Disclaimer: I don't own these people, but it would certainly cool if I could catch Dean for five minutes…

A/N: Thanks for the reviews again and for adding me to your alerts, believe me, I'm not a big reviewer, I just read a bunch of other people's works.

Chapter 10

"Hello Bella!" Alice screeched through the receiver, making me wish I hadn't pressed it into my ear. Her voice could make a bat lose its hearing. If I was still around in twenty years I'd need hearing aids because of her.

Of course she would have seen me coming, although she certainly had never helped me in the past and I had quite a few scars from close calls in hunting to prove that. What a great friend.

"Hey Alice," I muttered, glancing at Dean and Sam to see what they were doing while I made the dreaded call. They were simply staring at me with mouths forming a hard line. That's what they were doing. Watching me as I turned a nice fuchsia, heat rising to my face, sweat beginning to pour from my pores, and I could do nothing about it but glare until they both turned in opposite directions at the same time. Hilarious, weenies both of them, and they were still unable to deal with my evil eye. I had used that many a time to get them out of my area when working a hunt. Sometimes, it takes the feminine touch to get information or a job done.

"Bella where have you been?" she squealed. Five year olds could sound more mature in my opinion. I swear I could even hear her jumping up and down like the little sprite she still is. Nothing ever made her feel bad, not even bailing on her best friend four years ago.

"Like you don't already know. Now you know who I want to talk to, can you go get him?" I replied through gritted teeth. Could she not stop with the sugar coatedness? This was serious. I certainly didn't want to talk to her for hours about nothing after everything she and her family had done to me.

The tv turned on behind me, guns going off, the volume blaring, a door closing. Probably Dean looking for a good action flick. Not like our life needed any more action to begin with. If we lived through this hunt I was going to need a long vacation, without pixies and boys that screwed with my emotion and head.

The door had to have been Sam probably going out for awhile to get some fresh air, or find a bar while I dealt with this. He would know everything when he came back from his little outing. Sometimes I worried about him; he didn't do much else except research and hunt. Even after I had joined them the first time he hadn't made any real leaps and bounds into the real world. Jessica's death had cost him too much. His gift hadn't made things better either.

"I'll go get Carlisle," she answered, her voice dropping an octave as if in defeat. Not like I cared, even if I felt a pang of regret at being so rude to her. She brought it on herself, I thought. She chose to leave me alone, let me become the person I am today. She can deal with it.

After a few moments, which was beginning to feel like eternity for me, with the receiver feeling heavier and heavier, Carlisle finally got on. Couldn't vampires move faster than our snail speed for a phone call? "Bella, so good to hear from you." His voice was pleasant, like we were just catching up after a few weeks of not talking.

Holding back a bark of bitter laughter I rolled my eyes and said, "Good to hear you too. Now, I'm sure Alice has been keeping you updated as well as the newspapers and everything on the issue in Seattle."

"Yes Bella, we have been discussing whether or not to go out and deal with this ourselves. Of course Alice told me twenty minutes ago to be expecting a phone call. I didn't really think it could possibly be you who would be calling to help us with this situation. Have you been tracking it as well?"

"Yes, we have."

"We, Bella?" Carlisle asked, intrigued at the idea of more than just myself.

"Yes, it'll be me and two other hunters with me. I hope that's all right since we're all on the same page. They know what you are, and they won't hurt you since they know your diet," I gushed, my voice and demeanor becoming businesslike as the conversation carried on. "Is it ok if we stop by tomorrow to talk?"

"Yes, yes, as long as they know we mean them no harm it should not be a problem. We'll be expecting you around," he stopped, presumably to see from Alice when we would arrive before stating, "three. We'll be at the house waiting for you then. I can't wait to hear about a hunter's life," Carlisle replied jovially. He truly seemed interested in what had become my life.

I paused, unsure whether I should ask him the one question I was dying to ask. My body became cold and clammy as I thought harder on it. Taking a deep breath, my voice cracking, I asked quietly, "Will everyone be there?"

The silence seemed to last forever, as if Carlisle were thinking of telling the truth or not. "I'm not quite sure, to be honest," he finally answered.

I pulled at my ponytail, trying to keep the aggravation out of my voice. "What do you mean, you're not sure?"

"He knows that you're coming…but he hasn't been with the family since you left."

