"Dad?"
Charlie froze mid-step, a second before he could pull the front door closed behind him. "I thought you were still asleep," he said sheepishly, as if he'd been caught sneaking out.
Bella shook her head sadly and shifted her overloaded backpack from one shoulder to the other. "No, I've been up for a while now." She didn't go into detail. Her father didn't need to know that she'd been up since 4:48 that morning, that she'd already showered, done her hair, and reorganized her bookcase (by color this time). He'd already wasted enough hours worrying about her, and there were other people that needed him now. "You going to see Sue?"
"Yeah, we're meeting with someone from billing at the hospital. I'm pretty sure they're jerking her around – thought the sight of the badge might keep 'em on the straight and narrow." Secretly Bella thought that Sue was a hundred times more intimidating than her soft spoken father ever could be. She thought of her last encounter with the woman and gave an involuntary shudder. "You looked like you're packed. Going somewhere?" Charlie asked, dragging her focus back to the present.
Bella shrugged again. "I was actually hoping I could tag along with you…" she said cautiously.
For the first time all week Charlie genuinely smiled, a soft slow grin that she could recall from some of her earliest memories. "I was starting to think you were never going to ask." He turned sideways and gestured her through the door, pulling it shut tightly behind them.
Standing on the edge of the Black's property, Bella began to feel physically ill. Each step she took towards the garage sent her stomach churning, and the ground beneath her reeling. She had said things without thought. Were there words enough to fix the damage they had done?
Did she even want to?
She rounded the bushes that would lead her back towards the garage, and almost impaled herself on the front tire of a mountain bike.
"Crap!" she stumbled out of the way, tripping in the process and falling squarely on her behind. A brown hand reached out to help her up.
"Okay there, crazy-girl?" Quil asked, with a grin.
Bella raised an eyebrow at her new nickname. "So I've been upgraded from coma-girl, huh?" Reluctantly she took his hand.
He hauled her to her feet with a laugh. "Definitely," he said. "I think this has a better ring to it. Don't you?"
"At least it'll always be a good ice breaker at parties," she muttered bitterly, but Quil's teasing today seemed to be all in good fun.
"That's the spirit!" he crowed, slapping her on the back. The smile stayed planted on his face, but his eyes took on a serious quality. "How're you feeling?"
Bella figured he wasn't asking about her head. "I'm…okay," she said with as much confidence as she could muster. "I'm working on figuring some things out, stuff I hadn't really dealt with since the accident. But yeah, I'm okay. And for what it's worth, I'm sorry about the other day."
He waved her apology off dismissively. "Don't worry about it. It was a bad day all around. You just made it a little more interesting, that's all." There was a touch of humor in his voice. "If you ask me, Harry would've approved of all the excitement. Besides, Jake could use someone to keep him on his toes. He's such an old fart sometimes."
"How is he?" Bella asked, before she could stop herself. She would never expect Quil to spill secrets on his friend or anything…
"He's a pain in my ass, that's what he is," Quil said without hesitation. "He's been moping around this garage all week. Go make up with him so we can all move on already. Jeez!"
Bella felt the knots in her stomach untangle just a bit. "I'll see what I can do."
"Good," he said, pushing his bike back towards the road. "'Cause otherwise I might have to take matters into my own hands. And believe me, nobody wants that." He laughed at his own joke, riding away.
But Bella was grateful for the heads up; it was nice to know that Jake was suffering as much as she was. Maybe this wouldn't be as much of a disaster as she'd thought. Maybe…
Maybe there was something left to save.
Instinctively, she took her hat off before she even reached the old garage door, knowing full well he'd just take it off anyways. She was literally coming to him hat in hand – the least he could do was hear her out.
She lurked in the doorway a moment, letting her eyes adjust to the darkness inside. As the room grew clearer around her, the only part of Jake that she could see were his feet sticking out from beneath her truck. She knocked on the wooden doorframe to get his attention.
In a huff he rolled out from under the frame on a dolly. "Back already? Seriously dude, it's not my fault that you haven't cracked open your algebra book since last November, and – oh."
Bella gave him an embarrassed, little wave. "I already passed algebra, but thanks."
