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I want to thank everyone who has reviewed this story! You guys are great! And thanks for hanging in there while I fought with the first part of this chapter - my goal was to get it posted by the end of September, and I just barely missed it. :(
11. TOUCH
(COMPLICATIONS)
The walk from the cafeteria to Biology was a blur. If the speculative looks of the other students continued, I didn't notice them; I was too caught up in Bella to pay attention to anything else.
As we took our seats in class, Bella slid her chair sideways toward the center of the table and smiled softly at me. Gone were the days when she had leaned away, her chair pushed to the edge of the aisle; she was so close to me now that I could almost feel her arm brushing against mine. I smiled back at her and wondered how I would ever manage to pay attention to another one of Mr. Banner's boring lectures again. How could I, when Bella was smiling at me that way?
The pre-class chatter quieted abruptly, and I turned toward the doorway to see Mr. Banner pulling a scuffed metal cart with an outdated television and a VCR into the room. A movie day. Without a word of introduction he started the VCR and headed across the room toward the light switch.
But as the lights went out, everything changed. Bella was still barely a hair's breadth away, but in the semi-privacy of darkness, the distance between us seemed to be humming with some strange electric current. I could practically feel it dancing across the tabletop between us, and for a second I imagined myself reaching across that fraction of an inch and touching her hand. It was all I could do to resist the urge, to shift back in my seat and cross my arms in front of me. This was going to be a long hour.
I turned my face toward the front of the room, but I wasn't paying any attention to the images playing across the television screen. My attention was focused entirely on Bella. While I had leaned back in my chair, she had leaned forward and sat with her arms crossed and her elbows resting on the tabletop. Like mine, her hands were clenched into fists. It took a few seconds for my eyes to discern in the flickering light of the television that Bella was watching me in much the same way that I was watching her, and she was leaning toward me ever-so-slightly, as if trying to lessen the distance our different postures had created between us. I buried my hands under my elbows, trapping them against my body in case they defied my orders and gave in to the urge to reach out to her.
I was right. It was a very long hour. I spent every second of it watching Bella out of the corner of my eye. I memorized the beautiful arch of her neck, the curve of her flawless cheek, the shape of the bones in her wrists. I studied the way the gentle waves of her mahogany hair spilled over her shoulders and down her back as I fought the relentless urge to reach out and brush a finger along her skin. By the time Mr. Banner turned the lights back on and stopped the movie, my muscles ached from the effort of holding myself still. I stretched and turned to face Bella.
"That was . . . interesting."
Bella lifted one corner of her mouth faintly but didn't respond. Rising on stiff legs, I walked beside her through the classroom door.
"Where's your next class?" I asked.
"Spanish," she answered. "You have Gym, right?" I nodded as we turned down the sidewalk toward building seven. A funny little smile lit Bella's face as she walked along beside me, but she remained silent.
We stopped just outside the door to building seven and turned to face each other. A faint frown crossed Bella's beautiful features. What did her expression mean, I wondered? Was she as reluctant to part ways as I was? Was she standing there with that little frown because she didn't want to go to Spanish any more than I wanted to go to Gym?
The faint breeze stirred again, pulling a lock of her hair out of place. I acted without thinking—or rather, I acted because I had been thinking, for the past hour, about doing just this. It was a faint touch, barely even noticeable, but as I reached up to tuck the silky strand back behind her ear, Bella froze. She looked like a statue—unblinking, unmoving, not so much as breathing as her amber eyes, wide with something that might have been surprise, stared up into mine. And I stared back down into hers as I tried to remember how to breathe. One tiny brush of my finger against her skin and every single thought had left my head.
Her skin was cool, but I'd known it would be, and there was a smooth firmness to the shell of her ear that reminded me of porcelain, but it was the jolt of electricity that sizzled through my hand and up my arm that kept me breathless. It took a moment for me to drop my hand, pull air into my lungs, and step back. Bella blinked and shifted her weight slightly, but her eyes never narrowed. They were still wide and staring back into mine, some deep emotion stirring in their depths. I finally managed to find my voice.
"I'll see you after class," I told her, backing toward the gymnasium. My heart was still beating double-time, and I couldn't seem to take my eyes off of her. She nodded, staring back at me for a moment before she turned to make her way inside. Just before the door closed behind her, though, she stopped and glanced back at me. I saw the smile begin, almost shyly at first, and then breaking out across her face before the door closed between us and she was gone.
