Fanfic My Fanfic Contest
Name of the fic you are fanfic'ing: Hide and Drink
Word Count: 10,271
Title: Reserve and Renew
Full Summary: Begins after chapter 17 of the original fic, giving Bella's point of view after leaving Edward. What if Charlie had made a slightly different choice about how to protect Bella from herself when she returned?
To view other entries, go there: http:/www (.) fanfiction (.) net/~fanficmyfanfic
Disclaimer: Twilight and all its recognizable situations belong to Stephenie Meyer. Hide and Drink belongs to Savage.
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Once the boat left the shallows, Emmett brought the motor to wide open throttle. The vessel took off like a rocket. Under cover of the engine noise, Bella turned her face into Rosalie's shoulder and sobbed, and sobbed, and sobbed. She took what comfort she could from the familiarity of the cold skin and the delicious scent, but it wasn't good for much.
Rosalie held her and stayed silent for most of the trip, but finally said, "Bella." She spoke quietly, almost in an undertone, but the vampire voice could hold a human's attention no matter what other distractions were present.
Bella lifted her sodden face and wearily focused on the inhumanly gorgeous features beside her. "Yes?" she managed to croak. She tried not to see Edward's face, immobile with despair, as she'd caressed his cheek for… the last time? Oh, God. Oh no.
"I think you need…" Rosalie's thick-lashed golden eyes searched Bella's, looking for something.
Bella couldn't help it; she turned her face out to sea, gazing in the direction from which they'd come.
"What do I need?" she asked distantly. Tears still spilled from her eyes, dripping down her cheeks and off her jaw.
When Rosalie didn't answer for a minute, Bella finally looked back at her, surprising a look of sadness on the immaculate face.
Rosalie finally said, "Whatever you need, I don't think you will find it without... distance."
Bella nodded. "I think I need Edward."
Rosalie shook her head, but said nothing.
( * * * )
The hotel they chose in Fiji was five-star, of course. Nothing but the best for Cullens who hadn't kidnapped a human.
Rosalie ran a bath for Bella in the massive Jacuzzi tub. Her naturally cold physiology didn't prevent her from being able to gauge the temperature perfectly. Bella mechanically climbed in, washed her hair and body while avoiding looking at her scars, and climbed right back out again, donning the first clothes that came to her hands.
"What would you like to eat?" Emmett asked, his usual joviality tempered into mild kindness.
Bella shrugged. "Nothing."
"Don't be ridiculous," Rosalie snapped. "You're going to eat."
When Bella didn't respond, they ordered one of everything on the room service menu.
After the silent servers wheeled the carts in and departed, clutching their ludicrous tips in gloved hands, Rosalie and Emmett zipped around the room so fast they blurred before Bella's eyes. They removed all the domed lids to reveal an array of food that would have stocked an army and tempted a king.
Bella turned away and started trudging toward her bed.
"Bella, don't be—" Rosalie began, rising exasperation in her tone, but Emmett interrupted her.
"Bella, if you don't eat, you won't be able to make it back to see Edward. Your body needs food." Bella paused, arrested by the argument. Slowly, she spun on her heel and looked the food over. "Here's a burger," he pointed out, gently moving the right plate toward her.
Bella looked at the meat and shuddered. Too much like that clerk, too much like… No, no, he hadn't meant that. It had been an accident; it was all her fault anyway.
"This is absolutely ludicrous," Rosalie snapped. "You're grieving for that bastard like a dog whose owner has abandoned it. You idiot! Have you any idea what that boy has put your parents through? Your father didn't believe one line of that story you fed him. He plastered missing posters from Portland to Vancouver and visited our house one hundred and seventeen times—to my knowledge—looking for additional information. Your mother—your mother—showed up after a psychic convinced her that you were dead. Carlisle thought we would have to change our identities again and find another place to live."
Bella stood dumbfounded. The picture of her father, blindly searching the length of the state for her after she'd told him not to worry, first confused, then infuriated her. Poor Charlie. And Renée. Thinking she was dead. There was no way she hadn't bought the psychic's tripe hook, line and sinker.
Edward had…
Edward had caused this?
But it was her fault, because her blood was too tempting, because he couldn't resist…
Fury overwhelmed her. For a moment she thought she wouldn't be able to eat from sheer rage. He'd done this to her. He'd done this to her parents. "This salad looks okay," she finally said begrudgingly, and ate the whole bowl of vegetables before going to bed and pulling the covers over her eyes. She could hear Rosalie and Emmett arguing the second she did so, but they did it at vampire speed and in such low tones that she couldn't understand anything. Eventually she fell asleep.
And awoke in the dark with her throat hurting, Emmett by her side.
"You awake?" he asked, meeting her gaze the minute her eyelids flew open.
"Yeah," she replied, raising one hand to her neck. "What happened?"
"You were calling for him," he answered.
"For who?" Bella asked, although her mind had already focused on the bronze hair and the Adonis-like features.
"For Edward," he replied. "Are you sure you're okay?"
Bella nodded, but before she could speak, Rose called Emmett, and he rose to stalk out of her bedroom. She heard Rosalie and he restart their argument again before she squeezed her eyes shut and forced herself to fall asleep.
( * * * )
By the time they landed at SeaTac, the fire of Bella's anger had faded to cold, gray coals. Carlisle picked them up at the airport. Bella wasn't sure why, considering that vampires didn't get tired and Rosalie and Emmett could have paid long-term parking fees. She didn't ask questions, though, just got in the back of the Mercedes.
"Bella, how are you feeling?" Carlisle wanted to know. He twisted in his seat to look her over from head to toe, face calm and compassionate as ever.
Bella scowled at him. "I'm fine." She didn't bother to keep the hostility from her voice.
It startled him. She saw a quick flicker of bewilderment cross his features as he asked, "I'm sorry; is something the matter?"
"You hurt him," she growled. "You made him sad. You told him he wasn't your son anymore. You're a bad father and you made Edward sad."
Those classically handsome features moved into grief, but his tone was still calm when he replied, "Ah. I'm sure you're right, Bella."
For some reason, his agreement didn't make her feel better at all.
( * * * )
Carlisle got out of the Mercedes to take Bella to Charlie, who had run out to the driveway the instant he saw the doctor pull up.