"I thought you were--"
"I know." Bella tried to read his expression, but he avoided her gaze, climbing to his feet and trying to rub the oil off his hands with an old towel. He looked like an automotive disaster – covered in grease from head to toe, his look only improved by his fading black eye. But whether or not she had a right to be, Bella was kind of touched. He might hate her, but he was still putting all this effort into her truck. It was sweet, in a twisted sort of way. "You know, you don't have to kill yourself on this thing. I'm sure Charlie will still pay you even if you can't get the dent out."
"I like to earn what I get," he muttered, still maintaining the large, neutral territory between them. "I figure even if I can't fix it, least I can do is send it back with the oil changed."
"That's very kind of you."
He simply nodded in response, another awkward silence beginning to stretch between them. Bella wanted to laugh; they were both so damn stubborn. As if he were reading her mind, Jake did laugh. It was absent his usual warmth, more a bitter chuckle than anything else, but Bella was willing to take it. "We're a matched pair, aren't we?" Jake finally asked with a rueful smile. Bella gingerly touched the scratches on her cheek and his face knotted up in response. "I'm sorry you got hurt."
"I'm sorry you can't duck faster," she replied quietly. He grinned at her sharp retort, the bruise on his face growing more sharply evident as he smiled.
"Yeah," he conceded, taking a step towards her into the no man's land they had drawn between them, crossing that line in the sand. "I'll have to work on that. I'm sorry you almost got yourself killed chasing ghosts."
Bella ventured another step into the garage. "Yeah…I'm going to try not to go charging off any more cliffs anytime soon. I'm sorry you can be a heartless jackass sometimes."
Again, Jake bridged the gap between them with another stride. "I'm sorry you're stubborn as a mule."
Step.
"I'm sorry you didn't stick up for me in front of your friends."
Step.
They were only inches from one another now, trying to overcome their own awkwardness and insecurities with sarcasm and misplaced resentment. But it was a poor substitute for sincerity. "Mostly I'm just sorry in general," Jake said, his voice now absent its earlier dark humor. He made that final motion, and pulled Bella in tight against his chest.
She buried her head into the crook of his neck, blissfully oblivious to the fact that he was sweaty and covered in grime. It didn't matter. None of it mattered because Jake was sorry and he was hugging her and he didn't hate her or pity her and he wasn't going to be the last, resonating thing she lost before it all became too much and drove her mad. He was still her Jake, as much as he could be. And for that instant, that was enough. "I'm sorry, too."
She didn't know how long they stood like that. Frankly, she didn't care. Because Jake had his face buried in the top of her head and his hand was making slow circles against her back, and it wasn't until she felt his damp shirt collar pressed against her cheek that she realized she was sobbing against him. She sniffled thickly, embarrassed at herself, at her blinding overreactions, and tried to pull away, but he held her fast.
"It's okay," Jake breathed into the top of her head. "It's fine." And since he didn't care, and since he had a way of bringing her walls down even when she was trying not to let him, and since that made it all his fault anyway, Bella stayed right there.
"I'm sorry," she breathed into his shirt after the sobs began to ebb, after God only knows how long. "I must've picked up the phone a hundred times. I just didn't know what to say."
"Yeah," he replied, and it felt like he laughed a little, his chest bouncing beneath her. "I missed you too."
"That wasn't what I said."
Jake only laughed again. "Yeah, but it's what you meant." And he said it like he knew what he was to her, like he knew that he was the only thing keeping her planted here, and he was okay with that. He reached around her shoulder and lowered the tailgate on her truck, and helped her onto it before clamoring up beside her. When he threw his arm back around her shoulder, Bella leaned into him gratefully.
"I've been thinking about what you said. I…ever since I got out of the hospital, I haven't been able to shake this feeling that something is horribly wrong with the world around me," she murmured, her body no longer wracked by sobs, but the tears still refusing to stop pouring down her cheeks. She pressed in closer against him, and he returned the gesture with an obligatory squeeze. "But now I'm starting to think that it's not that something's wrong with the world, Jake. I think there's just something wrong with me…" She trailed off.
Jake just shook his head. "What I said…Bella, I was just angry. It was…it was just a bad day. I had to say goodbye to one of the best people in my life, then topped it off by getting the shit kicked out of me and learning that two of my friends had almost been killed." He shuddered at the thought, still shaking his head silently. "I know it's no excuse for what I said--"
"Doesn't make it any less true." The next words stuck in her throat when she tried to speak, caught like she was choking on them. And when they finally crossed the threshold of her lips, they were barely audible. "There's something wrong with me, in my head."
