Disclaimer: I do not own Twilight. I just like to play around with the characters. The God of War and Peter just knowing shit belong to Idreamofeddy.

A/N: Hey, guys! I know it's been awhile, and I'm sorry for that. Unfortunately, there will still be no concrete updating schedule. You and I have got exactly one person to thank for this update, and that is my sister, shelljayz. Despite her ridiculous and crazy schedule she somehow made the time to beta this chapter and offer the support I sorely needed when I had some doubts, so thank you, sis, for having my back and for going above and beyond as you always do.

I still have many doubts about this chapter actually which has made it really hard to get up the will and the nerve to post.

Anyway, I hope you like it.

oOo

Thursday, December 31st, 2080

BPOV

It was New Year's Eve; four days since Peter asked me to stay away.

Four days during which I'd heard nothing from him or Charlotte.

Four days of wondering, uneasiness and borderline worry.

And every one of those days, I'd attempted to leave Forks.

I'd gotten as far as Kelso, Washington that first day. I'd shaved an hour off the customary three and a half hour drive, and the entire time I'd spent on the road an increasing feeling of reluctance and my regret over leaving people I'd grown to care about became heavier and heavier to bear. But I could bear it. I'd born worse. Whether or not I could shoulder the weight of it wasn't the issue nor was it what was making things so difficult. No, it was the renewed vehemence of the ache in my chest and the itch that went bone-deep the more miles I put between me and my pseudo-family. The ache had faded to sporadicity recently, but overall, it had become so commonplace in the past months that it hardly ever registered anymore. It did now though; oh, I definitely noticed it now. I just didn't know why.

My second attempt landed me in Tacoma. Distance-wise there were only forty point two seven miles between it and Kelso if one took a ruler to a map and drew a straight line. I didn't stop there on purpose. I never stopped in any one city or town on purpose. It just so happened that Tacoma was the place that my apprehensiveness simply would not let me drive another mile farther.

God damn the Cullens and Peter fucking Whitlock! I cursed silently, slamming my fist against the steering wheel of my car. The wheel snapped and the steering column itself quaked, bolts coming loose with the force of the blow. The curse I let out this time was most definitely not internal. I was going to have to fix that before I went back.

Day three's failure occurred in Centralia. The only saving grace of it was that it was farther away than Tacoma—by five point nine eight fucking miles. That's right, I couldn't even manage to drive six miles more than the day before without cracking, turning around and heading straight back to the people who'd managed to worm their way under my skin. I was better than this. I could endure months, years, of every type of torture and not break, but put a few miles between me and a few vampires that had shown me a little kindness and that was blown all to hell.

What the fuck?

This was the perfect opportunity for me to slip away unnoticed, and I was wasting it.

Needless to say, I was more than a little frustrated and pissed off.

This morning, I bottomed out in Hoquiam, the closest of my bungled efforts to leave by thirty-one point six four miles. It was a beach town, and the beach was where I'd found myself when I realized I wouldn't be driving anywhere but back north to Forks. The sky was painted in ominous shades of gray, light and dark and darker fading into each other and blending like a haphazardly crafted work of art, opaque clouds crowding in here and there.

The ocean wasn't tranquil today. It was violent and chaotic, wild, and I watched and listened as the waves writhed and roiled, crashing riotously against each other for miles out from the coast. What I longed for in that moment was to be a part of it, of that reckless brutality, nature at its finest and most vicious.

It occurred to me then that my problem might be how I was trying to escape Forks. Maybe driving just wasn't the way to do it. Maybe swimming was the way to go. It had been a huge part of my emergency exit plan, so I decided to give it a whirl.

I returned to my car to grab my go bag, thankfully made of waterproof fabric, and stripped down to my underwear, abandoning the rest of my clothes on a piece of driftwood. Tying my hair back as I waded through the shallow surf, I dove smoothly once I was knee-deep, cutting through the choppy water with ease. I started out at a leisurely pace, simply enjoying the measured movements of my body as I glided along, only picking it up when I hit the five-mile mark. After that, I moved with insurmountable speed, navigating the volatile current with strong, sure limbs. I swam for another twenty miles before I had to stop and not because I needed to but because I knew this whole endeavor was futile. Swimming was no different than driving. Mode of travel was not the problem here.

The problem was that my pseudo-vampire family was in some sort of "situation," in the vaguest possible sense of the word, and being in the dark on the details left a lot of room for my imagination to run wild with crazy possibilities. If not for Peter's absolute vehemence, I wouldn't have agreed to stay with the Webers when he asked me to. I didn't know if the Cullens were okay, if they were safe. If I hadn't grown to care about them over the course of the last few months, that wouldn't matter quite so much, but now it did because… Well, now, how could I ever find any sort of peace after I left if I didn't know? The awful, uneasy feeling I'd had since my almost-kiss with Jasper had only continued to heighten, and I couldn't shake it. Not until I knew.

