Sorry
"Do you want to open it?" Edward asked, still tense, still watching.
"Let's go inside," she said.
He nodded, his stride carefully matched to hers as they walked up the steps.
Her hands were shaking as she peeled back the envelope. The note was short: "I'm sorry. Please forgive me. Jacob"
The shaking grew, and she clenched her teeth together, the anger a red wall that almost clouded her vision. Her eyes felt like they were throbbing to her pulse.
She stomped towards the kitchen, and grabbed a black felt tip marker from the assortment of pens they kept on the windowsill. Setting the note down on the day's newspaper, she scrawled her own message back.
Edward's eyebrows were high on his forehead, seeing it. She pressed the marker so hard to the paper that the ink bled through to the newspaper below. The two word reply traced its ghostly letters onto the picture from The Times, of Seattle, under the caption "Nation's newest murder capital?" Bella's angry, and large 'F' lined up with the grainy grey of the space needle.
"Where's the wolf?" she growled.
"Bella—" he started.
"WHERE?" she yelled back, stuffing the note back into the envelope.
"Outside," he answered, unhelpfully.
"EDWARD, STOP PLAYING GAMES! WHERE?!"
He sighed, and jutted his chin in the direction they needed to go. She followed, and he turned, walking backwards, facing her as she bounded down the steps. "Bella, please listen, I—"
"Shut up, Edward," she growled, and tried to push past him through the treeline. He skipped backwards, his face a study in worry.
"Bella," he said, "It's—"
But it was too late.
She could see, now, what he was warning her of.
Jacob, in his large russet form, stood up from his seated position, facing them.
Her feet stopped moving, frozen, but only momentarily. Then, her anger safely unlocked, she threw the envelope at him. "STAY OUT OF MY LIFE JACOB!" It fluttered, most unsatisfactorily, to the ground, several yards in front of him. She wished she'd thought to fill it with rocks, so that it could at least smack him in the face.
Spinning around, she growled, "Make him leave, Edward. Now."
Edward looked at her, ascertaining her level of seriousness, and then at Jacob. "You heard her," he said quietly, watching the wolf. His body language made his intentions clear.
Jacob didn't make a sound, but turned, and loped away, heading west.
They had driven to his house, where the family was assembled, except for Alice and Jasper, who had disappeared from class to Bella's house—keeping watch, just in case the vampire visitor returned.
Carrying in a fern frond, Emmett had presented it to the others, who all shook their heads, not recognizing the scent.
They had eventually, and uneasily, accepted that it might have been a visitor, simply curious about the many vampire scents swirling around Bella, and her home.
Edward had reluctantly returned her in the early evening, assuring Bella there Jacob wasn't there, and no vampires either. He didn't mention that there was a wolf there. "We'll be just outside, at all times," he said, smoothing his fingers over her hands. "Nothing's going to happen to you. Or Charlie."
Her nod had been a reluctant one. Everything seemed so precarious. So uncertain.
"You need some distraction," he murmured, later, in her room, bringing his lips to her throat.
She smiled, at his idea of a distraction, but was too distracted to enjoy what he was offering. "Much as I appreciate the effort, I am too unsettled, even for that."
Edward pulled back, eyes crinkled with concern. "Do you want to go see Ann tomorrow?"
"No, I don't think discussing the vampire that's out to kill me will help any," she said, her smile grim over her clenched jaw.
"I'm sorry," he whispered, closing his eyes. "You will be safe. Please rest in my assurance. We aren't going to let anything happen to you."
She wanted to throw back, 'just like with James?' or 'or when you left, and Laurent almost killed me?' but stopped herself, knowing those words would offer a finality she could not undo. No, she took no sense of security from his words. She knew, better than most, where the best laid plans could go.
"Sure," she begrudged him. "If you say so."
Author's note: Thanks folks, for your kind words. Yes, I am still plugging away at this. Have much of the latter part of the story done, but struggling with the bridge between them. It's been a wordy journey at 65K words in just over a month :-)
