Sunday, December 13th, 2080
BPOV
It was half-past eight in the morning on Sunday, and I was in my room. I was trying to put together a new go-bag, my heavy-duty backpack laying out on my bed, still empty, as I stared at it from my perch on my computer desk chair with one knee tucked under my chin. I was trying to figure out what parts of my life here in Forks I would stuff inside it as I studied its shape, doing useless mental calculations using its dimensions to determine the many different combinations of material shit it could house without splitting at the seams. The necessary clothes, my still incomplete stockpile of weapons and the cash I'd been saving expressly for the purpose of settling somewhere new were a given. Mementos not so much, and they had never been my thing. I had been sitting here, contemplating the possibilities for nearly two hours now and was no closer to making any decisions on what tokens from my jaded foray in to normal I would take to torture myself with. It didn't help that I was also being tortured by the night before.
Ahh, the Winter Formal. Good times, and I mean that in the most sarcastic and unpleasant way possible.
It had started off pretty well. I had managed to keep Tyler at a relatively safe distance without being rude about it, and I'd even had some fun dancing with him and doing more of the stereotypical "date" but not date stuff. Then Peter came along, whirling me about the dance floor and dazzling me with his innate Southern charm. Things started to go downhill when he told me he loved me.
It wasn't until Jasper showed up that my night truly began to go to shit. The fact that he'd shown up at the dance, had come back to Forks, before I left was a relief to me. I had wanted to see him before I had to go, to clear the air between us, to somehow say goodbye without actually uttering the words.
I shouldn't have agreed to dance with him. That was my first mistake, but I hadn't been able to refuse him. His voice as he'd greeted me and during our subsequent conversation was so uncertain, so timid, so unlike him that it made it impossible to do, even if I was still marginally angry with him and half-expecting him to tear in to me again. He didn't tear in to me though, and his touch was soft but sure as he held me. Electric. He hadn't resorted to evasion when I finally asked him why he'd been so angry with me; he'd been honest, if uncomfortable.
I understood a lot of the things he said as he attempted to explain himself, as difficult as that was for him to do and as hard as the words were to come by. I knew he wasn't lying when he told me he had no better an understanding of his behavior than I did, and I felt for him. I got angry sometimes myself—angry with Project Apotheosis, people, the world and sometimes, fate, though I hardly believed in it. Jasper had plenty to be angry about, things, events and probably people to resent. As many things as there were about him that confounded me, that was one of a very few of them that was obvious. It was in the way he carried himself, in the way he existed in the world around him, in the look that never left his eyes. It was why, when I wasn't pissed at him, I teased him, tried to get him to lighten up, to smile. It was why I had taken him to meet Chaos.
I knew we had quite a bit in common, and I wished we didn't. He'd gotten under my skin, but more importantly, he made my heart go all soft and that was bad … very bad. I couldn't seem to help that though, and as the time passed, it had begun to bother me less and less. That was bad too.
His apology to me was genuine, and I appreciated it. I hadn't wanted to leave things between us in a shitty place when I left Forks. It would have saddened me more than I cared to admit. It would have left me hurting for a long time, no matter how much distance I put between the small town I had come to be so fond of, no matter how much I put between him and me. The softness in his voice, in his expression, the earnestness as he told me he wished I always felt my age only made me feel as though that pain would be more intense. It touched me in a way that took me by surprise. Despite our fight, we were getting along now, for the most part, but that wasn't something I had been expecting from him.
What I hadn't been expecting from myself was my admission about how much I noticed about him. For some reason, I felt like he needed to know, and I hadn't seen the harm in telling him. That wasn't my initial thought, of course. My first instinct was to facepalm, but once I started, I figured it didn't matter since I was leaving. I thought it might make him feel better, and he seemed like he needed it. I wanted to give him that. It was the last thing I could give him, the last thing I could do to convince him I wasn't an awful person.
Even after hours of contemplation, I didn't know what to make of everything that happened after that …
My need to touch him was so intense, so fucking powerful, almost primal, and his easy willingness to let me would have left me reeling if that need wasn't so great. I had clutched him tightly, almost desperately, as though my life depended on it, and in a way, it felt as though it did. The way I'd pressed myself impossibly close to him next would have been mortifying if I'd cared, but I didn't because in that moment, Jasper had felt like … everything. His scent had surrounded me, overwhelming my nose, seeping into my pores, invading me so completely it could have been possession for all I knew. I'd clung to him for I don't know how long, unaware of everyone and everything else at the feel of his hands on my body, the weight of him against me, but it was more his closeness I craved than want—the physical need for contact and connection, and for it to be Jasper I got it from. It could be no one else. It had to be him.
I had tried my best to avoid his eyes, the mesmerizing gold of his gaze I so often lost myself in if I looked long enough, to no avail. I couldn't help myself. I could never seem to help myself. I was drawn to them, drawn to him. The world which had already been so distant, faded even further, and the sense that we were the only two people that existed deepened until it throbbed in my bones. It made me ache with a loss I had never known before. A week ago, I would have steadfastly denied all of this. I would have refused to let myself acknowledge it or feel it, but my impending departure made that impossible. There was no denying these things, no way for me to hide from them.
I came to a realization then—I wasn't just attracted to Jasper Whitlock. Angela was right. I had feelings for him, and it terrified me so utterly that I felt it in every cell of my body. It was a fear I had never known, had never wanted to know because those kinds of feelings led to things I could never have. The loss I felt intensified so much that I wished I could wrap my arms around my middle to provide myself with some sort of comfort, even if I knew it would provide me with none. The longing for my circumstances to be different, for me to be able to have what I had always known I couldn't, nearly swallowed me whole.
But none of it mattered for so many reasons. Jasper didn't feel anything for me other than a mild sense of kinship and amusement over our occasionally similar sense of humor. It was for the best. If I stayed and he did feel the same way, how could I be around him and endure denying us both what we wanted? But I would have to. If he shared my emotions, how much harder would it be to walk away? Even if Jasper cared about me the way I cared about him, all of it was a moot point. It would change nothing. I still had to go.
My night began to suck in bittersweet earnest after this personal epiphany, and I had been desperate to distance myself from all its implications, all its consequences. I'd done the only thing that made sense, the only thing I could truly do—I pulled away from Jasper and returned to Tyler, the boy who'd brought me.
I'd danced with him again. Then I'd danced with the boys from my other lunch table, and even Riley and Gavin. I'd danced with Peter again, and Emmett and Edward. I'd joined Alice, Charlotte and Rosalie on the dance floor to do a girly, sexy group dance and made a trip out with Jessica and a begrudging Angela and Lauren for something similar. It was a pattern I repeated for the remainder of the night, and I was more frivolous with letting people touch me that I absolutely did not want to. I only allowed it because it was necessary. I couldn't go around breaking hands, but I could not dance with Jasper again. I didn't dance with Jasper again. Even being in the gym with him at all was not a good idea.
I was paying the price for my desperation to avoid him now though, for allowing so many to make contact with me whether it was through the material of my dress or with my bare skin. It was a different sort of desperation. Panic was swirling around in my brain, turning my stomach, coiling my muscles and twisting them into knots. I was headed toward an episode, a nasty one by all indications. The good thing was that I didn't yet have a pounding headache nor was blood trickling out of my ears. I hoped that wouldn't happen and that I could hold it off until I got far enough away from Forks that I couldn't be tracked by my scent.
