Disclaimer: I own nothing
AN: The tempus might be all over the place in this one as I changed it back and forth a couple of times. I'll try and get it sorted out ASAP but for now I just wanted to get this chapter posted already.
I'm sorry this update took so long, but I've had a couple of crazy weeks at work and have not been able to write like I would've wanted. I have however almost half of chapter 5 ready, so I'll try and get that chapter up as soon as possible. It's told from Jasper's POV. =)
Chapter 4 - Anger is a Deadly Sin
Bella's POV:
"Will you just sit down, Bella - you're driving me crazy!"
The sound of Billy's frustrated voice made me halt in mid-step, staring at him. I'd paced back and forth in his small kitchen for half-an-hour now, almost carving my own path in the dusty wood floor. I'd driven to Billy's as soon as I heard the second anguished howl echo in the night, thinking it probably was the best place for information.
"Sorry, Billy, I…" I sat down at the kitchen sofa, but just couldn't stand being immobile, and got up before I barely touched the seat. "I guess I'll go outside then."
Seth had turned up, needing a car and someone strong to help carry Sam and Quil. He hadn't said much else, but refused to meet my gaze when I asked him what had happened. His assurance that Jake was safe and unharmed wasn't nearly enough to ease my growing apprehension. I was still pretty freaked out over the night I just had and overcome with worry for Jacob. His pain had always been my pain and somehow I knew he was desperately hurting right now.
What could be taking them so long? Not having too much to begin with, my deteriorating patience was almost entirely gone. Just when I was beginning to lose it completely and head into the woods and drag him out myself, a truck pulled up. In the back, unconscious and covered with thick blankets and smeared with blood, laid Sam and Quil together with a pretty young girl I'd never seen before. I gasped when I realized that the reason she didn't move at all were because she truly couldn't. The sight of her blood-drained body and the crescent wound on her neck made me nauseous.
I turned to Seth, preparing to assault him with a massive amount of questions, but before I'd even inhaled, he slowly and deliberately inclined his head towards the woods.
I followed his gaze. A second later, Jacob burst through the forest line, coming to a running stop when his eyes fixed on me. At first, he looked relieved but the emotion was soon replaced with a surge of others I barely had time to recognize; regret, anger and…guilt? I ran to him and threw my arms around his waist, holding him hard and tight against me. Feeling him safe and warm in my arms allowed it all to come crashing down. We just stood there for a moment; Jake's warm hand caressing my hair.
When I'd calmed down I looked up at Jake, a questioning look in my eyes. Before I managed to say anything, he let me go and suggested a walk on the beach.
The following couple of hours were pure agony.
After a little pushing from me, Jake launched into his story. He told it like he had witnessed it; the howl, the run, the silence, the girl… as he recounted how Embry had been massacred by a vampire, tears started streaming down my face and my heart formed into a congealed mass in my chest. Embry was just such a genuinely happy and good person, it seemed so unfair. I knew vampires were deadly, and I'd always feared something horrendous would happen if the pack ever faced one again. They'd handled Laurent all right, but that had involved the entire pack and probably a big pile of luck. Victoria always ran, never attacked, so it hadn't come to a fight with her. Thank God.
I winced at the thought of Victoria. It still bothered me how she'd just given up like that and disappeared one day. Maybe she'd realized that killing me wouldn't be the perfect revenge on Edward she'd envisioned after all but…I still felt uneasy when thinking about her.
"Do you know who it was…the vampire who did this?" I asked. Jake was barely able to look at me, his eyes blazing fire and his hands clenched into hard fists, ready to strike.
"Well, you did see him, didn't you?" Jake's voice were dreary, tired, like he couldn't stand thinking of this for one more second. Seeing my confused stare he continued and told me the truth.
As soon as the shock settled, I'd understood it all perfectly. It had been Edward's furious face at the window spying on us having sex. A familiar blush stained my cheeks at the thought, though part of me was relieved; I had been focused on Jake in that moment…my mind wasn't playing tricks on me. The relief was short-lived though and the monstrosity of it all filled me with a consuming guilt. It was perfectly clear to me that Edward had done these things because of what he'd seen in the window. At first, the anguish and remorse filled me up, ate away at my mind and crushed me to the ground.
Embry was dead. Jake could have been. Because of me.
Jake held me in his arm until the tremors stopped, his warm familiar scent felt reassuring and safe, somehow holding me together. My feelings for Edward felt abused – dirty. It was like losing him a second time, only worse because this time it made me re-evaluate EVERYTHING; see myself and my past behavior in a whole new light. I felt stupid and naïve.
