Loving You / Paul Lahote - [EDITED]

12 - [EDITED]

After leaving Forks the Cullens first went to Alaska to their cousins. 

Edward was supposed to meet them there and the family would decide where they would go next. However, Edward never showed up, and when he finally called he had said that he wanted to be alone. 

The Cullens stayed with the Denali's for a few weeks before eventually moving to Ithaca, New York. Carlisle had found a job in a health center, working night shifts. Jasper enrolled in the philosophy major and Ashley enrolled at the local high school. 

Edward's departure had shattered the family. Rosalie, Emmett, and Ashley were living on their own. Alice and Jasper rented an apartment close to the campus. They still kept in touch but the family wasn't the same.

Especially Ashley wasn't the same. She seemed like a robot for the past 5 months. She woke up, went to school, came home, did her work, and went to sleep. 

The life in her seemed to be drained out. The rest of the family couldn't remember the countless times they offered to do something Ashley would love to do on normal terms. 

During the past 5 months, Edward called them a month to briefly inform them that he was still alive. He wouldn't tell them about his whereabouts to avoid seeing him. He always asked about Ashley, her condition, and the answer he got every time broke his heart and added to his guilt. 

The last 5 months hadn't been easy on Paul as well. The pack had new members now. Quil Ateara, Leah and Seth Clearwater and Jacob Black. Leah was the first female shifter in their tribe and it did set up small chaos. 

A cold one had come to their territory, not one of the Cullens, and it did raise questions about new ones. There was this human, Bella Swan, who caused too much trouble. 

Not only did she find out about the pack, through the stupidity of her and Jacob, but Paul also found out that she was the reason Ashley left. 

At first, Paul was angry. At her imprintee. How could she lie to him? Paul had opened up to her and she lied for the whole time they were together. Paul didn't shift back until two weeks later. 

The first thing he had done when he shifted back was to go to Emily's house. Sam and the others decided to leave him alone until he could put his mind back together. 

When he went back only Emily was there and she talked to him. She had said she understood why he felt betrayed but asked him to understand Ashley's reasons for not telling him. She was raised by them, they were her family and the way the pack talked about her family might have scared her off from telling Paul. 

And most importantly, she wasn't like them, she was only human and very hurt by what happened.

So Paul decided to talk to her. He didn't even think of how was Ashley the past week and now that Emily had pointed it out, he felt the need to be there for her, no matter how he felt. The bond urged him to be there for his imprintee, whatever she needed him to be.

But when Paul tried to contact Ashley he didn't get an answer. Her phone number was no longer used, all of her social media accounts were deleted. Paul tried calling her school, to find out what happened but all he found out was that they moved away. 

Then Sam decided to tell him that the Cullens, they knew their identity all along, left the town, probably not to come back for another seventy years. 

Paul was crashed. The last conversation he had with her wasn't anything nice and that was the last of it. Plus, new problems kept popping up in his life and he wasn't handling it well. He had become even more of a hothead than he had been before Ashley.