Jake was quiet for a moment, looking down at her as if he was reading the emotions on her face like a novel. His own expression flickered, dark eyes becoming amazingly sad. "You were in an accident," he finally said. "Maybe it's just going to take time…"
Through the tears, Bella could only smile ruefully. Real, fake, it didn't matter – Jake was always trying to give her hope. He'd once looked at her that same way, made all those promises about time and healing and fixing her. And boy, did he try. Maybe he would've succeeded, Bella couldn't say. But this wasn't a broken heart, and it wasn't her own twisted fairy tale. Some stories don't have happy endings – it was the lesson she was currently learning as, with each beat of her heart, her entire being ached for a boy she didn't truly know, and who would never be the hero from her dreams. Some stories don't have happy endings.
She just didn't have the heart to say those words to Jacob.
Instead Bella reached for her backpack, which had fallen by the wayside near the back of the truck sometime during their reconciliation. She hauled it into her lap, grunting under its weight. When Jake looked at her quizzically she told him, "There's something I want you to see." From amongst the myriad inside, Bella pulled a huge tome and plopped in on her lap.
Jake leaned over to glance at the title. "The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders?" he said quizzically. "Bella, isn't this about as effective as typing your symptoms into Google?"
"It's what they use in hospitals to diagnose patients with mental disorders," she told him, unable to be flippant about the whole thing. "I've been researching all week, trying to find anything that might indicate I'm not completely crazy," she said, trying not to let her tears drip onto the pages as she flipped. "You know, stuff like latent accident trauma, or evidence that the doctors left a sponge in my brain. Even the weird stuff, like waking comas and out of body experiences."
"And?"
Bella finally found the page she was looking for and dropped the book in his lap. "Nothing. This was the only thing that matched any of my symptoms."
Jake snorted derisively before he could stop himself, but his voice held a world of sympathy. "You do not have schizophrenia."
Bella pointed to the top-most symptom: hallucinations. "I nearly got myself killed chasing a woman who didn't exist."
Jake pushed her finger out of the way and continued reading, all the while Bella shivered beside him, certain he was going to come to the same sort of tragic conclusion that she had. "We don't know that was a hallucination, Bella," he murmured, still trying to make sense of the psychiatric jargon. "What if it was some sort of seizure? Or, I don't know, some kind of fucked up sleep walking? I mean, you're not hearing voices or anything, right? No one telling you to build a baseball field?"
Bella glared at him. "This isn't funny."
"Of course it's not, but what is funny is either you or me trying to play doctor," he told her gently. "I can only make out about every fourth word of this, and seeing as how you're an oh-so-wise junior, I'm guessing that means you can make out about every third word. But it says here you have to have symptoms lasting at least six months, so I think you're in the clear."
"For now." As far as Bella was concerned her future was inevitable now – that slow decline into madness. At first it had just been the dreams, which she chalked up to residual trauma and an overactive imagination. But once they'd crossed over into the realm of reality, into the here and now…well, it seemed like it was only a matter of time. The feel of Jake's warm hand on her shoulder pulled her from her stupor.
"Hey, don't do that," he told her. "Don't go a million miles away without me." She tried to smile for him, but her lips couldn't seem to come together right. Jake closed the manual and tossed it into the bed of the truck haphazardly. "Since we're playing doctor, you want to hear my diagnosis?"
"Sure," she said wetly, throwing up her hands. It wasn't like she had anything else to lose.
"I don't think you're crazy. I think you're just hurting."
Bella tried to grasp the significance of what he was saying, but it eluded her. "I don't understand," she muttered, frustrated and uninterested in games.
Jake sighed and looked contemplative for a moment, trying to put what he was thinking into words. "I think," he said finally, "that after the accident you were in pain, maybe you were dying…I don't know. But I think your psyche made up a story, a life, a person that would keep you holding on when your body was ready to give up. I think you created a superhero for yourself, someone to protect you and love you and make you feel safe."
As he was talking his arm worked its way back around Bella's shoulder. "Someone that was powerful enough to make you…make your body want to fight harder. I think you gave yourself a reason to survive when you didn't think you could anymore. And I think, now that it's all over…well, that maybe you're just having a hard time letting go of what you convinced yourself was so important. Maybe that's why your dreams are so bad, and why you think you're seeing things: your brain just wants so badly to believe it's still real, that you're making yourself think it is." He shrugged a little. "I think you're doing this to yourself, Bella."
