A/N: Guess what? You can still nominate stories for The Indie Twific Awards until Tuesday, June 23. Only stories with an average of 30 or less reviews per chapter (or 1000 reviews all together if the story is complete) can be nominated, so these awards are really, truly for the stories that do not have a lot of readership. This means it is really up to you to nominate a story if you like it, you can't just trust that enough other people will nominate so you don't have to. So, get on over there next week and nominate your favorite little stories that could. (BTW, C+S does qualify, hint, hint).
(http(colon)(slash)(slash)theindietwificawards(dot)com)
Thanks to Goldenmeadow (aka Rie) for the shout-out in her fic Dead Confederates, and if you're not familiar with Confeddie/Rebelward/Dirty Southward, well, you're missing out. He's to die for (tee hee) as is Rie's love affair with the English language.
Thanks to the folks at Project Team Beta for making me watch my p's and q's.
Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended. In other words, I do not own Twilight.
Chapter 7: Satisfied and Empty
The boy had made me late to class, but I couldn't manage to wipe the sappy grin off my face. With a quick glance to make sure no one was around to see me, I sped to class, only slowing to a human pace when I entered the building for English. I carefully closed the door behind me, hoping Mr. Mason would ignore me and just continue to write on the chalkboard, but of course, he spun around sharply as soon as he heard the faint click of the door latch.
His face was frowning as he turned to me, and I was certain he was about to spout some snarky comment, so I pasted on the most saccharine, charming, and contrite smile I could manage, all the while thinking repentant thoughts in his direction. His eyes glazed over, and his mouth drooped open slightly, and then after a second, he turned back to the board with a mumbled, "Please, have a seat."
I had to sit in the back since I was tardy, and Mike turned to me from several rows in front, mouthing lucky. I made an effort to answer questions and ingratiate myself to Mr. Mason for the rest of the period, and after class Mike and Eric walked with me to Government. The two boys started hyping each other up with plans to go to the beach during the weekend since the weatherman predicted clouds but no rain. I snacked on their energy as we walked, hoping to calm them enough to keep them from dragging me into the conversation.
I should have known my luck wouldn't last. They ganged up on me, insisting I had to go with them, and I feigned a smile, claiming I had to ask my dad, until Eric started creepily uttering, "La Push, baby! It's Laaaa Push!" I curled my lip in disgust and walked into my class without another word. Mike laughed behind me as Eric exclaimed, "What? What did I say?"
I spent the rest of the morning trying to solve the conundrum of getting Dad to accept Edward in my life, because I knew now that it was futile to even pretend to resist. Who knew that an aggravating undead boy could be so addictive? My mind raced down every avenue I could come up with, desperately wanting to find a solution that didn't involve us running away to Timbuktu, but inevitably I always reached the same conclusion: Dad was never going to be cool with the magnetism we had going between the two of us, whatever it was. However, I was mollified somewhat by my newfound knowledge that it wasn't one sided. He couldn't stay away from me, either.
As Jessica and I headed to lunch with Mike, they started in on the plans for the beach trip again, and I nearly groaned in frustration. Jessica assured him I would go, and she smiled at the glare I cast her way. She promised I wouldn't regret going and said I would be thanking her when it was all over. I snorted in reply as I pushed through the cafeteria doors.
The pull was coming from the wrong direction, and I stood on my tiptoes to find my favorite rumpled head of hair. He was sitting several tables away from his family, and he slowly smiled a daring grin once I located him. I looked to his regular table with a puzzled frown, and for once, Alice wasn't baldly staring at me. Instead, she watched me from the corner of her eye as she faced Jasper, while he whispered sweet nothings to her.
I looked at Edward again, still wondering why he wasn't sitting with his kin, and he lifted one hand, slowly crooking one long, slender finger, telling me with that simple gesture to join him. I shivered remembering the feeling of his fingers on my ribs earlier in the morning, and then I berated myself for swooning over a finger when I should have at least saved the reaction for his lips.
I grabbed my usual soda and told Jess that I needed to discuss some Biology homework with Edward, so I was going to sit with him. Her face fell, and because I'm a sucker for the crestfallen look, I told her that I had decided to go to the beach after all. She squealed and hugged me, jumping up and down. Old Bella would have crashed to the ground with the force of her enthusiasm. As it was, I still rocked a little with each of her jumps. She guaranteed that we would have fun and told me she'd call me after school to fill me in on the details and to plan what we would wear. "Great, I can't wait," I lied through gritted teeth and a fake smile that she seemed to buy.