The panic and impending episode weren't the only repercussions, however. All the extra time spent with my vampire almost-family had only shoved the knife in deeper. Every laugh with Emmett and Peter, every eye roll shared with Edward and Rosalie, each quiet moment I looked to Charlotte and found something like a kindred soul in her eyes and her pride at the choice I had made to come to the dance when I'd been so uncertain, and each and every squeal and bounce of Alice, dulled the blade of that knife so that when it twisted in the deep wounds their smiles and affection ripped through me, it hurt that much more. My time with Angela was the salt poured over and ground into them.
No one knew I was bleeding or struggling to breathe, choked by the weight of how much I knew I would miss them all. I wasn't sure how I'd managed not to break down, but I was Soldier Omega. I had bucked up and carried on because, no matter how I felt, that's just what I did. It was what I was created to do; it was what a good soldier did, and I was still a good soldier. I was a soldier who knew what had to be done, and putting Forks and the Cullens in my rear-view mirror was my mission objective. It always had been.
Before I had made the decision to move in with the Cullens, I'd appeased my better judgment with promises that I was going to be careful, that I wouldn't let all this bite me in the ass. I had used my confidence in the solidness of my physical, mental and emotional fortitude to convince myself that I could pull my little fantasy off with no harm done, foolishly believing it would allow me to spend six weeks here with these "people" and survive it intact, but that is exactly what it was—a foolish, naive, misguided belief … a wish, a dream. Wishes and dreams got a person nowhere, at least not a person like me, and especially not those particular wishes and dreams. I had failed catastrophically. Though I had tried my damndest to be careful, this experience had bitten me in the ass. There was no surviving it intact or even unscathed. I wasn't intact. I wasn't unscathed.
Of course, I hadn't been completely stupid, or that was what I had thought at the time. I had considered that my experiment with this little slice of apple pie normalcy might fuck things up for me, that trying to convince myself it wouldn't be succumbing to naivete was fruitless, and that, ultimately, all this shit, this "Bella goes to high school" and "Bella lives in an actual, decent house" and "Bella pretends to have a family and friends" shit, might eat me alive when all was said and done. I should have listened more closely to that part of myself, the part that generally always won the internal arguments I had when making potentially life-altering decisions because now I was fucked. I had been eaten alive. My time with the Cullens and this little taste of normalcy would fuck with my ability to readjust to my hard reality, the one where I was alone and always on the run, never with a concrete home or anyone but myself to count on, and it hurt so fucking much.
And so here I sat on my desk chair, staring blankly at my backpack and wasting valuable time.
The Cullens were currently gone and would stay that way for a solid twenty-four hours at least, out hunting together. It was a trip they'd planned after I'd determined today was the day I would take off, and that only made my choice all the better. I wouldn't have to feed them a bullshit excuse for where I was going and when I would be back when I knew I never would be, I wouldn't have to look at them as I walked out the door, knowing it was for the last time, and I wouldn't have to hear their happy chatter as I drove away. It was the greatest blessing I had been given since I broke into their house.
I had just decided that I was going to steal a little something of everyone's to take with me as reminders of them when I realized I wasn't as alone as I'd thought.
Son of a bitch! I cursed violently in my head. He was supposed to be with the others. He was supposed to be fucking gone! What game was he playing? Why was he fucking this up for me? Leaving was hard enough without having to deal with this shit.
Calm down, Bella! I coached. Just calm down. You can't give him any reason to suspect.
Just as I brought my gaze to the entrance of my room, there was a knock at my door.
"Come in," I called out in invitation. It was best to get this over with so I could get back to packing.
I had known it was Edward from his scent and the specific way his knuckles rapped on the wood of my door before I saw the visual proof. He walked in and took a seat on my bed, balancing on the edge of it. His hands settled in his lap, his left covering his fisted right, and he greeted me with a bright smile. "Hi, Bella."
"Hey, Edward," I greeted back with faux but convincing enthusiasm and a hint of genuine confusion. "What's up? I thought you were hunting."
"That's the point, dear Bella," he intoned. "That is precisely the point."
I raised my eyebrows and gave him an inquiring look.
"I will be hunting," he assured me. "Later ..."
Okay, so maybe this situation was still salvageable. Once I got Edward to pony up why he'd come back, I could sweet-talk him into leaving and continue on as planned.
Edward noticed my backpack laying on my bed and regarded me curiously. "Are you going somewhere?"
I smiled at him as I thought quickly. I really should have had some contingencies in place beforehand to make sure I could neutralize this kind of thing, but I'd been too distracted by the last twenty-four hours to do my job properly. Leaving Forks and the Cullens really would be the best thing for me. I couldn't afford to screw up like this.
"Day trip to Seattle," I responded decisively. "I'm trying to figure out what to pack since I haven't actually decided what I'm going to do when I get there."
Edward's face and eyes lit up, and for a moment, I expected him to start bouncing the way his wife did. I even envisioned it, and it was quite the hilarious sight. I almost laughed.
"I think I can help you with that," he announced with excitement and what sounded like relief.
"Okay," I said, dragging out the word. And now, the million dollar question: "But why aren't you hunting now?"
He smirked conspiratorially. "I was hoping you and I could hang out while the rest of the family is gone, Alice to be specific. I was actually going to propose we go to Seattle for this potential bonding experience, but since you're already headed there …"
"Is there any particular reason you're dodging your mate?" I questioned. This was suspicious, and Edward wasn't a shady guy. I was more than a little intrigued.
"Truthfully?"
I nodded expectantly and crossed my arms over my chest.
"As much as I love her, being married and mated to a precog can be a real pain in the ass," he griped irritably, huffing.
"I suppose it might be," I agreed, my voice still an obvious prompt.
"Today is a bonding hunt day," he said as the start of his explanation. "Carlisle and Esme split off from us to spend some quality time together since his work at the hospital cuts in to that sometimes. Then the guys and girls separate. You know, testosterone with testosterone and estrogen with estrogen … bonding," he finished with a sweeping wave of his hand.
"I see," I replied with a nod. "And what does skipping out on the liquid male bonding time and ditching your wife have to do with her being a pain in the ass and hanging out with me?"
Edward's mischievous smirk widened. "Alice can't see you," he responded simply, crossing his long legs at the ankles with an air of leisure. "I made the decision to participate in the 'liquid male bonding' as soon as it was proposed; thus, my future was set. However, I have picked up a few tricks on how to get around my mate's gift over the years. I started off on the hunt with my brothers before making a split-second decision to hang out with you … you see where I'm going with this."
"She can't see me. Therefore, she can't see you," I surmised. "You are a sneaky bastard, Edward Cullen."
"I can be," he said slyly.
"You still haven't told me why you went to all the trouble to give your wife the figurative slip, and isn't disappearing off Alice's supernatural radar going to send her into a blind panic?"