He said it with such earnest, such an honest belief that it almost broke Bella in two – she'd done nothing for Jake to inspire the kind of confidence he had in her. It was so genuine, so sweet.
And in this case so very, very wrong.
With all her might Bella wanted to believe what he was saying; that everything – vampires and werewolves and Edward himself – had just been a survival mechanism created by the dying mind of a girl who'd read one too many stories in her lifetime. But she knew that wasn't the case.
"I wish you were right," she whispered, her throat constricting against her will. "I really wish you were…"
"What makes you think I'm not?" he teased. "You think my vast medical training doesn't make me as qualified as that book to make a diagnosis and – hey," he stopped teasing when he saw her face twist up, a paroxysm of the pain rising her up inside her. "Hey, hey, hey, I'm sorry. I was just kidding and-"
"It's not you," she brushed him off with decisive wave of her hand, willing the tears to recede. But they came in fresh, new waves, pouring over the scabs on her face, dribbling down to her chin.
Jake dodged her offending hand and pulled her close again. "Then what is it?"
Almost subconsciously Bella found herself leaning into his touch. "It's just," she started to explain, but her throat caught at the onslaught of memories that were boiling below the surface in her mind. "It's just that there's too much other…shit! I know things," she told him a rush, the truth spilling over the dam she'd built up inside, and out into the open where she never wanted it to be. But the burden was too much to carry, especially after the other day. And she was beginning to feel that if the words didn't get out then she'd just self-destruct from the pressure. "I know things that I shouldn't, things that I wouldn't if all this was just some construct of my own messed up head!"
"Things like what?"
The list was beginning to seem endless. "Like what Carlisle and Esme Cullen look like, even though I've never met them in real life. Or the pack. Or you, even though I hadn't seen you in ten years." She absently reached out and tugged on a stray bit of his hair. "Every detail of your face, I knew it perfectly."
"I'm sure there's a rational explanation for that," he tried to assure her, but Bella could see the doubt creeping into his eyes. "I mean, what was that thing you said about waking comas earlier?"
Bella groaned. "It's a crackpot theory some people have that they can see and perceive normal events at times while comatose. But it really is written by a bunch of loonies…"
"Well, what if it was true?" He shrugged. "I mean, it would make sense – this Cullen guy was your doctor, right? Maybe his wife brought him lunch one day or something. And I know that after Harry's first heart attack a lot of folks from the rez were in and out of the hospital. Your dad's got a pretty good reputation. I'm sure a lot of people stopped in to say hello. And me, well…"
"It's true, isn't it?" she whispered before he had a chance to finish. "What Quil told me about you? That night when we met again…that wasn't your first time there, was it? You'd been to the hospital before, keeping an eye on me…"
He chuckled weakly. "Well…yes and no. It was more about Charlie needing the help that first week until your mom got a full time substitute and flew out. And even after that, well, Billy was always anxious to check on your dad…and he doesn't drive so well anymore and…well, yeah, I wound up there a lot…" he murmured, and even Jake looked a little bit uncomfortable. Bella instantly wished she'd never mentioned it, but her filters were down, and it wasn't as if she hadn't already laid enough embarrassing things on the table already. Jake bumped her in the shoulder when she tried to look away. "But it was always nice seeing you, too."
"Yeah, I'm sure I was great company…" she said darkly, wishing in vain for a rock to crawl under and die. It's always about you, isn't it, Bella, she chided herself silently.
"You'd be surprised." He reached out and tugged on her hair in retaliation when she still refused to meet his eyes. "It got…really bad for your dad for a while. I mean, to the point where Billy would have to drag him away just to make sure he ate and showered. I think it made things easier for him, knowing that I was keeping an eye on you – it was like he was afraid he'd come back and you'd really be gone. Physically, you know, and not just in your head." Bella glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, but Jake was the one now a million miles away. A darkness clouded his expression, and for the first time Bella was actually glad for the things she didn't know, didn't remember. Seeing Charlie drunk the other night…that had been bad enough. She couldn't imagine him even more broken…waiting… "I had it way easier than he did," Jake said finally, pulling them both back to reality. "I used to read to you, old copies of Popular Mechanics and Sport Illustrated and stuff, which is exactly my point."
"What?"
