Your reviews were lovely - I was immensely flattered. Half of this chapter bored the crap out of me to write. Formalities and all. Sorry.
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"Bells! Over here!"
Bella turned and looked over her right shoulder. She spotted Charlie at the end of the terminal waving to her, his brown police uniform making him stand out among the throng of people. She made her way over, and smiled when he pulled her into an embrace.
"Hi, dad." She spoke softly, enjoying the hug. It'd been three years since she'd last seen her father.
"It's good to see you, kid. Let's get your luggage and head home, I'm sure you're tired."
Bella's smile turned wistful. In all the years that had passed Charlie hadn't changed – he was perpetually a man of few words. She felt a pang of sadness for all the time she had missed with him, but the feeling that this move was a wise decision solidified in her mind.
Spending the last two years of high school with her father in Forks would work out.
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Unpacking was depressing. It made Bella think about how many friends, relationships, and usual teen memories her life was missing.
In Arizona she had never connected with anyone. Kids her own age annoyed her, and older people avoided her like the plague since she was in high school.
'This year will be different,' Bella told herself. 'I'm going to be a normal teenager, do normal teenage things, have a normal teenage life.'
Heavy footsteps coming up the stairs disrupted her musings. After so many years of living with her mother – small, slight Renee – Charlie sounded like Bigfoot thundering around the house.
She listened as his footsteps grew nearer and was slightly confused for a second to see the awkwardly thin and long box appear at her doorway.
Less than a second later excitement replaced her confusion. She jumped up from her spot on the floor and practically skipped over to Charlie.
"Excellent! I was hoping it'd arrive soon!"
Bella grabbed the box with practiced ease and gently set it down on her bed.
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Charlie watched as his daughter completely zoned him out, methodically going through her boxes, pulling out random toolboxes and odd metal fixtures.
"Um…Bells?" he asked, breaking her out of her trance. She looked at him quizzically. He returned the look. "What is all this stuff?"
"It's my bike. Don't you remember that I started cycling four years ago?"
She sounded hurt. Charlie started racking his brain to remember when he'd ever heard that Bella had started riding bikes around. A vague memory surfaced – he latched on to it.
"You got into it after one of Renee's random interests, right?" he asked, relaxing slightly when he saw her face brighten. 'Point for the old man,' he thought to himself. 'Crisis averted.'
"Yeah that's right," she told him, "Mom got tired of it, but I was addicted. I saved up, bought a good bike, and started riding around the city. Eventually I met up with a few other enthusiasts who helped me better understand the sport and train properly. About a year and a half ago I was picked up by a locally sponsored team and started joining in races."
Fatherly pride began to swell within Charlie. "Races, huh? Like the Tour de France type stuff?"
Bella chuckled. "Not quite that epic, but yeah."
"You ever win any of the races?" he asked her, watching as she slid the bicycle frame from the box and set it onto a metal stand.
"Not yet," she told him, gathering her tools and the parts to assemble her bike. "I'm still an amateur. The best I've ever placed was 9th individually. It'll be another two or three years at least before I have a shot at going pro and getting on a professional team."
"Will you still be able to ride out here? Washington's not the best place, weather wise, for biking."
He watched as Bella's grin grew more prominent. "The weather's actually a bonus. Phoenix never had much cold weather or rain so this will help me train on areas that I don't have much experience with. I was planning on using this week before school starts to ride around and get used to the roads around Forks."
Charlie frowned, but couldn't think of a good enough excuse to voice his discomfort with the idea. "As long as you're careful," he told her.
"I will be dad," Bella promised.
She had purposely pulled the dad card. He knew it, but was powerless to stop the effect it had on him. He wouldn't try to stop her from riding around. It was important to her.
He nodded slowly and then pushed himself off the doorframe he'd been leaning on. "Alright, well I'm going to lock the door and head to bed. I have an early shift tomorrow. Try not to stay up too late."
Bella's attention was already focused back on her bike. As Charlie made his way downstairs he thought he heard her give some belated affirmative reply to his request, but he couldn't be sure.
It'd been years since Charlie had to play the active parent role, and the unwritten rules of raising a teenager were lost to him. Boys, homework, friends coming over on school nights, feminine issues – all were things that he had no idea how to deal with.
'Relax, school doesn't start for another week and no boys have met her yet,' Charlie told himself.
He locked the front door, turned off the lights in the living room, and then made his way to turn off the kitchen lights. 'I've still got a few weeks to get used to all this before the teenage drama starts to infiltrate the house,' he reassured himself, flicking off the light switch.
Charlie turned to head up the stairs – and then froze.
There.
Out of the corner of his eye he could see through the kitchen window.
There was somebody standing on his lawn.
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It was eerily quiet.
Bella was used to noise; she'd lived in the city for almost ten years. The stillness small town life possessed unsettled her.
It made her feel uneasy.
Isolated.
She felt hot – the room was suddenly overwhelmingly stuffy. She moved over to the window and forced it open. Years of disuse made it screech.
