Jake opened the door almost immediately, and stood there with a half-eaten apple in his hand. "Hey. What's up?" He looked from me to Edward.

"Jake, I need to talk to you."

"Sure." He stepped aside to let me in.

"No, not here. Could you come into the park with me?"

He frowned. "Why?"

"Please, just humour me."

He shrugged, took one last huge bite from his apple and threw it away, and followed me out of the cottage and across the property. The three of us jumped the wire fence marking the border of the state park, and headed off into the woods. After travelling directly north-west for a time, Edward touched my arm and nodded. We were out of earshot of the house. I smiled at him, mouthed 'thanks' and continued a short distance. Jacob looked back in confusion when Edward stayed where he was and I kept walking. "What's going on?"

I stopped and turned to face him. "I wanted to be far enough away that the others couldn't hear."

"Okay, but what's Edward doing?"

"I thought he should hear, but he's staying out of the way. This is between you and me."

"But he has to hear it?"

"This concerns Nessie, so it seems only right."

"Is something wrong with Nessie?" He immediately became alert.

"No, she's perfectly fine." His concern made this talk a little harder. "It's about her future. Well, hers and yours."

"Okay." He waited. "Come on, Bells! We've got the Cone of Silence in place. What's happening?"

"Give me a second. This is hard to talk about. I know how you care about Nessie." He frowned at that. I took a largely unnecessary deep breath. "She's almost finished growing. In another year, she'll look like an adult."

"I know. She thinks like an adult, too."

"Well, not necessarily."

"You know she does! She's learned more in six years than most people do in twenty. She's the smartest..."

"I'm not arguing that. Intellectually, she's way beyond her actual age, I know that. But there's more to being an adult than that."

"What are we talking about here?"

"No matter how much she's learned, she's still been alive only six years. She's smart, and she knows a lot, but she's not...what's the word? Sophisticated, I guess. She has the information, but she's still a little bit innocent about how she puts it all together. For some things, there's no substitute for real-time experience. In many ways, she's an adult, but in a few ways she's still a child."

"Sure, that makes sense."

"That means she's too young to make certain important decisions."

"Like what?"

Another deep breath. It seemed to help. "Like joining the army, or buying a condominium, or, well, getting married."

"You think I'm planning an elopement, or what?"

"No. But I think you're starting to think ahead. You were talking about living in the same place once you go to college." He glowered a bit. "And you just got her a new..." I gestured with my fingers circling the opposite wrist, like a handcuff.

"That doesn't mean I'm scheming! The bracelet doesn't mean..."

"No, I understand that. I just think you're assuming a lot. It has to be Nessie's decision."

"Of course it's her decision! I'm not going to kidnap her!"

"That's not what I'm saying. You were talking a few days back, about what would happen if Nessie wasn't interested in getting married to you. You said you'd be able to bring her around."

"I was kidding! You know I wouldn't try to push her if she wasn't ready."

"I do know that. You wouldn't force her or use coercion - but you might try to manipulate her a little. Use what you know to push her in the direction you want. Play on her pity. Guilt trip her. Things like that."

"That's...I would never...!"

"Jake," I broke in, "I know for a fact you would, because you did."

"What? On Nessie?"

"On me!"

"Bella, that was a long time ago. I was just a kid!"

"You were younger, but I don't know if that means you're a completely different person now." One more deep breath. "I started going to see you when Edward was...away. I brought you that motorcycle to fix, and kept going to hang out. Nothing personal, but at the time it didn't have much to do with you. I had to do something; I was like a zombie, and scaring Charlie to death, and almost anything that used to make me feel better reminded me of Edward, so I didn't have a lot of options."

I could hear Edward sigh softly, and regretted having to put him through this.

