Okay here's chapter 2, I'm waiting for chapter 3 from my beta. It shouldn't be more than 3-4 days.
Chapter 2 - The pain you live through and the pain you don't want to.
"What are you doing here? I thought you were in Alaska." She didn't move. She didn't want to look like prey, but he could probably hear her pounding heart from where he stood.
"I was. I quiet enjoyed the novelty of staying in one place for so long, however the restrictions were very difficult. So sometimes, I cheat."
"Oh, really? I know that Jasper has some trouble keeping to those restrictions, too." His red eyes were really scaring her now, and there was nothing she could do. She knew she couldn't outrun him. She began to think about her promise, and hoped that Charlie would be okay. She hoped Edward would forgive her.
"Did Victoria ever find you?" She asked him as she stood. She thought that maybe she could get to her car if he was distracted.
"Yes, actually. I'm here as a favor to her." He frowned slightly and glanced into the trees, then looked back. "She won't be happy with me…"
"Why is that?" Bella whispered
"Because I'm going to kill you. She really wanted to do that herself. You see, she's not happy with your Edward. James was her mate and Edward killed him."
Bella froze and nearly flinched at the mention of his name, but managed to keep her face looking calm…though she was anything but.
"She thinks it a fair trade. He killed her mate, now she will kill his. She asked me to do a little scouting for her. I didn't think it would be this easy to find you alone."
"I'm not his mate though, he's gone. They all are."
"I'm sure she will be angry all the same."
"They why not wait for her?" I was hoping to at least delay him.
"Unfortunately you came here at a very bad time, Bella. I was hunting and I happen to be very thirsty. You should thank me though, for finding you first. Victoria likes to play with her food. I'll make sure it's over quick…you wont feel a thing."
He began to advance on Bella slowly, deliberately. The next few moments were very confusing for Bella, as he stopped and looked behind her suddenly. He was scared. She didn't follow his gaze to see what could cause that reaction. She remembered someone once said what scares the scary is usually scarier. Soon enough she knew what it was - a large animal, what looked like a bear, walked past her left side. Bella would have screamed if she could have found her voice; instead, she just stumbled over her own feet in an attempt to move further from it.
It was taller than Bella by at least a foot; the way it walked looked almost canine. The snarl that came from its mouth revealed rows of sharp teeth. So it was a wolf and not a bear, but then how was it so big? Laurent was backing toward the trees trying to keep his eyes on the creature. Soon four more wolves came out of the woods, and one moved to stand right between her and Laurent. It didn't take long for Laurent to turn and run. He took off so fast she didn't even see him move, then the wolves were after him.
As soon as she was alone she ran for her truck. Her arms and legs were shaking, but she managed to get inside and slammed down the locks. Bella's hands were shaking so bad she had to use both hands to get the key in the ignition. It was dusk now, and she peeled her old truck out of there and drove home as fast as she could.
When Bella got home she thanked god that Charlie wasn't there. She didn't know how she would have explained this to him. She took a shower and let the hot water melt the ice from her limbs. By the time Charlie got home she had calmed down quite a bit, and was just finishing frying the fish.
Three weeks later, she woke in the middle of the night and her head hurt so bad she was crying. She stumbled to the bathroom and took two Tylenol out of the medicine cabinet. She took them there and sat on the floor, the only light in the bathroom coming though the door she had failed to close.
Bella hadn't heard from Jacob since he got sick a few weeks ago He said he didn't want to make her sick again, and so he hadn't come see her. But surely that didn't matter now, he couldn't still be contagious. With her head still pounding she made her way back to her room. Maybe she would call him in the morning and see if he wanted to come hang out. It was a Saturday, after all.
Hours later, she hadn't managed to go back to sleep. The pain was still too great, so she decided to go get more Tylenol since in had been awhile. As soon as she stood up, her vision tilted and she felt her stomach spasm violently. She barley made it to the toilet. Her father heard her and came in.
"Bella, are you okay?"
"I don't know dad…I think I need to see the doctor again."
Charlie took the day off and they went to the hospital first thing, because the regular doctor didn't have any appointments available until Tuesday.
The doctor who examined her looked tired and impatient.
