©NataliaNicolette

I own nothing you may or may not recognize other than my own original content. No copyright infringement intended. Quil, Claire and any other original Twilight characters and or plots belong to Stephanie Meyer and Little Brown Publishing.

AN: So I've been very absent lately. I'm taking a bit of a break from Broken Bones. I'm not so sure I'm really into it anymore. But it will be finished, one way or another. This little beauty, however, is written in a different universe. I'd been reading a Quil/Claire OS somewhere and I wanted to write one, so here it goes. There may be a Embry/OC story coming soon.

Thanks to all the fans that support and are still supporting my work. It means the world to me that you guys take the time to comment and subscribe, even when I'm a mondo bitch and don't update for months and months. I'm on vacation now, so hopefully I'll be getting some good stuff to you lovelies. Thanks again, I love every single one of you!

"Make everything so simple in a crazy world.

And I'm tryin' to find the words to make everything alright, just by being around boy.

Mmm, you make me wanna say.

Mmm."

©MMM / Laura Izibor

I felt my teeth grind together. It was audible and unfortunately a habit that I'd developed over the years. It always seemed to happen when Quil wouldn't reason with me. That seemed to be happening more and more lately.

"What were you thinking, Claire?" he asked me, his eyebrows quirked and the little veins in his arms popping out. I wanted smile at him and the ridiculousness of this whole argument.

Quil was a character. He thought I was completely oblivious to him and the fact that he'd imprinted on me when I was too young to even speak complete sentences. I'd heard he and my uncle Sam talking about it when I was fourteen and had known about it since.

The current dilemma - I wanted Quil and he wouldn't have it.

I hadn't let on to the fact that I knew about the imprint, but I had let on that my feelings for him were beginning to change. They had begun to change when I ventured in teenage hood. I was eighteen now and he was acting like I was still ten years old.

I was a young adult, I had breast, damn it!

He insisted that I was too young to know what I was feeling, that it was all impulse and hormones. It had been months since the first argument about this.

"He could have been a pedophile or a mass murderer!" Quil said, looking me straight in the eye. His eyes were toasty warm like his body, which was chiseled and just begging for my hands to touch. He wouldn't have it.

"Oh, Quil - come on!" I snapped. "This is La Push. How many mass murderers do you think dwell among us?" I asked him, sarcasm dripping from my lips.

Quil was currently pissed off at the fact that I'd went and met up with a guy that I'd been corresponding with online.

Little did he know, I didn't actually meet up with a random guy. I met up with one of my girlfriend's cousins from the Makah. It was a ploy to make Quilie here jealous, and from the look of rage in his eye, it had worked.

When he'd seen me in the café with the random guy, he literally dragged me away.

"Can you imagine my shock when Anna told me you met up with a stranger!" he asked me. I didn't like the tone of his voice. It was like he was reprimanding me. Hell, he was. I felt like a preschooler being scolded for eating all the paste. "How can you be so stupid, Claire?" he asked.

By this point in the one of many arguments we'd had, I would have groaned and stalked off, but it had been months and months of this building tension.

"How could you be so stupid, Quil?" I grumbled under my breath, not really meaning for him to hear. But, lucky me, the wolfy hearing was sensitive.

"Pardon?" he snapped at me. I glanced up, feeling suddenly irritated with the sneer on his face. "You're calling me stupid when I'm the one that dragged you away from a potential rapist?" he asked me incredulously. "You are completely irrational and thoughtless!" I just stared at him. I knew he had been concerned. If he only knew. "I just don't get why you would do something so dumb!"

That broke the straw on the camels back.

I breeched his personal space in a matter of seconds. I glared up at him. "You're the dumbest fucking guy on the planet, you know that?" I asked him, not really expecting an answer. When he began to retort, I cut him short, "I've been busting my ass for the last six months to get you to take me seriously!" I gritted out, not feeling a bit embarrassed. "I want you, Quil!" I said solemnly. I had never outright said it so the words felt a little foreign coming out of my mouth. "I went out with that guy to make you jealous." I muttered, now stepping back. I had no idea why I'd suddenly lost my nerve, but I did. I didn't feel as bold, but now vulnerable because I knew what was going to come next.

Quil was going to tell me that I was being a hormone crazed eighteen year old. He was going to say that I didn't know what I was talking about and I was just being absurd.

"Claire. . ." he began. The ambiance in his voice let me know that I was completely right in my assumption. "You don't know what you're saying." he said softly now.

I had sworn that I'd never cry over Quil. He'd never gave me a reason to, even all the other times he'd rejected me. But now, it was different. I'd admitted it, in the bluntest way possible, and here he was making up excuses and pushing me away.

Tears threatened to spill over the brims of my eyes. I didn't understand. Weren't imprints destined to be together? Wasn't he supposed the love me and only me? He was acting like being with me was the last thing on the planet that he wanted, and I'll be honest, that shit hurt.

"Why don't you want me?" I asked. It was meant to sound like an innocent question, but my voice was shaky and weak. I couldn't bear to look him in the eye. My own eyes were now spewing stupid tears and I damned myself for looking so pathetically helpless to my feelings.

"It's not that I don't want you , Claire. . ." he began. My eyes snapped up. He was the most confusing male on the planet. I was suddenly irritated again.

"What the hell do you want then, Quil?" I asked, wiping my cheeks of briny tears.

Be strong Claire, be strong!

"Because you don't make any sense!" Quil eyes softened like pools of caramel brown as he approached me. His hands cradled my face.