"I went to LaPush because you were an old friend from when I was little, from before I knew Edward, so there weren't so many associations. And you were almost the only person who didn't mind that I was acting so strange. It was a relief, not having to pretend to feel normal all the time. Hanging out with you made me feel...not exactly better, but like I could manage. I could get through one day, and then another. I wasn't quite so scary, and Charlie didn't worry so much. That was good.
"But after a while, it seemed like you started thinking I was your girlfriend, or going to be. Like, you'd hold my hand when we were walking around, and I thought I should put a stop to that, so you didn't get the wrong idea; but when I mentioned it, you'd just say 'so I hold your hand, it doesn't mean anything, why are you making a big deal out of it?' Or somebody at LaPush would call me your girlfriend, and if I objected, you'd give me this 'you're a girl and a friend, that makes you my girlfriend, what does the word matter?'
"Sometimes I could see I was being unfair to you, but I was too scared to really deal with it the way I should have. I let it go on, because I was afraid I'd have to stop coming to see you, and I'd go back to being a zombie."

He looked pained, and I knew how much it hurt Edward to hear it. "Bella, this stuff happened years ago, and none of it means anything any more."

"I think it does. Jake, I know you don't like hearing about this stuff, and Edward doesn't, and I hate talking about that time. I don't even like thinking about it. But there's a reason I'm bringing all this crap up now."

"Fine!" He waved a hand to tell me to go on.

"Okay. After Edward came home, I ended up in the middle of the whole vampire/wolf feud. I should have stopped talking to you completely, and a lot of it's my fault. But there's this one thing that happened. It keeps popping into my mind the last little while, and I'm worried that I never really dealt with it, and it might affect things that are happening now."

"Could you be a little more vague?" Jacob's arms were crossed over his chest. He was acting irritated, but I think he was worried more than anything. Starting out by saying it concerned Nessie had set him on edge.

"I mean a time I went out to LaPush to see you." I tried to ignore the fact that Edward was hearing this, tried to set aside everything except the reason I had to drag this business out again. "You kissed me by force."

"Force is kind of an exaggeration," he said, looking away. "I know you said later it felt like an assault, but..."

"That's what it felt like, and that's what it was."

"If you say so." He was still looking away from me angrily.

"Don't get all offended..."

"Well, what do you expect? Look, Bella, I said I was sorry, and you forgave me. I thought this was all in the past. What are you saying, you're still mad about it?"

"No, of course not."

"Then let's drop it."

"I can't drop it, Jake. It's..."

"You dropped it for over six years, you can do it for six more. Easy, one day at a time."

"Jake, will you listen!"

"No, I don't think so. This can't go anywhere good. If you want me to say I'm sorry again, I will. Sorry! Can we get out of the woods and go back home where we belong?"

"Jake!" I hadn't realized I was going to shout quite so loudly, but it stopped him a second, so I tried to keep up the momentum. "You've got to listen to me. I've been trying to work up to this for weeks. You don't like hearing it, and I don't like saying it, but it's important."

"Because you need to protect Nessie from me. Yeah, I get it." He was offended again.

I decided to take a page from my latest role model. "Jake, you need to hear this, and you're going to hear it. You can act all hurt, but that's not going to shut me up. If you stalk off and refuse to listen, I'll keep trying, if it takes a hundred years. I'll do whatever I have to do, to make sure you understand what I'm trying to tell you. If you won't listen, I'll...I'll keep you from seeing Nessie." The shock and horror that appeared on his face for just an instant filled me with guilt for making the ultimate threat, but I stood firm. "I don't want to put any of us through this, believe me, but I'm her mother, and what's good for her comes before anything else. So go ahead, keep putting me off a long as you want. I can wait."

We stood there and glared at each other a minute. "What is it that's so important? I don't understand what you're trying to tell me."

"Then let me explain. Without being defensive. Please, Jake."

He nodded, moved back to demonstrate he wasn't going to make a run for it, and planted himself. "Go ahead, then. I'll listen."

Big, unnecessary breath. "After you...did that, I hit you. I know it didn't hurt you the slightest bit, but I hit as hard as I possibly could. I broke my hand doing it."

"I said I was sorry you hurt yourself..." he began, then, "Never mind. Listening."