Emerging from the locker room moments later, I was unusually energetic, as though the electric current that had passed between us was fueling me. I spent the next forty minutes running around the badminton court, trying to burn off the excess energy. By the time Coach Clapp blew the whistle to end class, my overenthusiasm was catching up to me. My ankle was starting to complain about being forced to sprint back and forth, and my partner, Jennifer Ford, was giving me dirty looks because I'd barely given her a chance to play. Mike caught up to me just outside the locker room door.
"So, is it true?" he asked. "About you and the Swan girl?" The Swan girl? I frowned at his reluctance to use Bella's given name but kept the thought to myself.
"Is what true?" I asked instead.
"Jessica told me at lunch that you two are going out."
I sat down on a bench and leaned over to untie my shoelaces. Mike wasn't the gossip monger that Jessica was. He wasn't asking because he wanted to spread it around school; he was asking because the Cullens gave him the creeps. I smiled faintly to myself, thinking Bella would be happy to know that even if I didn't react to her family's presence the way that I should, Mike Newton's instincts were right on target.
"It's kind of a gray area," I told him, "but I'm working on it."
Mike frowned. "She's kind of . . ." weird. He didn't finish the sentence, but I knew what he was thinking. "Sometimes she gives me these looks . . . it's like I ran over her cat or something." That I had noticed. I'd meant to ask Bella about it the other day, but sometimes it was hard to keep my train of thought whenever she was around. I shrugged at Mike and headed for the showers.
Several minutes later, as I came back out of the locker room into the gymnasium, I caught sight of Bella standing just inside the main doors. She wouldn't be here waiting for me, would she, if my touch had made her feel in any way uncomfortable? I felt the smile breaking out across my face, but in the next second, it began to fade as I realized that Bella was studying the contents of the school's trophy case. I shoved aside the sudden queasiness in my stomach, forced my smile back in place, and made my way across the creaky wooden floor to her side.
"Hey." I could see what she was looking at now. The big golden cup on the left-hand side of the third shelf. My eyes flickered up to it for a second, then drifted away.
"Hello." She turned to me and smiled, and for one brief moment, I forgot all about the golden trophy and the name engraved on the front of it.
"So, how was Spanish?" I asked.
"Fairly boring and uneventful. How was Gym?" She turned toward the door, and I fell into step beside her, but I couldn't stop myself from taking one last glance back up at the golden cup.
"About the same."
I opened the gymnasium door for her, and we made our way through the school parking lot toward my Volvo. Neither of us spoke as I opened the car door for her, then took my seat behind the wheel. I knew she had to have seen that golden cup, to have read my name on the placard on the front of it. It wasn't a secret, anyway. Anyone in Forks could have told her the story. I glanced across the car at her and wondered if I should bring it up. It wasn't something I ever really wanted to talk about.
"I guess you saw the trophy," I finally said. Bella nodded silently, then waited for me to continue. "Did you know?"
"My cousins told me." Of course. The Cullens had already moved to Forks when it happened. They'd been here for some of the before . . . and the after. I sighed, wondering just what details she'd been given and how accurate they'd been. In the year and a half since it had happened, the story had been circulated over and over again, the tragedy of it exaggerating with every retelling.
"How much did they tell you?" I asked as I checked my mirrors and pulled out of the parking spot.
"Just that you ran track your freshman year. And that you broke state records, several of them."
I nodded, thankful that the version she'd heard didn't have me winning a spot on the US Olympics team or some other such nonsense, but there had been phone calls, dozens of phone calls from college athletics departments, all of them saying that they wanted to introduce themselves early, before I'd hit my prime. I was only a freshman, they told me, and already a wonder. I was only going to get better.
I stopped at the parking lot exit and glanced across the seat at Bella. "I can take you home. Where do you live?" She shook her head.
"Just take me to your house. I have a ride waiting there for me." I nodded and pulled out onto the highway, heading toward home.
"What did they tell you about what happened?"
Bella's eyebrows lowered, and she turned to glare out through the windshield.
"Mike Newton broke your ankle at football tryouts," she hissed through her teeth.
The sudden change in her tone caught me off guard. Stopping at the next intersection, I turned to stare at her. Her features had grown cold and hard. Every trace of the warmth that had been there only moments before had vanished. Something clicked into place. Was this it, then? Was this why she disliked Mike Newton? Because she blamed him for what had happened to me? I turned my attention back to the road.