"Everything you said that you 'knew'…Bella, it could just as easily been stuff that you picked up from me, or your Dad, or any of your visitors, or the radio in the background, or what I read to you. It doesn't necessarily mean that you're a schizoid."
"Jake, I knew Harry was going to die," she murmured softly, before she lost the nerve. With baited breath she waited for his face to fall. "I didn't have the circumstances right but I knew his heart was going to give out…and there was nothing I could do about it." She was waiting for him to realize what she'd said, to hate her for sitting idly by knowing that his mentor was going to die. But the outburst never came, the hate never came. Instead he reached to entwine his dirty fingers with her own, and before she knew it, Jake was the one comforting her.
"He was sick, Bella," he murmured, his voice faint and dry. She couldn't tell if he was really trying to convince her of that fact, or himself. "He was in the room down the hall – out of everything you said I'd expect you to know that…"
"You're not listening!" she protested, yanking her fingers out of his grasp. She didn't want to be reassured. She wanted him to hear her and understand her and…and believe her. "I knew about Sam and Emily! And I know a hundred other random, horrible things! Who knows how many of them are actually true, or are going to come true! But I can't figure this out on my own and I need you to…to believe me before…before…someone else dies…before I get someone like Embry killed or…or…" she felt the heat rising in her face, the pressure building in her chest. She couldn't breathe, couldn't think…
"Bella!" He grabbed her face gently in his hands, and forced her to look at him. "I won't let that happen." He said it with such resolution, such certainty, that Bella believed him. After all, it was Jake. "And I do believe that what you're saying is true. I do believe that you think you dreamt how all this would happen. I just think there's a rational explanation for all this. Seeing that woman doesn't mean you're actually schizophrenic, and knowing about Harry's death…" He brushed his thumb against her temple, staring deeply into her eyes, as if could see through them and into her very mind. "It doesn't mean you can predict the future either. I think you're just putting the pieces together faster than the rest of us, or maybe it's just a coincidence, I don't know. But I do know that you're going to find a way to get through this. And in the meantime, I won't let you get hurt, and I won't let you get my friends killed either. Okay?"
"Promise?" she asked him, breathlessly.
He nodded resolutely, her face still clutched between his fingers. "Absolutely. And if you want, I promise I'll help you figure out what's going on, too. But I'm willing to bet dollars to donuts that it's not that you have a personality disorder or freaky kinetic mind powers."
Bella snickered brokenly, already feeling…lighter somehow. "Wouldn't it be precognitive powers?" she said, her voice awash with relief and rage and humor and a thousand other problems that she didn't have to face alone anymore.
"Like Sookie?"
"No, that's telepathy and…did you just make a True Blood reference?"
He shrugged, and finally let go of her face, then wiped at her cheek with his sleeve to brush off the dirt he'd left behind. "Quil's cousin snagged him an illegal cable hookup, so we've been on an HBO binge lately. Would you rather hug it out, bitch?" He held his arms out wide. She took a gentle swing at him instead, and Jake leaned into the blow willingly. "Seriously though, it's going to be okay, one way or another."
He seemed so certain that Bella found herself actually believing him. Maybe he was right, maybe this was just one of those things that would heal with time, just like the rest of her body after the crash. Of course her mind would run to the idea of supernatural! So many of the fake memories in her head were overrun with shape shifters and blood drinkers with more powers than she could fathom, things that couldn't possibly be real.
Things that didn't exist in this world.
But in so many ways Jake really was her anchor, keeping her grounded in an existence without mystery, without monsters…
Without magic.
Maybe he was right. Maybe she was just putting details together faster than the people around her. Maybe dreaming of Harry's death had just been coincidence and nothing more. Maybe the mysterious woman was just the result of residual swelling of the brain – something logical and rational and explainable. Something human.
Maybe she was normal, ordinary, and nothing more.
"If you really are scared Bella," Jake said after a while. "And you really want to know what's going on…well, I'll go back to the hospital with you then. You won't have to do it alo--"
"I don't want to go back to the hospital," she interrupted him, her voice barely above a whisper. It was a confessional, and this was her sin. "But I…don't want to feel like this anymore, either." She fought back against the surge of guilt that immediately threatened to overtake her body. This was her life. Not that world in her head, but the actual ground beneath her feet and the people who walked upon it. She had to find a way to separate the two, she had to find a way to let go of someone she had never loved, and thus never truly lost. Because trying to hang on to both worlds was killing her, and Bella was tired of trying to cheat death.