"Bells!" Charlie grabbed her and pulled her into his embrace. Bella leaned into him for a moment, but then he felt too hot so she straightened within the circle of his arm, turning to face Carlisle.
"Thank you for bringing me home," she said formally.
"You're quite welcome, Bella. I'm only sorry it didn't happen sooner." Carlisle gave her the suitcase she'd brought. "Chief Swan, may I speak to you in private for a moment?"
Bella could feel every muscle in Charlie's body straining with the urge to grab her and inspect her from head to toe. She could see every one of the thousand questions he had, that she was about to refuse to answer, dancing in his eyes. So she was shocked to hear him reply, "Yeah. That'd be fine. Bells, why don't you head on into the house? I'll be right in so we can talk."
Obediently, Bella hoisted the suitcase and trudged toward the house while Carlisle began murmuring to Charlie. She caught a few words: "I'm not certain, but… It seems that she's become attached… Stockholm syndrome…"
The last two words she heard, before she slowly swung the front door closed behind her, were, "Professional help."
( * * * )
School was a nightmare. She'd barely had the chance to introduce herself before she'd been kidnapped, so now Bella, the girl who avoided any sort of attention like the plague, had only notoriety to recommend her to the student body's gaze. She heard the whispers as she shuffled from classroom to classroom in the morning, clutching her books to her chest and staring at the tile in front of her.
"I think she ran away from home."
"Chief Swan said it was kidnapping."
"She's awfully tan for someone who was, like, kept in a basement."
"Look at those scars. Someone hurt her."
"Yeah, it was definitely kidnapping. If she'd run away she wouldn't be hurting so badly."
That last came from the girl wearing the glasses with the kind eyes behind them. Bella couldn't remember her name but she sent her a sideways smile of halfhearted thanks.
Everyone was too hot. When the passing kids jostled her on their way to class, their skin burned her. She longed for the cool touch of Edward's arms as fiercely as a child wanted her mother's embrace… except she couldn't remember Renée's hugs bringing anything other than a mixture of love and anxiety.
The first day was the worst. After that she figured out she could spend lunch in the library and avoid Cullens and humans alike.
( * * * )
After a couple of weeks, her mind thawed enough to start moving at night again. When that happened, the nightmares began, and they didn't stop. Bella awoke in the dark screaming. Charlie rushed in each time. After the first night, he learned not to touch her. Every time he tried, she screamed more and batted away his too-hot skin from her own.
"It's okay," he tried to soothe, over and over again. "You're safe now. You're safe."
After a week, she finally shrieked at him, "I know I'm safe! He's not! All alone—on the beach—there's no one… He's all by himself… I left him…" And she burst into sobs.
The next day, she glanced over Charlie's shoulder as she walked out the door, and saw that he was trawling Google for information on "Mental Health services Port Angeles." That afternoon, she went to Mike Newton's parents' store and applied for a job. They called her the next day for an interview.
She worked every day and night she could, for as many hours as she could. She needed to save as much money as possible.
She was saving up to buy an airplane ticket back to Edward.
( * * * )
By the time mid-April arrived, Bella had saved up enough for half the ticket price. She was sitting in her usual spot, at the end of a table next to Angela Weber, when she sensed every muscle in Angela's body tense. Looking up, she saw Alice Cullen approaching.
"Bella." The bell-like tones of the vampire's voice brought a rush of sentimental tears to Bella's eyes. "May I speak to you for a moment? In private?"
Bella nodded silently and rose, gathering up her books. She hadn't bought lunch. She was never hungry anymore. She followed Alice out of the cafeteria, eyes on her feet. When they stood alone in the hallway, Alice turned to her and rested her chilled hand upon Bella's elbow. "Bella, I'm concerned about Edward," she said without preamble. "All the visions I have indicate that he hasn't moved for weeks on the beach, and won't any time soon."
Bella nodded, blinking back more tears. Every word Alice spoke felt like a blow. "I was afraid—I've been so scared…" she choked out, and couldn't continue.
Alice's wide eyes shone with concern. "I know you're part of his future. You've already decided to go see him, right? I see you in different scenarios, depending on what decisions you've made that day."
Bella nodded. "I've got some money saved up, but it's not quite enough. Actually, it's only half enough."
"You need to be the one who retrieves him," Alice urged her. "Every time one of us tries to go get him it ends in disaster in the future. You're the only one who can get him safely back."
Bella smiled at her. The relief in having someone else's support was immeasurable. "I'll go as soon as I have enough money, okay?"
Alice shook her head frantically. "No! Don't do that. If you leave the second you get the money your father will go insane. You could lose your chance."
Wow. Having a co-conspirator who could see the future was amazingly helpful. Bella put her hand over Alice's, shivering with delight at the familiar freeze. "Okay. Thanks."
Over the next two weeks the girls ate lunch together every day, making and discarding various plans to get Bella back to Edward. Jasper kept his distance—Alice said she couldn't guarantee he wouldn't snap and try to eat Bella, so he didn't want to risk it. Bella tried to be patient, as the vampire had counseled, but one day Alice murmured, "He's worse." She stared at her untouched food.
Bella swallowed the sudden lump of fear that sprang into her throat. "Worse? How? What's happened?"
Alice simply shook her head and didn't answer.
That afternoon, Bella went right to Newton's after school, but instead of working her shift she picked up her check and headed straight for the bank to cash it. After she pulled all her money out, she went home and threw some of her things into her suitcase without really seeing what she packed. Then she got into her old pickup truck and went to SeaTac.
Once she walked in, she headed straight to the nearest airline she saw and plunked down her identification. "I'd like to buy an international ticket, please," she told the man behind the counter.
"Where to?" he asked, not unreasonably.
"Um…" Bella thought for a minute, then decided, "Fiji." It was the closest destination with an airport, probably.
"I.D., please?"
She shoved her passport and driver's license to him.
Still looking bored, the airline worker picked up the driver's license and typed in the numbers, then picked up her passport and flipped through the pages. Bella tried to remember not to tap her fingers on the counter while she waited, but her foot jiggled. She had to move; it was impossible to hold still. She wondered how she would ever make it the full day in transit.
