I awoke to a room that was dimly lit and very hospital-esque. After gathering my surroundings I came to the conclusion that I was probably somewhere in the Cullen mansion considering Edward was the last person I saw before losing consciousness. I groaned and got to my feet while putting my shoes back on.
After entering the kitchen voices could clearly be heard from the second floor so I made my way up the thin, black spiral staircase into the upper level sitting room. As I walked in the doorframe everyone grew silent.
"Was it something I said?" I joked. I walked over to where Bella was sitting and plopped down on the sofa next to her. "You don't have to worry, everyone, I'm alright. I guess it must have been a migraine or something." I said.
"It was definitely head related. What concerns me is that I was able to read your thoughts, and I normally can't do that." Edward said. I shot him a look, did he actually see the vision of Bella and Jacob?
"Can you read them now?" I asked.
"No, it's strange. You touched my face and we exchanged that brief thought before you lost consciousness, I've never experienced something like that before." He replied. I looked at Bella and she just shrugged.
"Do you think that it was something having to do with me? Or was that Edward's power acting out?" I asked.
"We cannot be sure until, if it even does, happen again. My hypothesis is that it was Edward, but that's just playing it safe." Carlisle responded. I sighed and blew up a piece of my hair.
"What time is it?"
"9:30 at night." Esme replied. My eyes grew wide and I looked to Bella.
"We should go, Charlie's probably worried about us we haven't called or anything!" I said as I jumped to my feet…bad idea. The blood rushed to my head too quickly and I felt as if I would fall over but before I could even move, I felt a pair of arms grab me and lift me bridal style. When my vision cleared I realized it had been Jasper who caught me and my face turned bright red.
"You should be more careful." He said with a chuckle.
"Yeah…thanks." I said slightly dazed. When he didn't let me back down my brow furrowed.
"I called Charlie earlier and to not make him worry I said we were still at the reservation and Billy has our back too…for once." Bella said. Edward slung his arm around her shoulder and I began to doubt that he saw exactly what I thought he did.
"So what's the plan? Does that buy us more time to just kind of…chill here?" I asked. Everyone in the room grinned and Jasper put me down gently on the floor.
"I guess you could say that, we don't really want you leaving just yet in case something else happens." Esme stated. I nodded once in reply and noticed Rosalie sitting in the corner glaring at us. The way she treated my sister and I really got under my skin, I was going to have a little chat with her one of these days. "Jasper, why don't you give her a tour? She's really never been around here before."
I looked over to him and blushed slightly, I hadn't gotten the chance to really spend much time with Jasper since he told me his secret. The more time I spent with him…the more I came to the realization that I liked him a lot more than I intended to.
"My lady." Jasper said as he held out his hand for me to take. I took it with a small smile as he led me toward the rest of the second floor.
"Are you feeling up to the walk?" he asked. I nodded once and smiled again.
"Absolutely, I feel fine now. I don't know what happened, but Edward said he could read my thoughts for a second. Did he happen to mention what it was he saw?" I asked.
"No, but he didn't seem very pleased with whatever it was." Jasper replied.
"Ah, so he did see it." I said in a whisper.
"What was it?"
"Oh, it was Jacob kissing Bella against her will. She broke her hand from punching him in the face, it was actually kind of funny. But I really don't like Jacob all that much for the way he is with her. He needs to learn his boundaries and know when enough is enough." I said. I threw my hand over my mouth; I didn't mean to spill all of that. "Quit making me calm! You're making me spill out all my feelings!" I yelled, Jasper just chuckled in response.
"I'm not doing a thing. You're just comfortable all on your own." He said. I blushed at that and he toned it down for me. I appreciated whenever he did that, I really did hate how I blushed so easily.
"Speaking of, did Carlisle patch up Bella's hand too?" I asked. Jasper nodded as he opened a door for me to step through.
"Yes. Now, this is my room—it's not as nice as Edward's since he was the first of us Carlisle changed, but I really can't complain." He said. My mouth parted slightly in shock as I stared into the bedroom…if you could really call it that.
Although there was no bed, there was a huge L-shaped, crème colored sofa to the left of the room. Across from that was an enormous big screen television in the midst of enormous bookcases filled to the brim with books and records. There was so much empty space that the room looked bigger than it actually was—but the décor was gorgeous. The carpet was a pure white accompanied by white walls; an enormous fish tank filled with exotic reef fish sat on a glass table toward the back of the room; a black chandelier with traditional candles hung from the center of the ceiling, all of the candles were lit giving the room a very…romantic feel. What really caught my eye, however, was that the entire back of the room was made of glass. The wall was an enormous glass window that overlooked the forest—the drapes were open, however they were a light brown color that would usually be used to block out the sunlight.
