PREVIOUSLY-
"So now that we've covered abusive relationships, places to sleep, and making me blush, we need to figure out what to do about Jake and help Quil do the dishes for his mom." I told them, pointing to the sink.
Quil grimaced then pouted. "Do I have to?" I gave him a pointed look. "Alright, alright. Note to self: don't make Bella give me the death glare again."
Quil turned to the sink and I motioned to Embry to watch this as I walked up next to Quil. He turned to look at me and I made him lean down so that I could whisper in his ear.
"And if you ever expect me to sleep in your room, it should probably be clean first." I whispered, immediately making him go red in the face while Embry laughed from behind us.
"Bro, she's good. I think I need to go clean—"
"Dishes first." I cut him off with a laugh.
"Please tell me you meant what you said?" He nearly begged as he turned the water on.
"I guess we'll just have to see now won't we?" I responded. He just bit his lip and started to do the dishes. I helped him dry them and Embry put them away.
"Alright, dishes are done. Let's all head up to my room so that I can get that done too while we talk." Quil said anxiously. I laughed as I turned to Embry.
"Is that all it takes to make a teenager do his chores?" I asked Embry quietly.
"You have no idea, Bells." Embry replied.
We followed him upstairs to his bedroom and both Embry and I sat on his bed while he began to pick up the clothes off his floor.
"So what are we going to do about Jacob?" I asked them both.
"Well he wasn't phased in when I was a little bit ago. Oh by the way, Em, Sam wanted me to tell you that your patrol is 7-10 tonight." Quil told him.
"When's yours?" Embry asked him.
"Not 'til tomorrow after school." Quil responded.
"Back to Jake." I muttered, knowing they were both trying to put it off.
"Sam is going to rescind the alpha order blocking us from showing him in the pack mind. I say we all three phase in and the both of us show him what happened." Embry suggested.
"Sounds good to me. He might try to take a chunk out of our asses though." Quil told him.
"I want to talk to him too." I told them both adamantly.
They both stopped and looked over at me.
"Bella, Jake will be mad enough to phase on the spot. We don't want to risk you getting hurt like Emily." Embry told me with Quil agreeing.
"Then I'll stand plenty far enough away. Or I can just talk to him while he's already a wolf. He doesn't scare me. None of you do." I told them but they still looked at me apprehensively. "Honestly guys, you can both stand there with me as humans, wolves, one phased, one not, I don't care. I'm talking to Jacob."
"Alright." Embry said, completely surprising me.
"Alright?" I questioned, not sure if I heard him right. Quil responded first.
"We told you that we would never try to control you. Obviously that doesn't mean that we won't have our own opinions on things, but we'll go with whatever you decide, as long as it doesn't somehow result in your death. That shit won't fly." Quil explained to me.
I was speechless. I knew they'd said that they would never control me, but it was different to actually be able to make a questionable decision on my own. I felt like a fog lifted from me and I was able to finally breathe again.
Then I realized that Alice had controlled me too. She wouldn't let me wear anything I owned or even liked. She'd picked out everything for my wedding. I didn't even have a say in it. And Edward had let her. Come to think about it, Alice most likely saw my future change unless I stayed with Edward, so therefore she'd been an accomplice as well.
In fact, she probably saw my future change again when I didn't jump off the cliff and I worried that it would bring her back to Forks.
"He really did a number on you, Bella. Even if you didn't realize it." Embry told me, snapping me out of my daze.
"Apparently not just Edward... Alice did too and I just realized it." I muttered.
"What are you worried about, Bella? I can feel it." Embry asked.
"Alice can see the future. That's why she came back last time. She saw me jump off the cliff and didn't see me get pulled out of the water because she can't see the wolves, so she thought I'd died. My decision not to jump, then where I accepted both of your imprints means that my future probably just went blank to Alice. My future is with the wolves and she can't see you guys." I explained worriedly.
"Meaning she'll probably show up to find out what's going on…" Quil replied and I nodded.
"Take Bella back over to Sam's, I'm going to run up to her house just to see if anyone's been there." Embry told Quil as he stood from his spot on the bed.
I looked up at Embry as I stood up and hugged him tightly. "Be careful."
"Always am. I'll meet you guys over at Sam's." He said before taking off.
Quil and I walked back downstairs and headed out the door toward the path in the woods that we'd taken to get there yesterday. I cleared my throat and turned to Quil as we walked.
"How do you feel about everything? We haven't really gotten a chance to talk alone yet." I asked him.