"Absolutely, but as soon as I told her my motivations, she calmed considerably," he replied. He was proud of himself for pulling whatever this was off. I just wished he would get to the "telling me what this was" part was. He rested his right ankle on his left knee, propped his elbows at either end of his calf and leaned forward. "You see, trying to surprise a woman who can see the future based on the decisions you make is pretty much impossible. I haven't been able to keep the gifts I get her a secret for ninety-five years. That is where you come in, my friend. I would very much like to keep what I'm getting her for Christmas underwraps for once, and since I actually have that opportunity, I intend to take advantage of it if you're willing to help me out. Besides, I'd very much like to spend some time with you too. What do you say, Bella? Will you help a guy out?"
Then Edward totally played dirty. He pulled out a puppy dog face very similar to Alice's, complete with pouted lips and wide, sad, pleading eyes. The difference was he was an alarmingly beautiful man, and I was a seventeen year-old girl who liked guys and happened to be fond of him as a person. As hardened as I tried to make myself, I had a soft spot for him, for everyone in this family. I was not unaffected, and I caved almost instantly. After all, my plan to take off today, at least for now, was blown to hell. I couldn't leave while any of the Cullens were home. I couldn't handle saying goodbye to any of them. The best I could do was leave the note I'd written:
I will never be able to thank you enough for the kindness and love you showed me. I will never forget it or you, but it was time for me to move on.
Bella
Not terribly personal, but as smart as I was, I didn't have the words to truly express how I felt or to make them understand what all they'd done meant to me. In light of that, I'd kept it simple.
Unfortunately, due to the change in circumstances, I was going to have to roll with the punches.
"Well, since I'm going to Seattle anyway, I suppose I can help you out, and spending time with you wouldn't be terrible," I teased with a perfectly straight face, adding a huff for good measure.
Edward grinned at me. "You are an angel, Bella Crawfield."
I just shrugged.
"You wanna drive or shall I?"
"Eh," I said indifferently, shrugging again. "Lets give the Volvo a workout."
He opened his right palm to reveal the keys to said shiny, silver car and tossed them up in the air, his boyish grin morphing back into that damnable smirk that was nearly as irritating as Jasper's. He caught them with a flourish. "I was hoping you would say that."
"Stupid, cocky vampires," I muttered under my breath in annoyance, knowing he could still hear it.
Edward let out a hearty laugh, to which I rolled my eyes. He rose to his feet. "Shall we get going?"
"I don't see the point in waiting," I stated, also rising from my perch on my chair, grabbing my much smaller purse in lieu of my backpack and heading toward the door. The sooner we got this shopping trip over, the sooner I would be able to determine if I could somehow keep to my schedule. It would be several days before I got another chance like this one, one where I wouldn't have to walk away from them without them actually being there for it, so I needed to do everything I could to make sure that this chance wasn't completely obliterated. If I didn't and I later realized I could have found a way to leave today, I would be pissed.
"Aren't you going to take your backpack?" he queried. I turned back to face him and saw that he remained standing by my bed, alternating his gaze between me and the item in question.
"Nope," I responded. "If you're going to use me for the day, I'm making you my little bitch boy. That includes providing me with any supplies I determine I require for the duration of that time, including the muscle that may be needed for said supplies, which means I no longer have to bother with my backpack."
"If it means I get to surprise Alice for once, I will happily be your little bitch boy for the day," he laughed again.
"That is a little disappointing, Edward," I informed him with a mocking frown. "No one, especially not a guy, is supposed to willingly agree to be someone's little bitch boy."
Everything about him—the shrug he gave me, his expression, his tone of voice—exuded matter-of-factness when he said, "I already said it was for Alice, and there is nothing I won't do for her."
"Would you chop off your balls and roast them over a fire on a stick if she asked you to?" I demanded seriously. I kind of wanted to test how far this whole vampire mating thing went.
Edward's eyes narrowed in a pointed glare. "First of all, I don't need to explain or justify the things I'm willing to do for the woman I love. And second, Alice would never ask me to do that," he responded smartly. I held up my hands in a placating gesture, and just like that, the smirk was back. "And just FYI? There would be no contest between my balls and the stick. My balls would win every time."
I snorted and only just managed to keep from laughing.
Edward's smirk turned smug, his eyes dancing with playfulness when he spoke again, "Now all this 'little bitch boy' business sounds very formal. Is there some sort of contract I need to sign?"
"I would demand your signature in blood, but since that isn't an option," I told him with a very straight face, "I will accept a pinkie swear. Upon agreement, you concede to a junk punch if you violate my very simple terms."
"Deal," he agreed easily, still clearly amused as he offered up his right pinkie. I locked it with mine and we shook on it briefly. In my peripheral vision I saw that he followed me when I turned again and headed to the door.
oOo
Edward and I had been driving for twenty minutes, and at the rate he was speeding along the road, we would be in Seattle in an hour instead of three.
For the whole of those twenty minutes, I had been staring out of the open window with my arm poked out of it at a ninety degree angle, undulating smoothly to a beat of my own making. Instead of admiring the impressive scenery that passed us by, I was focused on the movement of that solitary part of my body as I remained lost in my own thoughts. It was raining, and I could tell Edward wasn't pleased that I was getting his leather interior wet, but I didn't care. I was simultaneously filled with nervous energy, my muscles coiled with a jittery anxiety, eager to be on the move, and a heavy depression at the thought of doing precisely that. Nothing about my outward appearance betrayed my inner turmoil. I merely looked like a girl enjoying the crisp, winter air and the chill, refreshing dampness of the rain.
I needed to break the silence, to provide myself with some sort of distraction if I wasn't going to go crazy before we got to Seattle, and music wouldn't do the trick. I retracted my arm from the outside of the car and rolled up the window before I looked in Edward's direction. "Do you have any idea what you're getting Alice or are you flying blind here?"
He glanced at me and smiled. "I haven't been able to think about it. If I even came up with options but didn't decide for certain, she would still be able to see what those options were. She just wouldn't concretely know what her gift would be until I make a concrete choice, so yes, I'm essentially operating on the fly today."
"Brave man," I noted.
"That is the only thing about it that makes me brave," Edward shared seriously. "Generally, I'm a planner, so it's kind of unnatural for me not to have one, but I do ditch my control-freak tendencies just for the sake of expanding my horizons from time to time. And Alice may seem high maintenance, but she's really not. She does genuinely appreciate the finer things, but she loves smaller, less expensive, well-thought out gifts just as much. She's really not hard to please."
"That doesn't surprise me, Edward," I assured him, my expression honest.
He smiled again, softly this time. "Thank you, Bella."
"For?" I asked with a raised eyebrow.
"For how you are with her," he answered with equal amounts of sadness and gratitude as he trained his attention on me again. "Alice has always needed a friend, Bella … a really good friend. One who accepts her for who she is. Don't get me wrong, she's close with Charlotte and Rosalie, but Alice doesn't have the same connection with them as they have with each other, no matter how appreciative Charlotte is to her for everything she's done for Jasper."
That last bit piqued my curiosity, but I restrained my desire to question him about it.
"Charlotte loves Alice in a very special way for that as well, but Charlotte is still more of a kindred spirit with Rose. Ever since the two of them buried the hatchet a few decades ago, Alice has felt keenly left out. Really, the thing that most closely connects them is their deep love for Jasper."
