After the beach trip I dropped everyone off at their homes, one by one, the car slowly getting quieter as each person hopped out. Leah included. She insisted she could walk home from the corner, "I'm not a damsel, Mike," but I still drove her all the way to her porch. It took persistence, stubbornness, and the strategic use of puppy eyes. She rolled her eyes but let me win.
She kissed me goodbye, quick and warm, before hopping out. I sat there in the driver's seat like an idiot for a full minute afterward, staring at the empty spot where she'd stood. The guys teased me to hell and back, but I felt it was worth it.
When I got home, the fish incident happened.
My parents flat-out refused to believe I caught that lingcod myself. Dad thought someone sold it to me. Mom thought someone dumped it on the beach and I just grabbed it before it rotted. Honestly? I didn't even care. I just wanted to eat the thing.
I helped Mom clean and cook everything; oysters, mussels, fish steaks, and she kept staring at me like I had been replaced by aliens.
"Where is my son," she said, waving a spoon at me, "because the real Mike Newton can barely cook an egg."
I gave her a very dignified shrug. "Internet."
The truth was… cooking had come naturally. Too naturally. Leftover muscle memory from another life where I had apparently wanted to become a chef. I wasn't Gordon Ramsay or anything, but I could dice onions without losing any fingers, and that already put me miles ahead of the original me.
The food turned out great. Mom complimented me, Dad approved with a face stuffed full of fish, and I felt weirdly proud.
But all of that was days ago.
Now it was Tuesday, March 8th, after school, and I had a car full of girls heading to Port Angeles.
Specifically: Jessica, Angela, Lauren, and Bella.
I had offered to drive because they wanted dresses for the dance, and I needed a new suit. That was my official reason.
My real reason?
Bella.
This was the day she was supposed to be surrounded by thugs. The day Edward swooped in like a moody bat and scared them off with that weird vampire glare.
But that was in the books.
This world had already proven things could change. Tyler's accident… yeah. I was still just a tad guilty about that. Changing the plot had consequences, but letting things happen just because they "should" also felt wrong. And well, as far as I knew, things could have also gone worse, maybe Edward wasn't going to save Bella in this world and she would have ended up splattered against her truck, I could never know.
So here I was. Driving, babysitting, and preemptively hero-ing just in case.
The girls chatted nonstop in the back, switching topics faster than I could keep up with. Dress colors, shoes, corsages, gossip, math homework, who smelled weird in gym class. The usual.
I kept my eyes on the road and my mind on The Incident.
What if Edward didn't show up this time?
What if Bella really did get hurt?
What if I blew it by letting things play out?
No. No way. Not happening. I'd already made up my mind: I wasn't going to treat canon like some sacred timeline. If I felt like doing something, I'd do it. If someone needed help, I'd help. I wasn't some TVA agent making sure the plot stayed on track.
I glanced at Bella through the rear-view mirror. She was looking out the window, humming quietly to whatever music she had stuck in her head.
She trusted me.
And I wasn't about to let her walk into a dark alley alone just because a book had said so in a different universe.
Port Angeles was coming up.
And I was ready.
No matter what happened tonight, canon, no canon, Edward, no Edward, my friend was not getting harmed on my watch.
…
Two hours.
Two. Whole. Hours!
At that point I was actively praying for the sweet release of death. Or for someone to hit me with a tranquilizer dart. Or for the boutique to spontaneously combust, anything to end the suffering.
I sat on one of those tiny upholstered chairs boutiques use to trick customers into thinking they're comfortable. Bella was beside me, equally dead inside, her chin propped on her hand as Jessica, Angela, and Lauren tore through dress racks like discount-day Valkyries.
Bella had picked her dress in five minutes flat. Five. Incredible. Efficient. Elegant. I wanted to give her a medal.
I, on the other hand, had already ordered my suit because apparently finding my size was an impossible task for a store built to clothe people smaller than me. They were going to custom make one, which was fine, except it meant I had nothing left to do except sit here and suffer.
Jessica emerged from the fitting room wearing something sparkly, pink, and vaguely lethal-looking.
"Do you think this makes me look… fat?" she asked, eyes bouncing between us with the desperation of someone seeking a life-or-death answer.
I opened my mouth, prepared to lie for my survival, but Bella beat me to it.