She noticed that the clerk had started frowning just a second before he held up the driver's license again, and compared it to the passport.
"So…" he said, giving her a skeptical look over his eyeglasses. "Is it 'Swan,' or is it 'Masen?'"
Oh no. Oh no. In her hurry she'd grabbed the passport Edward had made for her, instead of the one she'd bought for the trip Renée had asked her to plan that had never materialized.
"Swan," she murmured.
"The birthdates don't match here," the clerk noted.
Bella started shaking. This was so bad. She was going to be arrested. They were going to think she was a terrorist.
"Miss, I'm going to need to speak to a parent," he said heavily. "I'm going to need to know that someone responsible will take you home, because what you've attempted today is a serious crime."
Bella's mind flipped through various possibilities. She could call Alice and have her pose as her mother over the phone, but the vampire could never pick her up while playing the same charade. If she tried Carlisle—but no, he barely looked older than she.
Bella sighed against the sickness in her gut and gave the clerk her father's cell phone number.
( * * * )
Charlie, predictably, was furious.
Unpredictably, he didn't simply tell her that she was grounded for life. No, he made her quit her job, and he made her withdraw from school, and then he took her to the one place she could never have predicted, the one place Alice's visions had never warned against.
"You remember my friend Billy," he growled as they pulled up in front of the small cabin. "Well, he's always hated the Cullens, and I wish to God I'd listened to the man when I had the chance. I think I can trust him to make sure you don't run off to SeaTac. You're gonna be doing homeschool through a website I found, but I can tell you right now that it's gonna be rough because they've got internet through dial-up still. I don't give a rat's ass by this point, Bells. I don't know what the hell that boy did to you, but I see the scars all over your skin and it makes me want to kill him, and then you won't give me any sort of information and it makes me want to rip his head off. Boarding school in New Hampshire my ass."
Bella remained silent, staring at the little house before her. She'd heard one version or another of this rant on constant repeat for the past forty-eight hours, and knew from experience that any sort of interruption led to further raging.
"And Billy's got his son Jake living here too. You played with Jake a lot as a kid."
She remembered. The mud he'd dumped in her hair had been traumatic to her young self.
"The guy's huge, so I figure if a Cullen comes sniffing around here he'll be able to chase them off. I'm at the end of my rope, Bella. You won't let me help you, you won't let me get you help, that therapist we tried told me she couldn't help someone who wouldn't talk at all, and I can't trust the school officials to keep you on campus either. So this is it. This is my last-ditch effort to be more than a half-assed dad to you."
"You're not a half-assed dad," she muttered, crossing her arms tightly over her chest.
"Tell me that when I can keep you from trying to contact your kidnapper on a regular basis," he snapped back with uncharacteristic speed.
Bella had no answer for that.
The front door opened, and a man she vaguely recognized as Billy rolled out in a wheelchair, waving a welcome. At the same time, a gorgeous Quileute man in his mid-twenties rounded the house and raised his hand.
Bella startled herself with the pale flare of interest she felt toward the younger man. "Who's that guy?"
Charlie snorted. "That's Jacob Black."
Bella drew her eyebrows down in puzzlement. "I thought he was younger than me. Remember that sandbox, and him dumping the truck on my head?"
Charlie gave her a sideways glance. "He's sixteen, but he sure doesn't look it, does he?"
The momentary glow of attention faded into her usual gray perspective. She shrugged and opened the door. "No. Guess not."
"Hi guys," Billy said from the porch. Bella waved. Charlie popped the cruiser's trunk and started unloading the groceries he'd brought with them.
"Charlie!" Jacob came running over and hefted Bella's suitcase effortlessly, like lifting a bag of feathers. "I didn't expect you guys till dinner—I didn't get a chance to sweep the room Bella's gonna be using." Turning to Bella, he said with a careless smile lighting up his face, "Hey. I'm Jake. Probably you don't remember me."
To her surprise, Bella felt the corners of her lips turn slightly upward in response to his sunny expression. "I, um… I remember wet dirt in my hair pretty well," she mumbled.
Jake laughed as if she'd made a funny joke. The sound reminded Bella, for the first time in months, that once upon a time she'd been a little funny, in a way that people didn't seem to expect. She would slip in snide comments at odd moments in her normal tone of voice, so that it took most people a second to realize who spoke, and what she said. She'd forgotten that part of herself, because Edward seemed never to be able to pick up on the most blatant human humor, and since she'd left him she hadn't felt like kidding much. She felt the smile on her face widen, and almost frowned in response. It was such an unfamiliar sensation.
"C'mon, I'll show you where you're going to be staying. You do remember Rachel and Rebecca, though, right?" he asked, putting one hand on her elbow to guide her inside.
Bella gasped and yanked her arm away from him involuntarily. He was so hot!
Immediately, she felt like a total jerk. Glancing up guiltily, she saw puzzlement overtake the handsome features looming over her… but no anger or hurt. The lack of defensiveness on his face freed her tongue from its usual incompetence, and allowed her to mutter, "Um. Sorry."
"S'okay." He didn't touch her again, just led her up the steps and into the house. "Like I was saying, you remember Rachel and Rebecca, so probably you remember their room. Not much has changed, because they haven't been home in like two years or something." He pushed the door open and stood, waiting for her to step into the room first, before following and setting the suitcase on the floor.
Bella surveyed her new abode. To her surprise, it was pretty clean—Jake must have made a real effort, since there was no way Billy could have fit into the crowded space. It was about two-thirds the size of her room back at Charlie's house, and had twice as much furniture. There was a desk with a kitchen chair in front of it, a massive dresser, a small closet standing open to display its emptiness, and a set of twin bunk beds. Hardly any light filtered through the one small window. Bella walked to it and stood next to the panes anyway, looking out into the forest behind the house. There was a large…shed?
"That's my garage," Jake informed her. She jumped. How had he drawn so close to her shoulder without her noticing? It was like he was so nonthreatening, despite his massive height, that she forgot to be wary of his movements. "I like to work on cars. I'm restoring a Rabbit right now, but I did your truck first. She's still running okay, right?"
"She?" Bella asked, turning to give him another small, foreign-feeling smile.
"She," he replied with a firm nod that brooked no argument.