I reached the table where Edward sat, his arms folded where his normal tray of uneaten food should have been. I raised a brow. "Not hungry today?" I couldn't keep myself from taunting him.
His lips twitched as he looked at my soda. "Nope. You?"
"I've got my caffeine. What else does a girl need?"
His lips parted, and his eyelids lowered, and heat surged through me at his unexpected, smolderingly seductive expression. His gilded gaze swept down my body, and my skin tingled like he was actually touching everywhere he looked. "What else, indeed."
My pulse sped, and I rejoiced that I couldn't blush anymore because otherwise, I would have been some horrid shade of magenta at that moment. My mouth went dry as I sucked in a deep breath, which just made my discomfiture worse when his luscious scent hit the back of my throat. I bit back a moan, and his lips curled up knowingly.
I melted into a chair before my legs collapsed. I dropped my eyes to the table, wishing I was more adept at flirtation so I could one up him at his own game. I licked my dry lips before chewing on the bottom one, trying to think of something to say to him. I heard a gasp across from me, and I glanced up to see him staring wide-eyed at me, bewitched by my mouth.
At first, I couldn't fathom what had caused such a reaction in him, but then I realized what I was doing when he gasped. I slowly ran the tip of my tongue across my lips again, and his eyes widened even further as he held his breath. I pulled my bottom lip between my teeth, nibbling at it a little for good measure, and he exhaled with a puff of his cheeks.
I couldn't keep the corner of my mouth from twitching up, and his eyes narrowed when he realized he'd been played. He looked up to my eyes. "You, you're wicked."
I smiled sweetly at him. "Oh, that's rich, coming from…" I didn't want to out him in the middle of a room full of grazing sheep, so I altered my thought. "…well, you."
We were both quiet, and questions ran through my mind, but I was afraid to ask most of them, not wanting him to question me in turn, because I knew I wouldn't be able to keep the truth from him if he asked outright. His beauty should be bottled up and sold to the military as a more effective replacement for sodium pentothal. Enemies of the state would sell-out their own mothers.
"Bella, can I ask you a question?" Crap.
"Sure." I tried not to sound uneasy, but I failed.
"I just want to know…" He paused, and then ran a hand through his hair. "Well, my family and I need to know, just how much do you know about us?"
I thought about how to respond, wanting to be honest, but not completely flagrant in our surroundings. I decided to tell him what I knew to be different about his family.
"I know you're supposed to have red eyes, but for some reason you don't. Do you all wear contacts, or use some extra strength eye-drops or something?"
He glanced at his family before responding. Alice was staring at us, her face a stone mask, and he quickly shook his head at her, an almost imperceptible jerk of his head. He turned back to me.
"It's our diet. We prefer furrier fare than…" He struggled for a moment, searching for an appropriate euphemism. "…other people."
I nodded, accepting that they would be able to survive on animals, too, but curious why they would bother when apparently other vampires didn't. I remembered what Dad had said about vampires hiding from our kind during the day, and although they didn't fear us anymore, I assumed they wouldn't want to be seen sparkling like a pageant queen's tiara around humans.
"Why do you come out in the daytime?"
He smiled. "Rumors of our combustibility have been greatly exaggerated." I smiled at his misquotation of Twain but shook my head.
"No, I mean I thought you wouldn't want to attract attention with all the glittery-ness."
He had the nerve to look affronted and then spoiled it with a smirk. "Glittery-ness isn't very manly, thank you very much. I prefer the term incandescence."
I snorted. "Yeah, you would."
"Bella Gertrude Swan, did you just snort?"
I went to slap his arm, but his other hand caught mine mid-air. The familiar jolt shot down my arm, and I breathed a sigh of relief as the pull in my chest relaxed. He turned his hand over and held my fingers curled up against his smooth, cold palm. I looked down, too shy to watch as he contemplated our hands like they held an answer. "Of course I didn't snort, you're imagining things. And my middle name is not Gertrude."
He started to rub his thumb against my knuckles, and I wanted to purr with contentment. "So, what is it?"