"Jasper…this is amazing! And you say Edward's room is better? Is that even possible?" I asked. Jasper smiled as he lightly shut the door behind us.
"Well, in his opinion I guess. He doesn't have most of the fancy stuff like the television and the chandelier, mostly just books and records. He spent a lot of time collecting records. I personally like my set up much better." He replied with a toothy grin. I plopped down on the L-shaped sofa and stared at the chandelier, I had always loved chandeliers.
"This really is beautiful. I could absolutely get used to living in a room like this despite the fact there's no bed of course." I said. He took a seat next to me and grinned.
"What, making yourself at home already? You're a few steps ahead of me, my dear." He said. My face turned bright red and I started stumbling over my words like a babbling idiot.
"That's not…that's not what I meant! I just meant that like, we're friends and if I was in your spot or something…" I trailed off as he put his index finger to my lips.
"I want to show you something." Jasper said. I just nodded my head silently trying to make up for my idiocy. He took me by the hand and led me over to where the glass window was. "Check this out."
He lightly pushed the middle of the glass and it opened up like an enormous door. I gasped out of surprise and he smiled.
"That's amazing! It's a giant window wall!" I yelled. My eyes sparkled like a small child as I got excited.
"That's not what I wanted to show you, either. It might be a bit hard to see with your human eyes in the darkness, but if you look carefully you can see the waterfall in the forest because of the small clearing." He said. I walked forward until I was hanging mostly out of the enormous glass window and anchored myself by hanging onto the strong glass. As I peered into the forest I could feel Jasper's hands secure on either side of my waist and grinned to myself, he knew I was a Swan and therefore I was bound to fall out of the window. After straining my eyes for what seemed like eternity, they settled on a small babbling brook and all the way up to the small waterfall.
"I found it! It's beautiful." I said. He helped me clamber back into the room and smiled.
"It's a lot easier to see in the daylight, despite the fact that it's usually dark around these parts. My room is also quite fetching in the sunlight as if you couldn't imagine." He said with a wink. My breath caught in my chest and I felt very flustered. Was he actually flirting? Or was I just being hopeful?
"So I uh, I assume we're not touring the rest of the house?" I asked with amusement.
"My room is the best one in the house, wouldn't you agree Ms. Swan?" he asked. He motioned for me to sit back down on the sofa and I did as directed because I was too nervous to screw up. He sat beside me, closer than he was before, and clicked on a remote. I thought it was going to turn the television on but instead it opened up the CD player. A few seconds went by before I heard Pink Floyd coming softly through the speakers.
"Mm, my favorite. It doesn't surprise me that you listen to them, you look like you have a good taste in music." I said with my eyes closed in pleasure. I felt him move slightly next to me and when I opened my eyes he was but a few inches away from my face, his scent smelling sweeter than ever. Maybe it was the adrenaline.
"Their music is beautiful and more emotionally captivating than most of the garbage out there today so I know I can always count on Roger Waters and his genius to bring up my mood." He said. I nodded my head and released a shaky breath, the closer he got the more nervous I became.
"Jasper…" I went to say until he abruptly grabbed both of my hands and started to move them to either side of his face.
"It was fate that we meet like this, Demetria. It's been so very long…" he trailed off as my palms made contact with his cheeks…bad idea.
We were frozen where we sat as our eyes locked and my head was filled with a thick fog I felt I couldn't fight. I immediately let go and felt the insane need to vomit, Jasper didn't look much better.
"What was that?" he asked slightly dazed. I gasped a little bit and then stood up to go vomit out the window. Real classy, Demetria. This is really how you get a guy to like you. I sunk to my knees and stared out the window in a daze while fighting the urge to scream.
"I don't know. But I'm tired of it happening." I stood up and walked out of the room and called out Carlisle's name—he was there in a flash.
"What is it Demetria?" he asked, alarmed.
"It happened again when I touched Jasper's face. I got a small memory exchange of us looking out of the window from his perspective. I didn't pass out this time, but I kinda puked." I said slightly ashamed. He put an arm around my shoulders lightly and guided me into his office.
"So it is your head we're dealing with here." He said. I nodded once.
"I guess so, yeah. This really sucks it makes me feel so sick and I don't even know what it is! Can you help me?" I asked, suddenly feeling helpless. He looked at me from the other side of the mahogany desk with a look of wonder.
"I'm honestly not sure."
A/N: I hope this one was a little better than the last one lol, I went back through and read my reviews and took them into account. I'm trying to get this moving a little bit faster because I have a lot of important stuff planned and I want to keep it interesting while forming them all together. So, review please! I really look forward to reading them and they help me really improve my work-so keep it up!