"I'm going to check out a bookstore," she blurted, shooting up from her seat like she'd been ejected. "There's a book I've been trying to find."
I stood up so fast the chair squeaked. "I'm going with you."
Bella blinked. "Oh, no, it's fine. You can stay…"
I hit her with the full force of the Puppy Eyes of Doom™.
The ones that silently said: "Please. Please save me. If I spend one more minute here, I'll start chewing on the mannequins."
Her expression cracked. "…Fine," she sighed, already grabbing her coat. "We'll meet you guys at the restaurant down the street in an hour!"
"Okay!" Angela called.
Lauren waved distractedly.
Jessica was still obsessing over the mirror.
And then we were free.
The second the boutique door shut behind us, we both exhaled in perfect synchronization, a long, exhausted uuuuugh.
We froze.
Looked at each other.
And burst into laughter.
Loud, cathartic, slightly hysterical laughter.
"God," Bella wheezed, pressing a hand to her chest, "I felt like I was going to die in there."
"You were going to die?" I snorted. "I was about to gnaw my own arm off. I think time moves slower in that store. Like, scientifically, we aged a decade."
She brushed hair from her face, still smiling. "Thanks for accompanying me."
"No, thank you. If you hadn't stood up, I'd still be in there listening to Jessica ask the same question in different dresses until the sun explodes."
Bella laughed again, softer this time. "Come on. The bookstore's this way."
We started down the street together, the cool evening breeze hitting like a revival spell.
An hour until we met up with the others.
An hour to keep her safe.
And I wasn't planning on letting her out of my sight.
…
It took us about fifteen minutes of wandering around Port Angeles to find the little bookstore Bella had mentioned. It was tucked between a bakery and a jewelry shop, the kind of place you could miss if you blinked. A tiny bell chimed as we stepped inside.
It was… quaint. Like, really quaint.
Only a handful of narrow shelves, all mismatched like they'd been donated by different grandmas over the last fifty years. The air smelled like old paper and lavender. An elderly woman sat behind the counter, reading with the deeply bored expression of someone who had transcended time itself.
Bella went one way, I went the other, and we started browsing.
About five minutes in, as I was staring blankly at a section labeled "Local Miscellany" whatever that meant, I felt something cold crawl down my spine.
A thought.
A deeply stupid thought.
… I wasn't supposed to know what book we were looking for.
I froze, mentally replaying the last twenty minutes, and nope, she had never actually told me. I scratched the back of my neck, cheeks warming with secondhand embarrassment at my own existence.
"Uh… Bella?" I said quietly.
She hummed, still scanning titles.
"So… what book are we looking for, exactly?"
Bella turned toward me slowly, very slowly. Like she was processing whether I was joking or if she should call for medical assistance.
Then her face cracked, and she burst into uncontrollable laughter.
"Oh my god…" she wheezed, holding her stomach. "Mike. Mike. You're telling me you've been looking for the past five minutes-" another snort "-and you didn't even know what you were looking for?"
I covered my face with a hand. "When you put it like that, it does sound a bit dumb…"
She laughed harder.
I couldn't help it, I laughed too.
"Okay, okay," she said after a bit, wiping her eyes. "I'm looking for a book on Quileute legends."
"Oh," I nodded sagely, as if that clarified anything. "Right. Obviously."
We searched for another couple minutes. Found books on gardening. Astrology. Knitting patterns from 1984. A collection of recipes that all seemed to feature prunes. But no Quileute legends.
Finally, in mutual defeat, we dragged ourselves to the counter.
"Um, excuse me," Bella said. "We're looking for a book about Quileute legends. Do you happen to have anything like that?"
The old lady didn't even blink. She just pointed a finger without looking up from her own book. "Third shelf. Top left."
We turned around, and there it was.
Right there.
Five seconds.
Five.
We both stared at it… then at each other… then back at the book.
I let out a quiet, pained sigh. "We're idiots, aren't we?"
Bella nodded solemnly. "Complete idiots."
We grabbed the book, Bella paid, thanked the old lady, and we walked out of the store with the shared shame of two people who had been thoroughly humbled by a seventy-year-old woman who didn't even bother looking up.
But hey, mission accomplished.