My intrigue continued to mount, and I angled my whole body towards the bronze-haired vampire sitting not so far away.
"Other than that Texan jackass—" Edward rolled his eyes but there was affection in his voice when he uttered that nickname— "the three of them just have so little in common," he lamented. "Well, Rose and Charlotte have a lot in common actually. Their personalities are similar, darker, whereas Alice is all sunshine. That's just how people are, of course. Different, I mean, and Alice knows that, but it still makes her feel alienated at times, as though she doesn't belong. Sometimes she doesn't feel like she belongs anywhere."
Sadness for Alice pierced my heart in a lightning quick stab. She was such a bright and sunny girl that the idea of her so forlorn was incredibly foreign and totally wrong. As much as I felt for her though, I could see how a friendship between her, Charlotte and Rosalie might be a little hard to swallow. You connected with who you connected with, and I couldn't hold that against the latter two girls. They didn't snub Alice or ignore her. When they spoke to and interacted with her, there was love and humor there. I knew the state of their relationship wasn't purposeful. It just was. That didn't make it any easier on Alice.
"Not even with you?" I questioned. If there was anywhere Alice belonged, it was with Edward.
"She knows she belongs with me," he responded quietly, fixing his gaze to his windshield and staring long and hard at the rain distorting the beauty of the landscape. "But sometimes, what you know is different from what you feel, and most of the time, when they conflict with each other, it's the feelings that win out over the knowledge."
I nodded slightly in response and turned my own eyes to the water pelting the window.
"You know, earlier," Edward started again, and I returned my attention back to him. "When I said that Alice doesn't have a friend who accepts her for who she is, I don't think I said that right. Everyone in the family loves and accepts her. It's just there are times when the family only tolerates Alice's … quirks," he said with mild disapproval. "With the exception of Carlisle and Esme. I'm not saying I don't understand. I know her exuberance can be a bit hard to take. I try to let everyone's reactions go, to not hold that against them because I do understand, but it's difficult. When it's your mate, it's almost impossible to let slights against them go because we're so damn protective of them." His hands tightened around the steering wheel so much it creaked. It was only when the sound mixed with the pitter-pattering of the rain began to echo in the car that Edward realized he'd done it and loosened his grip.
"Being able to read their minds makes it even harder. Maybe I'm overreacting, but protectiveness of our mates is such a hardcore instinct that most vampires never even try to restrain it. Make no mistake, Bella," he implored. "I have the best family in existence. I would be lost without them, and I will do anything for them. I love them, Alice loves them, and I know they love her, us. That has never been in question nor is it ever going to be, but I'm not perfect. I'm a mated vampire who, on occasion, lets his instincts to protect his mate from everything, no matter how big or small, and everyone, no matter who they are, get out of his control, even if that lost control could result in damaging the relationships he has with his family. When that happens, the urge for violence becomes nearly beyond my ability to resist, but Jasper keeps me from doing anything stupid."
His tone again conveyed distinct gratitude, for Jasper this time.
I couldn't resist asking, "But don't you get pissed at him too?"
"No," Edward replied immediately. Then he looked sheepish. "Well, not anymore."
There was a story behind that. I wondered if he would tell it to me if I pushed him on it, but I wasn't sure I wanted to know.
"Jasper understands Alice better than anyone besides me, and he may even be more grateful to her and for her than I am," he revealed, to my surprise. My indecisiveness on whether or not I wanted to know about Alice and Jasper was starting to lean more towards "did" than "didn't."
Edward had started to make gestures with his hands as he spoke but still remained in impressive control of the car. It was extremely amusing, and I was thoroughly entertained, despite the subject matter and how bleak I was over it. "He gets annoyed, and not just in regard to that, more because everyone else does than because he is, which isn't to say he doesn't have his moments. His gift might seem straightforward enough, but it's not. I know very few things about it for certain, but I believe he can block specific emotions. I don't think he can do it all the time though, and when he's surrounded by multiple people that are feeling the same thing, he has a tendency to absorb those emotions in earnest. It can affect his mood when, otherwise, he'd be chill about my mate's VADD."
"VADD?"
"Vampire Attention Deficit Disorder," Edward explained with a light chuckle. "Oh, and it wouldn't matter if I got pissed at Jasper. He could make me his little bitch boy much faster than you did, and it would be up to him whether or not he uses his gift to do it."
I opened my mouth to ask him what the hell that meant, but Edward either didn't see or he ignored it. My guess was that it was the latter.
"You and Alice don't have everything in common, but you have more similarities and shared interests than she has with the others," he said.
That was true enough. I had certain things in common with each of the Cullens. It was no secret that Alice and I shared some mutual interests, so I nodded.
"Do you know you're the only person ever to ask her why she loves fashion?" he asked softly.
"Really?" That honestly surprised me.
"Yes," he answered. "The family finds her enthusiasm about it kind of annoying, grating even. It's one of the things they only tolerate about her, and I get that too. She can get kind of control-freak about it and pushy. She can go overboard sometimes too, though she's gotten much better over the years. If they bothered to ask her though, I think they would understand, and I believe it would be impossible for them to get annoyed with her over it anymore. She really does mean well," he said, sounding almost like he was pleading with me to believe him. I gave him a look I hoped conveyed that I did. I also decided not to ask many questions. It seemed to me that Edward needed to talk, so I was going to let him.
"Alice is an amazingly passionate woman, and she's anything but shallow. She doesn't see just clothes or shoes or accessories when she looks at fashion. She sees art, art that decorates and celebrates the body. When she finds the perfect piece of clothing or puts together the perfect outfit, it makes her feel like she's accomplished something. Besides me and the family, it's what she loves most, and she especially loves being able to do that for other people but not because she's pushy or a control freak," Edward told me, his smile wistful and adoring as he described the woman he loved.
"She can't do that for anyone but us, and she views putting together the perfect outfit for each of us as enhancing the already wonderful things about the people she loves. Not making them better than they are but highlighting our greatest qualities, and she genuinely believes that can be done through fashion," he said. Then he brought his gaze to mine, and I was floored by the emotion there, the awe for his mate that was so apparent. "God, Bella, if you could see the world through her eyes ... the way she sees everything is so beautiful, and fashion truly is art."
Not only was that awe shining in his eyes, it was radiating out of him like heat off asphalt on a hot day in Arizona. He made me wish I could see the world through her eyes.
"It saddens her that we have to keep ourselves apart from humans," he carried on, moving his eyes back to the road. "She's always been very social, but that's not why it bothers her. She loves the family so much, and though she understands why we can't get close to humans, she doesn't think it's fair that no one else gets to see or experience all those great things. She thinks we all deserve for people to know how funny and sweet Emmett is, that Rosalie loves with her whole heart and has a wicked sense of humor, to experience Carlisle's endless patience and quiet acceptance no matter how badly one of us screws up. She wants people to see what a great mother Esme is and how kind, the way Charlotte refuses to let anyone make excuses but is willing to help them through whatever it is they can't come to terms with, and how Peter always knows how to put a person at ease or what advice to give to help them find clarity. She especially wants people to understand just how strong and resilient Jasper is and how selfless he can be—"
"And what does she want people to know about you?" I queried softly. My fondness for Alice had grown by leaps and bounds in the last minutes, but I didn't want to linger on the subject of Jasper.