"Well, my first name is actually Isabella, and my middle name is Marie. What's your middle name?"
He became completely and utterly still, and I looked up at him. He was still looking at our joined hands, and his grip tightened for an instant, then relaxed again. Otherwise he was entirely immobile, not even breathing or blinking. "My full name is Edward Anthony Masen Cullen."
I thought for a moment, hoping he wouldn't retreat further into himself. "Was Masen your last name before you were… adopted?"
He nodded and began rubbing my knuckles again while he still looked at our hands.
"Was Dr. Cullen the one to adopt you?" It sounded ridiculous, but I didn't know how else to ask.
"Yes, Carlisle is my father in more ways than one."
I knew I was getting too personal considering we had hardly spoken in a month, but I was too curious not to ask. "Were you mad at him for changing your life like that? For taking you away from your real family? From the life you knew?"
His eyes tightened. "My parents had just died of the flu, my life was changed anyway. I was scared then, and there have been many times where I haven't embraced my current lifestyle, but I always knew Carlisle had the best intentions."
I nodded, knowing how important it was to know your parents had your best interests at heart. He looked up at me cautiously. "I don't want to press you, and please tell me no if you don't feel comfortable answering me."
I nodded, but I was still concerned, knowing my traitorous tongue would never be able to say that two letter word to him.
"Did you have to… go through some kind of adoption process?"
I laughed and shook my head. "We really need to have future discussions like this in a more secluded venue. No, I wasn't adopted. I am who I am by birth."
"So, you've been this way since you were born?"
"This way? You mean snarky, irritable and antagonizing? Sure, since birth."
He laughed with me. "You know what I mean: beautiful, strong, brilliant, talented."
I rolled my eyes, a habit I knew I should quit, especially since I'd just done it in front of the one person I wanted to impress. "Not exactly. Supposedly puberty is extra hard on people in my family, you know, unexpected changes in one's body." I could not believe I just said that to Edward Cullen.
He was puzzled. "Supposedly?"
"I guess you could call me a late bloomer. Nothing happened to me until I came to Forks."
Understanding blossomed across his face. "Ah, so that's why you came."
I shook my head, knowing we had already had this discussion. "No, I told you, I came to be with my father. Well, that, and I've always liked Forks more than Phoenix. Did Forks have a particular siren's call for your family? Some particularly tasty furry fare?"
He smirked. "Nope, and this might answer your earlier question. It rains almost constantly here. It helps to tone down the glittery-ness."
I returned his smirk. "You mean the incandescence." His smirk spread into a breathtaking, genuine smile.
"Exactly. Thanks for correcting me."
I sobered, not wanting to bring up the subject of my own powers again but knowing I needed to. "Thanks for not pressing me about my non-adoption."
Sincerity and respect radiated from him. "I don't want you to ever tell me anything because you feel compelled to. I need you to trust me, so only ever tell me what you feel like sharing."
I would have reached across the table and hugged him if I weren't afraid I would never let him go. I wondered how he knew how hard it was for me to say "no" to him. "Do you feel the same way? Like you have to do or say whatever I want?"
"To some extent, I suppose, but it's not as much like I have to obey you, more like my greatest desire is to give you whatever you want and need."
He made sense; it wasn't like I physically couldn't say the word "no" to him, it was more like it was upsetting to think of him not getting whatever he wanted. I wanted to test the theory a little, though.
"If I tell you to stand up on this table and give the school a strip-tease, will you?"
"No," he answered without hesitation before explaining. "Since it's all about my desire to please you, I could definitely say no. I've spent a lot of time ignoring my desires, so that part should be easy. However, if it were something you really, genuinely wanted, it would tear me up inside to deny you it."
I shouldn't have chosen a strip-tease as my example, because the images running through my head were making me squirm in my seat. Luckily, I was saved by the end of lunch bell.
We walked out of the cafeteria together, his left hand hovering just over the small of my back, as if he wanted to protect and steer me but didn't want to seem forward. Even though we weren't touching, I could feel the electricity passing between us as we glided through the crowd.
Alice stood in the middle of the sidewalk a few feet in front of the Science building, her feet squarely planted and her fists on her lithe hips. The other students skirted around her, their heads ducked away from her stare as the herd parted like the Red Sea for the immovable presence of her diminutive yet deadly frame.
