JPOV
He kept his phone in his pocket as he made a show of going out to his car in the morning. He was still in Leah's pair of baggy, gray gym shorts, but the rain had stopped, and the cooled air felt good on his chest as he popped the hood of the Rabbit. He looked the inside over, knew that the whole thing was probably just a matter of getting someone to jump his car.
Pursing his lips, he leaned in, pinched a wire between his fingers and pulled it free, ending a vital connection. Even if someone tried to jump his car now, it wouldn't have started. Jacob worked up his best expression of frustration as he pulled his phone out and rounded the car to the trunk where he retrieved a wrench.
Leah didn't know anything about cars. As long as she looked out her window and saw that he appeared to be pissed off and working a wrench under the hood of his car, she wouldn't know any better. Rounding his car again, Jacob leaned in, held the wrench down by the engine, and pretended to crank it.
He opened his phone, pushed in a number, and held it against the side of his face that wasn't in open view from the house. While he listened to the ring, he wondered what Leah was doing. She hadn't left her room, but he'd sensed that she was awake. He'd made enough noise to make sure that she was in either case.
Still, she'd pointedly remained behind closed door until he was out of the house. She was probably taking breakfast by now, thinking that she should probably offer him some, but deciding, cruelly against it. She'd see him starve first.
Or maybe she'd gone straight to the shower, hoping to wash his scent off of her, because, even without touching, the smell of their bodies was the primary scent swirling around the house. Jacob scowled at that. He didn't like that she could read his emotions—if they became too strong—just by sniffing the air. He needed a certain level of subtlety to deal with Leah. Anything he felt too strongly could wind up pissing her off.
"Hello?"
"Hey, Bells."
"Jake? Is everything okay? What happened to your car?"
He felt a strange ping in the pit of his stomach. Bella's concern seemed real enough, but it still rang with a certain lack of sincerity, as if they were moving through the motions only. Stupid. It was only because he'd wanted once, so much, for her to care about his well-being. Now that he had that compassion, he didn't trust it.
"I'm not sure. It's just old, you know. But I can fix it." He closed his eyes. "It'll just take some time is all."
Time to fix Leah, who was what was really broken here. At the very least, his relationship with Leah. He felt bad for lying, feeling like he should really cut that habit out of his life as soon as possible, but it was necessary for now. Despite how Leah had stabbed him by pointing out that he was only lying and cheating on Bella, he wasn't ready to speak the truth until he knew what the truth was.
"Can't you call someone to help?"
He continued to work his arm as if he was cranking the wrench.
"You know me, I have to fix it myself. Besides, it's proving more difficult than expected to convince Leah to come home."
"Oh," Bella said, at length. "All right, well, I'll just keep spending time with Charlie until you get back. He likes the company."
Jacob clanked the wrench against the engine to add appropriate sound effects just incase Leah was being overly observant. He doubted it. She probably didn't want to look at him any more than she had to.
"Sounds fun."
"Your dad was asking about you."
Jacob's hand stilled. "What'd you say?"
"He knew about Leah running. He seemed glad that you'd gone after her, if not a little doubtful about your chances of success."
"Sounds like dad. Look, I better go. I've got to get this done."
He wasn't sure if he meant to refer to Leah or his car.
"Call me later. See you, Jake."
"Bye, Bells."
()()()()
Edward POV
He'd never felt so hollow, yet so completely made of marble, filled with rock. He had taken to sitting for long hours on the couch—spilling stuffing like milky vomit from one of its plaid, green cushions—forgetting to breath, reminding himself to breathe, going through the motions of breathing. The motions made him feel sane, but they also made him feel even less human. What human had to remind himself to breathe?
He took a deep breath, blew it out, reminded himself to blink and not to think of Bella. Tonya was rifling around the house, like a real human. It was her house, sunk into snow drifts, placed remotely in Alaska. She liked the cold, the hours of complete darkness. She liked the perfect habitat for vampires, and yet she was also uniquely human. She wore plain clothes and light makeup and seldom fixed her hair into anything flashy. She underplayed her beauty and made a show of going to the grocery store, buying food.
She'd invited human guests over for dinner, and she ate human food with them, forcing herself to crunch the lettuce of salads between her teeth, swallow, and smile. She was hospitable and everyone liked her, and, when she introduced him to her new, mortal friends, she called him her husband, Edward Cullen. And she was Tonya Cullen.
And he went along with it, because pressing himself so firmly into the mold of a vampire family—like Rose and Emmett, and Alice and Jasper—would surely convince him that this was his "natural" path in life. If he could just make himself care for Tonya, he could forget Bella. He could stop trying to convince himself to go back to her, because he knew that it would ruin her life. It would steal her life.
Alice had told him that Bella was safe and happy, and that was enough. He imagined that her safety and happiness was with Jacob—having read the man's thoughts before—but he told himself that it didn't matter. She would have the human life she deserved.
She might even have children. She might even get married.
She might have done both already, but he'd instructed Alice only to tell him whether or not she was happy and nothing else.
"Edward."
Tonya strolled into the room. She wore a blue knitted sweater over jeans that were tucked into fuzzy, brown boots. She'd wound a warm pink scarf around her neck and had her hair pulled into a messy ponytail. She could almost pass for human.
Sometimes he wondered if that was why he'd chosen her.
"Yes?"
"The Cudmore's are coming to dinner again. I ran into Nancy at the grocery store. Really, I think she's just dying to see you again. She was practically drooling on you last time."
