AN: So sorry for going AWOL on you guys. I'm back now though, and this is the last short-ish chapter. I promise. Excuses below…
RECAP:
APOV
"Are you okay?" Jasper asked, walking around to stand beside me.
"I am now," I replied softly, smiling up at him.
BPOV
The second that I saw Rosalie start to prepare the big, burly officer for her own personal method of ensnarement, bending over suggestively and flicking her long blonde hair, I got the hell out of there. Just seeing her be that forward with the poor man was too much for my fragile self esteem to handle, and my cheeks blazed as I imagined myself in that position. Only, if I had attempted something that flirtatious, I would have probably have fallen flat on my face or head butted someone in the stomach. Not a clever idea on my first day.
Shaking my head at the uncomfortable, yet somehow still arousing, image of trying to do a booty drop whilst pressed up firmly against the beautiful bronze-haired officer, and him laughing at me, I started to walk towards the door through which all of the other cadets were now leaving. I thought I spotted a flash of bronze hair disappear around the doorframe as I approach but, when I couldn't see anything outside, I assumed that I was just imagining things. I also couldn't see Alice anywhere to find the black team, so I just started following a man I didn't recognize. I hoped vehemently that I would spot Alice soon, but unfortunately I soon found myself surrounded by a group of people that I didn't recognize in the middle of a large soccer pitch.
"Excuse me," I said timidly, tapping the nearest person on the back gingerly. I didn't really want to ask for directions and seem like a moron, but I wanted to be late even less so I gritted my teeth and waited for the tall man to turn around. When he did, I had to blink several times to convince myself I wasn't seeing things.
The guy who stood in front of me looked so young that I could hardly believe that he would be allowed to enter a training programme like this. He couldn't be older than about sixteen, or seventeen at most. He had a cute, baby face and a messy tangle of hair, longer than my own, tied with a rubber band at the nape of his neck. It looked like it would benefit from a good wash and blow-dry, but the scraggly, rugged look seemed to work for him. I continued to stare at him for several minutes before he cleared his throat uncomfortably, and I realized that he expected me to speak.
"Sorry," I stammered, my blush making an unwanted appearance yet again. God, that was annoying. "But aren't you a bit young to be here?" Then, my brain caught up with my thoughtless word vomit and I gasped in horror as he laughed. "Oh God, I didn't mean to say that out loud. I wanted to know if you knew where I could find the black team." I couldn't believe I had just insulted this complete stranger, but thankfully he didn't seem that upset.
"I can't help you with your team, sorry, but I will answer your question," he said kindly, and I sighed. I began to shake my head, and opened my mouth to tell him he didn't need to do that, but he ignored me. "I turned seventeen about three weeks ago, and I applied for this programme the second I left school. It's been my dream to be an officer since I was eight, and my mom was so proud when I got into Sandhurst."
"You left school at seventeen?" I asked, confused now. That was young, wasn't it? He shook his head patiently.
"No, I should have explained better, since you have no reason to know anything about it. In Britain we can leave school at sixteen, after finishing our GCSEs, and then we can get a job or do something like this." I nodded, knowing what GCSEs were from my conversations with a girl from Cornwall, who had moved to Forks at the start of junior year. She had explained the whole system, which had puzzled me at first, and I liked to think that I was reasonably clued in to the concept now.
"Oh right, I knew that," I replied. "Anyway, I guess I'll ask someone else for directions. Bye." I started to walk away, then stopped and turned back to him. He was still standing there, watching me walk away. "I'm Bella, by the way. One of the Americans, if you hadn't already figured that out."
"Cool, and yeah, it's kind of obvious. The accent gives you away; you might want to work on that," he joked, making me smile in spite of myself. "I'm Embry, Embry Call. Oh, and you might want to try asking the Colonel, over there. I'm sure he will know where the team bases are." I saluted him as thanks, trying and failing to keep a straight face, and then smiled widely at my new acquaintance. He was a really nice guy and it was nice to find someone that wasn't so scarily anonymous, that I could maybe recognize next time I was stuck in an unfamiliar part of the campus. I walked through the crowd, which parted for me like the human Red Sea, over to a huge mound of equipment. A man was bent over beside it, his perfectly toned ass sticking up into the air towards me. I assumed that he was the Colonel, since everyone here seemed to be watching for him to make a move, so I walked around the bags of soccer balls and stepped over a pile of jump ropes until I was the right side to speak to his front end.
"Um, sorry to bother you," I whispered, not wanting to cause any more trouble. I would already in a shit load from the fact that I was bound to be late to join my own group, and I didn't want to do anything else that might put my foot in it. The man huffed in resigned irritation at being disturbed and stood up straight, and I gasped instinctively. I hadn't realized how close I had been standing, and I was now standing nose to nose with the last person I wanted to talk to. The flash of unusual bronze hair was the first thing I saw, glinting as he straightened up, and then I noticed the unmistakable scar that bisected his left eyebrow and down to restart just below his left eye. It was a thin, graceful scratch, but it also looked like it would have hurt to receive it. I had noticed it yesterday at the briefing but had somehow pushed it to the back of my mind, since I didn't seem to be able to picture it when my mind fed me images of his glorious features. The slightly puckered, pink line reminded me strangely of Scar from The Lion King, a film that I had loved watching with Renee as a child. It was the only imperfect on an otherwise flawless face, and it somehow made the Colonel more real and tangible to see that he was just as susceptible to injury as I was.
Almost without my permission my fingers began to tingle with a burning, aching need to reach out and caress the mark and the surrounding skin, to ask him how and when he received it, and I had to clench my hands into fists to restrain their subconscious movement. He stared expectantly at me, waiting for me to speak I realized, so I shook of the ridiculous thoughts swamping my brain and attempted to string a sentence together without sounding like a five-year-old.