We halted in front of her, and she and Edward stared at each other intently. Even without touching her, I could sense the nature of her thoughts: concerned, confused, and frustrated. I looked up at Edward, wondering if they too could communicate telepathically, but then he spoke.
"You see me going home early? It hardly seems like a cause for concern. I'll come back to pick you up."
His question when she hadn't spoken made me think he was either reading her mind, or they had developed some kind of incredibly subtle sign language. I hoped it was the latter, because if Edward could read minds, I might as well curl up in a ball of shame right in the middle of the sidewalk. They were staring at each other again, and his eyes narrowed.
"What do you expect me to do, Alice?" he hissed. "I can't just walk around on eggshells all of the time just because your brain is on the fritz."
She growled under her breath and then sailed away from us in a flurry of silk and scarves. Edward winced and called out softly after her, "Alice, I'm sorry, I didn't mean it!"
I felt like they had forgotten me during their nonsensical one-sided conversation, and I was glad because I wouldn't want Alice to turn her maelstrom of frustration on me. Edward sighed and turned to me. "Sorry about that."
He swept his hand out in front of us for me to continue walking. We were the last ones to enter our class, and Mike watched us worriedly as we passed. I smiled at him and he briefly smiled back, before turning a glare on Edward.
As we sat, Edward nodded in Mike's direction. "It seems like your boyfriend over there has some issues with us looking too cozy."
I glanced again at Mike who quickly turned around to face the front of the room. "Shut up, we're just friends, and he's just worried about me getting too close to the weird and exclusive Cullens."
He chuckled. "I wouldn't be too sure about that. In fact, I'm fairly certain if you buddied up with Rosalie, he wouldn't have a problem at all."
I thought of the standoffish and breathtaking blonde and the unlikelihood that we would ever be friends. "Well, I guess it's a good thing he has no say in who I'm friends with, then."
He leaned closer so only I could hear and with a sideways glance he whispered, "Or more than friends with?"
I shifted in my seat as I looked at his suddenly emotionless face. I turned to face the front, too but watched for his reaction in my periphery. "Or more," I said firmly.
A grin flashed across his face before he rearranged it into the bored mask he usually wore in Biology. Mr. Banner wasn't in the room yet, and Edward sat up straighter when we heard a rattling at the door. His eyes widened. "Damn it, Alice!" he breathed so quietly I almost didn't hear him.
Mr. Banner walked into the room carrying a box and began passing around items to every table. I caught what he was saying in the back of my mind, but I was too distracted by Edward's behavior to heed his words. I watched as Edward became immobile again, seeming to shrink into himself before he stopped breathing altogether. I was about to ask him what was wrong when Mr. Banner's voice finally intruded on my thoughts.
"Then I want you to carefully prick your finger with the lancet…" My head snapped in his direction, and I wanted to shout at him to stop, to launch myself out of my seat and push him away from Mike, whose finger he held as he lowered the lancet. For whatever reason, though, I stayed still, watching as the metal slid into the skin of the pad of his finger. I knew I shouldn't have, but I couldn't resist inhaling as the blood beaded, and saliva flooded my mouth.
I had been subsisting too long on emotions and small rodents, and suddenly human blood became my holy grail. Without a thought commanding them to, my calf muscles tensed, readying me to spring over several tables and tackle Mike, my friend whose scent was always overpowered by Edward's, until the moment his blood became the focus of all of my senses.
My toes were several inches off the ground when a cold, unbreakable manacle latched onto my arm, jerking me back and throwing me unceremoniously onto the ground by my seat. My head hit the tile with a crack and I looked up at Edward standing above me. I growled behind my gritted teeth before I snapped my teeth at his ankle, the closest part of him I could reach.
He hopped a little further away before whispering, "Stop it. Stay still."
I growled at him again, unthinking and feral, until his grip tightened painfully. I felt the small bones in my wrist sliding against each other, and my growl turned into a whimper. Edward quickly turned our hands, relaxing his painful grip slightly as he seemed to be checking my pulse.
Mr. Banner's feet appeared near my head, and I closed my eyes and whimpered once more as I felt my wrist bones shift again with an almost inaudible grinding sound.
"Did she faint?" Mr. Banner asked with surprised concern.
