AN~Writing this chapter is what made me love Jacob Black. He's the only person who's really allowed to verbally slap Bella around and the only one she remotely considers listening to anyway.
11
Jacob answered the door. He blocked the entrance with his body and poked his head into the hallway looking both ways theatrically. He raised his eyebrows.
"He went back to Italy," I said tightly.
"You sure know how to pick 'em, Bella," he said cruelly. "I didn't tell her you were coming, you know, just in case you weren't."
"Of course I was coming," I said, my teeth clenched so hard I thought they would shatter.
"All right, well, I hope you're ready to be here forever now Bella because there's no leaving when you're a parent," he lectured.
"Move," I said through my teeth. I knew my face was frightening because I had used it many times over the past few months when capturing and dealing with criminals.
He must have known he had pushed it as far as he could. He backed up so I could enter the room.
Renesmee was sitting cross-legged on the bed, watching TV. When she saw me she jumped off the bed with froggy leap right into my arms. If I hadn't been a vampire, she would have knocked me over. She was the size of a nine-year-old. I remembered what the other half-blood boy had said about reaching maturity in seven years. Renesmee wasn't yet two and she seemed to be growing faster than that. I had missed so much. She put her hand to my cheek, showed me bits of her travels with Jacob. And last an image of Edward.
I held her close, I didn't want to tell her he was gone. I sought to delay it, pretending I had misunderstood her question.
"You look like you've been having fun," I said with false brightness. "Jacob's been taking good care of you."
"I missed you, mama," she said, laying her head on my neck.
"I missed you, sweetie. We're together now though and I won't leave you again," I hugged her fiercely, protectively.
Jacob had brought my bag in from where I had left it in the hallway. I had checked out of our hotel after changing and rinsing the blood out of the sink. There was no reason to go back. I hope that place would burn to the ground and somehow also cleanse me of the memory of the most intimate moment of my life. Now a joke. A game. One I was too dumb to know I was playing. Sitting there with Jacob and Renesmee, with him gone, I admitted to myself that I had thought he had feelings for me. And I had never felt as stupid as I did then.
"How long have you been in Paris?" I asked, sitting on one of the beds, still holding Renesmee.
"A week. We were just in Germany but it's a lot colder there so we came up here."
"Germany. That's cool."
"Es war hübsch," Renesmee said.
I looked at Jacob, surprised.
"I have no idea," he said. "Nessie speaks twelve languages."
"Fourteen," Renesmee corrected.
"There. She didn't get it from me."
I didn't know my daughter. My chest hurt. I should have looked for her right away. But I was so afraid and lost and I didn't know how to do anything or how to tell her. I didn't speak fourteen languages. I didn't even speak two. Aro had tried to teach me Italian a few months in but it had just led to an amusing argument and then sex. Like almost everything did. Laughing and fucking was almost all we did. Toward the end it had seemed more like making love than fucking but I was sure now that that was wishful thinking fueled by me realizing my feelings towards him had changed. Thinking about him laughing ached so badly I had to fight to keep my face neutral.
"So, where do we go now?" I asked.
"Wherever we want," Jacob said.
"Is daddy going to meet us?" Renesmee asked.
I was hoping it wouldn't come this quickly.
"No, baby," I said softly. "He can't meet us. He's . . . not able to come." I couldn't say it. That I betrayed him made it all that much harder to think about him.
"Did he die?" she asked bluntly.
"Yeah, he did," I said. "He was trying to save us all, keep us all safe. He was really brave."
"I thought we couldn't die."
I looked at Jacob. I didn't recall talking about death with her in any detail.
"If nothing bad happens, we'll live a long time, but sometimes bad things do happen and we have to say goodbye."
She was quiet for a few moments.
"Was it those people who came? Aro and his friends?"
Jacob was glaring at me.
He didn't need to make me feel guilty, I was already being crushed by it.
"There was a fight," I didn't know how to explain it, it was too horrible. "Aro . . . he wasn't the one who hurt daddy. Those people thought they were protecting our world. They were wrong but sometimes people make mistakes."
Jacob scoffed and turned away.
"Where are they now?" she asked.
"Gone," I said simply.
"Good," she said and leaped off my lap.
Aro was right to leave. There was no way Renesmee could have accepted him now. He had come to kill her at first. He had stopped when he knew that he'd been lied to but it hadn't mattered, everyone ended up dead and it wouldn't have happened if Aro hadn't been looking for excuse to attack us and take Alice. And me. But Irina was the one who told him. I clung to that. I wanted to blame her so I could pardon Aro even though he had left me.
Renesmee was at the window, humming and drawing on the cold glass with her finger.
"She's happy," I said.
"Yes, she is, but having me around isn't the same as her parents," he said accusingly.
"Jacob, I didn't have a choice. I didn't even know where you were, I had no way to find you."
"You could have tried though," He said.
"I looked in every city!" I said. It was true, I was always scanning the crowd for them, not sure if I really wanted to find them. Finding them would mean facing reality.
"Sure," he said dismissively. "When you weren't busy shacking up with the monster that killed her father."
I could have killed him.
"That is none of your business," I hissed. "You don't even know him."
'You don't even know me anymore,' I added silently.
"Oh, so now you think he's different? That he's actually sweet and cuddly and misunderstood?"
"No, he's just . . . he doesn't see the world like we do," I said. It was a weak defense.
"Of course not, everybody's food," he said ungenerously. He stood. "Bedtime, Ness," he said, his voice completely different than when he spoke to me. It was bouncy and fun.
