There.
There will always be that moment, that precise second where friendship falls away and something deeper, darker, baser rises into the surface. That brush of awareness that makes her skin tingle and stomach twist.
She knows it. He knows it.
It hovers in the air like sparks from a bonfire; harmless, beautiful, elegant even....until it falls on your skin and burns.
"You should go, Jake."
Jacob merely blinked; a slow, flutter of eyelashes that covered his dark, deep eyes that never wavered from her averted face.
Here she was again, punishing him for doing nothing but existing.
It wasn't his fault, it was hers; for feeling the way she did, for being the way she was.
Simply put, for being who she was.
Because at this point in her life, there is no Bella Swan without Jacob Black.
Because he was the rock that Bella clung to when she was cut adrift.
Because he was the foundation in which she rebuilt herself around.
Because it was within him where she found herself again.
Bella turned herself away from his blazing presence in the guise of putting away the dishes from their shared meal in the sink. From the corner of her eyes, she watched him. Her shoulders tense, her heart hammering in her chest, as he came closer to where she stood and slowly, slowly in a gesture as benign, as casual as it was meaningful, placed a hand an inch apart from hers...and felt the air between their fingers singed.
The space around their fingers vibrated up her arm with an intensity that stole her breath.
His heat seeped into her skin from the tip of her fingertips, every nerve endings pulsing, streaking up her skin to dance inside her chest and settled deeply inside her stomach to jump and churn.
She didn't dare look up and see his face.
She counted each beat of her heart, each breath that she took and in those mere seconds, feel him fill her, those empty pockets where only he existed and only he could reach.
Not a minute too soon, just seconds before she gave into her feelings and leaned into him, wrap herself around him and take, take, take, Jacob took his hand away and in a swirl of scents and texture disappeared without a word.
She didn't breathe until she heard the back door close.
Sighing, she caught a reflection of her face on the glass cabinets and couldn't help but smiled mockingly at the high color of her cheeks, the stormy depth of her eyes, that soft, yearning expression that shifted endlessly on her face.
And of course, there was that all too telling shaking of her hand.
As she rinsed and washed the dishes that they used, she thought about the two men in her life and found out that Jacob, didn't need words to tell her how he felt or to tell her how she felt.
He only needed to be.