"Remember, I had no idea you wouldn't be hurt. As far as I knew, I was punching an ordinary sixteen year old boy in the face as hard as I possibly could. Hard enough to fracture bones. Does that sound like the kind of thing I went around doing?"

He frowned. "No."

"So can you believe I took it seriously? That I felt like I was being assaulted?"

He cleared his throat. "Yeah, I see what you mean," he said cautiously.

"You were stronger than I was, and you used that against me. And after I'd worked so hard to defend you, and try to convince Edward I was safe with you.
"After that, you offered a nice, friendly ride back to my house - which I had to take, because I had no other way to get there - where you insisted on coming inside with me. Then, while I was calling Edward to come get me so I could receive medical attention for my fractured hand, you were in the living room convincing my father to treat the whole thing as a big joke. Which I have to give you credit for. Not every guy can grab a girl against her will, cause her to injure herself fighting him off, and get the girl's father on his side.
"I kept alternating between hoping Edward would lose his temper and hurt you really, really badly, and hoping and praying he didn't because it might cause an all-out war which could result in the deaths of several people I was close to. All to the background music of you and Charlie chortling away over it."

He had the decency to look uncomfortable.

"You showed up at the graduation party, figuring you could just say 'sorry' and it would be all over, and of course it was. You gave me the guilt trip about ditching you for my 'real friends' and I felt like a horrible person, and let it all slide. "I already felt guilty enough, so it didn't take a lot."

"Guilty for what?"

"Lots of things. Going back to LaPush to see you, even if it scared the hell out of Edward and caused the Cullens a lot of worry. They all felt responsible for me, yet couldn't protect me on wolf territory without breaking the treaty. It was an impossible situation I was putting them in, not to mention the danger. Also guilty because I was being unfair to you and to Edward by continuing to see you instead of making things clear. I knew what you thought was going on, that you and Edward were rivals, but that was never the case."

"Why did you keep seeing me? Considering how dangerous it was. Or aren't you sure?"

"I know exactly why, now. When Edward left, I was like somebody from a shipwreck, holding onto a plank to keep from drowning. Someone doing that for a long time, she might, once a ship comes to rescue her, even once she was safely aboard, still keep holding onto that strip of wood. It was all that kept her alive for so long, it would be hard to let it go, even after she was safe. It was kind of like that with you.
"And besides that - you meant something else to me. You stood for my human life, the one I was getting ready to say goodbye to. It wasn't as easy as I'd thought it would be. I guess I was holding onto that, too, and you stood for everything I thought I was giving up."

He nodded. "Yeah. Looking back, that makes a lot more sense than...what I thought."

"But I loved you too, Jake. Just...not the same way."

"Sure, I know."

"But the point I was trying to make, about punching you, and all that. There was a big gap between what happened, from my perspective, and what was happening in your mind. A huge gap."

"Like, I thought I'd stolen a kiss, you thought you'd been terrorized and humiliated? Yeah, that's kind of a disconnect," he said drily.

"But as long as you believed, in your own mind, that I was better off with you, or that I could be convinced to be with you - well, you figured anything was fair. Being cruel to Edward, showing him what I was like while he was gone. Using Charlie to get to me. Lying to me, manipulating my emotions, you figured it was all justified, and it wasn't."

"I know that now."

"You know that, because you understand how I really felt, that it was always Edward. But," I said carefully, "please understand the difference here, Jake - what if you'd been right? It still wouldn't be justified."

"How do you mean?"

"What if there was no Edward, ever?" I winced slightly at the thought. "If I really did want to be your girlfriend at first? I'm afraid you think, in that case, everything you did would've been okay. Which means doing any of that with...another girl would be okay."

It took a second, but he got it. "So this is where Nessie comes in?"

"Yes."

"But that's a completely different situation! For one thing, there's no other guy in the picture."

"You don't know if there will be, though."

That seemed to shock him. "Do you know something I don't?"

"No. That's the point. Neither of us knows what will happen. I know imprinting almost always results in the imprint-ee returning the imprint-er's feelings, but we have no idea how that works with a non-human. None at all."

