The Girl With Golden Eyes
Bella Cullen stood in the middle of the house, which a week ago still belonged to Jacob Black. She takes a look around at his small house, a million memories coming back to the forefront of her mind. She shuts her eyes and wishes them away.
She wishes in vain. They refuse to go back into her mind and heart to hide. They refuse to be oppressed any longer. Bella opens her eyes and looks around the small living room. It is exactly the way it was when Billy was still alive, no changes were made. Again memories of her past life bounce around in her head. She remembers eating spaghetti with Jacob, Billy, Charlie, and the Clearwaters, and the countless times on the couch watching monster garage, doing homework, laughing, and most of all living.
Bella stops herself and refuses to keep reminiscing on past years. She turns and stares at the door to the far left of the small hallway, Jacob's room. She had made up her mind before she even came here, she would not go into his room. But her legs had a mind of their own and they were already carrying her forward. She shook her head fiercely as if to say 'no' to an unknown presence and even griped the walls so tight that she left her mark on them but still her legs took several steps closer.
If Bella Cullen could cry, she would.
She arrives at the door, takes in a breath, which she takes because it's a habit, not because it's essential for her survival because she can't die. She let go of that right when she was turned into the beautiful pale, lifeless and cold walking corpse, she had chosen to become. Oh but she wishes for death, she's wished for death every single second since the day she was out on a run, and came to a sudden halt when an unexplainable grief ignited in her dead heart, which made her break into dry sobs and she knew that Jacob Black was no longer among the living.
Her hand reaches the door knob, turns the knob and opens the door. She closes her eyes and takes a step inside. Immediately greeted by the smell of him, her mind drifts to years ago when she was wrapped around his arms and inhaling the smell of his skin. Her dead heart aches and she opens her eyes and what she sees brings her to her knees.
Nothing, there is nothing at all, no pictures on the wall, no night stand, no rug, no evidence that someone existed in this room, only a bed with dull brown sheets. She shakes her head furiously again, turns around and is about to run for it, when she sees two small double doors on the wall, his closet. She opens them in a hurry and there… his clothes neatly hung on hangers, mostly cut offs, a couple of sweats, and she doesn't know why this brings her comfort. She reaches for his clothes and touches them, caresses them really.
She takes a pair of sweats off the hanger and brings them to her nose, she smells him still. The odor might be gruesome to others of her kind, but no, not to her, she has preserved his smell in her memory like she used to smell him when she was alive, when she was not a monster.
"Jacob." Bella says out loud, every bit of yearning in her voice.
She reaches for the hanger and in a blink of an eye it is falling to the floor. She could have caught it, but she didn't. She wanted to pretend. She wanted to believe that it was too fast for her to catch, like everything was when she was a human, when she was the epitome of a klutz. She bends down to pick up the hanger, when she sees a small storage box at the very corner of the closet. She reaches in and grabs it, makes her way to the middle of his bed where she sits down and crosses her legs and stares at the box. She stares for hours. Knowing that what she will find will break her.
With trembling fingers she removes the lid and the place where her dead heart resides aches painfully. The lid of the box has her name written in Jacob's writing and underneath her name there is a picture of Jacob and a beautiful girl in a white wedding dress. She wonders what happened to the girl in the picture why had Jacob not said a word about her. He obviously loved that girl and obviously the girl felt the same way, the picture said it all. The way they seemed so relaxed in each other's company like it was natural for them. The way they were gazing into each other's eyes with such love that it hurt to look at.
She gazes at the picture, Jacob in the black slacks he had shown up in at her very own wedding and the same white button up shirt, untucked, in true Jacob Black fashion, exactly the way she remembered him on her wedding day. Jacob has one hand on the beautiful girl's hips and the other holding her hand mid air. She looks at the girl in the picture and sees how she's gazing up at Jacob so lovingly and she cannot deny that the girl was madly in love with him too.
"Oh my God!" Bella whispers and she brings her hand to her mouth. It's then that she realizes that the girl in the picture was no stranger, it was her, it was her on her wedding day, a day she cannot even remember, only a few hazy memories here and there. The only thing she does remember is Jacob, every moment that Jacob was a part of, she remembered.
Bella is assaulted with so many different emotions. She believed she had fallen in love with the boy in the picture after she was turned. She believed she had fallen in love with him when he kept coming by even though the alpha had forbidden him to make any contact with her. She believed she had truly fallen in love with him after she was a monster, and he told her time and time again that he didn't care, that he still wanted her, still loved her. But she refused to tell him she was in love with him too, because it was too late.
Now she knows differently, as she looks at the picture, she knows with such certainty that she had always loved Jacob. She was always in love with Jacob Black, it had always been him, and will always be him.
She tries to sob and the sounds echo around the room.
"I'm sorry Jacob. I'm so very sorry!" She sobs and pulls her hair in her despair.
The picture falls to the ground, and lands with the back facing up, that is when she sees a hand written message too fancy to belong to Jacob.
Dear Jacob
I thought you should have this, as a reminder that she loves you too.
You are not the only one who sees it. I wished it would have been enough.
Edward.
It makes her cringe. She looks again, this time inside the box and it's filled with pictures of them together, as children, some of the wolf pack with Bella and Jacob at bon fires, private little moments when he had actually convinced her to take a picture with him. She sobs harder and harder as she sees the pictures and she wants to die. Finally she reaches the bottom of the box and breathes in relief, her torment is over.
But not quite, she sees something written on the box and she leans in and takes a closer look.
Bella
I've loved you since we were mere children.
I've loved you when you were away.
I've loved you when you returned.
I've loved you even when you loved someone else.
I've loved you, when you were broken.
I've loved you when you chose someone else.
I've loved you even when chose to be forever the girl with golden eyes.
And I love you still, and always will.
Jacob.
She stays there unable to move, but feels the sobs building up inside her chest. She was a monster. She had loved him, truly loved him and believed that saying nothing to him would be best, not telling him that she had finally realized she loved him the way he was supposed to be loved, even if she was a leech. She thought that he would eventually heal and get over her, and she would be left behind with no one, so she stayed quiet, said nothing and loved him in silence.
She was so wrong. Being here alone in his house was proof enough of how wrong she was and how heavily she would have to pay for that mistake.
She sobbed hard, so hard with so much pain that her cheeks were streaming rivers of red tears.
Jacob Black died at age 25 from a broken heart, his heart stopped beating and the last word he ever spoke was 'Bella.'
Bella Cullen was found nearly dead a couple of hours later with Jacob's name as the last word that escaped from her lips. Her husband Edward Cullen found her and heard her as she left this world. No one had ever heard of a vampire, a cold one, dying without being ripped apart, but Edward knew that she was ripped apart, from the inside.
Bella was buried next to Jacob with her rightful name Isabella Black written on her tomb stone.
"My love, you are home now, may angels help to lead the way to a road that leads back to him," Edward speaks as he kneels down beside Bella's grave and places a kiss on her tombstone. He turns around to the gravestone right next to hers and lightly touches it.
"Jacob Black, she has always belonged to you, brother," Edward said he stands up turns around and walks away.
A smile creeps onto his face as he hears the laughter of both Jake and Bells and he knows that, that is their own gift to him, a sign that they finally found their way to each other, that they were finally together exactly how it should be.
Authors Note: I'm sorry, this idea was in my head for so long and I decided to write it! Review and let me know your reactions!
