Chapter 2 – Worth a try
"Caleb!" I smiled an ran to him, throwing my arms around his neck, carefully afraid to hurt him. I could feel his arms around my waist and I could feel how strong he was. Inhumanly strong, like me.
"I missed you so much." He whispered to my hair. "I love you Jules, I love you so much." He chanted the words as if he wanted to make it up to me for not being able to say them for a couple of months.
"I
love you too." I finally said when I looked at his face, he didn't
change a bit. His scent was stronger to me now, of course it was
harder to resist, I couldn't expect anything else, I shouldn't. I
should learn and control myself forever. All of a sudden I realized
how hard it would have been for Edward and Bella.
"What's
wrong?" he asked, apparently my face showed what I was thinking, or
part of it. I looked at him and smiled again.
"Nothing, I'm just happy to be back." I told him. "What have you been up to?" I tried to keep the conversation casual, I didn't want to talk about my time at Denali. Not now, not when everything was so perfect.
"Not
much really. Missing you mostly." We walked towards the living room
and sat down. Everybody was there, talking with each other. I was
enjoying the warm feeling of having family again.
"How's your
family?" I asked, strangely enough I couldn't look him in the eye
after this question so I was pretending to be busy with my dress.
"There all okay. Aiden and my mother are out of town actually, it's their anniversary. Keira has this annoying new boyfriend, I believe he's called Chuck or something." He started to talk more enthusiastic, like he used to do before all of this happened. "And that Chuck guy has this brother..who is even more annoying and he's hanging out with Penny or something. Anyway she doesn't want to tell me anything of course.."
"Of course.." I tried to laugh, it had hurt me that his family was against our relationship, and ever more that his cousin attempted to kill me.
"Matt has been cool though, and Taylor too actually. They tried there best to help me through it all you know…they even want to meet you, if you're willing of course!" I could see it meant a lot to him, and it did to me as well. His brothers wanted to meet me? He stopped talking for a over a minute. He was clearly avoiding talking about Chase right now. I still couldn't really believe Chase had attacked me, I never met the guy and I didn't expect them to try and kill me. That had changed, I had a lot of time to think about..well.. everything, in Denali. And I started to get scared of the Wade family. They were professional vampire killers, it would probably be easy for them to kill me, or anybody from my family for that matter. I would never forgive myself if anything happened to my family, but I wasn't willing, I wasn't able to leave Caleb forever. I would never be able to do that. But how was this ever going to work? Could it work?
"You look worried, are you okay?" he asked when I didn't answer his previous question.
"What? Oh, yeah I'm great. I just have to get used to all this attention..Denali wasn't exactly the most social period in my life." He smiled a little, still not entirely convinced of my wellbeing.
"So, do you want to meet them sometime?" he asked me, this time I tried not to wonder of in thought.
"Of course. If they're really willing to meet me."
"Why wouldn't they?" it was a rhetorical question, or so I hoped because I had enough answers to that question but they were all hurtful. I was grateful when Alice walked towards us, her face filled with pure happiness.
"Caleb, I can imagine you're hungry, do you want to eat something?" she asked, of course she could imagine he was hungry, she knew he was hungry.
"You have food?" he asked both hopefully and surprised.
"Of course we do!" Alice laughed and pulled his arm to guide him to the kitchen we never use.
Edward came to sit beside me on the sofa, he looked at me with meaningful eyes.
"It's okay." Is answered the question in his head. "Did you know?" I asked him carefully, he looked down at his feet for a moment.
"Yes. He talked to me about it. He even apologized while it wasn't his apology to make." Edward looked a little bitter when he said the last sentence.
"Okay." It was hard for me, finding out everybody had known before me.
"Look," he turned towards me and quickly looked toward the kitchen to see if Alice planned on coming back anytime soon. "I tried to talk to Chase, and Carlisle talked with Aiden, but we can't seem to convince them that we won't harm anybody. They don't believe vampire's are capable of such discipline.."
"It's ridiculous."
"It is, but Caleb's older brothers seem to believe us a little..they promised us they would keep Chase and the rest from hurting you or our family."
"I don't like to separate them like that Ed."
"I know. But until they do believe we mean no harm, it's the only way."
That night I spend talking with Caleb about anything but Denali. I finally felt normal again. He told me about how Alice invited him over when I was gone, to talk or do something fun. And how he celebrated his birthday without me. I felt guilty I wasn't able to be there, and even more guilty because I didn't know when his birthday was. It turned out there was a lot we didn't know about each other. I told him about the past hundred years and when I finally stopped talking for a moment, to just sit with him, he fell asleep. It was the most beautiful thing to see someone sleep. His face was covered by peacefulness and innocence. He was now twenty years old but hadn't aged a bit since I last saw him. Suddenly my thoughts were disturbed by something entirely different. How had my absence been explained? At school for instance? If I had questions I turned restless, it had always been that way, even before Carlisle saved me. I noticed that more memories of my mortal life were coming back to me. I could remember the face of my mother, the real color of my eyes and those of Edward, the voice of my father. It was weird, as if Carlisle's venom had stopped the memories from entering my consciousness every now and then. I carefully got up and put a pillow underneath Caleb's head and a blanket over him. I had some questions to be answered.
I knocked on the door of Alice and Jasper's room. Alice was downstairs, I knew that, but I didn't want to talk to her this time.
"Come in Jules," Jasper said, he could probably sense how I was feeling from where I stood.
"Hey.." I said quietly as I walked into the room. Jasper was writing something but he put it away before I could see what he was doing.
"Hey Juliette, how are you?" his voice and face were so gentle it was impossible to feel bad around him, of course, his talent helped a bit too.
"Kind of great actually." I said while I sat down and looked around. I didn't know what I was looking for, I was probably still getting used to being home.
"Good." Jasper smiled again and put away the paper, then he turned to me expecting me to tell him why I was here. It took me a moment.
"What did Carlisle tell everybody?" I asked. Jasper smiled as if he had expected that question a long time ago.
"Well, the rumor went that you where sick you know?"
"That started ages ago, when we first got here."
"It finally helped you though, Carlisle told the school you got into a program that would help you with your illness, but it would take a couple of months. The school believed him of course, being a doctor and all, and asked him how you would finish the year..with homework and essays and all. Carlisle asked them to send it home and he would make sure you would get it. Since you're an excellent student at Forks High School, you can start your last year tomorrow."
"But the essays and.."
"Edward made them, and I made a few as well…there was one on this subject Alice really loved, so she helped too. We figured you weren't exactly in the mood to worry about school.." he grinned but we both knew that was more than true for a bad reason.
"Thanks.." I said surprised.
"I think you should thank Edward and Alice too, and Carlisle of course." He turned back to the desk and started writing again.
"What are you writing?" I asked when I walked towards him and looked over his shoulder.
"It's for Alice." I knew he didn't want to talk about it right now because he was trying to keep it a surprise, something impossible to do for Alice.
"I try to make the decisions unclear for her, so she'll be confused." I had to laugh.
"It's never going to work."
"It's worth a try. It always is." And all of a sudden I had the feeling he wasn't talking about surprising Alice anymore, and that I wasn't the one reading his mind, but the other way around because my mind was filled with the same question all day long: Is this relationship between Caleb and me ever going to work?