When Edward looked at me, a tender smile had graced his lips and a love so startling filled his eyes it took my breath away. "Alice wishes I could show others my soul, little bits of it at the very least, because she says it's the most beautiful thing she's ever seen, and it needs to be shared with everyone."
I couldn't help but smile just as tenderly as he was.
"I wish people could see the people I love for who they really are as well, but it's just not possible because of what we are. She still tries to find ways to showcase all of the things she loves about us, and because of how she sees fashion—as art—she uses that to try to get people to see us for who we are. It's her way of trying to make the people she loves understand just how much she loves them because she doesn't always know how to do that," he sighed. "Alice is confident in many things, but there are many others she feels insecure about, inferior in a way. She's never said it, but I know it's because of her history. Everything I've told you is. Would you like to know it, Bella?"
"Uh," I hesitated awkwardly. "I'm not sure I should."
"Alice is a private person. She doesn't advertise her history, but she doesn't hide it either. I know she won't mind if I share it with you," he assured me, "and I want to, Bella. I want you to understand her, and she needs someone she loves to understand her. She always has, and if anyone will at least take the time to try, it's you."
"You're awfully confident, Edward," I stated doubtfully. "How do you know Alice loves me?"
Edward rolled his eyes and snorted. "Seriously, Bella?" he scoffed. "Alice has loved you from the moment she met you. How can you not know that?"
I tore open the Starburst he'd bought me when we stopped for gas before leaving Forks and threw a lemon-flavored one at his head. It was his duty as my little bitch boy both to buy them for me and not to swat it away before it whacked him. It hit him squarely in the temple. Then I nailed him equally on target on the side of his perfect nose with an orange one. They made a pinging noise as they ricocheted off his skin before landing in my lap.
Edward laughed at me. I was satisfied that I'd hit my mark, but I still was not amused.
"Okay, smartass," I grumbled as I peeled the wrapper off a cherry chew with my teeth and popped it in my mouth. "Why don't you lay it all out for me?"
Despite his eagerness for me to know about Alice's past, his face fell and he sighed in dejection. "The transition from human to vampire is …" he trailed off as he tried to find the right words, "... a traumatic experience. The dullness of our human senses in comparison with the enhancements we gain as a vampire muddles our memories because we are so much more aware than we were when we were alive. We remember some things, mostly the significant stuff, but we generally lose the rest. When we're newborns, we're wild and unstable. We don't have much concept of a sense of self, but when we come out of that phase, those memories ground us enough to remind us of who we once were. Sometimes, depending on the person, it helps us to regain a semblance of our humanity. Others don't care so much about their humanity once they're changed, but the memories are still a comfort. Alice doesn't have that. Her human life is an absolute mystery to her. She doesn't know anything about her human family or where she comes from. The only concrete thing she did know when she woke up was her name. Essentially, she has no idea who she is. But that's not all …"
"What else?" I urged gently.
"Do you remember what we told you about our laws?"
"Sure," I said. "The only law that is strictly enforced is keeping your existence a secret from humans."
Edward's expression turned grim. "Yes," he said. "That may be the only one that is strictly enforced, but we have many laws, several of which are unspoken but widely known. Some of them can be referred to as vampire etiquette. One of those unspoken laws is that it is a sire's responsibility to stick around when they change someone. When that person wakes up, their vampire creator then explains what they have changed in to, what happened and hopefully why, makes sure the newborn understands our laws and rules, and teaches them how to hunt discreetly so as not to risk revealing the secret of our existence. As I said though, it's an unspoken law/rule that isn't technically punishable when broken, but Alice's sire broke that law, and we'll never know if it's because they flat didn't give a shit or if it was due to circumstances beyond their control. She woke up alone, Bella. The only reason she knew what she was and how to function is because of her gift. She was turned in 1920, and she didn't meet Jasper until 1982. Alice spent all that time wandering, sixty-two years, and she had no one. Can you imagine what that must have been like?"
I smiled again, cheerlessly this time. "Yes."
He nodded without looking at me. "Because of that, Alice often wonders if it was something about her that caused her sire to abandon her, if she was so awful that she wasn't worth sticking around for and that made her nothing more than someone to throw away. It's why she tries so hard sometimes. She wants to prove that she's worth more than that, even if she doesn't always believe she's not, to make sure no one ever wants to throw her away again. As confident as she is in most things, when you've wondered about something your whole life and never gotten the opportunity for closure, you start to believe the things you tell yourself. It's a difficult pattern to break, no matter how much you know someone loves you."
"I get it," I assured him because I did.
After a moment, his perfect face lit up with pride. "You know she learned how to control her thirst and feed from animals all on her own? It's hard enough doing that with a support system, but to do it without one? It's practically unfathomable, but she did it. My Ali is fucking amazing."
"You really love her," I remarked with genuine admiration for his clear devotion to the petite raven-haired girl.
"More than anything," Edward confirmed.
"You are really sweet to her, Edward," I said. "You're really sweet to each other."
"Alice saved me," he confessed. "From solitude and an eternity alone, from bitterness and the stick I had up my ass at the time, but mostly, she saved me from myself."
"What do you mean?" I asked, so focused on him and my desire for him to elaborate that I lost quite a bit of my awareness of my surroundings.
Edward glanced at me and held my gaze for a long moment. "And now it's time for me to tell you my story," he declared decidedly. "It's the only way you will be able to comprehend the enormity of what Alice did, and continues, to do for me."
"Alright." I wouldn't make a fuss this time. Edward was offering up information on himself, and it was easy to tell he genuinely wanted to. I wasn't prying. "Shoot."
"I suppose the first bit you need to know is that Alice isn't the only one who's saved me," he revealed. He seemed far away as he spoke, nostalgic in a contrastingly morose but fond manner. "I was born in 1901 in Chicago as Edward Anthony Masen, Jr.. My father, Edward Anthony, Sr., was a lawyer, and my mother, Elizabeth, stayed home with me. They were good people, and I had a good life. I never wanted for anything, especially love. My mother adored me, and so did my father, and I adored them. I was happy ..."
Edward was so clearly lost in his memories that I wondered if he even remembered I was there.
"Then, in 1918, the Spanish Influenza struck, and my family and I fell ill. My father was the first of us to lose the battle with it. My mother succumbed next, but not before she pleaded with our doctor to 'do everything in his power, what only he could do,' to save me."
"Carlisle?"
He nodded. "Even in her delirium from the fever, she somehow knew he was different, or maybe it was because of the fever. I don't know, but she had utter faith that he could cure me, and she didn't care how he did it. Now Carlisle has never made the decision to turn someone lightly, but he is a compassionate and caring man, and my mother's grief and desperation broke his heart. He had also been alone for centuries—"
"Wait," I interjected, holding up my hand. "I apologize for interrupting but centuries? How old is Carlisle exactly?"
"He was born in 1640 and changed in 1663."
"That means that altogether, including vampire and human years, he's four hundred forty!" I exclaimed, in shock. "Holy shit!"