Which of course made Bella want to argue more. "Everyone knows that two-door vehicles are all boys," she objected.
That same sunny grin dawned, brightening the entire room with its warmth. "Except for trucks. The bed counts for something."
"Something male," Bella corrected loftily, then snapped her mouth shut in confusion. What was happening? She wasn't feeling like herself. She wasn't—she wasn't miserable. Except that couldn't be right, because surely she hadn't been miserable all the time, even before she'd come to Forks. Had she? She couldn't remember.
She couldn't remember so much…
Edward's face, set in stone misery as she'd caressed him and said "Goodbye." That was the memory to which she'd clung for months now. The reason she did what she did, the reason she felt so terrible all the time. The image Alice had described of him sitting motionless on that beach, buried under gathering sand, had spurred her into further action, but it was the sadness that had started her down this path.
"Bella? Are you okay?"
Pulled from her reverie, Bella focused on Jake's suddenly worried countenance. And for once, she didn't see Edward hovering between the real world and her like a translucent veil. She saw a little boy, face screwed up in hilarity, laughing uproariously at her dismay while she shrieked and batted at the dirt in her long brown hair.
"Um… Yeah. Yeah, I'm okay. Do you guys want me to cook dinner or anything? Is Billy on some special diet because of the diabetes?"
Jake snorted. "Yeah, it's the 'ignore everything the nutritionist said at the doctor's office and eat whatever the hell I want' diet. It's worked out for him real well, so far. I guess you can tell by the wheelchair."
Bella giggled—just the smallest sound of amusement, but it startled her so much that she almost flinched. She heard a strangled noise from the doorway and turned to see Charlie frozen there, staring between Jake and her as if he'd just witnessed a miracle.
After a second, her father cleared his throat and said, "I'm going to stay for dinner, if you're cooking."
Bella nodded. "Of course, Ch—Dad. I'll cook."
After dinner, and some awkward, stern words in private about the behavior he expected of her while she was a guest of the Blacks, Charlie drove away, taking her cell phone with him. Bella broke out her laptop and connected it to Jake's modem. The first thing she Googled was "diabetic diet."
( * * * )
Charlie had been right about the slow speed of the Internet connection driving her crazy. Bella felt like she'd go insane within the first day of trying to do her class work online. Charlie steadfastly refused to upgrade the service, though. When she finally demanded an explanation over the Blacks' ancient phone—it was so old it actually had a cord—he told her, "Because travel websites are made for high-speed connections nowadays, and I figure they won't load up right while you're there."
"Okay," Bella said blankly. Wow. Apparently he'd given up on dancing around any of the topics related to her escape attempts.
It took her five hours to finally get everything completed, on most days. Once she succeeded, she cleaned the house from top to bottom. Billy never seemed to notice. He was always engrossed in some ball game or other. She would have gone outside just for a change of scenery, but the rain never let up for an instant for four long weeks.
Jake came home a little before three. The first day, she offered to help with his homework, but he just laughed at her and said, "Why don't you come back to the garage with me? You've got to be going nuts stuck in here."
She followed him and sat on a dilapidated futon mattress he dragged onto the bare floor in deference to her whining, watching him as he tinkered with part after part on the Rabbit. He never pried or stared at her scars. Neither did his friends who came over to hang out and playfully flirt with her, despite her lack of response to their efforts. He must have warned them in advance. Eventually she felt at ease enough to take off her hoodie around him.
Then he did ask a question, with apparent nonchalance: "Don't you get cold?"
She looked down, noting with vague surprise the gooseflesh on her arms. "I like the cold," she answered simply, and he didn't push for more of an explanation.
Sometimes, when he was gone, she would take a break from her school work and lie down on the chilled, concrete floor, just to remember what it had felt like to press against Edward's immaculate form. It didn't feel quite as good as she remembered, but then nothing felt the same.
Around five, she started dinner. At first Billy complained and wouldn't eat the healthy foods she prepared, but then she struck a deal with him: she would eat as much as he did. When he saw she meant it, he began to eat enough for a horse. Jake ate enough for an entire stable.
Jake was touchy-feely by nature. She'd never see a guy kiss his dad on a regular basis before, but Jake would casually sling his arms around Billy from behind and kiss the top of his head while Billy watched TV, and Billy would just pat his arm and absently respond, "Love you." Bella watched their easy interactions with an indefinable mix of emotion churning in her stomach. Whenever Jake reached to guide her by her elbow or lay his hand on her shoulder, though, she jerked away from his insanely hot touch. She couldn't help it, although she also couldn't have defined what she feared from him. He remembered to keep his hands to himself within the first week.
Jake asked her lots of questions about herself, though never about her kidnapping.
"What's your favorite color?"
"What's the last movie you saw in the theater? Did you like it? What's your favorite movie?"
"If you could drive any car in the world, what would it be?"
"Do you miss your mom?"
"Do you miss yours?" she asked in return after answering "yes."
He bent under the hood, angling his face away from her. After a moment, the answer wafted from the engine compartment. "Every day."
She sat in silence, digesting the words, unsure of how to redirect the conversation.
He asked her, "Do you ever wish you weren't an only child?" and she smiled before she replied, "Sometimes."
Nothing was ever uncomfortable with Jake. In the rare awkward moment, he always found a way to say something just funny enough to ease the tension without pretending the reason for it hadn't existed.
On the first day of the fifth week, the email from Alice arrived in her inbox.
Dear Bella,
I know you must be on the reservation, because the wolves interfere with my visions and I can no longer see you.
Bella, you need to know that there's been no improvement in Edward's future. I see him sitting on that beach for as far into the next few years as my visions can reach. Any time one of our family decides to go retrieve him, it ends badly, so none of us have taken the risk.
I'm not certain what you know about our interactions with the mutts, but I cannot broach their territory without serious repercussions to our family. However, if you can meet me at the boundary on La Push road, I'll be able to see the moment at which you'll arrive and meet you there. We can go together to the island. Please, Bella. If you love my brother, meet me there. Carlisle refuses to take action. Without you, Edward's situation will be hopeless… I fear forever.