I let my body become dead weight, sinking beneath the waves for what seemed like an eternity so I could muddle through my current predicament with only the company of the odd sea creature or school of fish swimming about. The farther I sank, the more the ocean muted the goings on of the world above, and that was what I needed right now; the isolation was a comfort, a relief. I didn't know what the hell else to do with the mess that was my head, other than to lose myself like this, to pretend that all my carefully laid plans hadn't gone to complete and utter shit.

The silence did help center me, calm my emotions, but pretending my problems had magically evaporated was a no go. My frustration was still there, clinging stubbornly. I had to leave...but I couldn't. This overt weakness wasn't me and I couldn't stand it, but I still couldn't bring myself to walk away. I'd told myself shortly after I dove into the water that I would never be able to find peace if I left without knowing whether or not the Cullens were okay, but when had I ever been at peace? What did it matter if I added just a little more to the chaos and discord and nightmares in my head? And yet, it did matter.

Even so far beneath the sea, I was going around in circles.

That frustration and anger, though? They were what finally solidified my determination when it seemed as though I had nothing to ground me, when I felt like instead of finding myself by agreeing to live with a family of vampires, I had lost myself completely. I would still do what had to be done. I would still leave. This changed nothing.

It was only on the drive back to Forks that I realized that I'd stayed submerged for hours without needing to resurface for oxygen. The last time I'd tested that ability, I'd only been able to hold my breath for twenty minutes. I pushed that little tidbit of knowledge out of my mind. I had enough shit to sort through for the time being.

oOo

I'd left for my trip to Hoquiam at four this morning, shooting Angela a text message on the drive there for her when she woke up. Since the whole thing ended up being a total fail, I managed to get back only fifteen minutes late for work, thankfully.

My shift was only four short, uneventful hours, and when it was over, I climbed back in my car and headed to where I'd mounted my surveillance cameras in the forest to help me keep an eye on things around Forks while I was here. Each time I had attempted to leave, I'd removed any trace of them, of me, intending to destroy them along with my car when I got far enough away to ditch it and find a new means of transportation. Every time I failed, I returned the cameras to what was apparently becoming their rightful places, unwilling to take any chances on compromising my security even if I planned to make another attempt at leaving this tiny ass town only a few short hours later.

Now that I knew I would be staying for a few more days, it was especially important for me to return them to where they belonged.

As I'd done each day, I tested every camera before I moved on to replace the next. It was with the first that everything began to go wrong. When I turned it on, there was nothing; the screen was black when it should have been displaying footage of the surrounding woods. It had been just fine yesterday.

It wasn't my phone. I kept it in perfect working order and left it safe in the car during my beach outing. As for the cameras themselves, I was just as painstaking in their maintenance as I was with all my electronics and weapons. Even so, I took it apart and it was fine, more than fine in fact. I even made the few upgrades I could on the fly. Still, nothing.

I checked each of the cameras and the same thing happened with every single one. Then I went to each cell tower I'd used to bum a signal for my smartphone off of. There was nothing wrong with them.

That left three options as the cause of the problem: something had happened to my computer back at the Cullens', there was something wrong with their WiFi router, or the satellites I used to make especially sure my phone and computer hacking couldn't be tracked had been compromised in some way. It could be any one of them or any combination of the three.

Fuck!

I was going to have to break my promise to Peter. I hated breaking the promises I made, but this was necessary. If I didn't need the extra surveillance footage to make sure I wasn't taken by surprise if hunters showed up it wouldn't be an issue. I did warn him I wasn't good at doing what I was told.

I hoped he wouldn't be so angry with me that he kicked me out before I could do what I needed to.

oOo

I realized a couple of miles out that the Cullens weren't home. Their scents weren't pungent enough for them to be there, but there was someone in the house. The scent was distinctly feminine—peaches, cinnamon, vanilla and an undertone of oatmeal; like a peach cobbler—and the undeniably sweet odor unique to vampire venom, pegging the mystery person as a vampire.

Did this vampire have anything to do with the Cullens' situation? Were they friend or foe? I had no damned clue, so I would be on red alert every second I was here.

All I had to do was get in, accomplish my objective, and get out in as little time as possible. This vampire could not get in the way of me completing my mission.

My strict and thorough training demanded stealth, but I had no choice but to use the front door. Between the purr of my engine and the crunch of gravel beneath my tires, my scent and the sound of my heartbeat, the unknown vampire would already know I was here, and trying to enter the house through any other means would be weird.

From the time I realized I wouldn't have the Cullens as a buffer until the moment I parked by the front porch steps, I strategized. In the event that I did meet Peach Cobbler, I had to decide how to act. In order to figure out the best way to do that I would have to take everything they had told me about vampires as well as what I, myself, had observed in my time living with nine of them and use it accordingly in order to keep this stranger from questioning me too much. Even though I knew no one in the family would have gone out of their way to mention me, the house was absolutely saturated with my scent. Whoever this vampire was, they would know I was the human that scent belonged to which could come with its own separate set of questions I had to prepare myself for.

