A/N: Thank you for all your kind reviews. The ending of this chapter might be a bit confusing, but things will clear up as the story develops. I apologize for the slow progression of the story, but things should be happening soon enough.
As they approach her old spot beside the back porch, Bella's hands clenched at the memory of what drove her away not less than an hour ago. She slowed down considerably.
Noticing the change in pace, Embry glanced around to gauge at her expression, and decided to take matters into his own hand.
He grabbed her fist, smoothed out the tightly wound fingers without much trouble, and laced his own with hers. He quietly chuckled at the sound she made—a cross between a surprised gasp and a sigh of relief—and mentally noted that Bella Swan was much more interesting when you caught her by surprise.
He was relieved that she's too shocked and worried to put up much of a fight, and that gave him enough time to drag her towards Charlie.
"The prodigal daughter returns." Embry announced in somewhat poor taste to the two men before him.
Charlie glanced up to see his daughter's tiny frame hovering somewhere behind the Call boy, not missing the fact that their hands were tightly intertwined, or rather, she was offering her limb like it is separate from her body while the boy tried to make the fact that she was a dead weight he lugged across the yard as imperceptible as possible. Charlie raised his eyebrows.
"Bella, the party started hours ago."
"I was distracted…" She seemed to mumble as she ducked out from behind Embry to add to the pile of gifts behind Charlie. Gathering up her nerves, she turned to her right and looked Billy Black in the eyes, while smiling as naturally as possible under the circumstances.
"Hi Billy. How are you these days?" She greeted lamely.
To her surprise, he smiled back. "Well the wheels need a little oil and the fridge needs some stocking, but other than that, I'm the same as always. How's Boston treating you? Heard 'bout that freak snow storm in April—it had Charlie boy here in a right frenzy."
Bella grinned at the memory. "Yea, the phone lines around my area crashed."
"Damn old cities." Charlie grumbled.
Billy let out a boisterous laugh as he handed his friend another beer. At that moment, a voice called out from across the lawn.
"Yo Embry man! Where the hell have you been? Patrol ended hours ago, got lost?"
"Or maybe just lucky in the forest. Who's the lady friend??" Another added.
"Hey hey, if anyone's getting some today, it's me alright?? It's my damn wedding day!!" An indignant voice called out from somewhere near the food table, followed quickly by a loud sound of plastic trays hitting skulls.
Embry cocked his head around to grin at his pack. "I was having a discussion on the importance of symbolism."
The answer earned him several snorts and raised eyebrows.
"Charlie, Billy, I'll see you two around." Embry nodded at the men before turning to Bella. "Come on Pandora, time to check out that box!" He announced with a sly grin before twirling her around, causing a low hush to fall through the crowd across the yard.
"BELLA SWAN?!!" Quil exclaimed after a few moments of utter silence.
Bella can only nod weakly, her free hand hover dumbly somewhere between a wave and a salute. She settled on tucking her hair behind her ears instead.
"Shit, I can't believe it." Paul groaned, earning a glare from Emily who was already moving towards her with a wide smile on her face.
The rest of the pack watched mutely as Emily took Bella's other hand and guided her towards them, hauling a carefully expressionless Embry along. As their human chain snaked through the throngs of people milling about, Bella nervously glanced at the faces around her, and noted, with a hint of relief, that Jacob and his companion is nowhere in sight. She could face the pack easier this way.
"I invited Bella." Emily said cheerfully in answer to all the silent questions passing through the group of overgrown men. Her words, although spoken lightly, had all the force of a gauntlet.
"I agreed." Kim piped up from beside Jared, smiling apologetically at Bella.
Bella smiled back, glad that she had the bride's consent. "Congratulations." She said in a steady voice.
"Thank you." Kim answered softly, her eyes dancing in liquid bliss. Jared echoed his wife's sentiment in a warm smile, and Bella let out a breath she didn't realize she was holding. Love doesn't have to be a sparkling diamond anvil, crashing through blindly, creating holes and crumbling hearts, Bella mused. No, in the right hands, it is quiet smiles and simple vows; it is the pink of her cheeks and the sparkle in his eye; it is everything that Bella once thought too simple to be forever. She was glad there are people who got it right.
Formalities aside, however, the rest of the pack seemed to be lost as to what they should be doing in light of her sudden appearance.
"Well regardless, you're here so let's get you some food!" Seth Clearwater interjected when the silence threatened to overwhelm. He grinned at her from beside Quil and bounced up from his seat with all the energy of an overexcited puppy.
Bella nodded, noting that it would be better to be occupied with something, rather than being the sole target of the attention of a group of werewolves. It helped that Seth was still the same as always, all boyish grins and bouncing dark curls. She was halfway turned to follow him to the food table when a low voice sounded through the crowd behind her.
"You're back…?"