"You think it doesn't kill me to know that you're seeing other guys, that it doesn't make me so jealous I want to kill someone?" he said, which only served to confuse me even more. "Because it does, Claire. You have no idea." he said, the pads of his thumbs stroking my face. "You also seem to think that I haven't noticed how you've changed. You're amazing and gorgeous, Claire. You always have been." he said sincerely. It was sweet, but made no sense at all.

"What are you talking about?" I asked, pulling his hands off me. "You say I make you jealous and I'm beautiful, blah, blah, blah, but you still don't want me?"

"I want you to have a choice." he said, staring at me like he was hurting more than I was. I knew he was referring to the imprint, which is why I rolled my eyes. Even if it wasn't for the imprint, I probably would still love Quil as much as I do.

"Oh, that's just rich, Quil." I spat at him. "Have you not been here for the last few months in which I've been throwing myself at you!" Quil was quick to respond. "I know about the fucking imprint!" I now seemed to have a case of verbal diarrhea. Quil's eyes bulged.

"What?" he asked me, stunned.

"I've known." I said, shaking my head in disbelief, and staring off at the rain that had begun to assault the window of his my little apartment. "Which is why this is so stupid." I muttered. "You're stuck with my forever and you don't even want me." I mused bitterly.

"Claire, I. . ." I shook my head.

"You're an idiot, Quil." I said, tears beginning to bubble again. "I chose you, even before I knew about the stupid imprint." I said evenly and low. "You say you want me to have a choice - you were my choice."

"Claire, you have to understand why I didn't tell you." he pleaded like him not telling me about the imprint was what was making me hurt so much. I didn't even care about that. I only cared that he was supposed to love me and it didn't seem much like it. "You're so young, Claire. You have to understand where I'm coming from."

After I'd snapped out of the daze that I'd been in, listening to his explanation and watching the rain, I looked at him with dead eyes. "It's obvious I'm not what you're wanting right now, and I'm tired of trying to get you to take me seriously, so why don't you just leave now?" I asked. My voice was expressionless.

Quil's eyes were pained. "Claire. . ."

"Just leave me, Quil." I said, cutting him off and wrapping my arms around myself. "An imprint is supposed to do whatever their better half wants, right?" I asked without giving him time to reply, "Well you won't give me you, so at least give me what I want right now and go." I knew I was hurting him. "I can't do it anymore."

The last thing I'd heard of Quil was the front door clicking shut quietly and the earsplitting howl of a wolf in the forest.

I let the hurt and tears overpower me, curling up in a ball on my couch, I cried, hard. My home was cold without Quil.

It'd been three days since the night I'd bared my feelings to Quil. I hadn't talked to or seen him since, other than my aunt calling me and telling me that he had been at the house earlier in the week. She said he wasn't eating or sleeping at all, he looked ragged and broken.

If anyone knew what he was going through, I did. I couldn't take a the sight of food, sleep was scarce, my tears plentiful and my concentration was completely obliterated.

Of course it made me hurt to think that he was hurting and it was my fault, but Quil didn't want me so I was convinced that breaking ties was the best for both of us. What was the point of simply revolving around each others existence, but never actually having what we both wanted? It was like torture to the heart.

It was the fourth day of no Quil when I was sitting at my kitchen table, trying to work on some schoolwork. I'd just graduated and working to become a registered nurse.

A frantic knock sounded on my door. I rushed, hoping nothing was wrong.

I opened the door to a sunken in, defeated Quil. He was staring at the ground.

"What do you want?" I asked, crossing my arms and watching the water droplets of rain drip off his hair, which was beginning to get shaggy. He looked up at me, eyes melting.

"I love you." was the only thing that came out his mouth. My eyebrows raised in question.

"Do think that you can just come here, after all the bullshit, say I love you and expect it all to be oka-. . ." I was cut off and my world was sent into a spin.

Quil had lurched forward, one hand gripping the back of my head, under my hair, yanking me to him, other arm snaking tightly around me. His lips landed square on mine and he proceeded to kiss me absolutely senseless. I was surrounded with warmth.

I was in shock for the first few seconds of the initial kiss. Soft lips was all I registered. My hands remained stiff near my sides, but when Quil made to pull away, I sprung into action. This was what I wanted for the longest time.

My arms wrapped tightly around his middle, preventing him from pulling away and I kissed him harder. He was so warm and smelt like forest and rain. He felt like Quil. I parted my lips as his hands danced on my ribcage, squeezing gently. The simple gesture made butterflies erupt in my stomach.

He nipped at my lips deliciously, running his tongue over the little bites, soothing away any trace of pain. Finally, after a few moments of torture, his tongue met mine and fought for dominance. I let him win gladly. He began to slowly withdraw, running his tongue over my teeth momentarily and then sucking gently on my bottom lip.

I was completely breathless when we finally separated. His hands were still splayed on my back and hips, covering me easily.

"I'm sorry." he whispered onto my lips. "I want you." he said, kissing my lips sweetly. "I want to be with you." one of his hands ran through my hair. It took me a moment to realized that I was damp from his touch. He'd been standing in the rain, making his touch wet. I didn't care. I stepped forward, pressing my chest into his dripping wet form. "I love you, Claire." he said, as if I was going to tell him I was still angry with him.

Who could still be angry after an apology like that?

"Quil. . ." I said sweetly. "As much as I love to hear you say that, do you really think I've waited this long to hear you talk?" I asked. I took a step back, pulling him with me inside my warm, dry apartment, "You're forgiven, kiss me." I demanded.

He had no issues fulfilling his imprint duties.

He kissed me completely senseless again and I loved him all the more for it.

AN: Short, sweet, and completely to the point. Hope you enjoyed it, babe : )