"Mike didn't do anything. It was an accident," I explained. "I was fast, too fast, I guess. Mike didn't see me coming and tackled Josh Coleman right in front of me. Josh went down on my leg, and with Mike's weight added to his, my ankle snapped." The coldness had left Bella's eyes, I noted, but she was frowning at me uncertainly. I shook my head.
"It really wasn't Mike's fault. It was just an accident." When I glanced back over at her again, there was a thoughtful frown crossing her features.
"I had assumed, from the tone of the newspaper article, that there was some negligence on Newton's part." She'd looked up old newspaper articles? I frowned.
"No, but I was the star of the track team, the town hero, and accidents are hard to accept." I pushed back against the pain the memories pulled to the surface. "I guess Forks had to find someone to blame, and Mike was the one they pointed at." Bella was silent, apparently considering my words. When she still hadn't spoken a moment later, I pulled my eyes away from the road to find her studying my face. She looked almost . . . confused.
"What?" I asked.
"I was just thinking that you don't seem like the football type." I gave a short, somewhat bitter laugh.
"I'm not." Bella's eyebrows lowered slightly in confusion. "I was only trying out because my father wanted me to," I explained. "He said football would look better to Harvard than track would."
I waited for her to say something else, but the car remained silent. How much more of the story did she know, I wondered? I couldn't remember how accurate the stories in the newspaper articles had been. I decided it was probably best to finish telling it myself.
"What happened with Mike wasn't permanent. It was a clean break, easy to set with no lasting damage. I'd have been back the next year, but then, right after I got the cast off, I slipped on some ice in the school parking lot." I winced, remembering the pain.
"It was worse the second time around. The bone splintered, and it did a lot of damage. After they'd put it back together, when we realized how much worse it was than the first time, my father made appointments with every specialist he could find in Seattle, but they all agreed that there was nothing else that could be done, that . . . your uncle had done just as well as any of them could have, under the circumstances." I smiled ruefully. "My father wasn't too happy about that, but with all of the doctors in agreement, there was no one for him to sue." I shook my head.
"It didn't really matter. I already knew my running days were over." Bella considered me for a moment in silence.
"You sound as though you miss it a great deal," she said softly.
"Yeah, I do." I shook my head. "I know it sounds pathetic, but it was . . . such a big part of my life that sometimes I can feel it missing." I stopped and glanced over at Bella, certain that she'd be looking at me like I was crazy, but her eyes were soft, and there was a sympathetic smile on her lips that made me think she understood what it was to lose something that was so much a part of you that you weren't quite sure who you were without it.
"I'm sorry," she said gently, and I could feel, in the softness of her tone, that she really was.
"Thank you," I said, touched by the understanding in her voice but not quite sure what else to say. The car was silent for another moment before she spoke again.
"What did you like about it?" she asked. Her tone seemed almost . . . hesitant, as though she feared she might upset me by asking. I shook my head, searching for the right words.
"I liked . . . the freedom. The speed. The feel of the wind in my face and the ground under my feet. Sometimes I felt like . . . like I could just step up off the ground and fly. Like I was in a whole other world where I could just leave everything behind until I was ready to come back for it." I smiled sadly at the memory. Bella's eyes narrowed slightly.
"I guess that's why you prefer to use the other entrance to the gymnasium," she said after a moment, "the one that's farthest from the rest of the school. It's because the trophy case is by the school side entrance, isn't it?" I nodded.
"It's not that I have anything against the trophy case, really. I just . . . right after it happened, I couldn't stand to look at it. Now . . . I guess it's just habit." I made the turn onto my street and glanced over at her. Our time together was growing short, and I didn't want to waste any more of it on unhappy memories.
"So, anything interesting in your plans for the evening?" I asked as I pulled into my driveway.
"You mean, am I going to go home and try to figure out what Lorenzo's Oil is about?" she asked, smiling slyly. I blinked, confused for a moment before I realized what she was talking about.
"Is that what movie it was?" I laughed. Bella nodded, smiling. "I think I saw that once, a long time ago."
"Me, too." She turned to glance back over her shoulder, and I followed her gaze, my eyes falling on the bright red paint of her truck parked along the street a few houses down. I frowned. I wasn't ready for her to leave so soon.
"I would have taken you home," I told her, but Bella shook her head.
"I'm not entirely certain that you and my family are ready for each other yet." She smiled sadly.
