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Jacob doesn't see their faces anymore. But he doesn't need to.

Their faces don't matter, he isn't interested in pretty or smart or charming. It could be a hag or a supermodel, for all he cares.

He feels bad about it, afterwards, every time. He's taking advantage, first of all. Jacob's never been the kind of boy who was just after that sort of thing, even when he was just a teenager.

And he can't fall in love. He's in love. Irrevocably and infinitely and without anyone bothering to ask what he thinks about it beforehand.

And he can't see any of them twice, not even a call the next morning because he's not looking for a relationship, he's looking for a release.

And he can't do anything about it.

And he feels sometimes that he's all but cheating on her, on the one he has to love. This should be hers, by rights, and it's cruel of him to go squander it when every part of him, body and soul, is her inalienable possession.

When she was a child, this was never a problem. She didn't need him to want. So he didn't. His lust simply disappeared one day, out of the blue, and he never desired any woman (certainly not her!) since.

But when she's a woman at seven years old, the want comes back, quadrupled for its absence. Every time she smiles, every time she looks at him, every time she touches his cheek to relay even a simple message, he can hardly restrain it.

He feels like a monster for his thoughts. The only thing that gets him through is the knowledge that if he wants her, it's because she wants him to. She is literally in complete and constant command of him—he cannot disobey her, even in wishes she doesn't know she possesses, and he can't even want to.

To quote Leah (it's crudity like this that makes him wish he'd never let her in the pack) "Poor Jake. You go from not being able to get it up at all to trying to fuck any woman that'll stand still long enough."

To that, the only reply he could make was, "Leah, shut up."

But it's true! The constant company of his love, of a seven-year-old, has him constantly on the edge.

Most of the time he worships her because she's truly very easy to love and every instinct is screaming at him how precious she is. But sometimes, sometimes he misses his free will.

It's times like this.

The woman beneath him is presumably neither beautiful nor witty, neither intelligent nor kind. He doesn't care. She hopped into bed readily enough with the stranger boy.

Jacob will never know that she fell in love with the desperation in his eyes. But he knows he needs her, at least for this, at least for this moment.

She will never know that he is trying to go one day without a thought that will make her father pinch the bridge of his nose in frustration. But she knows she can give him something no one else wants to ask for.

They aren't lovers. It will last exactly one night. Jacob will wake up on the morning and disappear—she will never see him again.

If he could see how she feels, the desperation in this lonely woman to be needed by someone, by anyone, he would laugh aloud.

He's miserable and alone. She's uselessly in love.

Flip the roles and name her Bella and we've told this story already, haven't we?

He shudders and cries out, wordlessly. He's careful about this. Never once has he said her name, because even if Edward knows he's sneaking out to meet strangers in back alleys he really doesn't need to know he's crying his daughter's name in their beds.

That night, they sleep side by side.

Jacob does not dream. He has carefully cured himself of it, because she may look like a woman but she's still so young, she may be brilliant but she's lacking the life experience to make that sort of choice. She's eight and he's twenty-two and it isn't even legal, and he doesn't intend to hurt her like that, not until she's sure she's ready, but that doesn't change the fact that her desire leaves him no choice.

No choice but this.

And there's nothing he could dream of but her, so he's forbidden himself from dreaming at all. The same does not apply to sex, apparently. He still needs, even if he can't have her. He'll have someone else.

The stranger does dream, sporadically. Colors and lights. No substance, like her life. It's emptiness, all emptiness.

It's as simple as the child's dreams were, once, and Jacob would weep if he could see it.

But he can't. He's no mind reader, and she's no Nessie.

And he'll never see that she loves him. He's intentionally blind to that.

And she'll never know what he's waiting for, and he'll never care.

In the morning, she's still asleep when he wakes. He kisses her gently on the forehead. All gentleness and none of the passion that was the only thing that ever bound them together. The action of love sets him free, free to go back to his binding.

She tosses in her sleep and sees the fire of his touch. She'll never feel it again, burning her from the inside out, setting her complacency aflame.

Back at home, Jacob cradles the girl he loves in his arms, just as softly as though she were a baby again.

"I want you," she whispers. "I don't want to wait."

He groans.

He'll go to Seattle tonight, he thinks, or maybe further. California.

Far enough away that it won't follow him, far enough away that he'll never have to remember.

Far enough that he won't have dreams where he tries desperately to remember the face he never really saw.

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