"Hello, I'm Dr. Meyer. How long have the headaches been going on?"
"About two or three months. But they have never been as bad as they were this morning."
"Okay, and you said the cough has been persisting for how long?"
"A little longer. I went to the doctor and he gave me antibiotics. I just figured it would go away eventually."
"Well, I'm going to send you to X-ray. We need to see what's going on in your lungs. Also I'm going to have a nurse draw some blood to check for chemical imbalances to explain the headaches."
Bella felt her head get light when they took the blood. Thankfully she didn't have to smell it. An hour later another doctor came in looking worried.
"Hello. I'm Dr. Andrews." He was holding what looked like x-ray film. "Dr. Meyer handed your case over to me."
"Why?" Bella asked. Her father was sitting in a chair by her exam table.
"Something showed up on the X-ray and we are going to need to run more tests." Charlie stood up abruptly from his chair
"Why? What's going on?"
"We don't know yet, we need to run the blood tests. The results should be back in a week."
"What are you looking for?" Bella asked quietly.
The doctor looked like he hated this part.
"Cancer."
Bella lay in bed that night just staring at the ceiling. She knew Charlie was downstairs staring at the TV. Neither of them knew what to say. She felt suddenly that she had Alice's ability; she knew somehow what the tests would say in a week. Dr. Andrews had explained about the shadows on her X-ray, but she hadn't been able to hear him after that one word.
'Cancer'. Such a small word. Such a terrifying word.
Bella had called her mom. She had cried into the phone for over an hour, she told her all she could remember. Then she promised to call again as soon as she knew more.
She had tried to call Jacob again that evening. She really needed her friend, the only one who kept the darkness at bay these last few months. He had finally answered the phone, but the words weren't those of her best friend. He was cold; he told her they couldn't be friends anymore. She didn't understand. She had tried to reason with him, but then he said, 'I'm not good for you, Bella.'
The words were so similar to those someone else had once said to her that she hung up. She had spent the next hour crying on her bed, holding her chest like she could keep the pieces together with sheer will power.
The next day, she returned to her robotic state. She couldn't let herself think or she knew she would fall apart at the seams. If Charlie worried about her sudden repression he didn't say anything, and for that she was grateful. If someone asked her how she made it through that week she wouldn't have been able to answer. But next thing she knew, she and her dad were heading back to the hospital to go over the results. She didn't eat anything that morning, she couldn't. They waited in the room for the doctor, and as soon as he walked through the door Bella could see what she would hear written on his face.
"It's what we thought." He got right to the point. "The blood tests confirm cancer. We need to do an MRI to get a better view of what we are dealing with."
Her father and the doctor started talking about tests and treatments, but the doctor said they wouldn't know how to treat it until they knew more.
She couldn't help but feel Fate was catching up to her. How many times should she have died now? First Edward that first day in biology, then Tyler's car, then James, then Jasper, and now Laurent… she almost laughed at the fact that almost every time it was a vampire. Maybe that was supposed to be her Fate all along, and now fate was making sure she didn't escape again. She still didn't understand how she had escaped the last one.
She lost track of the conversation, she didn't want to hear anymore. She wanted to scream, she wanted to curl up in a ball and just cry. The numbness she had felt when Edward had first left began to cloud her senses again. She didn't know what to think anymore, the cancer was supposedly in or around her heart. Maybe you could die of a broken heart; he had done a good enough job of breaking it.
The next thing she knew they were having her change her clothes and helping her onto the table of the MRI machine. The next weeks were a blur of tests and school (because she insisted) and long periods of sleep. The pain medicine worked wonders on her head, but they made her really sleepy. Her friends at school started to get suspicious; she hadn't told any of them. She didn't know how.
One day she went and saw The Bucket List with Angela, and when she asked why Bella started crying the truth came spilling out in a rush. Angela drove home that night and she took Jacobs place. She held Bella together while she fell apart.
Bella fell asleep that night a dreamed of red eyes chasing her, of lying on a white bed attached to machines, of backpacking through Europe, of Edward as they once had been. When she woke up she felt foggy, and tried to remember the last images from her dream. But they were gone, drifting away like smoke through her fingers.