Bella didn't need to turn to know whose voice that was; the tingling in her spine, the sudden dryness of her mouth, and the speed of her heartbeat were clue enough. She tightened her grip on Embry's hand reflexively, and felt that he was tense also. A quick glance back revealed the reason why.
Jacob's eyes were fixed on their intertwined hands, his face deceptively calm.
Deadly calm. Embry would reflect in hindsight.
Bella quietly disengage her hand from Embry's, and turned around to face Jacob.
"And so are you." She replied softly, her eyes staring steely into his onyx ones.
Jacob stared at those too-wide eyes looking for the glitter of unshed tears threatening to flood his senses or whorls of grief that grip his heart (always too tightly), but all he saw was an impenetrable brown; a brick wall that he could no longer scale.
"Bells?" A hand wrapped itself around her forearm, effectively ending their silent war. Bella turned to see Charlie looking at her closely.
"I was just about to head out; early morning tomorrow. I know you just got here, but seeing as how you got in this morning, I thought you might want to come back early to get some rest."
Bella knew that Charlie, being a man of few words, was extending her an awkward olive branch to protect her from a confrontation she was dreading, and if she was being honest with herself, Bella was tempted to come home with him. But she knew that facing Jacob was not only something she needed to but desperately wanted to do—even if she had to play nice with blondie.
"Actually I—"
"I can take her home afterwards." A voice next to her interrupted.
Three heads whipped around to see Embry with an easy smile on his face and three plates piled high with food in his large hands. One of which he handed to Bella without so much as a glance. She was too taken aback to do much but take the offered plate and stare.
Charlie nodded, giving a Bella a slightly bewildered look, which she returned, before bidding everyone good night.
Satisfied with the answer, Embry ambled over to the nearest empty table, and plunked down on one chair before pointing his fork at the opposite seat.
"Saved a spot for ya." He grinned at a dumbfounded Bella before digging enthusiastically into his food, seemingly oblivious at the incredulous stares that he was receiving.
Bella, for her part, was stunned with confusion, but found herself shuffling towards the empty chair anyway, despite the warning signs from her singing nerves, pleading her to stop before she becomes the maiden sacrifice for a werewolf ritual she was unaware of.
"What are you doing?" Jacob gritted from behind.
Bella opened her mouth, but for the life of her, could not formulate an intelligent answer besides from 'walking'. Luckily, it seems the question was not directed at her as Embry surfaced from his plate, and offered and answer that was equally trite.
"Eating."
Jacob glared. "No, I meant why did you offer to take her home?" Every syllable seemed to be forced, as if someone had a Heimlich grip on him and was squeezing out each word while he heaves them on the floor, wriggling like angry serpents.
Bella flinched at the infliction in Jacob's tone, and felt hot embers of anger igniting within her despite the fact that the same question was tittering on the tip of her tongue.
Embry shrugged, his face still wearing that easy smile. "Just something I could do, I guess. Didn't really think about it much Jake." He paused, his lips pursed together in a look of contemplation that Bella recognized from earlier. "If you don't mind, why don't you take her? I'm kind of tired from the patrol anyway." Grinning amicably at everyone, Embry stood up and brought his empty plates inside.
Bella sucked in a breath, and could almost hear the snap vibrating through the air.
Within minutes, Embry had successfully planned, executed, and lured both Jacob and Bella into a sticky sweet trap that promises no escape. He knew that Jacob would never refuse, and Bella, for all her practiced composure, was still as clumsy as ever. She is incapable of backing out of this gracefully, and anything beyond her honed tranquility would shatter the precarious courage that she wielded in order to be here tonight. Even if they had somehow weaseled their way out of this, driving Bella home would have opened a cornucopia of opportunities that Embry would be too glad to explore. Either way, he would get what he wanted eventually.
He might not be the fastest, strongest, or wildest of the pack, but he is the truest hunter amongst them all. Once Embry Call sets his trap, the course of the game is set, and he rarely loses sight of his prey. Despite sharing the same consciousness, the pack has yet to learn how Embry's cunning wit always seems to elude them, even when he exhibits his mind freely.
"It's something that runs in his veins." Sam had once offered as a way of explanation.
"What? Brain juice instead of blood?" Quil had jested in reply, but the pack had accepted the answer even before they knew what it was.
It is just another unexplained part of who they are—wolves and men. It is why imprinting works and the scars on Emily's face and how 13 year olds can be six feet tall and Leah's howls in the dead of the night and Jacob's love for Bella. There never were any explanations or excuses for what they are; existence is an exclamation point, a period, an ellipse even, but never a question mark. They've learned long ago that question marks are nooses, ready to choke them in their hesitation. Being a wolf means power, and being a pack means embracing and melding so that individual insecurities become group strengths. It was how they live and love together without tearing each other apart.