Edward chuckled before he smirked. "Holy shit, indeed," he agreed wryly. "Now, where was I? Right ... in all that time, he'd never had a companion to my knowledge. He did spend a few decades with the Volturi. They didn't share the same ideals, but he did make friends there, with the royalty even. He took a lover as well, but those weren't precisely the kinds of relationships and connections he'd longed for. There were other vampires, nomads, he met on his travels, of course, but he was, is, considered an oddity for his food choice. We all are. Very few of our kind understand why we deny ourselves what's only natural for us, and even fewer attempt to grasp our reasons if they give us the chance to share and explain them. So, while Carlisle also made friends with a few of them, they were never close ones the same as with the Volturi, and he spent the majority of those two and a half centuries almost completely alone, as I said. He was lonely, and he felt he was granting a patient's last request, fulfilling a dying wish. It helped that I was damn near dead anyway, and with my parents' passing, there was no one to miss me or to even notice I was gone, especially in the chaos of the epidemic. Carlisle has never turned someone who had the option of continuing to live a human life, and he never will."
That news made me wonder why Carlisle hadn't turned me in Louisville. I had fit all his criteria. Obviously, he and I had never discussed it, but I was fully aware that I had flatlined at least once before he brought me back to life and kept my heart beating. When Edward was dying, he had changed him, but when I was, he left me human, and if I was anything other than what I was, I would not have survived, no matter how great a doctor Carlisle Cullen was. Could Carlisle tell there was something in me that shouldn't be allowed to live forever? If I was willing to discuss our shared little adventure, which I wasn't, I would have asked him about it. But what if his answer was yes? I didn't think I could take it if that was his answer. It wasn't that I wanted him to have turned me in Louisville. I didn't want to be a vampire, I doubted I could even be turned, but to know that Carlisle, a man I thought so highly of, as near to a father, had always known on some level that I was a freak sent a sharp stab of anguish through my already injured heart.
"So, you see," Edward said. "Alice is not the only person ever to save me. She's not even the first, but when I woke from the change, that isn't how I perceived what Carlisle did."
"How did you perceive it?" I was unable to resist asking this question. I had promised I would never pry but all of this was just so damn interesting, and Edward was still willingly offering up his story.
"I believed he'd damned me," he sighed.
My brows again furrowed and my lips twisted down into a frown. He noticed, and I didn't have to ask for him to elaborate. He just did.
"No matter how beautiful we may be, vampires are not pretty creatures, Bella," he said. "Newborns in particular. They're especially volatile and lack control of everything: their emotions, their strength, their thirst, their conscience. Even when we come out of the newborn phase, we are ruled by our thirst. It drives us to do abhorrent, unforgivable things. The only conclusion I could come to at the time was that we are monsters without souls."
I thought about that for a minute. "I can't really say I blame you for that, Edward, even if I don't share that view."
Edward graced me with a distracted smile. "I loved Carlisle practically from the beginning. He makes it difficult not to, and he was there for me every step of the way, but I hated him too. As much as I loved my mother, I wished he would have ignored her last request and just let me die. I was so incredibly bitter about what he'd done to me. Despite how much I hated what I was and didn't want to let it rule me, like so many of our kind, I couldn't control my thirst. For a while I even left Carlisle and Esme and gave in to it and our natural desire to feed from humans. I justified my kills by using my gift to ferret out the genuinely bad people who were intent on committing terrible crimes. I told myself it was okay because I was ridding the world of those awful people, but no matter how bad they were, it didn't prevent the guilt. It hit me like a freight train, and eventually, I went crawling back to Carlisle and Esme. He hadn't stopped me from leaving to begin with. He was understanding about it, and when I came back, begging for his forgiveness, he told me there was nothing to forgive. He said my choice of diet wasn't his to make, that doing what was natural wasn't exactly wrong, and that he would love me regardless. Of course, that only made me feel even shittier. That guilt has haunted me ever since.
"I was sullen and depressed and just generally unpleasant to be around. It went on for decades," he said. "But then Alice and Jasper showed up on our doorstep and everything changed."
"Changed how?"
He grinned widely again. "It was all Alice. I had never met someone with such pure, happy thoughts. She was all light and positivity and strength and selflessness, so full of love. I had never been so drawn to someone before. After she came into my life, it didn't take me long to start questioning the beliefs that had been so deeply ingrained in me for so long. I couldn't help but wonder how anyone so bright and loving and vibrant couldn't have a soul. How could I love someone so much if I didn't have a soul? And I could never, ever view her as a monster. The more time I spent in her presence, the more certain I became that I was wrong and always had been. So you see, Alice saved me. I realized then that Carlisle hadn't damned me. He'd saved me just as surely as she did, given me a blessing. Not necessarily because of what he'd made me but because he gave me the opportunity to love so deeply. He truly had saved my life, and Alice saved me from myself. There was no going back after that. Not for me."
"I'm glad she helped you to see that, Edward," I told him sincerely.
"So am I."
"Have you really been together for ninety-six years?"
His lips compressed into a thin line and his voice was tight as he corrected me, "Ninety-five."
My brow puckered. "But Jasper said he and Alice joined the family in 1984."
"Oh, they did," he replied, his voice still tight, "but she and I didn't get together for a year."
"I have a really hard time picturing you two as anything other than 'Edward and Alice,'" I mused thoughtfully. "Why so long?"
"We had a few … obstacles to overcome first," he said with a snort.
"Such as?"
"Well," he stated, sounding slightly irritable, "before there was an 'Edward and Alice,' there was a 'Jasper and Alice.'"
My eyes widened, probably comically. "Are you serious?"
"Unfortunately."
"But that's just wrong!" I protested. I was not jealous. I was kind of grossed out, but absolutely not jealous. "I mean, I see how they are with each other. That's like incest!"
Edward chuckled. "Now, yes, but not then. They were quite the pair then, and it drove me fucking crazy."
"But how?" I sputtered. "Jasper told me about mates. I didn't think they could stay away from each other."
"It's not always that simple," he said. "I'd lived with two mated pairs for decades, but I wasn't familiar with the feelings myself. All I knew at the time was that I was attracted to Alice in a way I'd never been attracted to anyone before.
"And Jasper wasn't our only obstacle. Emmett used to tease me about being a clueless virgin who wouldn't know what to do with a woman if she drew me a map of her vagina. I will never admit this, and I will kill you if you tell him, but he was right. It took me a little while to figure out what I felt for her was love, and even longer to figure out she was my mate."
"But what about Alice?" I questioned. "Didn't she figure it out? She must have seen it."
"Alice didn't figure it out either," he said. "It took her even longer than it took me, and it was her gift's fault, in part. You see, she had visions of her and Jasper together but not of her and I. She assumed that meant Jasper was her mate, so even though she later admitted she was drawn to me too, she ignored it for that reason."
"So what changed?" I asked, unwrapping a strawberry Starburst and popping it in my mouth. I tossed the wrapper on the floor.
"Ironically, it was Jasper," Edward answered, thoroughly annoyed by my method of disposal. He didn't have to get his panties all twisted up about it. I was going to clean it up when we got to Seattle.