Jake nodded, and squeezed her hand reassuringly. "Okay," he said resolutely.
"Okay, what?"
"Okay, then that's going to be our goal." And he shook her hand up and down, as if agreeing to the terms of a deal. "Operation: Make Bella Feel Better will be our plan for this summer. You don't want to feel bad all the time? Then let's fix it."
Bella had a feeling it wasn't going to be that simple. "And what if I keep seeing people? Almost run off a cliff again?"
"Well, for one, I already promised that I wouldn't let you run off anymore cliffs," he reminded her gently. "And as for the seeing people thing…" He reached out and tapped the cover of the DSM-IV with one oil-stained finger. "We've got six months before we have to worry about that. Sound like a plan?" His face was more confident than Bella could ever hope to be. But she tried to muster up a smile in return.
"Yeah," she agreed shakily. "Sounds like a plan."
"'Ou know," Jake mumbled through a mouthful of sandwich, "'ou could talk to me'f 'ou want."
Bella poked at her bologna and tried not to wrinkle her nose. Jake had insisted on making lunch. Apparently he felt that mystery meat and Wonder Bread still qualified. "Pardon?"
He swallowed and tried again. "You could talk to me, if you want. I know you don't want to talk to a shrink about…well, you know. But if you don't want to keep it all locked up inside and stuff you could tell me about what you think happened..." Bella just gaped at him awkwardly. "What?" he demanded. "Maybe it'll help if you're not the only one who remembers these things. It was just a thought…"
She patted his shoulder reassuringly. "No, it's sweet. It's just…I don't know, you don't think it would be weird? Some kind of twisted, self-fulfilling prophecy?"
He shrugged and motioned at the remnants of her sandwich with his eyes. She gratefully handed it over. "Maybe," he finally said, pulling off the crusts like a ten year old. "But I also know how good it feels when you finally get something off your chest."
"What do you want to know?" she asked hesitantly. It was strange, the idea of those two worlds converging. Like introducing your summer friends to your school friends – they were united by a common theme, and yet utterly and inherently different.
Jake seemed unfazed. "I don't know. What did we used to do? I mean, for fun and stuff?"
"Well…" Bella chuckled quietly to herself. "Mostly we did a lot of this."
"A lot of what?"
She spread her hands wide, as if revealing to him the bounty of his own listing garage. "This. Nothing. Sitting around your garage doing homework, talking, working on cars, and eating off paper plates."
"Wow." He shook his head slowly, with mocking sadness. "Even in your head we're boring."
Bella wadded up a piece of notebook paper and chucked it at his head. Naturally, it missed by six inches. "Don't make fun," she scolded. "It was…nice." It seemed like the wrong word; nothing about that time in her life had been nice. There had just been awful (when she was alone) and slightly less awful (when she was with Jacob). But this Jake didn't need to know that. He didn't need to see all the bad, broken parts of her. Not this time around.
Meanwhile, Jake, having finished both their lunches, had climbed out of the truck bed and disappeared back under the chasse. Moments later, the silence around them was perforated by the sound of protesting metal as he resumed his work. "So then, is it weird now?" he called up from below the car. "You know, sitting in here and being boring with me when you've done it already. Is it like some fucked up déjà vu?"
"No, it's actually kinda comforting, doing what I did before," she murmured. "It…I think it helps, actually. Makes me feel a little less crazy to know that even though it was just stuff I did in my dreams, it was the kinda of stuff I'd do normally." She laughed that dark, sad laugh again. "Does that sound completely crazy?"
She looked down at the ground just in time to see the top of Jake's head reappear momentarily, and he shook it back and forth. "I don't think so. It's like getting the world in your head to sync up with this one. It doesn't sound that strange to me. But then again, I hang out with crazy people so what do I know…"
"You're soooo lucky my aim is bad," Bella said threateningly.
He didn't seem too concerned. "Seriously though, we didn't do anything else together?"
"Sure…" she racked her brain for something interesting to tell him. Interesting aside from the fact that he'd been a giant wolf-boy at the time, and she'd had her heart broken by a vampire. "We went to the movies and bonfires and stuff. And there was that Fourth of July when Quil got those fireworks…"
"That's more like it!" He demanded details, and Bella fulfilled his request to the best of her narrative abilities.
