Hey all! We've reached the end of this fun little project of mine. Thank you for the follows and feedback, it really helps keep me motivated when I feel like ripping my hair out lol. I hope you enjoyed my take on a Jake and Bella themed cheesy horror movie plot, and if you like my writing, feel free to check out some of my other works!
Chapter Fifteen: Us
Four Weeks Later
The trees passed by in a collage of greens and yellows, oranges and reds, as Jake and I put Forks in our rear-view mirror for the second time this summer.
It was strange, leaving again so soon after the absolute mayhem that was our vacation at Angela's beach house. Charlie hadn't wanted to let us go, but with a little nudging from Billy, he eventually relented. College was a big step, and he didn't want to keep us from what was supposed to be the best years of our lives.
Even if we did face off against a murderous vampire no more than a month ago.
The clean up after Alecia's attack proved to be easier than any of us could've hoped. Emmett took the various pieces of her body and disposed of them 'appropriately', whatever that meant. The wolves took charge of cleaning up the broken trees and rocks, which looked kind of like a bomb had gone off nearby.
Admittedly, I didn't get to see much of that. As soon as Alecia was dead, Jake phased back and brought me home. Leah was recovering in the living room, explaining away the gash on her head by telling everyone that there was a miscommunication and while I thought she was with Jake, Jake thought she was with me, and in reality she'd taken a sharp blow by the bear's paw and was unconscious for a few hours. The others accepted that story with some shock and horror, but the truth would've been a harder sell- even I was having trouble digesting it all.
On her way back to the house to switch out with Jake for patrol, Leah ran into Corey. He was waiting for her, utterly invisible with his scent cloaked by Alecia's powers. He struck her in the head with something heavy- probably a branch, but she wasn't sure- and then dragged her back to the boathouse with Sawyer's niece. The body covered her scent, so Paul and Quil had trouble finding her until she woke up and was able to make a hell of a lot of noise to draw their attention.
The rest of the pieces sort of fell into place after that, with the Cullens taking control of the situation as soon as any trace of Alecia was gone. Jake excused their presence by spinning some anecdote about running into them at the Animal Control office; since the Cullens had a reputation for being avid campers, it wasn't so unbelievable that they'd be in the area on a summer camping trip. Charlie even managed to falsify a check-in for us in Emmett's name.
Alice took full advantage of our original bear attack story, and began tracking down the various bodies of the women Alecia killed in an attempt to get to me. Most of them were scattered throughout the woods, but others were more difficult to find. It took her and Emmett about two weeks to locate everyone- all sharing some vague resemblance to me- and present their murders as a possible animal attack. After a bit of persuasion that I wasn't entirely sure Carlisle had nothing to do with, local authorities concluded that a group of black bears in the area had somehow contracted rabies, as if that excused the carnage. Most people didn't want to consider the alternative, so the cover story was swallowed without much complaint.
As for the truer side of things, I did my best to explain to everyone what Corey and Alecia had confessed to me, but I'm sure the shock confused some of the finer details. They all understood enough, and the hardest part of this cleanup was left to Edward's siblings.
They had to tell him.
I hoped he wouldn't take it too hard, but if I knew Edward, then I also knew that was an incredibly long shot. He was a master-class brooder, and knowing that he was indirectly responsibly for dozens of deaths would surely crush him. I didn't envy Alice and Emmett in their task.
There was also Victoria to worry about, but that wasn't a problem for me. The Cullens would be handling it from here.
"Pretzel."
Jake directed his open mouth toward me, shaking me from my reflection with his demand for snacks. He was driving again of course, which meant that his hands weren't free to fill his black hole of a stomach. I obliged, rolling my eyes for good measure.
"I thought you hated pretzels," I grumbled, popping another one into his mouth pre-emptively. Jake shook his head adamantly, affronted at the very idea.
"I hate pretzels as a default," he corrected, which still sounded the same to me. "But they're okay when they're the only thing left in the trail mix bag."
"There are raisins in here too."
"The only edible thing left in the trail mix bag."
I laughed, quickly abandoning the raisin I was going to grab for him.
Things were never going to be the same after this summer. Despite how eerily normal everything felt once we were home again, eighty women were dead, and a memorial service was to be held for them within the month. Their families would never know exactly what happened to them, but at least they would get some form of closure. It's the best we can do for now, and we have to be content with that.
Our human friends were suspicious. I think they know that something strange happened at the beach house, but they're too afraid to ask any more questions. That's for the better; Jake and I might be leaving Forks, but a lot of them are not. The less they know about their supernatural neighbors, the better.
Jake held his mouth open again, wagging his tongue to grab my attention. I laughed, producing another pretzel for him.
The one thing that didn't change- and somehow, the one thing that also changed the most- was my relationship with Jake. He was still my best friend of course, but he was more than that now. We were closer than ever, in different ways, and even though we kept it to ourselves and the Pack for the first week or so, people started to notice.
Once we got back from the beach, he didn't want to let me out of his sight. At first, we were able to pass it off as him being his overprotective self after what happened with Alecia, but pretty soon we had to admit to our dads at least that we were in fact, dating. Charlie thought it was a piss-poor attempt at solidifying an already secured win in the prank war, until Billy pointed out that he'd found some of my clothes scattered around Jake's room the other day.
Sleepovers got a lot less commonplace after that.
Not that it mattered now; Jake and I had an apartment picked out long before we went on vacation, and while Charlie could police us at home, in our own place, we were free to sleep wherever we wanted. Jake took great pleasure in pointing that out whenever he could, much to Charlie's chagrin. I'm honestly surprised both of them made it to moving day in one piece.