Yours,
Alice Cullen
Bella felt as if the email had dipped her in ice water. She stared at her laptop's screen, her outer immobility belying her increasingly frantic internal response. What could she do? How could she go? What would Charlie do? But Edward—he would—he wouldn't die, no, but he was in so much pain—
Like that poor man he killed? Like all those people he killed? Or how about that little boy he terrorized? a rebellious voice whispered in her head, but she shut it down. He hadn't meant that. He'd been out of control then, a slave to her blood. If she hadn't been too tempting for her own good he never would have done that. He would never do it again, not now that he'd promised…
Except he'd promised before the island…
She re-read the email, frowning in confusion. What on earth did Alice mean about the wolves? She'd heard howling on a regular basis during her time at the reservation—Jacob and the other boys called it "the rez"— but wolves were no match for a vampire, after all. They could kill sharks, let alone the scrubby little pack animals native to the Pacific Northwest.
They could kill humans, the rebellious voice reminded her.
She squashed it again, and began to plan just before Jake spoke behind her. "Bells? Do you want me to get dinner tonight? I can, you know—I used to cook before you got here."
"I don't think Steak-Ums are a good meal plan," she teased, and closed her laptop before he could get a look at it.
( * * * )
She waited for three days, making every attempt to act normal. Keeping up the charade proved especially difficult around Jacob, though; she felt ridiculously guilty about lying to him. Every time she was around him her heart picked up its pace to frantic levels, and he would give a narrow-eyed, considering look as if he could hear it. Once, she would have sworn he sniffed her neck like a dog trying to catch a scent. When she playfully demanded to know what he was doing, he just shrugged and grinned at her, but he looked uneasy.
She waited till midnight on the third night, then sneaked out with only her wallet. Cullen resources could surely spring for some new clothes, considering she was doing this for their son/brother. ("Sworn enemy" in Rosalie's case—no, no. She wasn't thinking about Rosalie, or what Rosalie would say if she could see her embarking on this mission to rescue the vampire Rosalie considered a murderer and little better than a rapist.)
She got all the way to La Push Road, stumbling down the ill-lit rez roads until she came to the entrance, before she saw the Mercedes' headlights far off in the distance. At least it was a straight line. She took off, walking fast because she didn't want to lose her momentum.
Because you don't want to talk yourself out of it, the rebellious voice said, and for the first time she noticed that it sounded a lot like Jacob. Except he never spoke in that sharp, sarcastic tone. He was always so kind… to her…
Bella's feet slowed beneath her without her consciously ordering them to do so.
She shook off the momentary qualm and kept walking, more slowly than before. She drew closer and closer to the headlights' glow, focusing on them to keep from looking around her. To keep from thinking.
Edward had held that little boy by the throat and threatened to kill him. Alice had said that he meant every word. But then he had changed. He had grown. Surely everyone deserved a second chance. He had fallen in love with her… She smiled to remember his rhapsodic admiration of her breasts. Yes. He was different now and that was that and she wouldn't leave him to not-rot on that beach when she could do something about it. She straightened her shoulders and stepped forward with renewed resolve, heedless of the rain soaking her from head to toe.
A horse-sized shadow moved through the darkness on her right.
Bella started, peering into the forest, but saw no more movements until she started walking slowly again. Then she caught two more shadows lurking to her left out of the corner of her eye. When she froze, they did too.
Heart pounding in her throat, she stepped forward once. Twice.
On the third step, a gigantic wolf darted in front of her, snarling and snapping—but not at her. At Alice's car. Bella screamed, but it didn't even flinch, let alone turn on her. A second wolf joined him, then two more. All of them completely ignored her, focusing instead on the car, howling and yapping.
The door opened. Alice stepped out, wearing a Prada raincoat and looking as immaculate as always.
"Let her pass," she hissed at the wolves, so low that Bella could barely hear her over the sound of the rain and the windshield wipers and most of all the constant growling emitting from the wolves' chests.
"Alice, why are you talking to them?" Bella shrieked. "Just grab me and get me out of here!"
Alice met her eyes through the rain and the massive bodies standing between Bella and her. "I can't, Bella," she replied. "You're going to have to come to me." She glared at the wolves again. "Of your own free will, of course."
"They're going to eat me!" Bella protested, backing away.
"No they won't!" Alice contradicted, amazed puzzlement spreading across her delicate face. "Why in heaven's name would werewolves be interested in a human?"
Bella shook convulsively, clutching her arms around herself and shaking her head. No. No. No. "W—w—werewolves?" she stuttered through suddenly numb lips. "Alice, what the hell are you talking about?"
One of the gigantic forms left the line and loped into the forest while Bella screamed again and shrank further back. A second later, a man ran out, clad only in cutoffs. Bella peered at him. How on earth had he managed to avoid the wolf? With a stab of terror, she finally recognized his face.
"Jake, no!" she yelled. "Go back! Get away from here! Run!"
He completely ignored her and ran to stand between the wolves, who parted to make room for him. Bella gaped in disbelief.
Jake spoke only to Alice. "You stupid leech," he said in tones of deep loathing. "She didn't know about us."
Alice hissed. For the first time ever, she looked utterly other than human, unaffected by the elements, crouched in a predator's defensive pose, hair standing on end and golden eyes burning with hate as she focused on Jacob. Her teeth shone in the headlights' illumination, bared by the curl of her lips.
"L-leech?" Bella stuttered. Her brain flailed, trying to put all the clues together. Leeches—sucked blood—vampires did—Jake knew, oh God, he knew—but Alice had said—
"Jake?" she quavered, and he half-turned to look at her, though he kept one eye on Alice. "Are you a werewolf?"
He nodded slowly, eyes dark with secrets. His unnaturally high temperature took on a sudden new significance. "Bells, I can't keep you here," Jake said. "The leech is right about that. If you choose to leave, that's it. You'll be free to go, at least until I can get your dad on the phone."
Charlie. His bitter words of self-reproach floated through her memory: last-ditch effort to be more than a half-assed dad to you… If she left, he'd be convinced he had failed again.
Jake continued, "I also won't be able to keep you safe. We won't be able to keep you safe. And…" he hesitated. The biggest wolf, a huge black monster, growled at him. He shot it a resentful glance before continuing, "We won't be able to protect any of the people who might be hurt if you help the bloodsucker who took you."
