DISCLAIMER: I own nothing. I am air filtering through the canopy. Or dust motes hanging suspended in a sunbeam. The blank emptiness of non-existence is terrifying and all-consuming, but as it is, I do not own a corporeal form. Dark matter eat your heart out. (Also: warning, smut? Nothing distasteful. They're teenagers, y'all. With very little supervision. You're telling me they don't have sex eventually? Get a back bone.)
A notable quotable from this chapter was " smeyer what's good," and if you can guess where it was, I owe you a cookie. In fact, if you've read this far, I probably owe you a tray of cookies and an Explanation.
Again, I must thank NeedMoreZzz's for her meticulous approach to grammar and awkward phrases. Between the two of us I think there's only three brain cells and she has all of them. If you haven't read On the Run yet, what's stopping you? Fear? Anger? Jealousy? A family curse? A cat sitting on your chest? Go read it, and if you have any thoughts, dish girl!
As always, I encourage you to read/review/favorite/scream unintelligibly at your screen/sob uncontrollably/sit in a chair while 'possibility' plays/all of the above. Oh, and wash your fucking hands.
XXVIII
I ran through the woods, limbs heavy with grief, butt-ass naked. I had ripped my clothes in the hurry to shift, and I didn't want to be a wolf right now. I needed to be alone to figure out what thoughts were running through my head. Words had never been my strong suit, but now I had to find the exact right way to explain, and the words wouldn't come. There were none.
I'd left Bella at Charlie's house, but she must have driven over to La Push, because when I got to Billy's she was there. I had only stopped by for a pair of shorts since Bella didn't like it when I "strutted around half-naked," in her house. I figured she wouldn't like me showing up in my birthday suit.
Needless to say, it was a surprise to see her pacing the length of my kitchen biting her nails, but she got the worse shock. If I could do it again, I would, because her face was priceless. She turned red as a tomato the second she saw me and stopped dead in her tracks, knees knocking together. Her mouth flew open, gasping for air. Her eyes skittered down, widened and then – as if it were possible – her face got even more red.
"Jake – !" She choked, turning around to face the sink.
I snickered. Oh, Bella.
Why should she have to die?
"Put on some clothes!" She screeched, and I reached out for the shorts Billy left on the kitchen table.
"Sure, sure," I sighed, pulling on the shorts. They were too tight – probably on the bottom of the laundry pile in my room for too long. They were stiff and confining, but not nearly as bad as the suffocating fear constricting my throat.
I gulped. This would be the hard part.
Dying would be difficult, sure, but there was no way I wouldn't go down swinging. I was almost grateful to be going out in a blaze of glory. It was much better to die a hero who would be remembered in the tribe's legends, if it had to happen. I was just as much of a fighter as Paul, maybe even a little better, except I didn't go looking for fights. Conflicts came on their own, seemingly out of nowhere. This would be the hardest of them all, since I knew we couldn't win.
We were outnumbered. It might be possible to take down these leeches, but at what cost? To kill them all would mean wolf casualties to deal with, and it was entirely possible we'd still be wiped out. I had been glad when Sam ordered the boys to stay and guard La Push, but if a battle broke out, the pack would be stronger with three more. I doubted they would be able to stay away from the fray, anyway. Especially when we started losing.
But saying goodbye to her would be harder than all of that.
Bella peeked over her shoulder, a pink blush still sitting on her cheekbones. Her eyes assessed my mood in a split second. She could always see right through me. I was the slick forest on the side of the highway and she was the passenger watching my thoughts as they flew by.
"What happened?" She murmured, hesitantly stepping forward.
I reached out and grabbed her waist. She automatically wrapped her arms around my neck, but her eyes were full of worry and intrigue, compelling me for an answer.
I sighed, eyelids drooping, suddenly very tired.
"The red-headed leech." I hesitated. The words still didn't come.
"Victoria?" Bella urged me to continue.
I dropped my forehead to rest against hers, closing my eyes and taking a slow breath in. She always smelled like lavender, strawberries, and something else – daisies, poppies, a meadow in full bloom.
"She created an army," I said slowly, voice barely a whisper. "All the missing hikers… the disappearances… she's been turning them." I breathed, brushing my thumb against her cheekbone.
Her eyes were bugging out of her skull at this point. "An army of… vampires?" She gasped.
I nodded. "The boys found the smell. Seth says it had to be more than twenty," I spat the last word, and it landed between us like a ton of bricks.
Bella jumped as if I'd tasered her. Her hands flew up to my face, mouth open in horror. Her words were lost in shock, but she didn't need to speak, even if her thoughts weren't so clearly written on her face. I knew Bella better than the back of my hand, so I knew exactly what she was about to say.
"Jake…" She trailed off, tears springing to her eyes. "Please, don't fight. I'm begging you. We'll run away," she offered. "Just you and me. Leave all this behind."
I shook my head, resting my hands over hers with a forlorn expression. "It's not something I can run away from, Bella." I reminded her. "But I would run with you, if I could."
"Let me go to Victoria," Bella insisted, a fierce look of determination hardening her features. "You won't die for me, Jacob Black."
"We're not going to fight them right now," I continued to explain as if she hadn't spoken. "We're trying to spy on them, see if we can nail down exactly how many there are. If they don't all hunt together, we might be able to take them out one by one, but it's a long shot." I closed my eyes again, tightening my grip on Bella's hands as she tried to wiggle her way out of my grasp. "Eventually, though, we'll need to fight the group."