"Hey," Jake interrupted my contemplative silence, his voice just casual enough to be suspicious. "Do you mind if we make a quick detour?"
"What did you have in mind?"
"Just this place I heard about," he shrugged, the picture of ease. I frowned. "It won't take long, I promise."
The signal light was already blinking, so I guess my answer didn't matter too much either way.
The highway was sparse with foliage, pushed back from the asphalt to give drivers their best chance at spotting inbound wildlife. The road that Jake turned onto was much denser, like leaving an air-conditioned room and walking headfirst into a wall of mid-July humidity. The trees stood shoulder to shoulder like sentinels, blocking the belly of the forest from view.
"You know," I teased, crossing my arms over my chest and settling back into my seat. "I always thought that when you finally murdered me, you'd throw me into the ocean or something."
"You are a pretty shit swimmer," Jake conceded, "but a murder in the middle of the woods is much more fitting."
"And predictable."
"So predictable no one would ever see it coming."
I rolled my eyes, bringing my focus back on our unknown destination.
Jake drove until the pavement faded into gravel, and the massive evergreens crowded the road uncomfortably, their bushy fingers scraping the side mirrors as we passed by. I winced, but Jake seemed perfectly relaxed.
Eventually, the road ended.
I don't mean that we reached any particular destination, I mean it just ended. One minute, gravel stretched out ahead of us in a roughly straight line and the next, my truck was nearly swallowed by pine needles. There was no parking lot, no circle of packed dirt to indicate that this was a well-traveled spot. There was just… trees.
"Come on," Jake released his seat belt, kicking the door open and vaulting to the ground in one fluid motion. "We're losing daylight here."
"I was joking about the murder," I ventured, cautiously following him. Despite how confined I felt in the truck, outside it was much roomier. The wind whistled past the thick fir trunks, sending a chill down my spine and chasing away the lingering claustrophobia. "But now I'm not so sure."
"Just trust me, Bells," Jake chuckled, winding his fingers through mine and tugging me along. "And watch your step. The ground is tough here."
I wasn't sure what that meant, until I left the relative comfort of the gravel road. The dirt here wasn't so much packed as it was cemented together, hard and cold beneath the soles of my shoes. Rocks and twigs protruded from the earth like they were frozen in a bed of ice, firm and immovable. If I stumbled here, there would be no cushion for my fall.
Jake was determined not to let that happen, keeping me close enough to feel the heat radiating from his body. I welcomed the small comfort, leaning into his warmth as he led me down a winding path through the forest.
Unlike my last venture into the woods, I had no reservations this time. I trusted Jake with my life.
True to his word, we didn't walk for long. The change in the air was instantaneous- we emerged from the thick of the forest like bursting through the surface of a river, gasping for breath, almost literally. The wind snatched deep into my lungs, thin and sinister, raking its icy claws through my chest.
It hit me then: we were very high off the ground.
The mountain range around us came into clearer focus as I adjusted to the reduced oxygen levels, my breathing evening out quickly in the wake of my awe. We were standing on a cliff face, much like the one next to La Push beach, but instead of staring into an endless sea, we were halfway up the basin of a rocky valley.
"Holy shit," I muttered, blinking my wide eyes. Jake laughed next to me, his grip tightening on my hand like he was afraid I would fall. He probably was.
"It's amazing, right?" He mused, following my gaze to the snow-capped mountain peak directly in the centre of our vision. The skyline was as picturesque as a postcard, each cloud, tree, and rock formation placed as perfectly as if they'd been staged. "Embry told me about it, if you can believe that."
"What was Embry doing all the way out here?"
"Do you actually want to know?"
I laughed, shaking my head without actually moving my eyes from the view.
"I thought it would be nice," Jake continued, tensing a little. He was uncomfortable, I realised with a jolt of surprise. "I know we're not going far, and we'll be back for the holidays, but I wanted us to see the best Forks has to offer before we move on to bigger and better things."
He rubbed the back of his neck with his free hand.
"It probably sounds stupid," he chuckled nervously, "but-"
"It's not stupid," I insisted, sudden and fierce. "I think it's beautiful. And it's the perfect last stop before we finish our road trip. Thank you for bringing me here."
Jake's muscles relaxed, and he turned to beam down at me.
"Thank you for giving me a chance," he smirked, and I knew he didn't just mean the mountain range. I smiled openly, resting my head delicately against his shoulder and absorbing the scent of sap, leaves, and the cleanest air I've ever breathed.
"I'm sorry it took so long," I murmured back, sighing as his arm wound tightly around my waist, securing me to him, shielding me against the wild wind.
We stayed like that, watching the sky, until the clear light faded to yellow, and we knew we had to get moving before night descended on us. We had places to be, after all.
A small part of me knew that I could never really be sure about my future. Jake promised me the world, and I have no doubt that he meant every single word of it, but even he won't know if he's successfully changed his predetermined path until he meets his imprint, or doesn't.
But I'm okay with that.
Jake loves me. Jake loves me more than I could ever understand, and in order to be with him, I need to trust him. I do trust him, and so, I'm not afraid. When it came down to a choice between the universe and me, Jake chose me. Jake will always choose me. And in return, I will always choose him. Together, we can overcome anything. I truly believe that.
A long life full of adventure, joy, and love awaits me, and I will spend every second of it with my partner, my soulmate, my friend, Jacob.
The End.