But still, she couldn't help but feel strange as she sat there, letting the stories spill from her lips. Recalling all those memories deliberately…it was like a controlled burn – contained but only just. She was expecting the pain that came with them, but it was fleeting and manageable as she sifted through the reels of tape in her mind. And because she was in control she felt those other emotions, usually masked by the intensity of her loss, begin to well up inside her. Those brief moments of joy that Jake had peppered her life with that spring, when he'd been the only thing keeping her from flying off into oblivion as the Earth turned on its axis.
She recalled the feeling of a motorcycle, wind whipping through her hair. And surprisingly it wasn't Edward's voice that she recalled most strongly, but that feeling of doing something brave and beyond herself simply because she was young and unafraid and there was no one there to tell her "no."
She missed that feeling more than she'd realized.
"Unbelievable," Jake muttered as that story came to life. "I put you on the back of a bike? You, Ms. Severe Head Trauma?"
"Quite willingly, yeah," peered over the truck wall at him. "Surprised?"
He rolled out on the dolly and gaped up at her. "Yes. Yes, I am. Were you…" he rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly. "You know, any good at it?"
Bella dropped a wad of paper this time as opposed to throwing it, and it bounced square off his nose. "Yes, thank you very much," she said smartly, opting not to tell him about…well, the less severe head trauma she'd suffered during their first ride. After all, it was her story to tell – she got to edit where she wanted. "I did have a good teacher, though," she added with a smile. "And a good friend."
"Sure," he chuckled. "Sweet talk me. I'm sure that's how you convinced me to put you on a large, mechanized machine of death the first time..."
But somewhere in the flood of motorcycles and movie theaters something else was coming through. The smell of pine and strong hands wrapped around her waist, pulling her in closer and tighter…and still not close or tight enough. Her lips burned, and she felt her cheeks color to match them in response. She shook her head fervently, trying to force all those images and sensation back behind the wall she'd built. And when she finally tucked them safely away, and reentered the present, Jake was standing there, staring at her.
"What?" she demanded.
"I've been talked to you for the last minute and a half and you haven't heard a word I said." He pointed at her with the butt of his wrench. "And you're blushing," he said in mock disbelief. "What were you thinking about? It was about me, wasn't it? Spill it, Swan!"
"No, I wasn't! I…" Bella stuttered, completely unprepared for the direction the conversation had taken. "It's…complicated, Jake."
"Well then, give me the uncomplicated version."
She threw up her hands defensively. "There isn't one. It was just…we were friends…really, really good friends and then…Edward…" His name was still heavy on her tongue, thick and awkward and hard to say, like it wasn't made for this world or her lips. "He left…and then you…and I, we just…yeah." She shrugged, helpless under his smirking gaze. "It was complicated." She waited with baited breath, for Jake to give his take on the situation. To her great relief, he only lasted a second before his smug grin exploded into outright laughter.
"Jacob Black, what the hell is so funny?" she demanded. Did he really find the idea of her and him that…ridiculous?
He choked and coughed and finally managed to breathe well enough to respond. "You totally had a coma-sex dream about me!"
And not even the barrage of paper balls that Bella pelted him with could get him to stop.
Jake asked questions for the rest of the evening. He picked her damaged brain for details on everything from the make of the bikes they'd salvaged, to the movies they'd watched, to the meals Bella had once cooked. And the details spilled from her lips more and more easily the more she spoke about them. As the hours passed, she realized there was something cathartic about the entire experience. Like sharing a tragic secret that'd you'd promised not to tell: once Bella got over how 'wrong' the experience felt, she realized that it was lifting a weight off her shoulders. One that she'd been carrying around for so long that she'd become accustomed to the way it crushed her and pulled her and wore her down.
She wasn't sure if Jake had known it would be like that from the beginning, if he'd planned to help her like that, or if it was just a fortunate side effect of being his friend, one of those serendipitous, spontaneous moments that just seemed to happen in his presence. But she didn't care. Deliberately or not, Jake had held out his hand, and offered to take the yoke from off her back.
And once it was gone, Bella found she was glad to be rid of it.
Of course, she didn't tell him everything. He never asked about the other aspect of their relationship after his initial outburst, and frankly she was relieved. Still, she didn't offer any more information on the pseudo-love she had dreamed they once shared. She didn't tell him how he'd jumped off a cliff to save her. She didn't tell him how she left him standing broken in her driveway, without so much as a 'goodbye, I'll try not to get killed for the man who left me broken in your grasp.' And she certainly didn't tell him about a confession as he lay wounded after saving her life, his pack mate's life. A confession that she loved him, but not enough. Not enough to chase the clouds from his sky, not enough to brave his fires, not enough to let go of the fear of watching her friendship morph into something more, no matter how desperately it wanted to.