Bella shook her head again. "No, he said he wouldn't do that anymore! He promised if I just lay there and let him take what he wanted that he wouldn't hurt anybody else, and-" The sudden flash of mixed rage and pity that crossed Jake's face silenced her.
Alice said, "Bella, come with me. Come with me now. He hasn't moved for months on that beach. Help me save Edward."
Jake snorted. "Save him from what?" he asked, without looking away from Bella. "Turning into an Easter Island head? Good riddance."
Bella felt hot tears join the cold rain freezing her cheeks. "He's so sad," she croaked out.
Alice nodded. "He is," she confirmed, looking as though she would cry too if she were capable.
"You don't understand, Jake," Bella pleaded, looking at him again. "When she tells me about him, how awful it is for him, it feels like it's hurting me too!"
Jake shook his head at her. "Bells, if there's one thing the past month has shown me, it's that you don't even know when you're in pain anymore. It feels like it's hurting you too because you are hurting. All the time. Hearing about him just reminds you. It's not his pain you're feeling, it's yours." He stepped closer. "Look at yourself right now. Look at the marks he left all over you. Do you really think he only scarred your skin?"
Bella glanced down and saw the scars, stark white against the more natural paleness of her skin, cutting through the spattering of freckles like meteor streaks across the night sky.
His fingernail, slicing through the skin, lifting out her artery, after he'd kissed her breasts and licked her chest…
"Bells." Jacob was close now, so close that she could feel the heat radiating from his body.
Back in Phoenix she'd always loved the heat. Her friends would turn the air conditioning up as high as it would go and complain to her when she rolled the tinted windows of their cars down to soak up the sun. She'd loved the sun on the island too, though. Here in Washington she never saw the sun.
Except when it dawned on Jacob's face, every time he smiled.
He bent to look into her eyes, still careful not to touch her. "Would you please stay here with me?" No threats, no coercion. Just a simple request.
Bella hesitated, glancing over his shoulder. Alice had frozen into that unnatural immobility that indicated deep distress in her kind.
"Bella, no!" she called, staring at nothing—staring into the future.
Bella hadn't realized she'd already arrived at a decision until she heard Alice's words. She said shakily, "I'm sorry, Alice."
"Bella, we have to do something before it's too late!" Alice shouted.
Bella hugged herself even more tightly, backing away. "I'm sorry, Alice," she apologized on a sob. "So, so sorry."
"Don't do this, Bella!" Alice pleaded.
Bella tried to answer, but she could only cry. Once she started, she couldn't stop.
Jake stood up straight, blocking her view of Alice, but she could have easily looked around him if she'd wanted to do so. Instead, she turned around, still hunched over and weeping, and started walking back to the house, Jake matching her step for unsteady step.
"Do you want me to carry you?" he asked at one point, but she just shook her head and kept going. She walked all the way home under her own power.
Bella cried all night, but Jake sat next to the bed so she didn't feel alone, even though he still didn't touch her. He didn't touch her the next day, when she called Charlie and confessed what she'd almost done, and listened to him impotently rant. He didn't touch her the next week, when she returned to Port Angeles to revisit therapy, this time with the necessary addition of talking. (To her surprise, she found that she could tell the therapist just about anything, barring Edward's true nature.) Bella was good with the distance between them. Her therapist told her she needed to regain mastery over her own body, and part of that process was deciding who should be allowed to access it in any way.
After a couple of months at the Black house, though, she began to have dreams about Jake touching her. When they began, dream-Jacob would just touch her hand, and her skin would catch on fire, literally, the orange flames running up her arm while she watched in horrified fascination. The first time it happened, she shied away from him the entire next day, until at last he demanded in exasperation, "What the hell is the matter? Did I do something?" (He'd reached for a wrench three feet away from her foot and she'd jerked her leg back as if he'd grabbed at it.)
"I had a dream you touched me," Bella blurted in response.
Jake froze and stared at her.
"And what happened then?" he asked after a minute of strained silence.
She shrugged. "I, um, I caught on fire. Like your hand was a match and my skin was firewood."
He watched her for a little while longer, as if waiting for additional information, but she offered nothing else. Finally he said, "That sounds scary."
She nodded. "It was."
They looked into each other's eyes until at last she dropped her gaze back to her open Biology textbook.
After a while, dream-Jacob started getting bolder. She began to simultaneously dread and delight in the nighttime visits. She dreaded them because she always felt awkward around the real Jacob the next day, as if she'd actually propositioned the boy she'd come to think of as her best friend. But she delighted in the way his hands would slide up her arms, down her sides, over her breasts, across her hips. It was what she imagined a visit from Apollo would feel like, when she read the mythology unit in her literature class—a sun god's touch soaking into every pore of her skin.
Once, she dreamed he lay on top of her. Just the feel of his weight pressing her into her mattress was enough to wake her up already in the middle of an orgasm. Bella couldn't sleep for the rest of the night; she kept picturing scenarios in which she walked into Jake's room and climbed into bed next to him—naked—and then…
She didn't want to go there, so instead she hid under the covers and listened to Jacob's deep, even breathing in the next room. She couldn't meet his eyes for a week, and he kept on sniffing at her until at last she snapped out a demand that he buy her new body wash if he thought hers did such a bad job.
Jacob watched her from a room's worth of distance for a week after that, and Bella thought that she might die from the deprivation of his closeness. When he finally hovered behind her in the kitchen and asked, "Do you want help chopping those?" she almost wept with relief at the heat pressing into her back, but she blamed the onions.
That night, she joined him out in the garage, watching him work in the naked light from the work lamp suspended overhead and pretending to read Macbeth. Always hot to begin with, once he got working Jake quickly built up a sheen of sweat, which emphasized the definition of every muscle in his (currently bare) torso. Bella tried not to drool on her chin while she kept an eye on him from beneath lowered lashes.
After fifteen minutes, she slammed her book shut in a fit of pique when she realized she had just re-read the same monologue five times and still had no clue what it said. Jacob started a little at the noise and turned to look at her. "Everything okay?"
She pouted a little. "I'm bored." I'm horny seemed like a bad revelation to make, no matter how honest it was.