"No, you won't," Bella insisted, still squirming relentlessly.
"Bella," I sighed, opening my eyes.
Her face was hot and wet with tears, eyelashes soaked and heavy. She was staring back at me with an indignant expression.
"You think they'll just leave if you go surrender yourself?" I asked in a lifeless voice. "We're gonna have to deal with these leeches eventually. Getting yourself killed won't help."
"I can't let you die," she croaked, blinking away more tears.
I was in serious danger of crying, too. Would this be the last time we ever saw each other? It seemed irresponsible of me to have our final moments blurred by the moisture accumulating behind my eyelashes. I blinked it away, spreading my hands out on each side of Bella's face, forcing her to look at me. Her eyes were two open windows with curtains blown to the side by the wind; I could see right through them. She understood the unspoken goodbye in my words and sensed another promise being broken.
"I will never leave you," I vowed. "Even if I die. Our connection is deeper than that," my face inched forward as I spoke, until our noses touched. "I'm in love with you, Bella. So ridiculously in love with you. I've never felt anything like this before, except in Sam and Jared's heads, but it's different when it's happening to you." I was starting to babble, but the words I'd been trying to find came pouring out before I had a chance to think of them.
"You're what's made this whole werewolf thing bearable. You're so persistent, I should have known you'd figure it out sooner or later – before that, though…" I trailed off, wincing. "You have no idea how hard it was to turn into a monster. I nearly killed my own father. I was something from a horror movie. And I knew I was too horrible to be with you, even after we got rid of the black-haired leech who was going to kill you.
"But you were so stubborn. I knew you weren't going to back off unless I hurt you. That was the most despicable thing I've ever done, and if I live to be a hundred, I'll never forgive myself. I said you could trust me, right? I was going back on my word. I had to see you again.
"But even when you knew, even after everything I had to say to you, you didn't care about any of it. I was still Jake. You were still Bella. None of it mattered to you." I pushed my hands forward into her hair. "Even after I phased in front of you. When we got back to Emily's, I was surprised you didn't start screaming." I laughed humorlessly, an edge of hysteria creeping up my tight throat.
"I've always been myself with you, like I was missing a piece of my personality before, and now I'm fully Jake. You've got the whole package, honey."
I tapped our foreheads together, running one of my palms down her arm and taking her hand in mine.
Her breathing had accelerated, gotten shakier. She was staring up at me through her lashes, but not in the same way as when we first met. This was a focused, heated kind of gaze. She looked at me like I was a meal and she hadn't eaten in weeks.
"This kind of thing doesn't end when our bodies die," I whispered, intertwining our fingers. "We'll be together again, as one whole piece."
"Jake," she choked, chocolate eyes melting over burning tears. "I am you, Jake. You're a part of me, too." She shook her head. "I thought I would never be capable of loving someone this much… in this way… again." Her eyes flickered down to my bare chest.
"Except it's different for us. You can touch me." She squeezed my hand, pressing her body up against mine.
"You can kiss me." Standing on her tip-toes, she pressed her lips to the tip of my nose.
"And you would never hurt me on purpose. You're my best friend, Jake. And, like you said, it's hard to resist that level of devotion." Her lips twitched before falling back into a pout.
"Wherever you go, I'll follow. I will always be with you, and I will always want you," she breathed, lips brushing against mine.
That was as much encouragement as I needed to smash our faces together. Bella was almost frantic in her movements, fingers shaking as she undid the top button of her plaid shirt.
I placed my hands on top of hers to take over the job, then sighed. We may have been going hot and heavy lately, but she'd made it clear she wasn't ready to be close in that way.
"Don't tempt me, Bells," I tried to sound teasing, but my voice was too thick to achieve the appropriate levity. "I'm not eager to die a virgin, you know."
"Who said you have to?" She asked, voice barely above a whisper. Her hands flattened against my chest, running down against every contour. I practically shivered in excitement.
I had imagined this moment over and over in my head and yet it still exceeded my expectations. But I refused to give up my V-card in Billy's kitchen. He wouldn't appreciate me breaking the table again. I scooped her up in my arms, enjoying the surprised shriek it elicited, and carried her to my room. It was only a couple of paper-thin walls away, but at least there was a bed.
Her lips were on my neck, my jaw, behind my ear. Her hands were on my shoulders, pulling herself up to my face. By the time we got to my room, I was done being gentle. I hurled us onto the mattress, but Bella didn't seem to mind.
We ended up being way too loud. Bella, turns out, is a screamer, which would have surprised me on any other day. I was just as bad, though. Every time she moaned my name, I groaned, flexing harder, until she got louder, fueling the fire. The bed rattled and creaked continuously as we tumbled around on it with reckless abandon. In our kisses was the weight of finality, the end of an era where we denied the irrevocable pull on our bodies to become one.
With my hands preoccupied and Bella pulling on the hair at the nape of my neck, neither of us flinched when the phone rang. I moaned, the sound vibrating in my chest, as I leaned down to press my lips on her breast. We gradually got louder than the ringing and soon forgot it in the heat of the moment. The fire grew and crackled, sending sparks into the air and smoldering on our skin. The bed quivered beneath our trembling bodies as the flames popped and exploded into the night sky, until our kisses got slower, sloppier, more tender.
For a few hours, the world around us blurred away. I melted into her skin, losing every fear I'd ever had.