Yet? Did that mean she intended for me to eventually meet her family? Ah yes, her family. A whole house full of vampires. I knew Dr. Cullen, of course, had known him for years; he'd performed surgeries on my ankle. He seemed normal, safe enough, but what about the rest of them? What would they be like if they didn't have to pretend to be human? I pushed the thought aside. If Bella noticed any uneasiness on my part, I might never get the opportunity to meet them at all.
"I think I'm a pretty safe, normal kind of guy," I teased. "No piercings, no tattoos . . . no criminal record." Bella smiled again faintly.
"You are definitely a safe, normal kind of guy. My family, on the other hand . . ." She shook her head and glanced down to where her hand rested on the door handle. For a moment, I had to fight the urge to beg her to stay for just a little bit longer.
"I should probably go," she said, and by the time I had made it around the car, she was already standing outside. We stood facing each other, just as we had outside building seven.
"Could I ride to school with you again tomorrow morning?" Bella asked. Her voice sounded uncertain, as though she feared I might actually refuse her request.
"Yes," I told her. It was impossible to keep from smiling. "And every morning after that, if you want."
She blinked and smiled a smile that made me forget the grey clouds overhead and the sad things we'd just been discussing. It seemed to me that the sun was shining.
"Okay," she answered. We watched each other for another moment, smiling like fools, before she started to back away.
"I'll see you tomorrow," she said as she stepped toward the street.
"Tomorrow," I told her, watching until she'd vanished into the cab of her truck and driven out of sight before I reached into the backseat of my car for my backpack. I couldn't resist the urge to lean forward, just to see if there was a faint whisper of her perfume still lingering on the upholstery of the front seat. There was. I was still smiling as I headed up the front walk.
. . . . .
As I came down the stairs the next morning, I wasn't thinking of anything but Bella. I knew she was outside, waiting for me in my car. Breakfast seemed like nothing but another annoying chore to be taken care of before I could join her. I was trying to decide what I could eat on the run when I discovered my mother standing at the kitchen stove with an apron tied around her waist and a spatula in her hand.
"Why are you up so early on your day off?" I asked as I crossed to the refrigerator and took out the orange juice. Since my mother was watching, I made sure I got a glass out of the cabinet instead of drinking straight from the carton like I usually did.
"Ellen and I are going to Port Angeles this morning to buy some things for Connie's baby shower Saturday. I thought I'd get going a little earlier, get some things done around the house." She smiled, clearly pleased with herself. "And I never get to make you breakfast anymore." She slid an omelet onto a plate and handed it to me. Knowing that Bella was waiting for me in my car, I pulled a fork out of the silverware drawer, grabbed the closest chair, and dug in just a bit too enthusiastically. My mother raised her eyebrows but didn't comment.
"I heard there's a dance at school Saturday night," she said instead as she pulled out the chair beside me. My mouth full of omelet, I nodded. "Are you going?"
I shook my head and swallowed. "I've got a lot of packing to do, and with the flight out the next day, I didn't want to add anything else to the weekend." I noted the faint frown on her face as I took another bite of omelet. I knew exactly what she was thinking.
"It's okay, Mom," I told her. "It was girl's choice, and I was asked. I just decided not to go." She studied me for another moment, her thoughtful frown still in place.
"Okay," she said, "if you're sure."
"I'm sure," I told her. I finished the omelet and carried my dishes to the sink. With my back turned toward my mother, I smiled at the kitchen window. At this very moment, the most amazing girl I'd ever met was sitting outside in my car, waiting for me to drive her to school. And if my mother knew the truth about her, she'd probably have a heart attack.
"You said you talked to Mrs. Lowery about Sunday night, right?" she asked, changing the subject as I walked back toward the table.
"Yeah, I called her last week. Andy said he can drop me off at the airport on his way back to campus Sunday night. It's no problem." I lifted my backpack off the floor and settled it on my shoulders. My mother was frowning faintly. I knew she was still thinking about the dance.
"I'll be fine, Mom. Don't worry." I turned toward the door. "I'll see you tonight. Thanks for breakfast." Glancing up at the key peg, I smiled to myself when I saw that my car keys were missing again, but this morning I knew exactly where they were. The car was already running, and Bella was already sitting in the passenger's seat when I opened the driver's side door.
"Good morning," she said with a breathtaking smile. I smiled back, thinking how nice it was to start my morning with Bella's smile.