The night was quiet.
Something was wrong. Their house was on the edge of town – one of the last homes before the large expanse of forest reclaimed the land for hundreds of miles. Bella hadn't lived near the country for years, yet natural instinct told her that the woods should have been alive with nocturnal sounds.
Her body hummed to life. Adrenaline coursed through her, her breathing picked up. The hairs on the back of her neck rose. Frantically Bella began scanning the tree line, looking for whatever her subconscious had picked up on. She started to back away from the window – then stopped.
There was movement against one of the trees at the edge of the lawn. A pale shadow against a dark outline.
She tried to force her eyes to adjust to the darkness, unconsciously moving towards the window and leaning out to get a better glimpse.
There was nothing there.
She sighed. "Nice Bella. Not even 24 hours and you're seeing monsters."
She started to pull herself back inside the window.
A twig napped – her breath caught.
It was beneath her window.
Her head tilted down on its own accord. Simultaneously, she saw a flash of white race towards the trees and heard the front door open. The crunch of boots on the gravel driveway announced Charlie's pursuit of the creature. He rounded the corner of the house and stopped next to the tree by her window.
Bella watched him scan the woods before he looked up at her. "You ok, Bella?" he yelled up at her.
She nodded before finding her voice. "I'm fine," she told him. "What was that thing?"
Charlie's gaze returned to the trees. "Bobcat most likely," he told her. "They've been getting braver each year, coming closer to houses, digging through trashcans."
'He doesn't sound certain,' Bella thought. 'He doesn't know what that was.'
As if hearing her, Charlie turned his gaze back up to her. "Don't leave your window open at night – it's not safe."
Bella nodded and pulled herself back inside her room. She closed and locked the window, but didn't feel any safer.
Sleep would not come easily.
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Birds woke Bella in the morning. She was certain that there were at least a thousand nesting in the tree outside her window.
It was 11 in the morning. Rolling out of bed, she sleepily made her way downstairs to the kitchen. Something on the table caught her eye. She moved closer.
Pepper spray. Police issued pepper spray. With a note that said, 'Just incase.'
Bella rolled her eyes but picked up the can. It might be smart to hold on to if she was going to ride down some of the back roads in the country.
'Speaking of riding,' Bella thought to herself, 'I should get around and do some today. Familiarize myself with the area.'
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Two hours later Bella rolled her bike out of the house. She placed her pepper spray in her extra water bottle holder and turned to lock the door.
Something felt off, but she couldn't place it. She looked around as she moved her bike down the driveway. Nothing was amiss. She shook the feeling off.
'Nerves,' she told herself, mounting her bike. She looked to her left – the road easily loped towards the small town. Turning to the right the road angled off into the trees, a teasing slope hinting at the mountains that weren't too far off in the distance.
Bella looked left.
Then right.
Then left.
Then right.
And pedaled.
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She was lost.
She had been riding around for hours and couldn't find a familiar road, or even a break in the trees to try to situate herself and her location.
This was the third day she'd been riding on the back roads. It'd felt good, the weather was uncharacteristically nice, and she'd made a split second decision to veer off on an isolated road she hadn't been down yet.
Bella sighed as she looked around. "Stupid, stupid, shit," she cursed at herself.
And then she was airborne.
She made it to the count of three before the ground reached her.
She lay in the pavement's embrace for a minute, eyes closed, mentally taking stock of the damage.
Her right forearm was on fire and her leg throbbed.
Experimenting, Bella moved her limbs. A low groan escaped her. Everything hurt, but nothing was broken. She opened her eyes and pushed herself into a sitting position. Her bike was three feet from her – the front wheel and rim bent at a 90-degree angle. Apparently she'd somehow missed seeing the pothole that was the size of the Grand Canyon.
There'd be no getting back to town on the bike.
And she'd forgotten to bring her cell phone.
Bella mentally paraded a litany of curses through her mind until the stinging in her arm brought her back to reality.
Looking down at her limb she grimaced. Road rash. The sleeve of her jersey was shredded from wrist to shoulder. Luckily, it seemed that she was only bleeding from her forearm, which nicely enough, had bits of dirt and pavement embedded in it.
Getting to her feet, Bella limped over to her bike and grabbed the water bottle. She opened it and poured water over her arm – gently brushing off her sleeve, hissing when the water rubbed into her cuts.
Gritting her teeth, she pulled back her sleeve to clean the rest of it.
The feeling of cool air hitting her wet wound soothingly distracted her from the fact that removing the sleeve had allowed the blood to more freely flow from her arm.
A low moan reached Bella's ears from somewhere on her right. She froze before slowly straightening herself and turning towards the sound.
The forest was silent.
'That's no bobcat! That's no fucking animal!' her mind screamed, hysterically.
Bella felt herself take a step towards the noise.
'Don't go towards it, you idiot!'