"I'm… Urm, do you… Ahh, could you tell me where I could find the Black Team?" I finally managed to get out, after altering my approach to the question several times mid-sentence. Colonel Masen smirked at my obvious discomfort and at the blush that was sure to be spreading across my face. However, he didn't say anything so I tried again. "I'm sorry, but I am trying to work out where to go and I thought that you might be able to help me. You are in charge here after all."
"Yeah, sure," he said finally, after several long moments of him examining my face thoroughly. I wondered absently if I should swipe my hand over my face, since there was probably something on it from the way he was staring, but I was too distracted by my own examination of his face to take any sort of action to obstruct my view. I stored every detail I could see in those few seconds to memory, and then coughed softly. I would have been perfectly content to gaze into his deep green eyes for all eternity, but I had a niggling feeling that the other people around us wouldn't agree with me so much. He blinked distractedly and seemed to shake himself the same way I had done before, but I knew that it was just my imagination.
"The Black Team is… urm, what was your question again?" he asked, his brows furrowing in a way that made him look unbelievably cute. I was a little putout that he got distracted from our conversation that quickly but I figured that he probably had a lot on his mind, with the training and team stuff, so I cut him some slack.
"Could you tell me where I can find them?" I reiterated, slower this time so he could take it all in. I refused to believe someone that was allocated to lead a training camp for army recruits could be a tad slow, but it's always possible.
"Oh sorry, you're situated on the other side of the armory. My deputies can show you the way." His eyes lifted to sweep the small group of people over my shoulder. Then he must have caught sight of who he wanted to see, because he motioned them over. Instantly a girl almost as short as Alice materialized at his side, followed closely by a guy who just had to be her twin. You know the way some people look a lot alike, as if they could be twins, and then there are those people who are so identical that there is no opportunity for doubt. These two were most definitely the latter, from the line of their angular noses to the disconcerting burgundy tinge to their dark eyes, and aside from the obvious they had almost exactly the same build as well.
"This is Colonel Ryan," Edward informed me, gesturing towards the girl and smiling down reassuringly at me. The two of them, if I was being honest, freaked me out a bit and it was as if the Colonel knew how I felt. I wondered if he felt the same and was trying to wordlessly assure me that they weren't going to bite my head off, and strangely enough it did make me feel much better inside. The girl nodded her head stiffly at his acknowledgement, and then he swept his hand over to her twin. "And Colonel Ryan."
I stifled a giggle at that, although I wasn't exactly sure why I found it funny that they were both Colonels and twins, and they narrowed their eyes at me at almost exactly the same time. Creepy! Maybe they shared a brain, or something. I was sure that I had watched a documentary on that a few years back, about how some twins shared a scarily accurate intuition for each others thoughts and actions. I had never seen anything like it before, but now I was beginning to see what the presenter had been talking about.
"Miss…" he paused as if waiting for me to insert something. Oh, my name.
"Swan; Bella Swan," I offered quickly, and my eyes locked with his once again. It felt like such an intimate moment, at least from my end, that I had to look away after a moment. He took a deep, slightly hesitant breath before continuing with whatever he had been saying.
"Miss Swan needs directions to the range." He spoke directly to the girl now, so I waited patiently. "Would one of you mind showing her the way, please?" The way he asked made it clear that he was unsure as to her reaction. Regardless of his role as team leader, the three of them ranked the same and therefore I assumed that they were under no obligation to agree to his request. I didn't think I would want to ask these two for anything, if I was in his shoes… or pants. No! Focus, Bella.
She tilted her head to one side and adopted a pensive expression as she considered his request, then nodded. As she did so, lowering her eyes for a fraction of a second and breaking eye contact with him, a flicker of relief crossed his face and then was gone so fast when she looked up that I wasn't sure I had seen it. They must be some scary-ass people.
"We will both go," she said, speaking for the first time since her arrival. Her voice was clear and high like Alice's but, where Alice sounded sweet and friendly, this was cold and calculating. "I need to collect some more rope from the storeroom anyway." I tried to work out what she could possibly want rope for, until I realized that it would likely be for one of the fitness exercises that were strewn around us. I had been picturing the guy lynching a faceless victim, whilst she watched from the shadows, but felt immediately guilty for thinking such things. For all I knew, unlikely as it was, they could be really lovely people inside.
"Thank you so much," I said earnestly, and smiled nervously at her. She simply ignored me, eyes ghosting over me like I was invisible, and began to walk back the way I had come with her brother hot on her heels. And he was hot… almost Calvin Klein model hot, but the sinister air that he exuded put a rather large dampener on it for me. I imagined that dating him would be a lot like dating a serial killer with killer abs; one side almost completely masking the other.
"Come," she called back to me, and I hurried to catch up with them, since she was obviously a very impatient woman.
"Thank you Colonel Masen," I called back to him when I reached them, turning back to see that he was still watching us. "Sorry for disturbing you."
"Edward," he mumbled, and I almost missed the movement f his lips because I could no longer hear him over the noise from the cadets that stood between us. "My name is Edward." Then he was gone, lost in the sea of people, and I finally turned my face away. Edward. I don't know why he had told me that, a force of habit perhaps, but I was glad that I knew. I now had a first name to go with the face emblazoned across my mind, and this knowledge filled me with a wonderful sense of warmth and pleasure. I just had to make sure, if I spoke to or about him again, that I called him Colonel instead of Edward. God knows that, in private, Edward it is!
AN: Aw man, I'm so sorry about the unexplained absence. I have been really
PS. Review and critique please, even if you hate me for deserting you.
PPS. My other ongoing story 'Greek to Grandad' will be updated very, very soon too. Thanks to all of you who read that for your amazing patience.