"Yes, sir. It sounded like she hit her head pretty hard when she fell." Edward's deceptive voice matched his concern, despite the fact that he was trying to pulverize my bones even as he spoke.
"Can you take her to the nurse's office?" Mr. Banner asked, shaken.
"Certainly." Edward released my wrist, but before I could move he had lifted me in his arms, crushing me to his chest, his left hand spread across my ribs and his right hand gripping my thigh so tightly, my sensitive hearing caught the sound of the tearing of the threads of my jeans beneath his fingers. To think, just that morning I had relished his slightest touch on me. Now his touch was painful, breaking me, yet I still turned my head to snuggle against his neck, basking in his aroma. God, I was one sick twist.
Mike held the door open, his face pale and worried as Edward carried me out of the room. Once we were out of the building, the truth of what I had done crashed down on me; I had nearly attacked my friend, and Edward had needed to stop me. The fact that he was still gripping me painfully as he hauled me across campus led me to believe he didn't trust me not to run back inside the class and rip into Mike. I began to plead, "Wait…"
Edward looked down at me in question.
"Please, don't hurt me," I whispered, hoping to not make him angry again.
His pace slowed as emotions raced across his face. I could feel that he was shocked and then horrified. "Bella, no! I was just trying to stop you from attacking your friend. I would never hurt you on purpose."
His voice was raspy, and his eyes squinted like he was holding back tears. I wondered if vampires even could cry. I pulled my damaged wrist close to my chest, cradling it with my other arm. "But you did hurt me. It's not like I was going to eat Mike." I didn't think I would, anyways. "You didn't have to hurt me."
He shook his head. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. I just couldn't be sure of your strength, or your fragility. I swear I didn't want to hurt you. Will you be okay?"
I lifted my shoulders, not wanting to upset him any more. "I had worse breaks before I changed, and I always bounced back quickly. I'm sure I'll be good as new in no time, so we really don't need to go to the nurse's office. You can put me down."
He shook his head but smiled apologetically. "The nurse should see you so you can get a note to stay out of class. I would hate to have a repeat performance."
Ashamed, I lowered my eyes and nodded in agreement. We had reached the administrative office, and a freshman girl held the door open for us with her mouth agape as Edward carried me inside. Ms. Cope stood with a gasp.
"She fainted in Biology. We were doing blood-typing today, and she hit her head." His voice held just the right amount of concern.
Ms. Cope's eyes travelled from my head against Edward's shoulder to my cradled wrist that was already turning an angry shade of crimson. "I think I sprained my wrist when I fell," I whispered pitifully.
She tsked and fretted as she opened the door to the nurse's office for us. The nurse looked up at us, startled, and quickly hid her paperback novel, but not before I could make out the illustration of a barely clothed couple on the cover. Edward explained our version of the situation again as Ms. Cope left, closing the door behind her.
The nurse checked my pulse on my unbroken wrist, stating that my pulse was racing, and then gently pressed at the back of my head, asking if it hurt. I claimed it was a little sore, and she nodded. She then had me hold up my wrist as she prodded it. I managed not to hiss at the grandmotherly woman as she declared it was at least sprained, if not broken. She advised that I have it x-rayed to be safe, and I nodded in agreement. She opened a drawer and pulled out an Ace bandage which she tightly secured around my wrist.
Edward had been leaning in the corner, his arms crossed, but he suddenly stood up straight when we heard the sounds of more people entering the outer office. Ms. Cope appeared in the doorway. "If you're done, we need the bed. We've got a bleeder."
Edward said he'd take me outside so I wouldn't faint again from the sight, and I closed my eyes and held my breath as he swept me up. I could feel that he was holding his breath too, until we walked outside into a slight drizzle. He sat me down on a bench and sank down next to me.
"Well, that was eventful," he half-heartedly joked as he ran a hand through his hair.
I looked down at my wrist, hoping Coach Clapp would let me sit out in gym so I wouldn't hurt it anymore playing basketball. Edward reached out a hand, lightly caressing my knuckles as he sighed. "If you want, I can go see if Ms. Cope will give you a pass to get out of school for the rest of the day."
I nodded, disturbed again at the thought that he might be able to read my mind. He stood and went inside but reappeared quickly with a note in his hand. "Ms. Cope already took the precaution of calling your father. He said he couldn't be here for at least an hour and asked you to call him if you couldn't make your own way home."