It was part of the reason why Jacob allowed Embry to walk away without tearing into him, to see what gave him such audacity to play them like chess pieces. The other part of the reason was now sitting in Embry's empty spot, picking at her food while Emily and Kim took turns to ask questions about Bella's life in Boston. Jacob caught snippets of the conversation over the din of the party, and savored each piece of information as if it was food thrown to a dying man.
School. Part-time jobs. Single. Roommate. History major. Coffee shop. Snow. Graduation. Single. Single. Single.
The word bounces around his skull like a propelled jet engine; his brain incapable of processing any other thought besides from those two syllables.
Single.
Not engaged.
Not married.
Alive.
Single.
The word ripples down his spine and melts on his tongue like sweet amber. Two insignificant syllables that tear apart a sea inside him and pour out all that had been drowning him for the past years.
It was all he could do to not pick her up from her seat and shake the answer out of her for all the whys and the hows that plague his mind as soon as she uttered that word. It took Herculean effort to allow Emily and Kim to regale her in chitchat, as if this was any other wedding, as if she did not just waltz back into his life hand in hand with one of his best friends after being absent for almost 4 years. It was almost impossible to remain a stoic version of himself while the real Jacob—her Jacob—was bubbling just beneath the surface, straining to grab hold of those pale small hands and feel the pulse that feeds into his own.
However, the image of the steely look in her eyes earlier reeled him back, reminding him that Jacob Black might still be the same underneath all the grime of bitterness, but that might not be the case with Bella Swan. The Bella that he knew, even during those zombie months after that leech left her, was never unreadable. She never built walls, but preferred to break dams instead. He was used to the force of the Nile releasing its fury from her eyes, and learned to tease a weak smile or even laughter out of those mournful pools. But this wall, this was new, and he wasn't sure what he was more afraid of: discovering the reason behind those walls, or the Bella who no longer wanted him poking around in her wounds. It was unchartered territory, and he could almost laugh at his naïve self who had declared so passionately once that he knew her. Always.
Youth holds such blasphemous and foolish things as monoliths.
It shocks him to realize that though he ceased being young a long time ago while gasping his way towards surface in an ocean of spell bounding grief, it was this strange new uncertainty in her that forces him to finally face adulthood for what it truly is, a mine of doubt and damning hesitation.
At least one thing remains true: she will always be the moving force behind his happiness, his growth, and his downfall.
Well that's damn comforting. Jacob grimaced.
He snapped out of his thoughts as he felt someone's hand intertwining with his. He looked down and saw quizzical grey eyes looking up at him. It took him several seconds to recognize who it is that he's gazing at.
"Tammy. Hi." He greet with a bewildered smile.
She giggled. "Hi to you too silly. Forgot I was here?" She joked, intentionally arching her eyebrows in a comical way that always made him laugh.
He smiled down at her and gave her hand a quick squeeze. "Of course not."
A soft snort arose from somewhere to his left, and he looked up to see Leah smirking at him, her eyes glinting tauntingly. He knew that the sound was too soft to reach Tammy's ears, but scowled at Leah anyway and tightened his hold on the oblivious girl's hand.
This only earned him a raised eyebrow and a haughty look that seemed to say "What? Got something to prove?"
"Bitch." Jacob muttered under his breath, sure that she could hear it.
Leah only laughed, and disappeared somewhere inside the house while pulling a pack Marlboro out of her jean pocket. Through the kitchen window, Jacob caught Embry taking a swig of his flask. He raises the container in mock salute when he realizes Jacob was watching, and then sauntered deeper into the house.
Jacob tousled his hair in frustration, and silently muttered "This is going to be a long night."
Bella weaved in and out of the crowd, eyes straining to catch hold of nothing in particular. She had spent a good part of the night being passed along the friendlier portion of the wedding guests, bounced around from one polite conversation to the next, her mouth frozen in a strange half-smile while reciting the perfunctory answers that flutter about uselessly, facilitating the saving lie that to communicate, all one has to do is to scramble a handful of vocabulary and regurgitate the same inane fact in a million different ways. At the moment, Bella couldn't care less about what was being said as her eyes constantly flitted around, trying to spot a familiar swish of a pony tail or tanned russet arms. She didn't know whether she was seeking him out to talk to him or locating him as a way to the pinpoint all the corners and nooks of Emily's yard that she should avoid. In fact, ever since seeing Jacob again, Bella have been steadily losing grip on her mentality. The whole night, her mind, body, and heart have been contorting in onto themselves and then detonating forcefully in opposite directions, creating nauseating vibrations within herself as her needs, wants, senses, and thoughts all splay about her like some repulsive scene from a horror flick. It didn't help the situation any when she spotted, out of the corner of her eyes, Jacob being hoisted from one crowd to the next by the statuesque blonde called Tammy. Finally sick of the internal fireworks and emotional bruising, Bella excused herself from a few elderly women discussing tribal traditional ceremonies and furtively slink through the thinning crowds, hoping to make her escape as unnoticeable as possible. She had no such luck however, as a glowering Leah Clearwater glared at her from the front porch. Despite herself, Bella froze under such a disdainful gaze, and could only stare back, her eyes wide in confusion and apprehension.