"I guess not."

"She has to be given the chance to find out for herself, once she's ready. She can't end up with you - and she'd be with you for a very, very long time, let me remind you - because she feels guilty or obligated. You know her better than anyone; you know how to manipulate her if anyone does. That doesn't make it right. That's one reason we don't want her to know about imprinting, if possible, at least until after the fact. The pressure that would put on her..."

"No, I get it. She won't hear it from me." He sighed. "I'm still listening."

"Okay. I have to be blunt here."

"What have you been doing until now?" he laughed. "Never mind. Go ahead, be blunt."

"The main points. And I'm open to discussion now. I've got my message across, and we need to talk about what it means."

"Okay." He waited tensely.

"First, when it comes to, er, matters of the heart, I think we've established that you can be subject to some serious mixed signals. That's why I had to go through all that awful stuff about what happened at LaPush. You have to see that it's possible to have a total disconnect with what's really happening. Sure, I can accept that and forgive and forget when it comes to me; but I'm not willing to accept it when it comes to Nessie. That means when you think the time is right to make changes in your relationship, you need to assume your take on it might very well be wrong."

"I get what you mean, but assume it for how long? Forever?"

"Until it's obvious to people who know her. I'm asking you to take our perception of things, Edward's and mine, into account before acting."

He sighed. "Not something many guys would have to consider, honestly."

"This is an unusual situation."

"I hear that." We both laughed. That was a good sign. "Fine. I guess that's reasonable."

"Second, keep in mind that you have a history of emotional manipulation. You're good at it. It would be wrong to use it in this situation. It could hurt Nessie terribly, and hurt you in the long run. You have to be aware of the tendency."

He grimaced, but the possibility of hurting Nessie had had its effect. "Got it."

"The third point is what I started out by saying. Nessie's practically an adult in some ways, but still very young in others. If this is going to truly be her choice, she has to be mature enough to actually make that choice. Right now, you're her friend and her, I don't know, her mentor or guardian angel."

"Her property is how she thinks of him," Edward whispered from where he stood, too low for Jacob to hear.

I stifled a laugh. "I don't want you to make any changes in that relationship, even suggest changes, until we're sure she's mature enough to choose." He hesitated. "You have to admit, that's in her best interests."

"Yes, but...you understand how this works, right? Within the imprint?" He looked around. "Edward's still here?"

"Right where we left him."

"Maybe he should join the discussion. I assume he knows what I mean."

"If you want." I turned, but Edward was already at my side.

"Tell her," Jake said. "You know what I'm talking about. Nessie has to be the one to start things. You can see in my mind that it's the truth."

"Yes." Edward turned to me. "What Jacob means is, the imprint doesn't allow him to act against Nessie's best interests. As long as she is too young to see him as more than a friend, he cannot see her otherwise, either."

"Right. Sam started making a play for Emily right away, but she was a grown woman. Quil and Claire, that was different. He's still just her buddy, and will be until she's old enough." Jake turned back to me. "But you already knew that, right? Edward told you before. Why else would you trust me with her for the last six years?"

"I know, Jake. We do trust you. The thing is, now it gets complicated. She's not like Claire. Claire will be grown up when she looks grown up. Nessie, she's going to look like a grown woman when she's seven. She'll be smart enough to be an adult, but it's what I started out saying: how much does actual life experience have to do with maturity? I honestly don't know."

Edward frowned. "I understand what you're saying, but if she were still too young for an adult relationship, she would not pursue one, and Jacob would continue in his role as friend until she was ready."

"It might not be that simple. A twelve year old girl could have a crush on an older man, but in the normal course of things it would never develop into anything real. What happens when a person with the emotional maturity of a twelve year old lives in the body of an adult woman?"

Edward raised an eyebrow. "I see the problem."

"But..." Jake began. "Well, first of all, can you accept that I honestly don't want to change things between Nessie and me if it's not the best thing for her?"