I groaned and rubbed my hand over my eyes, hoping Dad had just assumed I was getting out of class to avoid the blood, and not that I was mauled by our friendly neighborhood Strigoi Morti. "I'll have to go to the station and give him an explanation so he doesn't think the worst."
"Are you sure you don't want me to take you home? You can always call your father once you're there, and Alice can drive your truck home later. It won't be comfortable to drive with a broken wrist, especially since your clunker doesn't have power steering." He cast a disapproving glance at my baby.
"Hey, leave her out of this. I'll be fine. Besides, my dad would flip if he smelled a vampire in my truck."
His eyes narrowed in thought as he looked at my truck again, and I realized I had let too much information slip.
"So, I guess I'll see you in class tomorrow."
He turned back to me. "Actually, you won't. Emmett and I are going hiking this weekend; we're getting an early start tomorrow."
Vampires who hiked? What was the world coming to? Unless hiking was code for hunting…
"Do you have to go?" I sounded too desperate. "I mean, a bunch of us are going to the beach at La Push this weekend, and I was wondering if you wanted to come along. We could hang out in public, like you wanted." And Charlie shouldn't be suspicious if my friends picked me up, and Edward met us at the beach later.
He smiled like we were sharing an inside joke, but I was clueless when he spoke. "I'm not exactly welcome in La Push, you know, and yes, I really do need to go hiking."
Ah, so it was code, then. "I guess we'll just have to figure out something else." I paused, staring at his feet. "Bye."
I felt his hand tentatively brush my hair off my forehead, and I could feel his longing. His desire and my desperation proved too much for me. How could he still want to be with me, knowing now that I couldn't control myself, and I put everyone around me at risk? In the meantime, he had not only controlled himself in class, he had restrained me, too. I was so perplexed and saddened that tears were prickling my eyes, and then his cool lips replaced his fingers on my brow. I closed my eyes as the tears spilled over, trailing down my cheeks as evidence of the destruction he wreaked on my sanity. "Goodbye, Isabella Marie Swan. We'll see each other soon."
I kept my eyes closed as he stepped away, keeping them closed as the crunch of gravel indicated that he was racing away from me. I didn't open them until he started his car, and then I didn't watch as he sped out of the lot. I climbed into my truck and wiped at my face with my good arm, then started the truck.
On the short trip to the station, I planned what I would tell Dad, trying to think of something that wouldn't be a complete lie because he'd probably see through it if it was. When I walked into the building, he was sitting out front, joking and flirting with the ladies. He turned to me with a smile as I approached, but when he saw my face he frowned. "Bells? Are you okay?"
His gaze zeroed in on my bandaged wrist, and his eyes were hot with anger when they met mine again. He pointed an accusatory finger at my wrist as he asked, "What happened?"
I gestured towards his office and followed him inside. As soon as the door was closed, he turned on me. "Was it them?"
"Chill, Dad. It's not what you think. I had to get out of class, they were blood-typing. Everyone thought I fainted, so I went to see the nurse."
"And your arm?" he gritted out.
I had the sense to look sheepish. "I just wanted to test my own strength." Against Edward's marble fingers. "I know it was immature, sorry."
He sighed. "Don't I have enough to worry about without you deliberately hurting yourself?"
I scuffed my boots against the ground. "I know, sorry."
"So, why were you crying?" He sounded perplexed.
I made my way to the guest chair, thinking, and decided to give him the reason I should have cried instead of the truth. "I almost killed my friend today," I whispered.
He sat, too, watching me. "Bells, I'm sure you wouldn't have actually killed him. You stopped yourself, didn't you?"
"Dad, I wasn't even thinking of him as a person. It was close, too close." I knew I owed Edward an apology. He had been right to stop me; he would have been in the right if he'd broken every bone in my body. "Dad, can't we hunt bigger game? I don't think it would have been such an issue if I'd eaten anything besides squirrels in the past month."
He crossed his arms, leaning back in his archaic chair. "I'm sorry, Bells, but we can't hunt large animals in the area or we risk raising suspicion. I'll take you away to hunt as soon as I can, but with Julie out on maternity leave, and since we still haven't found a replacement for Don since he moved, I just don't have the time. Heck, I'm going to be here at least until midnight tonight for the third time this week. But if you feed off of energy enough, you should be fine."