"That's not surprising. You've barely left the rez in four months and this el Niño weather sucks ass." She grimaced at the expression. He automatically said, "Sorry. Do you want to go cliff diving tomorrow?"
"No!" she answered with a shudder. "I want to live, thanks anyway." She'd been sitting with her legs straight in front of her; she shifted to cross them instead. The instant she did, his nostrils flared and he glanced down at the floor with sudden interest.
"Why do you do that?" Bella demanded in exasperation.
Jacob jerked his head up to give her a disingenuous stare. "Do what?"
"You know…" She made an irritable wave with one hand. "Sniff."
He shrugged and stared at his bare feet again. "I don't know what you mean."
"Do I… stink? I know you can smell better than regular people, like, maybe I smell okay to me but you can catch all the stuff I missed and I should have scrubbed more or differently or something?"
Jake directed an incredulous gaze her way. "Of course not! You smell amazing, Bells, like, so good—" He snapped his mouth shut and turned red.
"Then what?"
He just shrugged and wouldn't answer.
Bella turned the matter over in her mind, trying to find a common link to his behavior and what had been happening every time he… ooohhhh.
"It is me," she said, horrified, before she realized what was coming out of her mouth. "It's my..." She made a mortified gesture toward the general area between her legs.
Jacob stepped closer, and Bella jumped to her feet, pressing her thighs together once she stood. "I'm sorry, Bells." He looked miserably guilty. "I can't help it. Do you want me to leave you alone?"
Bella shook her head no, eyebrows furrowing. "Don't be ridiculous! This is your garage; I'm not going to kick you out of it. I'm just, um… I'll go inside."
"I don't want you to leave." He looked even more miserable. "I don't want you to be freaked out by being around me. I'm already a mutant. I don't want to be a mutant who only has mutant friends too."
Bella stepped toward him before she thought better of it. "No, Jake! I'm not freaked out by you, I'm kind of freaked out by, um, by me? I guess? It's sort of embarrassing, you know? I mean, what if every time you felt, um, like that, the person you were with could, um, tell, because…" She trailed off because as she spoke her gaze had involuntarily dropped to his crotch. The bulge she saw there reminded her that that she wasn't the only one who could be unintentionally obvious about the effect someone else had on her. "Nobody's touched me since I got back," she continued, but her voice sounded faraway in her own ears. "That might be… all there is to it…" Somehow, she'd drawn closer to him without noticing her movement.
She heard Jake swallow, but didn't see it, because she couldn't seem to stop staring at his erection through his shorts. She closed her eyes rather than look away.
"I could touch you," he offered, and his husky voice had gone to a deeper register. "If you wanted me to."
Bella nodded, keeping her eyes closed.
"Would you—can you say it?" he asked. The uncertainty in his tone struck her as strange. Jake never sounded uncertain. "I just want to be sure, Bells."
It was the "Bells" that did it. Only two men ever called her that, and they were the only two people in the world who never asked anything of her, other than to keep herself safe. "Please touch me, Jake," she whispered, and held out her hand.
She expected him to take it into a firm hold, but instead she felt the faintest brush of his fingertips, trailing across the inside of her wrist in a straight line of fire. He gently grasped her hand with one of his and rotated it, exposing the palm, and traced the inside of her wrist again, and again. She opened her eyes to see him staring, for the first time, at her scars.
"They're so cold," he said. He sounded deeply sad, as if he had received terrible news, or watched a tragic accident unfold before his eyes without being able to prevent it. "You're so cold, Bella."
"I'm always cold now."
"I'm warm enough to make up the difference," he said, slowly, slowly pulling her into an hug.
She remembered Edward explaining how his body would retain heat for a time—and then always return to its natural state of frigidity. She wondered for a second if he had, in fact, managed to turn her—if somehow she just hadn't noticed and if the weird distance she felt from her own life, sometimes, was the result of having lost it when she wasn't paying attention.
Jacob's arms closed behind her back. She jerked, hearing a strange half-moan, half-scream tear out of her throat at the sudden infusion of superhuman warmth.
"It's okay," Jacob whispered. "It's okay. You don't have to do this. You can leave." His arms stayed where they were, barely resting against her body.
Still moving in slow motion, he inched the slightest bit closer. Bella tried to catch her breath, but she heard it racing through her lungs too fast, way too fast, as she allowed her cheek to come into contact with his chest.
She might as well have laid her face against a hot griddle. She screamed again, trembling from head to toe. He started, but she kept her head where it was, hearing his heart beat next to her ear. The foreign sound grounded her, reminding her of her humanity. This was the way things were supposed to be. Chests were supposed to rise and fall with the motion of the lungs beneath them. Hearts were supposed to pound. People were supposed to share body heat, not have one partner suck the warmth from the other until glacial temperatures felt normal.
"Are you okay?" Jacob asked. She realized that she wasn't the only one trembling.
She nodded again, and turned her face into his chest, breathing him in. She noticed her arms hung at her sides; she raised them to wrap around his waist.
They stood unmoving while minutes ticked past.
Bella's temperature soared, thawing her out of the iceberg that had held her encased in its thrall since she'd made her deal with Edward. Finally, she felt her skin flush with heat, her pulse thread through her veins. Finally, her scars felt cold rather than normal.
Jake's hands began to slide up and down her back.
"I asked him to have sex with me," Bella heard herself say.
The hands stopped moving for a bare second, then continued their prescribed path. "You did?" He clearly worked hard to keep the question casual.
"I told him I didn't want to die without having done it," she confessed. "That sounds really juvenile, doesn't it?"
He shrugged. "Maybe. I mean, I don't know. I don't want to die without doing it first."
She giggled damply. "Why am I not surprised?"
"Because you know I'm a teenage guy. Or maybe it's the hard-on."
Oh right. His erection still pressed against her belly, and it hadn't gotten any smaller, that was for sure. It didn't bother her at all. It was cool to know he felt that way about her damaged, dangerous body. She giggled. "That must be it. Anyway, we never did."
"Thank fuck for that."
"Jake!" She smacked his back, just a little.
"Sorry. Not really, though. You feel bad enough all the time for the stuff you did give him, even though it was what you had to do to keep you and everyone around you as safe as you could. Think about how awful you'd feel if that had happened too."
