pirate shirt.

"Claire, you didn't ruin my life," he murmured quietly.

"Yes I did!" I wailed, my anguish growing. "How can you even deny it? I never could have deserved having you in my life. You've been everything to me, and I've done nothing for you in return."

"That isn't true," he said reassuringly, making me feel worse. "Please don't say that."

A sudden, overwhelming desire to get out of the woods overcame me. It was irrational, but my logic had come to a standstill under all the emotion, and getting out of the woods seemed to be the most important thing in that moment. All I could think was that it was too dark and crowded-feeling. "I want to get out of the trees. They're making me claustrophobic," I pleaded into his chest.

Quil just said, "Okay." He scooped me up to be cradled in his arms and took off, running more quickly and smoothly than any normal human could. As he ran, I tried to formulate coherent thoughts again. There was a constant thought that I didn't deserve Quil in my life, along with the aching guilt that consumed me. I was having a hard time beyond that.

After a few minutes, we emerged from the woods, breaking out onto the moonlit beach, far away from any houses. A tiny, old dock that had been long abandoned was jutting into the water, and Quil carried me to the end of it before setting me down. I sat down with my feet dangling off the edge, and Quil did the same. A cold ocean breeze swept up along the beach and chilled me to my bones, but before I could so much as shiver, Quil's arm was around me like a heated blanket. I swallowed over another lump in my throat.

We both sat on the dock processing everything for a long time. I was grateful that he wasn't asking me any more questions, because I was only just beginning to come to any answers.

The endless October sky and the rhythmic pulse of the ocean instilled me we a sense of peace and infinity that I only ever found at the sea. I don't know how long we sat there, but the Big Dipper had visibly moved in the night sky by the time I was prepared to speak.

"Quil?" I said quietly.

He shifted his eyes from the waves to me. In that moment, he looked both young and old, timeless. Light-hearted but so sad. He was exquisite. I stared openly at him, the moon reflected back at me in his huge brown eyes, until he prompted me. "Yeah?"

I blinked, remembering once again that there were things that needed to be said. "Please just listen to me for a minute, okay?"

He nodded, allowing his arm around me to drop as I shifted to face him better. I quickly reached out and grasped his fallen hand in both of mine.

"I know I should have, but I really never thought about what it must have been like for you all this time. I know I'm selfish, but that's a new low, even for me," I said, my voice shaking at first but gaining strength.

"Claire, I told you -" he started, but I stopped him.

"You promised to let me talk. Otherwise, I might never get it out right," I said, a hint of begging in my tone. He nodded again, and I took a deep breath before I went on. "I'm so grateful to have had you in my life growing up. I – I can't even – I don't want to imagine what my life would have been like without you. And I hope you'll never leave my life, either."

A pained look crossed his face, and I knew he was imagining going through his entire life like the last few weeks had been. It hurt me to see, and I wondered if it wouldn't be better for me to just let him go now, but I had to keep going.

My stomach was twisting with nerves and emotion. I took another breath to steady myself and said, "I know I don't deserve you and everything you've done and do for me. I'm so sorry. It makes me feel like I'm dying to know that you did so much and I've ignored all the things you've gone through and given up. I'm so sorry. I know you don't want me to say so, but I'm still so scared that you would have been better off never having met me."

Quil's hand squeezed mine gently as a way of reassurance, rather than interrupting me. I squeezed back, clinging to his hand with everything I had.

"I just – I don't want to ruin everything. I don't want to make a mistake. You've always been too important for me; I've felt like I couldn't mess up with you because you meant too much. I've been afraid and confused and angry. I thought my biggest decision this year would be where I go to school, not if I'd start dating my werewolf soul mate.

"And that was part of it too, you know? The decision part. You know how important it is to me to be able to have a choice, and I didn't feel like I had one. I didn't like feeling like I had to, or that I couldn't do anything else, or that you had to..." I stopped for a moment, realizing I was rambling. "I really want to be able to choose who I love."

Quil winced, but nodded. "I know you want to choose, Claire," he said.

I shook my head to shush him again. "No, listen. All this time, sitting here, I've been thinking. I thought about lots of things. I thought about, if I could choose my perfect guy, if I could like, make him out of thin air with all the qualities I wanted, what I would want. I would want someone who would be there for me, who could talk sense into me when I needed it without making me feel stupid. Someone who was smart and who could make me laugh. Someone who could argue with me and hold his own, someone who realized that I need a lot of constant reassurance, someone who would put up with me and love me anyway. Someone who, when I was with them, I felt like home." I looked down at our hands, still entwined. "Then I realized you're all of those things."

I licked my lips nervously and met his eyes again. "I want to be able to choose who to be with, but now I know I'd choose you. If I just met you today, you would be it."

Quil swallowed audibly, his eyes searching mine, begging me to get to the point.

My heart was pounding in my ears. "I'm trying to say...I want to choose, and I have a choice. And I choose you."

My words seemed to freeze in the air, hanging between us, as Quil stared back at me, blatantly surprised. "What?" he asked after a moment.

"I choose you," I repeated, then decided that maybe my wording was the problem. "I want to try being with you."

Apparently my wording wasn't the problem, because again, Quil said, "What?" He was continuing to stare at be with a blank look, brows furrowed in confusion.

I half-smiled. "I don't know how else to say it...?"

He shook his head violently, not left to right like a man, but rapidly tilting it side to side like a dog. I would've laughed, except that I was about to explode from nerves. He needed to say something. Stat.

"Quil?" I asked. "Do you understand?"

He gaped at me a moment longer, then a grin slowly spread across his face. "I understand, I just don't believe it."

I laughed out of relief.

"You're serious, right? You won't like, change your mind tomorrow?" he asked, and it made my heart ache a bit to see how scared he was that I would do exactly that.

"No," I replied. When he still looked like he had doubts, I leaned over and hovered a centimeter away from his lips. "Believe it," I whispered, before bringing my lips to his.