"Good morning," I answered as I slid into the driver's seat and hooked my seat belt. Checking the rearview mirror, I noticed Bella's truck parked along the street where it had been sitting the afternoon before. I smiled again and glanced across the seat at her.
"Did you sleep well last night?" she asked as I pulled out of the driveway.
"I did," I answered. I couldn't stop myself from teasing her just a bit. "Probably a lot better than you did."
"Probably so," she answered, a faint smile touching her lips. When I turned to glance at her at the next stop sign, she was studying me, as though searching for something in my expression.
"What is it?" I asked.
"I was just thinking," she answered, her eyes narrowing slightly.
"About what?" I asked, amused by her vagueness.
"About all of the things that I know about you. And all of the things that I don't." I frowned at her, not quite sure what she meant.
"Like what?"
Her eyebrows lowered, and her face fell into a frown. She glanced away. "This is difficult," she said after a moment. "It's been so long since I was . . . like you. I'm not sure what to ask, where to begin." I considered her words, wondering about the sorts of things that she might want to know.
"What's the first thing that pops into your head?"
"What do you dream?" she asked immediately. Then she frowned thoughtfully. "When you sleep, do you always know the next morning what your dreams were about? It's been so long—I can't remember how that works." I studied her face, thinking for the first time just how strange it would be to never go to sleep.
"Sometimes," I answered her. "Sometimes not."
"What about last night?" she asked. "Do you remember what you dreamed about last night?"
"I do," I answered truthfully. "I dreamed about you."
Bella frowned. With her eyebrows lowered slightly, she looked almost . . . perplexed. "It's a wonder that you got any rest at all, then. Dreams like that must have disturbed your sleep."
I shook my head. "Actually, I didn't want to wake up." I smiled across the seat at her. She was frowning faintly.
"Is it weird," I asked, "never sleeping? To be awake all of the time?" The look she gave me was one of confusion.
"No, it's . . . it's been quite some time since I slept." Her eyes seemed distant, as though she were searching through her memories. She shook her head. "I don't really remember sleeping." I watched her out of the corner of my eye, wondering if she might be more willing now to answer the question she had evaded before.
"Just how long has it been since you slept?" I asked, but Bella shook her head. Apparently she wasn't ready to give me that answer yet.
"That's not fair. You just asked one." A smile touched the corners of her lips. "It's my turn again."
"Are we taking turns, then?" I asked. Bella nodded.
"Yes." Her smile grew . . . mysterious, and she narrowed her eyes slightly. "What about your music?" she asked. "Which one of your parents do you get that from?" I smiled.
"My great-grandmother tried to teach my mom how to play the piano when she was a kid. Mom says it only took her a week to realize that it was completely hopeless." Bella laughed, and my heart skipped a beat.
"What about your father?" she asked.
"My father? Musical? Are you kidding?" I laughed. "Definitely not." I pulled into my usual parking spot and reached for the door handle, pleased when I realized that Bella was waiting for me to go around the car to open the door for her.
We took turns for the rest of the day. I kept my questions fairly simple, sticking to her favorite things, for the most part. It was the easiest way to go, but I was just as fascinated by the expressions that crossed her face when she gave them as I was by the answers themselves. Bella's questions for me were more involved, and no matter what my answer was, she always seemed to want to know why. All through lunch and up until the moment when Mr. Banner pulled the outdated television back into the classroom, we quizzed each other. We might have continued if the room hadn't gotten so quiet for the movie.
That day was no different than the one before. As the lights went out, the same electric charge seemed to run across the tabletop between us. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Bella lean away from me slightly, but it didn't help. I was still hyperaware of every movement she made. I could see that she was watching me out of the corner of her eye, just as I was watching her. I curled my fingers into my palms and tried not to reach out to graze my fingertip along the back of her hand, but it was hard to resist. I tried Bella's tactic, leaning over to the side to increase the distance between us, but that didn't help either. I was relieved when Mr. Banner finally turned the lights back on and dismissed us.
The awkwardness of Biology had recharged the tension between us. We walked toward building seven in silence now, no longer firing questions back and forth. As we paused to gaze at each other outside the door, I waited, praying for another gust of wind to blow a piece of her hair loose, but the breeze didn't stir. After another frustrating moment, I gave in to temptation and reached up as if to brush a strand of hair away from her face, even though there was nothing there. And in that tiny fraction of a second when my finger brushed against the shell of her ear, Bella reached up and touched her fingertips against the back of my hand.