This wasn't the answer I wanted. Since I had nearly killed the prisoner a month ago, I had been very careful to not take more than just a smidge of energy from any one person. Dad had assured me that the man was fine; he'd even straightened up his life, claiming his near-death experience made him realize that life was too short to not do right by your loved ones. I still wasn't taking a chance of it happening again.
I looked out Dad's one tiny, dirty window into the greenery of Forks, the town I still loved dearly, despite everything. I felt like Edward's presence made me love it even more, and I wondered if his being here had resulted in my desperate need to move here, or if it was just my looming change. As a child I had always wanted to move in with Dad, but I definitely hadn't been willing to blackmail my mother over it until recently. I was reminded of my talk at lunch with Edward, how he didn't seem to think that my desire to be with my father was the only reason I was in Forks.
I looked to Charlie curiously. "Hey, Dad? Why did Papa Swan move to Forks in the first place?"
He was tinkering on his whirring old computer and didn't look at me as he answered. "Hmmm? Oh, he was always interested in our children and grandchildren, why some turned into different animals than we preferred, why some chose to live in swamps, or snow tundras. He heard about the Quileutes turning into wolves, which isn't heard of in our kind, and before you ask, no, we're not related to traditional, moon-controlled werewolves. He came to check them out, struck up some friendships, and decided to stick around."
He was still concentrating on his computer screen, probably playing solitaire, based on the way he moved the mouse, so he didn't see my jaw hanging open. After several silent minutes, I finally found my voice. "That beast we saw in the woods? Dad, that wasn't a wolf, that was a…" I waved my hands in the air to indicate its massiveness. "I don't know, a yeti?"
He finally looked at me, perplexed at first, but then realization crossed his face and he chuckled. "Yetis are more like people covered in really long hair. That was a wolf."
My eyes nearly popped out of my skull. "Yetis are real too?"
He shrugged. "Don't know, never seen one, but would it really be that surprising, all things considered?"
"Guess not," I muttered.
He shook his head in amusement. "I can't believe you didn't say anything sooner about the wolves. I didn't even think about the fact that you couldn't hear Jake and me communicate."
I'd been distracted, too busy obsessing over a ridiculously handsome vampire to notice something as "common" as giant wolves who happened to actually be people.
"Do they feel the same way about the vampires as…" I swallowed at the lie in my words, "we do?"
"Yes, but for different reasons. They blame the Cullens for making most of their boys change into wolves for the past couple of generations. They think their supernatural presence brings out the wolf in them. Papa and I had a theory that we contributed to some of that, but don't you utter a word of that to anyone. After all, the Cullens just came back to the area a couple of years ago, according to the Quileutes."
"Back? I thought you didn't know about the Cullens until last month."
His jaw tightened. "Billy was holding out on me. Didn't want me getting involved in 'tribal matters.' He didn't think about the fact that he was putting my little girl's life at risk."
I had wondered why I hadn't seen Billy since I moved in, and why Dad had stopped hanging out with him on the weekends. When I lived with Renee, it seemed like Dad and Billy were always doing things together. I had just assumed Dad was too busy at work to go visit.
"I'm sorry; I don't want you to fight with your friends because of me."
He smiled at me sadly. "Ah, Bells, it's not your fault. We're just two grumpy old men, we'll be alright."
He changed the subject, insisting I take at least some energy from the fellows in the holding cell, saying it would make my wrist heal faster. I complied and left with a promise to be asleep by the time he came home.
Once home, my thoughts naturally turned to Edward. I had become complacent, forgetting that he and his family were at least as strong as I was and could still hurt me. In the past day or so I had even convinced myself that there was no way we would ever hurt each other, especially once I realized that he felt the same desire to make me happy that I felt for him. I knew he hadn't meant to break my wrist, but he did nonetheless, but perhaps more importantly, if I could have reached him, I would have bitten a chunk out of his leg without a qualm. We were going to have to be much more careful, before we completely destroyed each other.
E/N: Please review! Got any questions, something(s) not making sense? Let me know! I'll either clarify right away or incorporate it later, or both! Also, if you want to discuss the fic, or the mythology behind it, or anything Twi related really, visit the thread on the Twilight forums.
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