"I'm cool with it." He replied like it was just another question. He was deflecting. I gave him a pointed look and he took a deep breath. "Alright, alright. It's… different. You don't know how excited I am to have imprinted on you. I'm not going to lie, I've totally had a huge crush on you since I met you at Jake's. Em has too, but don't tell him I told you that. Maybe we both subconsciously knew? I don't know. Either way, it's great but it's strange. Embry's my best friend and we both happen to imprint on the same girl? And then there's the fact that I'm completely okay with that in itself. Maybe it's because you're such a danger magnet that you needed more than one of us to protect you."
I thought about it for a minute. Maybe he was right, I was a danger magnet. Wait, did he just say that they both had crushes on me?
"So you both had crushes on me?" I asked him with a raised eyebrow.
"No." He stated. I looked at him curiously. "You said 'had' as in past tense. The correct word would be 'have'. And the answer would be yes. Who wouldn't?"
I blushed.
"You don't have to worry about us ambushing you just because we imprinted on you. Embry and I won't ever do anything you don't want us to. Crush or not, we'd be your best friends for life if that's what you wanted." He explained to me.
I took a moment to process before replying.
"Quil, I told you both that we'd take things as they go. I'm not ruling anything out, including the potential for something more than just friends." I told him with a smile as he helped me over a fallen log. He seemed surprised by my words.
"Really?" He asked me quietly, still holding my hand from where he'd helped me.
"I never really considered it before in the other life, but I'm not opposed to it. I wouldn't ever be able to choose one of you over the other though, so if this did progress into more it would have to be with you both. If you were both okay with it." I explained to him honestly.
I'd thought about it before I fell asleep last night and I could see it. The thought was strange at first but the more I thought about it, the more I was comfortable with it.
"I'd be game and I'm sure Em would too… if or hopefully when you choose to consider it." He replied with a smile and a wink.
"We'll see." I winked back at him.
I knew I was already considering it. It scared me just how easily I could see myself being with both of them when I'd never known that had even been an option before.
We made it back to Sam's and by the time we got there, Embry was already walking out of the woods.
"Well?" Quil asked him quickly.
"Leech scent all over the house. One of them was definitely there recently. Jared's there now keeping watch. Luckily Charlie's still on the res." Embry told us both and I started internally panicking.
"Bella, you need to breathe." Quil told me. I hadn't even noticed I'd been holding my breath. I sucked in a deep breath and turned to where he was pulling me up against his chest.
I didn't want them back. Especially not now that I knew what they'd done to me. Who knew what they were capable of?
"We're not going to let anything happen to you or Charlie." Embry reassured me as Quil rubbed circles on my back.
"Come on, let's get inside. Em, go tell Sam. Bells, I know Emily has some pretty great calming teas." Quil said, still holding me to his side as we began to walk inside.
Embry went off to find Sam around back as Quil and I walked into the house where Emily was sitting on the couch watching TV.
"Hey Emily, do you have any of the calming tea? Bella kinda needs some at the moment." Quil asked her. She got up immediately and walked over to the kitchen, grabbing a can.
"I just boiled the water so you're in luck. I was getting ready to have a cup myself." Emily said as I took a seat at the table. "What's got you so upset, Bella?"
"Embry caught the leech scent all over her house. One of the Cullens." Quil told her before I could.
"Well you'll be safe here. Sam will have the guys patrolling around your house for sure." Emily told me as she poured the steaming water over the tea leaves. "Welcome to the imprint club, by the way."
"Thanks. I might eventually have some questions for you about it all if you don't mind." I said.
"Of course! I'll be more than happy to answer any questions you have, or at least attempt to. You seem to have a double dose of imprinting." She laughed as she brought over my drink and sat down with me.
"I do." I smiled at her while Quil went out to talk to Embry and Sam.
"So what's it like having two imprints? It's intense for me with just one." Emily asked me curiously.
"It's different for sure, for all of us. It's so strange for me to just know I can trust them both more than anyone else in the world all of a sudden. I mean they've been my friends for months but as soon as I accepted their imprints, it was like the imprinting bonds hit me all at once. I can feel them." I told her, happy to have someone else that would understand.
"You'll get used to feeling their emotions over time. At first it's hard to separate them from your own but after a while you can tell they're not yours. You're lucky that you were friends with Quil and Embry before they even phased. I didn't have that luxury and Sam was with Leah, my own cousin. It broke his heart to hurt her but he couldn't stay with her after the imprint. He tried and I tried to make him but he just couldn't. We were arguing about it when he accidentally phased and this happened." Emily said, motioning to her scars. "He's never forgiven himself for hurting me, no matter how many times I've begged him to. He was newly phased and didn't have control."
"I understand. I was telling Embry and Quil something earlier and it made both of them mad. Embry was okay but he had to make Quil go outside because he knew that he'd phase." I replied to her.
"He'll be like that for a little while. At least Embry is past that stage now." She told me.