In that moment, through a fear-stained haze, I promised myself to cut out the decaying part of my mind, still clinging futilely to a long lost – and possibly imagined – love. With indisputable certainty I knew I would finally be able to love Jacob with all my heart now. Focusing on that silver lining made everything else more endurable. Once again loving Jake would save me, just like it had the first time Edward failed me and just like it had when Charlie died. Despite everything else going on, I needed to tell him.
"You remember last night when you said – I thought you were finally mine?" I looked up at his beautiful face only five inches away from mine.
"I think I truly am yours now." It wasn't a joyous statement, but I packed it with fervor and commitment. I waited in anticipation for some sign of the smile loved so much; only his face crumpled in despair and pain instead of expressing the hopefulness I'd imagined. "Jake, what's wrong?" My stomach twisted with trepidation.
"Oh Bella…" Silent sobs shook his entire frame as he gasped for breath. "You don't know how long I've waited for you to feel like that!" I held my breath – somehow knowing with absolute certainty that my world was about to be turned upside down yet again. Torment and sorrow seeped through his very pores and clouded the air between us.
"The only problem is…" He braced himself, "I don't think I'm yours anymore."
My hands grasped the steering wheel at a perfect ten and two o'clock position. I was so mad; I probably shouldn't be driving at all, but the compulsion to get as far away from Forks as possible urged me forward. The last couple of weeks had probably been the worst, or – the second worst – of my life. At some indefinable point however; sorrow, despair and agony had been replaced by anger and frustration.
A joyless smile graced my lips at the irony of it all. Just when I'd finally understood that my lingering love for Edward merely were a work of fiction, that's when the one thing we've always feared happened. Jake imprinting.
Myra. Part of me hated her, though I knew this wasn't her fault – if anyone, I was to blame. If I'd never loved Edward, he wouldn't have returned and killed her sister and Jake wouldn't have imprinted on Myra. Don't you love it when you're to blame for destroying your own happiness?
When Jake first told me, I'd felt like the air had been knocked out of me, without the possibility to replenish the lost oxygen again. In his arms, I'd gasped desperately for air, tears pouring endlessly as my mind fought to cope.
Not Jake too, I wanted him, I needed him! Two loves lost in one day, it was just too excruciating to bear. A hollow ache burned inside my chest and I clung myself to him, refusing to let go. Jacob's deep eyes were brimmed with tears, his sorrow almost mirroring mine. We'd spent that night in close embrace, holding each other in mourning of our doomed relationship. Jacob had moved out the following morning and as I watched him leave the driveway, the last fragile thread holding me together broke and the ragged pieces scattered on the floor.
Somehow I'd managed to gather and drag my disarrayed limbs upstairs and then spent the following week in bed. I'd thought a lot about the last few years, going over and reassessing many of the irrefutable certainties I used to believe were set in stone. At long last, I'd been able to think of my relationship with Edward in a more objectively detached way. Somehow I accepted that he really had loved me and didn't leave because I wasn't good enough for him. It was the only conceivable explanation for his actions; however that knowledge did nothing to sooth the raw wounds of this betrayal.
Jacob came by every day to check up on me, and talk. On some level he was just as broken as I was; he'd lost a best friend and lover as well - only he had another purpose in life now, one that simultaneously made this more endurable and despairing for him. The rational part of him wanted to be with me and forget he'd ever met Myra, and that part was in agony – but the larger part of him just couldn't wait to see her again. Most of all, he was angry.
Perhaps his anger and frustration were the catalyst for my own growing rage - I don't know, but from one day to the next I went from not wanting to get out of bed to needing to get as far away from this place as possible. It was like an itch you couldn't scratch compelling me to act. The house, the town, held nothing for me now; I didn't want them or my memories any longer. I loved Jacob and wanted our friendship to be resurrected again someday, but I couldn't linger here, watching him try and win Myra over. A vicious part of me enjoyed the fact that she still refused to have anything to do with him, and I didn't like being that person. I wanted him happy – or at least, I wanted to want him to be happy.
I asked Jake to sell the house my father left me, packed the car with the few sparse belongings I couldn't part with – mostly clothes, photos and a few gifts from Jacob and hit the road without a decided destination. Jake had begged me to stay, using all weapons he had available in his arsenal; guilt, family, love and even fear - Edward was not the person I'd thought he was, maybe now that he'd chosen the dark path, he would wait in ambush for me once Jake couldn't protect me?