"Oh?" I inquired curiously, my interest again piqued, though I was still utterly skeeved out by the idea of him and Alice together.
"Though initially he was the reason Alice and I didn't get together, he was also the one who forced me to pull my shit together and tell her how I felt."
—Flashback—
EdPOV
1985
I thought this hunting trip would make me feel better, but it hadn't. I'd killed several animals, only drinking half of them, and destroyed an unreasonable amount of foliage. Needless to say, I was covered in blood, fur, bits of bone and guts, mud, leaves and twigs. I was certainly not the most attractive I'd ever been, but damn if I didn't give a fuck. None of it relieved any of the tension or frustration I'd been feeling for months now.
Jasper had broken things off with Alice six months ago, and I had yet to make a move. I didn't have the first clue what to do, and if I was being honest with myself, I was terrified. The feelings I had for her were so new and foreign, so overwhelming, and they flustered me in a way I'd never been before. She and I had been spending more time with each other, but I felt invisible to her. I wished her gift would clue her in to how much I loved her and that we were mates, but I'd been so indecisive about what to do that she hadn't had a vision. Plus, she was still mourning her broken relationship with Jasper and what could have been. She wasn't being pushy about trying to change his mind, but I could see in her thoughts that she wished she could. She loved him, not me. She had seen a future with him, not me. She thought he was her mate, not me. How was I supposed to convince her that her gift, the gift she'd relied on her whole vampire life, the gift that had gotten her through so much, was wrong?
I was sitting on a boulder in a clearing, mulling all this over and brooding, a truly sorry excuse for a vampire, when I caught his scent. I hadn't heard him approach which pissed me off. I scowled. Jasper fucking Whitlock. Why did he have to be so fucking perfect? And so fucking smug? If I didn't know that he would hand me my ass, I'd rip him apart and burn the pieces.
Jasper emerged from the tree line, a scowl darker than my own on his face, his eyes blacker than I'd ever seen a vampire's go, as he leaped over the little stream that separated the trees from the edge of the clearing and stalked towards me. He moved with a grace that far surpassed that of most vampires, like the most dangerous of dangerous predators. His scars never failed to send a shiver down my spine, and he was displaying them fully at the moment. That was obvious. He wouldn't have been shirtless otherwise. It was an intimidation tactic, and it was working.
Asshole!
I could feel his rage and impatience all the way across the clearing.
When he reached fifteen feet away from where I was, he hurdled himself in the air, landing nimbly on my boulder. He fisted his hands in my shirt, lifted me clear off it and slammed me on the rock on my back so hard it cracked clean in two. We fell through the fissure it created, and I landed just as hard on the ground beneath as I had on the boulder itself with Jasper on top of me, his knees pressed into my abdomen, one hand still fisted in my shirt and the other wrapped tight around my neck. It happened so fast, I didn't have the time to react defensively or even just to block his attack. If I was being honest with myself, I wouldn't have been able to do either since I couldn't read his mind. Then there was the fact that even if I could, he was a better fighter than I was, and I probably wouldn't have been able to stop him anyway.
He squeezed hard enough to send cracks splintering through the stone flesh of my neck. Then he picked me up with that one hand and heaved me forcefully away from him. I flew across the clearing with alarming speed and collided with a tree, bowling it over with a resounding shriek and a groan as it toppled to the ground. Damn the fucker was strong, nearly as strong as Emmett, whose newborn strength had never waned.
Jasper was on me in an instant, grabbing me by the throat again and slamming me up against another tree. It cracked under the force but didn't fall. I didn't think it was possible, but his eyes had gone even blacker.
"What the hell is your problem?" I demanded, my voice a growl.
A menacing growl of his own rumbled from Jasper's chest. "You are my problem, you little fuck!"
"Why? What the hell did I do?" I asked, totally miffed. I stayed away from him on principle. His existence bugged me.
"Why? Why?" he snarled incredulously. I could feel it like a punch to the gut as his rage amplified. At that point he didn't even need to physically hold me in place. His rage would have done it. "I broke things off with Alice six months ago because you are her mate, because you can give her things I never can, things she deserves, and you have yet to make a fuckin' move, you pansy ass, balless twat!"
My mouth dropped open in shock and fury. "How is that any of your business?!"
Jasper's eyes narrowed to slits. "Alice is my business, and I gave up a good thing so you could have your shot with her. You think I give a fuck about you and your happiness? Think again, brainless, but I care about hers. Man the fuck up and take the shot I so generously gave you because, I swear, if you don't do it and soon, I'll tell her I changed my mind. Then I'll fuck her on your piano and replay it over and over and over in my head just to torture you. Then I will systematically defile every place you treasure by taking her there and fucking her senseless, and I'll replay those in my head too. If you think I'm not serious, you would be wrong. You have one week to get your shit together. Take. Your. Shot. Douchebag," he spat.
Then he filled me with a fear so intense I would have shit my pants and pissed myself if I was human, again amplified his rage so I felt it like another physical blow and hit me with compliance that would have knocked me to my knees if he hadn't been holding me up. Once he was certain I'd truly gotten the message, he ripped off my arm and stomped away.
—End Flashback—
BPOV
"Wow," I muttered in disbelief. I was seriously disturbed but I could picture it.
Edward smiled again. "That's Jasper for you. I hated him but was simultaneously grateful to him for giving me the kick in the ass I needed. Mostly, I hated him. We did not get along for decades because I couldn't get over his relationship with Alice."
"Was he in love with her?" I asked before I thought about the words coming out of my mouth. I certainly hadn't meant to give voice to them.
Edward cocked an eyebrow at me.
"What?" I snapped defensively, glaring. Then I took a deep breath, schooled my face, and made sure my voice was no longer tinged with hostility. "It just sounds like he was. I'm curious. Sue me."
"No, he wasn't," he responded. "But Alice was in love with him." His sigh was heavy. "Peter once told me that isn't true, but he didn't have to see and hear her thoughts." Then his face brightened. "It's all good now though. I got the girl, and she loves me better than I ever could have imagined. Plus, once I got over myself, I got a pretty damn awesome brother out of it."
It was comforting to me to know that Jasper had never been in love with Alice, though the knowledge that she had been in love with him made me very uneasy. Why the knowledge that he hadn't been comforted me, I didn't know. Just because I had feelings for him didn't mean I had to get all bent out of shape about him being with other women. He was more than two centuries old. It was unrealistic that he wouldn't have been in sexual relationships before. I had certainly known that for a long time. After what he'd done to me in Louisville, that was fucking obvious. But Alice? Really?
I tossed the last of my Starburst wrappers on the Volvo's floor. Edward glared.
"No complaining, little bitch boy," I chastised with a smirk.
He huffed, and we sat in silence for a few minutes.
"I'm really happy you're here with us, Bella." It was a murmur but it was spoken clearly.
"I'm glad, Edward," I responded. I didn't know what else to say.
"You know, the family hasn't been this excited for Christmas in decades," he informed me seriously, a delighted gleam in his eyes.
"Really?" I questioned, surprised.