But it was as if her body had a completely different motive than her mind. Instead of taking her away from the perceived danger, it wanted her to get closer.
Bella stood motionless, listening. She could feel blood slowly trickling down her arm and hand, before falling in soundless drops from her fingertips.
Behind her someone began to breathe. Heavily.
Bella didn't move, she didn't even think.
Fingertips ghosted down her right side. Touches so light that if it weren't for their coldness she wouldn't have known she'd been touched.
A person was behind her.
She didn't relax. Instinct told her that this was not a local, that this was not someone who was normal.
A body pressed up against her back. They were shorter than she was, cool and hard.
Unconsciously Bella felt herself lean back into the touch.
Wintry breath blew against a tear on her shoulder blade that she'd been unaware of.
"Bella…" whispered the voice against her back.
'An angel,' Bella thought. 'It sounds like an angel.'
She sighed as cold lips brushed her skin. She turned, instinctively reaching for whoever was behind her.
And found herself alone.
Confused, she looked around. No one was in sight.
She took a step towards the side of the road, impulse driving her towards the forest.
A new sound stopped her.
It wasn't the noise of a human, but of a machine.
A car.
Bella turned to her left and watched as a car approached and slowed to a stop.
The door opened and a man gracefully stepped out.
'Well now it makes sense,' Bella told herself, 'I've died.'
The man was young, maybe in his thirties. He was achingly beautiful – blonde hair, strong facial features, physically perfect. And he was wearing a doctor's coat.
Bella couldn't help the laugh that escaped her. 'A gorgeous, young doctor in the middle of nowhere right when I need him. Definitely dead.'
He was approaching her cautiously. "Are you alright?" he asked. "What happened?"
Bella snorted. "You tell me, Doc. Am I dead?"
His brows drew together in confusion. "You're not dead, but it looks like you've been in an accident. Do you remember what happened? May I come closer to help you?"
Reality was slowly returning to Bella. She twisted back to the forest, "Was it real?" she whispered, her eyes searching.
"Miss?"
She turned back. Dr. Good-looking was right beside her. "Do you remember your name? Do you know where you are?" he asked.
Bella looked up into honey colored eyes. "My name's Isabella Swan, and I am hopelessly lost," she told him.
Exhaustion suddenly swept through her and she swayed.
The man reached out and gently steadied her. "Well Miss Swan, my name is Carlisle. I'm one of the doctors at Forks Medical Center, and I know your father," he told her. Carlisle slowly turned her towards his car, "If you don't mind, Miss Swan, I'd like to call your father, let him know what's happened, and give you a ride to the hospital. We should get your scrapes cleaned up and check to see if you have a concussion."
From the look he was giving her Bella could tell he definitely thought she had head trauma. She looked back to the forest, and then to her bike. "I can't leave my bike out here," she told him. "It's really expensive and means a lot to me."
Carlisle smiled reassuringly to her. "We can put it in my trunk, I have a few bungee cords to hold it in place."
Again, she hesitated. Her eyes drifted towards the woods. They were out there, she knew. She studied the trees, looking for any movement that would alert her to wherever they were hiding.
"Miss Swan? We really should get you to the hospital. You're still bleeding quite a bit."
She looked down at her arm. Blood was streaked across her skin in the streaked pattern of fingertips.
It had been real.
Slowly she allowed Dr. Carlisle to pull her towards his vehicle, vaguely aware of him talking to her father on his phone.
Her eyes stayed trained on the same spot in the trees.
"Soon," she whispered.
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Alice watched as Carlisle helped Bella. Edward stood beside her, his hand on her shoulder firmly holding her in place.
Twice she had tried to break free and go to Bella.
"You could kill her," Edward told her. "Let this time go. She'll be in school on Monday."
'You want me to wait? Two years and you tell me to let her go, to wait more…'
"Yes," he told her. "For her safety. Until you can be completely sure you won't harm her."
The animal part of Alice roared defiance. Her mate was there, twenty feet away – wet, wanting, bleeding for her. She was hers to mark, to claim.
"Think rationally." Edward told her.
She tried to refuse, tried to keep his words from settling in her mind.
Slowly, Alice came to herself.
Bella was hurt.
She didn't know Alice.
She had no idea that they were going to be lovers, were going to love each other.
Disappointment swept through her.
Not today.
"Soon," Alice whispered, watching Carlisle lead Bella towards his car.
When she heard Bella repeat the word back to her, Alice finally allowed Edward to pull her back towards their house.
Time had finally arrived.
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Don't worry, cycling's just a convenient device that I'm familiar with to get Bella out in the wilderness alone with Alice. This isn't going to be a Mighty Ducks story about Bella becoming the world's best junior racer or anything.
I'm not this fast of an updater. There was the two-day wait to upload stories and I just kept writing.
To answer lovesanime's question – you bet there's going to be lemons. Teenage hormones are going to run rampant in this story.
If anyone has other questions or confusions I'll try to answer them or iron them out in the story. Just let me know.