"I don't want to." Her fingers started moving of their own accord, tracing patterns across the muscles of his back. "I want to think about something else."
One of his hands moved up to cup the back of her head, rubbing the nape of her neck under her hair. "What do you want to think about, then?"
"Oooh. Don't stop doing that." She arched back into his grasp. "God, Jake—I didn't know—"
"You're crying," he said, voice sharp with concern.
She shook her head and smiled up at him. "It's okay. I just didn't realize how much I missed being touched. I didn't know how good it would feel, um… for you to touch me." She was fully aroused for the first waking moment since she returned to Washington. The throb of desire between her legs and in her chest felt so wonderful. Even the tautening in her nipples, always such an embarrassment before—everything—felt good, because that was what they were supposed to do and they were doing it for a good reason this time. For Jake, who was hot and sweet and sexy.
"I didn't know either." He sounded a little strained, but surely it couldn't be from supporting her. She looked at his face and caught him staring at her chest. "You're so pretty."
"You mean my boobs are?" she asked with another giggle.
"Uh-huh."
She snorted with laughter at the honest approval. "Edward said they were perfect." She couldn't keep the tiniest thread of bitterness from weaving itself through the words.
Jake slid his hands up her ribcage to either side of her breasts. Twenty minutes ago the action would have shocked her into hysterics. Now it just felt right. "Oh, I doubt it," he answered after a moment.
It was the best thing he could have said, and it gave her new courage. Bella rushed the words out before she could lose her nerve. "Do you want to take a look and make sure?"
He went immobile again. "Are you sure?"
Bella nodded. A strange desperation—to have Jake look at and touch everything Edward had touched before him, to make sure she was still human, and attractive to non-monsters—overwhelmed her. "Yes, please."
When he still didn't move, she made an impatient sound and lifted her shirt over her head. Jake inhaled sharply at the sight before him. She wore her usual white cotton underwire—just because she was small didn't mean she wanted to be less than perky—but he couldn't have looked more impressed if she'd worn something from Frederick's.
"Well," he choked out. "Uh, they're pretty damn close, but…" He cupped them with his hands, completely hiding them from her view. "Yeah, the left one is a little bigger than the right. That's kind of asymmetrical. And you've got this, uh, freckle or whatever right here." His thumb brushed over the indicated area. "So no, not perfect. Just Bells." He was shaking again. Bella didn't think she had ever stopped doing so. She leaned into him again, trying to accustom herself to the sensation of skin that gave way, ever so slightly, to conform to the pressure of her body against it.
When it started to feel normal, instead of terrifying, she heaved a deep sigh and said, "Thank you."
Jacob released her as she straightened, and stooped to pick up her shirt and hand it to her. "Anytime, honey" he said with a twinkle in his eye. She giggled again. He always knew how to keep things from turning awkward.
After that, Bella kept pushing the boundaries she'd imposed upon herself. When they sat on the dilapidated couch, watching TV, she allowed her knee to rest against Jake's thigh and her shoulder to brush his upper arm. If they walked someplace together, she grabbed his hand to keep up or lead the way. Once, when they worked on homework together in the garage, she set aside her Calculus book and crawled into his lap, wrapping her arms around his torso and resting her head against his shoulder.
"Comfortable?" he asked, but his nonchalance didn't fool her. Every muscle had gone tense under her touch. He kept his eyes on his English book, though.
"Yeah," she replied, rubbing her cheek against his chest. "Mind if I stay here for a while?"
"Nah. Just don't fall asleep on me or anything."
She laughed and, because she could, brushed her lips across his skin in the lightest kiss she could manage. He shivered. Bella whispered, "I'll try, but no promises."
Bella knew she had to be careful. She knew she was still really messed up from her ordeal with Edward. Sometimes when she dreamed, he was the one touching her, kissing her breasts and extolling their virtues in chilled whispers, while other times it was Jacob, hot hand between her thighs, whispering filthy words into her ear that Edward probably didn't even know.
She knew a part of her still hid from reality and wasn't ready for Jacob's love. So she waited, like Noah on the Ark, and let her dreams be her guide to the recession of the waters.
Seven months after she arrived at the Black house, Bella lay awake at two in the morning. Jacob was home asleep—at night, for once—and she was not, because she wanted him to be not-asleep with her. She counted back in her head and realized that she hadn't dreamed of Edward in a month and three weeks. Surely that was enough time to allow herself to emerge from the safety of isolation?
You'll know when you're ready, her therapist had told her, when she'd brought up the topic. It'll be when you do it because you want to, and not to get back at Edward or to make yourself feel more for Jake or any other reason.
Bella considered her revenge on Edward to consist of forgetting about him as often as possible while moving on with her life. And she didn't think she could feel more for Jake. Every time she looked at him, her head turned light with the fresh impact of his effect on her.
She tossed and turned until three, when she realized his breathing had changed, and he was awake. Then she realized that she actually knew the different ways he breathed.
Rising out of bed, Bella walked to Jacob's room. She wondered if she was dreaming—her feet seemed to float above the floor—but then she pushed his door open and saw him lying on his back, looking at her, propped up on his elbows.
"What is it, Bells?" he asked, voice hoarse with sleep and maybe something else. "I could hear you flip-flopping in there. Everything okay?"
Bella walked into his bedroom and shut the door behind her. She drew off her nightshirt and climbed into bed, straddling his stomach to gaze at his stupefied face.
"I'm okay," she told him, and bent to kiss his mouth.
It took him less than half a second to respond. With a muffled groan, he dug his fingers into her hair and opened his mouth under hers. Bella followed his lead, loving the way their tongues tangled together, and the way his lips responded to the pressure of her own. She raised one hand to caress his cheek, and broke free of his mouth to brush more kisses across his jaw, then sucked on his earlobe. Jake swore and flipped her beneath him, cradling her in his arms.
She made a noise, startled pleasure, when his body settled against hers just as perfectly as she'd dreamed. Instantly he released her, babbling, "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I shouldn't have done that, I didn't mean to hold you down—"
Bella laughed down at him. "No, Jake. I liked it. Don't stop, all right?"
He didn't.
So much for hiding.