Just about that time, Quil and Embry walked in the front door.
"Sam's going to go scout things out at Bella's, he wanted me to tell you he'd be back in about 30." Embry told Emily as he walked up to me and rested his hands on my shoulders, beginning to massage them, seemingly unconsciously.
I noticed that both of them seemed to need to touch me. Not that I was complaining, I'd always been a touchy-feely type of person and the heat of their skin felt so good. His movements on shoulders were so relaxing that I laid my head back against him and felt the vibrations of him chuckling.
After a minute he lifted his hands and I looked up at him with a pout. "Why'd you stop?"
"Because you were about to fall asleep. You wanted to talk to Jake, didn't you?" Embry asked me. I nodded. "He's on his way."
"Should I talk to him before or after you?" I asked them both.
"Before." They both answered at the same time.
Quil told me, "I'll be phased next to you and Em will be human because he can keep his cool better than me if Jake says something to piss us off."
"He's here. Let's take this outside. Quil, go phase." Embry said, pulling me outside by my hand. Quil ran off to the woods to phase as we watched Jacob walking up to the house.
He was already mad just by looking at Embry holding my hand. Embry stopped me before we got too close to him.
"Hey Jake." I said as Quil came up to stand beside me as a wolf. I reached over and scratched behind Quil's ear as he leaned into my hand.
"Bella." Jake replied, crossing his arms.
"Listen, I know this is strange and aggravating for you—"
"Strange and aggravating? Bella, my two best friends imprinted on the girl I've been in love with for as long as I can remember! And not just one, but TWO! Now look at you with Embry, holding hands and crap. You have Quil trained like a freaking puppy dog. I mean seriously, scratching behind his ear?" Jake said angrily causing Quil to growl at him.
I went to take a step forward and Embry put his hand across my front to stop me. I looked over at him and he shook his head. It would be too close.
"Jacob, you know – you've known – for a long time that I only ever thought of you as a friend. My best friend. It was never anything more and it never will be, no matter how much you wanted and tried for it. You have no right to be mad at them because you don't have any sort of claim on me. The simple fact that Embry – my imprint – chose to keep the imprint a secret for over a month because he didn't want to overstep his friendship with you, is completely ridiculous. You three are best friends. I don't care what the freaking 'bro code' is, they are both my imprints and you are not. Deal with it!" I yelled at him, getting angrier and angrier as I went on.
"What so you're just going to run off and have threesomes with my best friends when you wouldn't even consider a relationship with me?"
He'd crossed a line with that one. Quil growled again and Embry had to hold me back once more.
"You know what? It's none of your damn business what I do with my imprints, Jacob! If I want to have a threesome, I will! It's my life! I didn't consider a relationship with you because I didn't feel that way about you! You can't even begin to grasp the concept of an imprint unless you've experienced it yourself." I threw out there, only being embarrassed about what I'd said after my rant was done.
"I—"
"I don't want to hear it, Jacob. I've said my piece so I'm going to go inside and talk to Emily while the three of you have a nice friendly chat." I said before walking off inside.
As I walked in, Emily had another cup of tea waiting for me.
"So I take it that didn't go very well?" She asked, handing me the cup.
"He accused me of having threesomes with his two best friends, so I might've told him that I'd have a threesome if I wanted to." I smacked my hands to my forehead in embarrassment. Emily giggled.
"I bet Embry and Quil got a kick out of that. Jacob will come around; it'll just take some time. You don't need to be worrying about him right now." Emily said to me and I knew she was right. I needed to be worrying about the vampire that had been in my house. I knew that it had been Alice, I was sure of it.
It was only a few minutes later that both Embry and Quil came inside. They looked remarkably uninjured, so I took that as a good sign.
"Well?" I asked them.
"We showed him everything. He's pissed, just like we figured. Going to run it off. He'll get over it eventually." Embry told me.
"So a threesome, huh?" Quil asked me, wiggling his eyebrows as I blushed deeply. Embry elbowed him in the side.
"Hey Em, I could really use another one of those massages right about now." I muttered, rubbing the back of my own neck. I was stressed out.
He looked super happy and walked over, putting his hands on my shoulders. As he worked on my neck and back muscles, I sighed.
"Why does he get to give you a massage and I don't?" Quil pouted, looking at me.
"Because he didn't bring up the most embarrassing thing I said." I muttered as I closed my eyes, relaxing into Embry's touch.
A/N- Uh oh. Bella's house has been penetrated! *Internally laughing because that's totally not a good enough excuse to use the word 'penetrated' lol!*
Let me know what you think so far!
Also, a very special thanks to WeasleyTwins07 because without her, this story wouldn't even exist! We bounce ideas off one another and it all rolls itself into a story, so thank you my dear friend!