"Absolutely," Edward said, looking at me like I was crazy for not knowing. "Esme, Carlisle, Emmett, Alice … they've practically been bursting at the seams. They've all been shopping obsessively, and Esme has been busy planning the perfect Christmas dinner menu. Even Rosalie is feeling particularly festive. As for Peter and Charlotte, they are always enthusiastic about Christmas. Jasper is hard to read, so I'm not sure how he feels about it, but that's par for the course for him. They all can't wait to go Christmas tree shopping. They've pretty much been going nuts waiting, but they aren't quite sure how to bring it up to you. They probably will this week and plan a trip for soon."
Son of a bitch! How was I supposed to leave now, knowing how excited all the Cullens were for the upcoming holiday? I could picture their disappointed, heartbroken faces, and the image tore at me. Fuck!
I couldn't do it. I couldn't break their hearts so close to something they were so excited about.
Double fuck! Why did I have to be so weak when it came to the Cullens? Why did their feelings matter to me so damn much? Except I knew why. I cared about them, far more than I had ever intended, far more than I should.
I guess I was staying for Christmas. It was only for a couple of weeks more. What could it hurt? Besides, it might be nice to have another normal-ish holiday and my usual policy still applied. I would still take the instant trouble showed its face in Forks, if it did, and I was still leaving. I was just putting it off for a bit.
"I have to thank you for that too, Bella," he said. "Seeing my family happy, especially my Ali, means so much to me."
"Uh, sure," I mumbled awkwardly.
There was another few minutes of silence between us, but right as we took the turn-off to enter Seattle proper, Edward decided to throw me another unwanted curveball.
"Bella?"
"Hmm?"
"We'll never leave you," he promised wholeheartedly, meeting and holding my gaze.
I was abruptly furious. My fists clenched. "Rooting around in Angela's head, I see."
"I can't pick and choose the things I see and hear," he defended with no actual offense in his tone. "And Angela thinks about everything you said to her during your slumber party constantly. It hurts her because she loves you just the same as all of us do, even if you don't love her, or us, back."
"Whatever," I grumbled, not ready to let him off the hook yet.
Edward shrugged. "I just thought you should know. You're family now, Bella."
My heart clenched.
oOo
Later that afternoon …
EdPOV
Bella and I had been shopping for hours, and while she had been a huge help in the procurement of my gifts for Alice, she'd made good on her promise to make me her little bitch boy; she'd certainly done it to the best of her ability. As I had told her, I didn't mind. I hadn't lied when I said I would do anything for my mate.
Bella and I had gotten a lot done, and I say we because she had decided to do some Christmas shopping of her own. Despite the fact that I was currently her slave, I was having a really good time hanging out with her. I had never regretted voting for her to move in, but the longer she lived with us, the happier I was with that decision.
The family had never felt incomplete exactly, but now that we had Bella in our lives, I realized that maybe we had been, especially now that we knew Jasper had feelings for her. Peter and Charlotte swore she wasn't Jasper's mate, and I had a hard time believing they would lie about that, but part of me wondered. It wasn't anything they said or did that made me doubt, but I didn't think that mattered. I believed that the two of them could lie to all our faces about nearly anything and we wouldn't have a clue they weren't telling us the truth; the thing was, Peter and Charlotte weren't dishonest people. They were actually very blunt, matter-of-fact people.
No, what had me doubting was everything I had recently found out about Jasper's past. Because honestly, in all the years I'd known him, no one had ever been able to penetrate the walls he'd built around himself and his heart. I understood that better now that I knew some about Maria and Savannah, but Bella had somehow managed to do precisely that. Considering that trauma, I could really only see Jasper's true mate having that ability. But whether Peter and Charlotte were lying about that or not, if they were, I knew they had their reasons. They always put Jasper and his well-being before everything else. It was borderline unhealthy but it wasn't difficult to comprehend why they were the way they were, and I had made a promise and had made the others promise that we would follow their lead on this. I had every intention of keeping it because if anyone knew how to handle this situation, it was them.
If they were lying, I could see why, and I was sure they were right in everything they'd said. There were those of us that wouldn't be able to keep that knowledge to ourselves, Alice unfortunately being one of them, and Jasper would most definitely react badly. Therefore, I was going to keep my suspicions to myself. I wasn't even going to let Peter and Charlotte know I suspected anything, though they might know whether I told them or not.
Bella was currently in the bathroom having a "human moment" as we'd all taken to calling that kind of thing in the past weeks, and I was waiting patiently for her to return so we could carry on.
As I waited, my phone rang. The caller-ID told me it was Emmett. "What's up?"
"Dude," my exceedingly loud and exuberant brother practically shouted into the phone. "Are you done shopping yet?"
"No," I answered, grimacing at his volume. "Shopping for Alice is always a process."
Emmett chuckled. "That it is," he agreed. "I do not envy you being mated to the midget, Ed. If she guesses what I've gotten her, I get to give way less of a shit about it."
"You're such a romantic, Em," I mocked sardonically.
"I am," he agreed, ignoring my sarcasm. "When it comes to Rose. How much longer do you think you'll be?"
"I don't know," I answered honestly. "Why?"
"Because the Jazzman's in crisis mode, and he needs all bros on deck."
I did not like the way that sounded at all. I hadn't liked the unease I'd detected in Emmett's voice since I answered. "What's going on? What's wrong?"
"Honestly, I don't have a clue," Emmett said, and I could picture him shrugging on the other end of the line. "He's just ... off."
I was tempted to let out a sigh of relief but didn't. "Jasper's been off for weeks, man. Hell, it's arguable that 'off' is one of his character traits. What is it that has you so worried? And where is he anyway? If he could hear this conversation, he'd flip his shit."
"Pete's keeping him busy at the moment," Emmett answered with an uncharacteristic seriousness to him that made me nervous. "I've stepped out further to start tracking a grizzly to wrestle, and the two of them are lagging behind. As for what has me worried, the dude looks like he's lost all awareness of everything around him."
Now that was cause for concern. Jasper was always hyper-aware of everyone and everything around him. His uber-alertness used to creep me out when he first came to live with us.
"And he ... well, he's not eating." There was something in Emmett's voice that made me think he'd wanted to say something else but thought better of it, and I frowned.
Making mention of Jasper's eating habits was a little strange. Vampires fed when they fed. I was sure Jasper would feed before he came home. He didn't always make his kills right off the bat. Sometimes he reveled in the thrill of the hunt before he partook. It wasn't unusual for him to wait for at least half a hunting trip before he sated his thirst. I didn't see why Emmett was so concerned, but Emmett wasn't the type to worry, so he had to have had a good reason for it.
"Okay," I responded, suddenly ansty. "What do you need, Em?"
"Well, really I'm just doing my brotherly duty and gathering the troops," he replied. "So as soon as you're done shopping for the missus, text me so I can send you our location and you can get your ass here."
"Will do."
Emmett hung up without saying goodbye, and I glanced at the time on my phone. It was nearly four o'clock in the afternoon, and Bella and I had arrived in Seattle at half-past ten this morning. I wasn't finished with my shopping for Alice, but I figured that, as long as I offered myself up as her little bitch boy, I could get Bella to come out with me again. I loved Alice, but our brother was more important to both of us than Christmas gifts. If Emmett thought I needed to get there sooner rather than later, sooner it was.