None of it had worked though. I wasn't afraid of Edward - no, I wanted to kill him! He drank an innocent girl's blood and ripped Embry to shreds. Edward!
My knuckles turned white as my hands gripped the steering wheel so hard my joints protested at the strain. The fury made it feel like my brain would explode any second now. I still couldn't believe he'd done this! Maybe I was a bit of a hypocrite, being ok with him killing a bunch of humans once upon a time and still loving him, but I didn't think so. There was a vast difference between killing for food than out of revenge. Between killing because you didn't know any better and killing innocent with cold purpose and knowledge of right and wrong. BETWEEN KILLING SOMEONE BY ACCIDENT AND PURPOSELY DESTROYING SOMEONE BECAUSE YOU THOUGHT THEY WERE SOMEONE ELSE.
Edward had wanted to take Jake away from me. Well, he had succeeded.
I would get far away from everyone and everything so he couldn't find me. I would NOT let him hurt me or someone I cared about ever again. Because of him Embry was dead; Jacob devastated and my father had died thinking his daughter would never be whole again. I could never forgive him, or myself, for that.
Small patches of snow lined the empty road, providing some illumination to the otherwise eerily dark night. The aloneness of this place calmed me somehow and soothed the raging anger with its silence. Whenever I got where the hell I was going, I would start over and create a new life - one where life and death weren't at stake at every moment. Maybe I'd even apply to college?
Something white flashed in my rearview mirror, halting my train of thought. My pulse sped up and my eyes darted left and right scanning the murky forest. Nothing.
Somewhat embarrassed, I laughed a little at my reaction. Come on Bella, don't freak yourself out. That's when I saw it again, this time on my right; a patch of marble skin briefly illuminated against the black forest before it disappeared again.
A vampire was chasing me.
Thank god I had a new car and not my old Chevy truck. I floored the gas pedal, startled at how quickly the car sped up. I watched as the vampire increased its speed, obviously realizing I had noticed something, it stopped bothering with stealth. Fear surged through me as it got closer and closer; the rational part of me already knew there was no way I could outrun a vampire, even with a decent vehicle, but I had to try. I pushed the car to its limit and focused my full attention forward, at this velocity I'd probably die in a car crash before the vampire could even get to me. Though it wasn't funny, a dark humor came over me at the thought.
The laughter caught in my throat as suddenly, the vampire was nowhere to be seen. The night was still and foreboding, like the silence before a storm. I knew it hadn't given up, and I didn't like being taken by surprise. In growing anticipation, I searched for a point of attack, unconsciously slowing down. Where was it?
It was right in front of me. Suddenly, as if out of nowhere, it appear in the middle of the road thirty feet ahead, its red eyes shining with anticipation.
Reacting instinctively, I hit the brake and turned the steering wheel to hard. The car swirled around on the slick, icy road, in panic I tried to compensate for the rotating momentum but I'd already lost control. In slow-motion I watched as a large tree rushed towards me. At this speed, the tree trunk would probably crush me completely in one swift moment – a quick and pain free death, far better than many I'd contemplated before. This is it, I thought, closing my eyes. Quick and pain free.
It hurt like hell.
Everything happened so fast I could barely distinguish each motion. I felt a backward jerk, just before the front of the car was completely demolished by the tree. A branch pierced the windshield but missed me by a few inches. My head hit the airbag so hard I almost blacked out, glass shards sliced my arms and hands as I tried to catch myself.
Just as quickly, everything stilled, but the pounding in my head was so loud it felt like the car was shaking back and forth. It grew louder and louder, but through it I heard something I couldn't quite distinguish outside. Focusing on the sound, I heard a final thud and then the slow pacing of someone approaching the car.
I was barely coherent, but refused to just sit here like a fly caught in a spider's web. With sluggish, bloody hands I tried frantically to release the seat-belt.
I froze as a cold white hand closed over mine, popped the lock up and removed the belt. My eyes followed the movement and continued to wander up the arm of my attacker. I gasped in shock as my eyes locked on a pair of familiar dark golden eyes, full of repressed fury and…concern? I must be dead already.
"Bella, are you ok?"
Before I could answer him, before I could fully comprehend the situation; my mind closed down. Through the semi-conscious state just before passing out, I felt myself being carried away.
I hope you liked it! I plan on further explaining the Charlie thing eventually.
Please review if you have any opinion at all! =)