…
Five minutes out of the bookstore, Bella and I were just walking, joking about how that old lady had speedran our IQs into the ground, when four guys stepped out from between two parked cars.
Immediately, I knew something was off. Their eyes were unfocused, pupils blown wide. Drunk. High. Maybe both.
And all four were staring at Bella like she was prey.
One of them grinned, showing teeth stained the color of old cigarettes.
"Leave the girl, man. Walk on home. We ain't gonna hurt her. Just play a bit. We'll return her intact."
Bella pressed herself against my back, trembling.
"Yeah, that's not happening," I said flatly.
I turned and whispered to her, low enough only she could hear. "Don't worry. Leave it to me."
I straightened to my full height, tried the intimidation approach, but the thugs just laughed. Yeah, supernatural glare for me…
And then they got impatient.
One rushed me, swinging his fist. From my perspective, it was like he moved through syrup.
I caught his punch and twisted, only meant to bend his wrist back a bit as a warning, but…
CRACK~.
He screamed and crumpled, clutching his broken arm.
I blinked, startled. I hadn't even used much force.
My surprise cost me: two more guys lunged. One punched me in the face, the other kicked my stomach.
I didn't feel a thing.
But they sure did when I retaliated.
I drove my fist into the stomach of the guy on my right. He folded instantly, collapsing to the pavement wheezing like a dying accordion.
The one on my left got a shove instead, straight into a wall. He slumped down, groaning.
"MIKE!" Bella suddenly yelled.
I spun around just in time to see the last thug slam a knife into my side.
I looked down at the handle sticking out of me, that one stung… Now that was annoying.
Ignoring the pain, I grabbed his wrist and squeezed.
Another crack, another scream, another thug down.
Bella ran to me, pale as death. Her hands fluttered helplessly over the knife wound.
"Oh my god, Mike, we have to get you to a hospital!"
She was shaking so much she could barely touch me. I grabbed her hands gently.
"Bella. Bella, hey. I'm fine."
"You're stabbed!" she snapped, voice cracking. She lifted my shirt with trembling fingers, pulling out a tissue to wipe the blood.
And then froze.
Because there was no wound anymore, just dried blood.
She stared at my side, her brain short-circuiting. "What… how… Mike… how?"
I hesitated. I couldn't keep making excuses forever. And honestly? I was tired.
Fuck it. We ball.
"How much do you know about the Quileute legends?" I asked.
Bella blinked. "Jacob told me they believed they descended from wolves. And that they thought the Cullens were vampires…"
She stopped, then her eyes widened and she pointed at me.
"You're a vampire."
"What? No!" I almost choked. "I don't glow like a disco ball in the sun!"
"But the strength, the healing…!"
"Still not a vampire." I sighed. "I have Quileute blood. My great-grandmother."
Bella stared like that explained zero percent of anything. "Okay…? And that means… what?"
"Bella," I said, exasperated, this girl was too obsessed with vampires and Edward to care about anything else… "the legends are true. The Quileute really descend from wolves. We have… abilities."
She narrowed her eyes. "So you can… what? Turn furry or something?"
I wanted to facepalm so badly. "No. I will be able to turn into a wolf, but I haven't gone through the full transformation yet."
She opened her mouth to keep asking questions, but I checked the time.
"…We're late," I said. "Come on. If we hurry, we can still eat before the girls murder us."
We jogged the last blocks and made it to the restaurant twenty minutes late.
Jessica shot up the moment she saw us. "YOU'RE LATE!"
Angela didn't even wait before noticing the blood on my black t-shirt. "Oh my god, Mike! What happened? Are you okay?"
Jessica and Lauren jumped in, suddenly worried too.
I smiled tiredly. "I tripped and scratched myself. But don't worry, it's fine, not bleeding anymore."
They bought it somehow.
Dinner went smoothly after that, but on the drive back… Bella kept sneaking looks at me.
Not scared, just curious like a cat. Like she had a hundred questions bottled up and ready to explode.
If the others hadn't been in the car, she would've surely interrogated me to death.
I wasn't sure whether that would've been better or worse.
Either way… the canon timeline was officially in shambles.
And honestly?
I felt pretty damn good about it.
No one had gotten hurt this time, well, no one important…
…
(Alright, leave the power stones in the bag and no one gets hurt! 🦝)