I watched sadly as they did a routine I wasn't a part of anymore. She chose pajamas and changed in the bathroom. He threw back the covers on one of the beds so she could get in, then he pulled them up all the way over her head. She giggled and pushed them off. She begged him to read a book.
"You've been able to read this book yourself for months," he said.
"I like it when you read though," she wheedled.
He sat next to her and opened the book.
She hadn't even said goodnight to me. I was a stranger. A stranger who killed her daddy by telling her about it.
I drifted to the window, it was snowing now. The sudden drop in temperature outside matched the one inside of me where frost had begun to collect in a delicate, fuzzy layer over parts which had only just thawed. It didn't even hurt, the pain was too large to register.
I wanted to be out there, in the darkness, stalking the night with Aro. I felt like a caged wild animal now. I closed my eyes. I needed to take my contacts out before they disintegrated but I didn't want either of them to see my eyes. Jacob was pissed off enough already. I decided I would wait until they were both asleep. Jacob had finished reading. He kissed Renesmee on the forehead and turned out the light by her bed.
"We should talk in the hallway, until she's asleep," he said.
I nodded and followed him.
Outside, the lights were on, and the brightness was uncomfortable. We sat against the wall, facing the door, three feet apart.
It was weird for Jacob and I not to be friends. We had not gotten along for periods before but this was different. He saw me differently for the first time. So I was surprised when he sighed and said, "I haven't been fair."
I didn't agree. It seemed bratty to.
"You had to stay and see all of that and I got to leave. Not knowing anything was probably better now I guess . . ." he said contritely.
"It was horrifying. I've just been running from it. Aro and I have hardly stopped moving. I think he's kept me alive."
He made face like I had told him I was totally into hardcore bondage and was working as a full-time dominatrix. Like he was trying not to show how freaked out he was and trying to seem non-judgmental at the same time.
"How did that even happen?"
I wasn't going to tell him the truth. That I had selfishly seduced Aro to make myself feel better.
"We were all alone," that was true, "everyone we knew was dead and we just decided to disappear for a while. It wasn't a sane decision but we weren't really sane just then." I kept saying "we" instead of "I" to make it sound like Aro had been as broken as I was and not that I had pathetically begged him to stay with me. Or that we had quickly become enmeshed in this seemingly insatiable lust that had nearly consumed us.
"So are you in love with him now?"
"I don't know." I did know.
"He went back to his bat cave?"
I couldn't even be mad. I was too miserable. "Volterra," I corrected tonelessly.
"Are you going to follow him?"
"I said I would stay."
"Nessie and I are fine. We were fine before you got here," he said. I wasn't sure of his motivation.
"So? She's my daughter, Jacob, how could I leave?"
"She's changed a lot."
"I see that. She barely knows me." I stared sadly at the closed door in front of us.
"If you want to leave, you should do it now, before she gets used to you being here."
I wanted to be angry but I knew that Jacob's nature compelled him to protect her and he wasn't nearly as interested in not hurting my feelings as he was in protecting hers.
"He left, Jacob. He had a life there and he went back to it. I don't belong there, it's over and I'm fine," I said, shocked by the steadiness of my own voice.
"Did he say that? Because he seemed to like you. And you are not fine. I know you, Bella, and I'd rather not have another jumping-off-cliffs-to-see-his-face thing going on. It wouldn't be good for Ness."
"I thought you said he didn't give a shit about me?"
"I lied. I was trying to hurt you. I've seen that face he had. I used to wear it, remember? He might be a scary weirdo, but it was pretty obvious he cares about you. He looked a lot like he wanted to kill me when I was being rude to you. And isn't he like the leader of your entire little vampy world and you somehow talked him into just running off with you?" he shook his head, exasperated. "You still don't know how easy it is to fall in love with you . . . . "
Did Jacob really think Aro was in love with me? After seeing us together for less than a minute? I knew strangers often looked at us but I assumed it was because of our strange skin and flawless faces. Were they seeing what Jacob saw?
"He said I should be with my daughter," I answered quietly.
"A little bit noble then. Or more evidence of how he feels about you."
"He didn't ask me to go with him." I didn't think I could have gone and left Jacob and Renesmee anyway but he hadn't even considered it. He'd just left without giving me a choice. The only obvious reason I could see was that he didn't want me to have one. This was the perfect way to get rid of me guilt-free and he'd taken it.
"Would you have gone if he did ask?"
"I want to say, 'No,' but I honestly don't know, Jacob. I hate myself for that. I would have been alone without him, it's scary. But I'm here now."
"You need to promise me that you won't leave and you're not going to go all Psycho Bella on us then."
"I'm going to stay, Jacob. I said I would," I wanted to believe myself. And I wanted to go straight to the airport and get on a plane to Italy, go to Volterra and throw myself at Aro, beg him to care about me, to want me back. To come away with me not just for a year but forever.
"You can't run out on her," he persisted.
"I heard you!"
I stood and started off down the hallway, not trusting myself with him in my anger and thirst.
"Where are you going?"
"To eat."
There was silence behind me and I smiled coldly before reaching the elevator and pressing the button which lit up red, like my eyes under the contacts. Like his. Ours.
END NOTES: Okay, so this is one of those chapters which would have had some alterations had I been actually giving these a full edit and verifying the things I wrote in the first draft against the books/movies. They're relatively minor and have to do with Renesmee's development both physically and mentally. But since I don't actually care very much about Renesmee, I'm going to just not care very much about her being canon-compliant although she does play a much bigger role in the sequel, that doesn't apply here.