"I can," Edward said. "I don't try to hear your thoughts on the subject, honestly; but I do hear the general tone of them, and it's very clear what you say is true."

They both looked at me, and I nodded. "That's good enough for me."

"In that case - Edward, wouldn't you have some idea where Nessie is as far as emotional maturity, or whatever? Couldn't you pick that up from her thoughts?"

"Interesting you should mention that. Bella and I had a conversation recently about that very matter. I said that while she was very advanced intellectually, her attitude to the opposite sex was still at an early phase of development. I would roughly estimate that aspect to be at the level of a girl of twelve. Well," he amended, "a girl of twelve whose parents did not subscribe to cable."

"If her...her psychosexual development," Edward rolled his eyes. "...is that of a twelve year old, then it would be another six years before she's an adult, in the sense of being ready for, er, romantic attachments."

Jacob snorted. "How old do you have to be before you can talk about them without going to pieces?"

"That remains to be seen," I said. In my case, maybe never.

Edward was shaking his head. "I don't know, though. Her growth has been faster than human, in all areas. That includes social development. I would think it likely she will mature quickly in this area, as well. Six years is probably far too high an estimate."

"But we don't know for sure."

"There's one way to know for sure," Jacob said, looking pointedly at Edward.

Edward's expression was pained. "I'm sure you can understand that I'd prefer to block out any romantic thoughts coming from my daughter. However," he sighed, "you're right. I could not help but have a general idea."

"Okay. Then you can let me know."

"And give you the green light?" I frowned. "That seems kind of calculating."

"We'd only be giving him permission to court our daughter, Bella," Edward said, "not make off with her. It would still be her decision, to accept him or not, and under what conditions. Especially since Jacob has, unless I'm mistaken, accepted your warnings about his manipulative impulses." He looked at Jacob.

"I said I did. You know if I'm being honest about it," he told Edward.

"That I do."

"Besides," Jacob turned back to me, "it's not the green light I was mostly asking about. It's knowing when there's still a red light. I mean, if she's still a little girl in that way, like Edward says, then if she ever does start to flirt with me or whatever, well, I'll know to take it as just a kid's crush, or a kind of play-acting. I'll know not to take it seriously, no matter how old she looks."

"Okay." That seemed reasonable, but I was still getting used to the whole, bizarre situation. Why couldn't she have kept looking like a little girl, just a few years longer?

"I wouldn't want to do anything before she was ready, Bella."

"It's true," Edward said to me. "Not just noble intentions. His mind actually rebels at the idea of doing anything not completely in Nessie's best interests. I've been called an overprotective father, and that may well be true," he told Jacob, "but quite honestly, I feel completely confident that I can trust you with my daughter. I doubt I could say the same of any other man."

"Thanks," Jacob said. "You are an overprotective father, so that really means something."

"I believe we have a plan in place," Edward said. "Jacob will continue as Nessie's friend and confidante, as before. He agrees to accept our insights into her emotional maturity, and to act accordingly. Do you agree so far?"

"This sounds like a legal document," Jacob laughed.

Edward didn't smile. "I intend it to be just as solemn and binding."

Jacob sobered. "I agree."

"Good. Jacob further agrees to take your observations on his past mode of courtship to heart, and to refrain, to the very best of his ability, from ever using such devices against our daughter. He will win her heart by honest means, or not at all."

"Yes, I agree to all that."

Edward looked at me questioningly. "I'm satisfied," I said. "I've got everything I came here for."

"Excellent. Then are we finished?"

"Except for one thing," Jacob said. He turned to me. "I'm sorry, Bella."

"Jake, that's not necessary. You apologized before."

"I know, but like you said, I didn't accept that I had much to apologize for. I did try to use guilt and pity to control you, and that was wrong. And I'm really, truly sorry I...assaulted you. That's what it was, even if I didn't think so at the time. I'm so sorry. For real this time."

I grinned at him. "I forgive you. For real this time."

"Great. Then can we finally get out of this dark, wet forest, and go home to bed?"

Edward caught my eye. "Definitely."