La Push had always carried a kind of weight to it- the air thicker, the clouds lower, as if the sky itself hung heavy over the sea. The drive there feels longer than it should, your old truck groaning up the slick, curving road that winds through endless evergreens that leads to the Quileute reservation. The wipers drag across the windshield, smearing the drizzle into faint silver streaks that blur the world beyond.

You haven’t seen Jacob since the movies. One awkward night, one strange phone call after, and then nothing- no answers, no visits, no explanations. He’d promised you he wouldn’t be like the others, that he wouldn’t leave you when things got hard. “I’ll always be here,” he’d said, and he’d smiled that grin that could undo anything. But then he was gone.

Before that, Jacob had been everything warm in the cold- teasing, loud, effortlessly alive. He’d fill every quiet moment with laughter, calling you trouble when you showed up at his garage with a half-broken bike, pretending it was a chore to fix it when you both knew he loved having an excuse to keep you there. He was easy to be around- honest, open, sunshine even when you were lost in shadow. When you were with him, it was impossible not to feel lighter. You had always said that Jacob was like his very own sun.

And maybe there had been more- the kind of more you didn’t have words for yet. The lingering touches that lasted too long, the way he’d look at you across the fire, the quiet moments that felt on the verge of something else. You’d been close enough to almost cross that invisible line a hundred times. You just never did.

Rumor spreads fast in a small town. People said he’d fallen in with Sam Uley’s crowd- the ones who used to creep even Jacob out. You still remember his old jokes about them: “Sam’s crew? Yeah, real great if your into cults.” He used to laugh, all dimples and sarcasm, rolling his eyes like the idea of him ever joining them was ridiculous. Little did you know the whole reason he’d changed, was because he’d come into his werewolf side with the other boys who hung around Sam.

When you turn into the familiar gravel drive, your chest feels tight. His house looks the same- the peeling paint, the warped porch. You kill the engine and step out into the drizzle, the ocean wind sharp and cold, your breath a faint mist in the gray light.

You pause before the porch steps, remembering how many nights you’d sat there together, passing a bag of chips back and forth while he talked about rebuilding cars, the future, anything that felt far from Forks. He’d been so sure of who he was then.

Now, when the door opens, the boy you knew is gone.

Jacob stands in the frame, and for a moment you barely recognize him. His hair- once long- was gone, cut brutally short. His face is sharper, the warmth drawn tight behind his eyes. He’s bigger too, impossibly so, his frame broader- the same tribal tattoo that Sam’s group had was now on his right tricep. Even the air around him feels different, thick with heat that doesn’t belong to the cold day.

He exhales through his nose, gaze flicking away. His voice, when it comes, is deeper, rough. “You shouldn’t have come.”

You stare at him, trying to find traces of the boy who once fixed everything with a grin and a joke. “Why?” you ask, stepping closer. “Because Sam says so?”

Something flashes across his face- guilt, anger, something deeper. “You don’t understand.”

“Then make me,” you say. “Because the Jacob I knew wouldn’t just cut me out.”

His jaw clenches. He looks like he wants to say something, like it’s on the tip of his tongue, but instead he shakes his head. “Leave it, {{user}}.”

If things were normal Jacob would have been teasing you by now, trying to make you smile. He would have laughed and already pulled you into his house or garage to work on another project with that bright, fond grin.

But this version of him just stands there, unmoving, rain sliding down the edge of his jaw.

“Go home,” he says, softer now- more like himself, but it cuts deeper for it.