"Wait. What do you mean, I left? You guys left me! You had moved out, you left me all alone!" I screamed, my eyes beginning to become unfocused as tears welled up in my eyes, flinching when I felt a callused hand on my shoulder. I turned around to confront Dean, expecting him to have a scowl on his face for interrupting his movie time, but instead he looked worried, unsure of what to do. Flinging myself into his arms, I waited for Carlisle to continue.

"We never left."

The phone fell from my hand as I heard those three little words. Lies. They had all lied to me, made me believe that they were going to leave Forks behind, start over in Los Angeles. Alice stopped talking to me the week before it happened. Emmett, Jasper, Esme, Carlisle, they had all faded into the background, avoiding me at all costs. While Edward became distant, angry at the littlest thing, finally admitting to me what I had always known with him. I wasn't good enough, that his infatuation with me was over.

Later I would recall that I hadn't heard Carlisle scream through the phone, or the dial tone after he hung up. The phone ring when he tried to call back was silent in my ears. All I heard was my breathing, my ragged breathing as I tried to keep myself together. Those assholes. How could they treat me like that? They had been a second family to me, and instead of being there when I needed them because the most important person in my whole universe realized I wasn't good enough, they had left me alone to die, to fight, to do whatever my uncertain future had held.

Dean just held me, his hand ghosting down my hair, slowly pulling the ponytail holder out, gently combing my hair with his fingers. "Shhh," he whispered, trying desperately to calm me down. "It's ok, everything will be ok. I'm here, I'll never leave you."

He had never been good with pathetic damsels in distress. I had always laughed when I had worked with them in the past. Some dumb bimbo flying into his arms, because he was a protector and either he would thoroughly enjoy the feel of her, her soft breasts pressing into his solid pecs or he would look around squeamishly at Sam and me as we stood on the sidelines. Sam always knew what to do when a girl flung herself at him. He would comfort and hold them and say just the right things and she'd be done crying in minutes. Dean, it just didn't happen. They would stand there for hours if Sam didn't butt in and take over.

Of course there was no Sam to make it better, only Dean. Not like I seriously minded at any other time, but right now I wasn't clearly thinking with my brain. I was only feeling, feeling all the crap the Cullens had thrown at me and frantically wishing it would all just go away.

So, I did the only thing I could think of. I pulled Dean's head down with both my hands, pressing my lips to his, franticly pushing my tongue to gain entrance to his mouth. I dug my fingers into his hair, locking his face to mine with all my strength. Waiting for him to respond with the same urgency I was feeling. Waiting for him to pull me tight against him, to feel some kind of emotion from him. Anything would feel better than being worthless. Anything.

"Whoa, sweetheart," Dean gasped, gently pushing me an arm's distance away. Keeping his hands on my shoulders, he created a barrier so I couldn't jump his bones. "Not that I don't think you're hot and everything, but I don't think this is the right time. I don't want to take advantage of you, Bells. I care about you too much to ruin whatever this is."

Never in all my time with Dean had he said that to a girl. Never. He was rejecting me in the nicest way he knew. My chin began to tremble as I faced another rejection again. My eyes began to well as I thought of how unworthy I was for the two guys that had sparked something in my life.

"No, no, no, sweetheart," Dean murmured, seeing my reaction to his rejection. Pulling me back into his arms I pressed my tear stained face into his black t-shirt. "I do want you; I just want you to not be doing it for the wrong reasons." I grasped his back, pulling him closer to me, muffling the crying I had held in for years, all the thoughts and feelings I had been hiding from myself since the day He had left.

Slowly rubbing his hand up and down my back through the thin t-shirt fabric, Dean walked me over to the bed we shared to lie down. Not even considering my jeans and knee high boots were still on, I laid down, barely holding myself together. The mattress squeaked underneath my weight and I pulled my thin legs up to my chest, holding onto them for dear life. Praying that this time I could keep it together, that it was simply a small meltdown, which would be over quickly, if only I could push it back down under the surface again. That the world wasn't crashing down on me like it had four years ago, I took a deep breath, trying to squelch myself.

Feeling the mattress move Dean came to lie down next to me, turning me over as I tried to hide my blotchy face in my hands, he cradled my still fragile form until exhausted from all the emotions I had been feeling for the past two days I fell into a dreamless sleep in his arms.