We both froze this time. Her touch was so light that I could barely feel it; only the chill of her skin registered. And the pulse of the current that the contact sent shooting up my arm. We stood there, staring at each other until she lowered her hand and I forced myself to step away from her. There was something in her eyes that pulled at me, but I couldn't even begin to describe it. "I'll see you after class," I said, though it came out as barely more than a whisper.
"Okay," she nodded. I smiled as she disappeared through the door.
Gym passed by quickly, for which I was grateful. As I hurried out of the locker room, I looked up to find Bella waiting by the far gym doors. I smiled and went to meet her.
Our questions continued as I drove back to my house, but the tone of them had changed. Bella seemed full of them now, so I let her lead. She asked me about things that were harder to describe—things I remembered from my years living in Seattle, what I liked about living in Forks, my earliest memories. We sat in my car for hours, even as the sky darkened and rain began to pour down from the cloudy skies above.
I told her about Bud, about road trips and baseball games and my mother's fascination with do-it-yourself home improvement manuals. I told her about my parents' divorce when I was a baby, about the apartment with the ugly green refrigerator my mother and I had lived in while she'd been in nursing school. I told her about my father's attempt to regain custody of me when I was six and how I'd been dragged back and forth between Seattle and Phoenix so much that year that my excessive absences from school had forced me to repeat first grade . . . in Seattle, after Meg had left my father and he had dropped the lawsuit. I told her about more things than I'd realized I remembered, and Bella was always there with another question.
It was growing dark outside when she finally fell silent. I waited for her to ask something else, then smiled across the car at her when she didn't.
"Out of questions?" I asked teasingly.
"Not even close," she responded with a soft shake of her head. She glanced out through the windshield and frowned. "It's getting late, though, and we can't stay out here all night."
"What time is it?" I asked as I glanced down at my watch.
"Twilight," she murmured. Something in her eyes seemed distant, as though her thoughts were miles away. "It's the saddest time of day, isn't it? But it's the easiest for us." I was frowning across the seat at her when she turned back to face me.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"It's easier for us to blend in after the sun goes down. But the end of every day is sad, isn't it? Happy days even moreso—to see the sun set on another day and the world covered in darkness." I shook my head.
"There's nothing wrong with darkness. If the sun never set, the moon and the stars would never get their chance to shine."
Bella smirked across the seat at me. "Not that they get the opportunity very often in this part of the world," she pointed out. I smiled back.
"True enough. But just because you can't see them doesn't mean they aren't there."
She studied me for another moment, then reached for the door handle. I offered to get her an umbrella, but she just shook her head.
"I'll see you tomorrow," she said as she released the latch and set her foot outside.
"Tomorrow," I nodded. She smiled through the window at me as she closed the door behind her and started down the side of the street toward her truck. I was leaning into the backseat for my backpack and watching her through the rain-streaked window of the car when I saw her freeze. It was too dark outside for me to see her expression, but I could tell that she was facing down the street. I turned my head to see what had captured her attention.
A pair of headlights cut through the drizzle, slowing as they approached my driveway and then turning in. Bella's head seemed to turn, following the progress of the car. I couldn't see who was inside, but it looked as though the person in the passenger's seat was staring back at her. Then Bella turned her head abruptly to the side, crossed to her truck, and pulled away from the curb. Her tires squealed on the wet pavement as she accelerated down the street. I got out of my car, wondering just what was happening.
"Hiya, Edward!" came a familiar voice from the cracked rear window of the little black car.
"Josie? Oh, hey, guys."
Jacob was already climbing out of the driver's side of the car. Squinting in the darkness, I finally recognized the person in the passenger's seat as their father, Billy. What were they doing here? An uneasy feeling crept under my skin as I walked around to the passenger's side of the car. Somehow I wasn't surprised to find Billy staring at me, analyzing my face as though he were looking for something just under the surface of my skin. His eyes were wide and dark, and his nostrils flared. He seemed out-of-sorts, as though something had just frightened him . . . or given him a shock. I remembered that moment when Bella had stared through the rain at the car—and Billy had stared back. The smile slid from my face.
Billy continued to stare at me, only now I knew why. Somehow, through the darkness and the rain, Billy had recognized Bella as she stood on the edge of the street. His children may have laughed at the legends of the tribe, but Billy was no fool. He knew they were true, and he knew what Bella was. That much—and so much more—was clear in his dark eyes as he stared out at me through the rain-streaked window.