No, those were secrets she tucked inside her cheek, better left in the realms of her mind. Jake was carrying enough burdens for her as it was. Why burden their fresh start with the ashes of previous fires, long gone cold and forgotten?
Still, he seemed happy enough with the information he did get as he walked her to Charlie's cruiser that evening. "I'm serious," he teased in a hushed whisper. "If you got on the back of a motorcycle, the entire town of Forks would be forced to file insurance claims. It's just a simple fact of your existence, Bella."
"Shush." She whacked him in the arm as they approached the car. The last things Charlie needed to hear mentioned in the same sentence were her name and the word 'motorcycles'.
Under the pretense of returning her overburdened backpack, Jake stopped her before the glow of the headlights could illuminate them both fully. "Hey, remember what I said earlier: it's all going to be okay. You're not completely crazy." He brushed his fingers against her arm reassuringly as he looped the strap over her shoulder.
"No, I'm incompletely crazy," she murmured back. But the tangle of nerves in her stomach, which had felt as abrasive and raw as steel wool earlier, had eased some. "Just remember what you promised," she reminded him as she walked away.
With a grin he flashed her the Girl Scout salute, the same cheeky response she'd given Phil all those weeks ago. "You just work on staying out of the library."
"I promise."
But as soon as she was outside the reach of Jake's orbit, she felt some of the old worries starting to build beneath her skin. He was reassuring, but what if he was wrong? What if something happened and he couldn't stop her? What if she did keep seeing visions for six months? And why had he seemed to find the idea of caring for her so laughable?
And the most confusing question of all: why did it bother her so much?
The room was spinning, and Bella could do nothing to make it stop. She clutched at the sheets beneath her, but red silk slipped right through her fingers.
It was the fire. It was burning through her skin, her sinew, her veins. Her body was a pyre, every cell screaming in pain. And through the agony she smiled.
Three days.
There was a clatter, and Bella's vision focused on the source. Pale and soft and ethereal.
Esme.
She placed a bowl of water on the elegant night table, and began to wipe Bella's brow with damp cloth. The moisture evaporated the moment it touched her searing skin.
Three days.
"I'm so sorry, Bella," she murmured, her voice heavy and mournful.
"Why?" Bella choked out through the pain. "I wanted this. I asked for this. We can be a family now. You can all come back now."
Esme's cool fingers grazed her forehead and Bella leaned into the touch. "Not everything is what it seems, dear." Her porcelain fingers continued to travel, tracking Bella's cheek, her jaw, the curve of her neck.
"But I'll be a vampire now," Bella pleaded, panic mixing with pain. "We can all be perfect, together."
"I'm sorry for dragging you into this," Esme professed. "I'm sorry for making you this way." She pressed a single finger against Bella's fluttering jugular vein, then another, and another. Gently they began to constrict.
"Esme…"
"Please understand," she pleaded once again, her tone desperate. "I didn't have a choice. I only wanted to save my son."
Bella heard a sharp CRACK!
And then she heard nothing at all.
Bella awoke hunched over, hands wrapped around her knees, curling herself into a protective ball in her chair. Beneath her ribcage, her heart pounded erratically.
"Please," she pleaded in a broken whisper, staring out into the darkness beyond her window. "Please make it stop. Please…"
Her whole body ached with a pain she couldn't fathom or begin to describe. And she didn't know if it was that twisted paroxysm of Esme that she was pleading to, or her own damaged body, or to a lover that could not possibly exist somewhere beyond the blank wall of trees. But it didn't matter; Bella knew no one was really listening.
"Please, just make it stop. Please…let me go."
A/N: 200 reviews in 9 chapters! It's unbelievable - I have some of the most enthusiastic readers ever. So thank you all for all your feedback, words of encouragement, and patience. Recently I've had lots of questions about Bella's messed up dreams, so I threw you guys a bone with this one. Just think about it ;) As always, a huge thank you to my Ceci and Sarah. Also reader Eyeliner 101 made a trailer for DoB! You can find a link to it posted in my profile, so go check it out and show her some love!