Leah Clearwater was never an easy person to deal with. An angry Leah Clearwater was something even the best hell-raising army the Volturi could conjure up should be wary of.
Apparently, Bella passed some kind of test by returning her gaze because Leah eventually averted her olive eyes back to the inky sky. After a pause, not sure if she should say anything, Bella began moving towards the road again.
"Sit." Leah commanded before Bella could go further than a few steps.
Bella did as she was told, feeling as if the letters itself were attached to threads that control her very limbs. She idly wondered if it was the wolf or the woman in Leah that lent her the ability to pound each spoken word into the very marrow of your bone, lassoing and choking and branding your senses until they are no longer yours to control.
Whatever it is, Sam needs to take notes. Bella mused silently.
She looked at Leah expectantly, waiting for some kind of verbal lashing, but when nothing but silence answered her, she began to slip into a sense of déjà vu, noting that not too long ago, she was sitting in the very same position with Embry Call.
Except there weren't so many cigarette butts here then. Bella noted, pushing the stubs around idly with the tips of her shoes.
"Want one?" Leah offered, extending an almost empty pack out to Bella.
"No thanks, I'm more of a coffee kind of girl."
A snort and then a quick flick of a lighter.
Bella watches the smoke twirl against the dark silhouette of the forest, the smell of tobacco bringing back memories of late nights in Harvard Square with an empty head and the sound of bluesy jazz filtering through the heavy wooden doors of anonymous bars. A platitude of faces and names flashes through her mind, all lost in staccato sensations of alcohol induced haze and a loneliness she can't place. The smoke rises and separates into gossamer thin threads, slowly dissolving into the sky.
"Maybe just a drag."
Leah handed over her cigarette wordlessly.
Bella's lips clasp onto the slightly moist paper and her eyes close as she breathes in. The smoke teases out all the coils within her, and as she release it, the coils spring up and spread themselves all around, unfolding like butterflies from their cocoon and quietly dissolve into the night, leaving behind a dull hollow echo.
Another dark nameless night.
Bella released a sigh as she handed the cigarette back to Leah.
The other girl raises her eyebrows in question.
"I'm…" Bella paused, fishing for the right words. "nights—they're difficult."
Leah snorts. "Doesn't help when there's a damn wedding."
Bella smiles. "Or Nate King Cole crooning about forever."
"Yea? I thought you were into all that forever shit."
"Can I have another drag? Thanks."
The butterflies tickle her rib cages; all other sensations are but a dull echo. "I'm sitting here aren't I?" She answered after a while.
Leah tore her eyes away from the sky long enough to give Bella a sidelong glance. No, she confirmed, the girl did not flinch.
"Who are you anyway? What happened to little miss I'm-too-torn-up-inside-to-give-a-shit-about-anyone-else's-feelings?"
Bella gave Leah back her cigarette. "I don't know." She offered honestly, her eyes meeting Leah's for the second time that night.
After a moment of silent exchange, Leah shrugs, and then wordlessly returns her gaze to the sky. Bella took this as her cue, and makes her way down the steps once more.
"Thanks for the cigarette."
Leah smirked. "Shouldn't you be taking her home Jakey boy? It's late."
Bella heard an angry grunt before seeing Jacob round the corner of the unlit porch. He gave Leah a stern look before shifting his gaze to Bella, signaling her to follow him. Leah watches them walk away together in silence, the night quickly engulfing them in her shadowy embrace.
The roar of an engine signaled their exit onto the dark road.
Leah put out her last cigarette on the weathered wood, and catches, out of the corner of her eyes, the hunched back of a man dragging his way towards his pick-up, his feet headed towards a cold attic room infested with the stink of mothballs and regrets, while his shadow longingly clutches at the place that he once called home. Sensing her gaze, he turned around slightly and caught her eyes.
Irises the color of warm coffee pours into her own. Leah started, as if to walk towards him, but seeing the glint of familiar fire in his eyes, she stopped short and averted her gaze.
Too much. Too late.
He turns around once again, and not long after, another engine purrs as it makes its down the road. Leah remembered to breath only when the night is once again returned to unadulterated silence.
She pretends that the sting in her eyes is another effect of the tobacco and too late nights.
Somewhere inside the house, a too cheerful Emily Young is trying not to notice the piercing glare of a hole that is shaped like her ex-fiancé, and the way Embry Call sits apart, his hand cradling a bottle of whiskey.
Weddings are hard, and nights are haunted.