He thought of Bella's insecurities, how she'd often worried that he would choose someone that she deemed more beautiful than her. Tonya wasn't insecure. Even if she was trying to be a human, she was assured by her unnatural beauty, the kind that no mortal—in her eyes—could match.
"I didn't notice," he said, "but I'll change into something nice and make sure to be adequately personable this time around."
Tonya smirked, because she was always pestering him to be personable. She told him that he had cocooned himself into a shell, that he had withdrawn even farther from humanity, and that it simply wouldn't do. Tonya knew about Bella, but she'd done everything she could to pretend like Bella had never existed.
"Excellent."
She slid onto his lap as smooth as water, fitting there so easily that it startled him. He didn't know why. He was a perfect mold of a human, and she was a perfect mold of a human—of course they would fit together on some level. She slid her arms around his neck, and Edward felt slightly ill. She had to know that, to a certain degree, he was using her, but she didn't seem to care. He fit into the perfect mortal world that she'd constructed.
"The past is the past, Eddie. You should forget her," she said, referencing Bella for the first time. "It wasn't natural. At best, she probably would have just ended up dead."
He felt his stomach turn, but Tonya didn't pay any attention to the way that he blanched, withdrawing deeper into himself. Running a finger over his bottom lip, she followed it with her mouth. Her kiss was cold and void of feeling, but, as her tongue pressed against his teeth, they parted to allow her in. She tilted her head, forcing his chin up, and worked the kiss deeper.
Edward lifted his hands to her waist and held onto her. She wasn't human or alive or Bella, but she was real and substantial enough between his hands, and his fingers dug into her sides, and he tried to make it enough.
()()()()
LPOV
She'd gotten into the shower as soon as she heard Jacob walk out the front door. She'd turned a bottle of flowery body wash upside down and doused herself in it. The cold gel ran lines down her skin, frothing a little when the spray of water struck them, and becoming full blown suds as she dropped the bottle and worked the body wash into her pores. She rubbed it in until her skin felt raw and blushed red.
It was a futile attempt to mask the smell of him on her body, considering as soon as she got out of the shower, she'd just be coated in it again, but she needed a few minutes of mind-cleansing solitude.
She knew that it was probably too much to hope that he'd wizen up and be gone by the time that she got out of the shower, but it was still disappointing when she opened the bathroom door and saw him from the hallway window.
Having been bent over his work, Jacob straightened automatically and turned toward the window, as if he sensed her, which he probably did. Hissing to herself, she moved on into her bedroom, dragging clothes from her closet and dressing herself—still damp—in a pair of shorts and a t-shirt. She'd pulled underwear on first thing, but hadn't bothered with a bra. Mainly because she couldn't locate where she'd tossed hers the night before.
Running her tongue over her teeth, she went about searching the room for a ponytail holder. She was searching a pile of clothes when Jacob knocked once on the door and let himself in. She straightened, scowling.
"What? Did you get it fixed?"
Jacob scowled back at her. "No, it's going to take some more time."
"Well, call a tow-truck," she snapped.
As if she was going to give him that easy of an excuse to stick around. She'd purchase a dog house for him to sleep outside before she let that happen. No more sharing her house together at night when all of the treacherous thoughts seeped in. The last thing she wanted to do was something stupid. Her track record was already damaged enough.
"No. I'm not letting anyone else touch my car. I can fix it."
Leah gritted her teeth. "Then you better get back out there and keep working."
Jacob switched his weight from one foot to another, and she hated how stubborn he was.
"I will, but not yet. I'm hungry."
She practically snarled. "I've never known you not to know how to help yourself to what's mine, but here, let me show you."
She started to stomp past him to lead him to the kitchen, but he didn't move out of the way like she'd expected him to, and she came up to a sudden stop against his chest. Gritting her teeth so hard together now that she thought they might break, she looked up at him, and it was a big mistake.
Just like when she'd opened the door and he'd shoved his way in, Jacob's eyes had gone dark, his jaw tightly clenched, as the space between them was suddenly nonexistent. And with that sudden awareness came the thick, hot scent of arousal. She wasn't sure whose need it was, but it might as well have been both of theirs, because they were equally as effected by it. She felt her muscles go loose and liquid, her breath stuttering.
It wasn't fair that he could make her react.
"What—What is this?" he asked.
And then he leaned down to sample her lips. The soft swell of his cupid's-bow mouth was a hard-hitter. It was soft like breath against her lips, testing the waters. She'd kissed him before, but those kisses had planned—not so mind-numbing and unexpected.
"A—A physical—" She choked on her own breath, trying to speak against his lips. "A physical reaction."
But still her eyes were closed, and she was leaning heavily into him, and, somehow, he'd worked his hand up her stomach, cupping her unshielded breast. His thumb, having been caressing her nipple, stopped.
"That's it? That's all you've got for me?"
She made herself open her eyes, and she could see Jacob removing himself.
"What else is there?" she asked, her voice hoarse. "Tell me you don't think the same."
"I—I drove here to find you. I didn't do that because your brother asked me to."
She straightened, pulling away from him. "Then why did you do it?"
The curling, invisible smoke of lust was fading as his annoyance began to eat at the aroma in the room. She wanted to tell him to stop being such a selfish bastard, but then, at the same time, she wanted to thank him for bringing her out of her stupid decision to let him kiss her.
"I—I don't know, but we need to talk about it."
Leah stiffened. "Fine. You figure out what—or who—you really want, and then we'll talk. Now move, and I'll get us breakfast."
She pushed past him, trying to breathe evenly. How stupid of her.