The trickiest part of this potential meeting would be circumventing this vampire's intelligence, but I wasn't terribly concerned about that. I'd had a hell of a lot of practice pretending to be something I wasn't, and the past months with the Cullens had only honed that skill. This was nothing more than stepping into a role, donning a new skin, just as I always did when I settled somewhere new. I was a chameleon. Reinventing myself was as easy as breathing.

Now to determine the key traits of the new person I had to become for this mission.

I had to be ballsy enough to traipse around a mansion owned by a coven of vampires but meek enough to shy away from questioning the most obvious differences between the Cullens and everyone with a heartbeat. That knocked over-confident and confrontational off the list of acceptable character traits. I had to be cordial, curious but not shrewd or especially perceptive, and not quite at ease while in said mansion.

By the time I shut off the Shelby's engine, the Bella of the past few months, the one I'd never truly been able to be, no longer existed. I wasn't just immersed in the role; I was the role.

My nose told me the vampire wasn't downstairs, and I wasn't pleased with their location. Not at all. Because that location was Jasper's bedroom. It bothered me, but somehow I shoved it aside. There were a lot of reasons this vampire could be there, but ultimately none of them mattered. I couldn't afford to let it distract me.

The Cullens left a spare house key in a groove gouged into the underside of the porch railing in case I lost mine. For the sake of my cover, I dug it out of its hiding place and used it even though the door wasn't actually locked. As I made my way to the stairs I took extra care in making my tread heavy, the way a typical person's footfalls might sound—I was nothing if not thorough.

I made it to my room without incident which made my already uneasy hypervigilance tingle even more ominously. Even though I'd hoped the strange vampire wouldn't make an appearance to disrupt my mission, the fact that they hadn't yet wasn't normal.

Prepared for whatever interruption might occur at any moment despite my uneasiness, I checked my computer and all its hardware first. There was nothing wrong with it, but when I went to log on to the Internet, I hit a brick wall. The Cullens' WiFi was down.

"Son of a bitch!" I grumbled internally, irritated. I'd known it was a possibility, and while an issue with the satellites was actually the worst case scenario, I'd still had my fingers crossed that whatever the problem was, it wouldn't be this. Now I was going to have to leave the cover of my room to find the router and check it both for internal and external damage.

Before I did anything else, I grabbed my smallest duffel bag and went to the safe I'd disguised as a steamer trunk, opening it and adding the rest of my stash of cash and carefully packing the few weapons I kept here. While I didn't plan to take my mini arsenal with me, I wanted to lessen the chance that the Cullens might somehow open my trunk and find them. I would ditch them at some point on my way out of town.

Unable to help myself, I grabbed the stuffed horse Jasper had gotten me for my birthday and shoved it in the duffel along with the weapons. I could decide whether or not to take it with me later. All the while, I listened intently for signs of the unfamiliar vampire's approach if it came.

Packing my duffel also served as a cover for my presence here.

I'd just slung my bag over my shoulder when my door swung open behind me.

I allowed my body to tense with the shock of being caught like any normal human would and turned to the vampire I'd known I would eventually come face to face with.

My initial assumption about this vampire being a woman based on her scent alone was correct. She stood just inside my doorway, studying me with plain interest.

Hunching my shoulders and adopting a surprised and sheepish expression, I stared back, my eyes noting everything about her without truly migrating from her face—observant but not overly so. I took in the blonde of her hair that was only one shade lighter than Jasper's, the complementary emerald green, pink-belted T-shirt dress that was on the verge of being too short, her pale, crystalline skin decorated with very few visible scars exactly like the ones I'd seen on Jasper, Peter and Charlotte, crimson eyes like bright marble run through with veins of gold, a body rounded with amazing curves, her height just two inches shorter than mine. Her feet were bare. Her features were delicate and fine. She was beautiful...more than beautiful. She was gorgeous.

I didn't like her, and it had nothing to do with how stunning she was. There was just something about her, something instinctive that I couldn't quite pinpoint, that rubbed me the wrong way. I hid it though; it didn't fit the role I was playing nor would overt hostility lead anywhere good with a vampire I knew nothing about.

"Hello," she said smoothly, taking another step into the room and cocking her head as she continued to watch me. She had a Southern accent but it wasn't Texan like Jasper's, Peter's Mississippian or Charlotte's Louisiana twang. No, this woman was from Georgia, like the peach of the peach cobbler I'd dubbed her.

I swallowed back my dislike. Polite, Bella. Must be polite.

"Hi," I managed somewhat pleasantly with a little uncertainty thrown in for good measure. Much to my irritation, there was an edge to my tone that wasn't meant to be there that ruined the effect as I said, "Who are you?"

Undaunted and seemingly oblivious of my flub, she crossed the room, dress swishing as she walked and gaze locked on mine, holding out her hand when she reached me. "I'm Savannah. Savannah Devane. I presume you're Alice and Emmett's friend."

I took her hand with genuine tentativeness, not wanting to touch her even more than I did everyone save two others. I succeeded without flinching but it made my stomach roll. "How do you know that?"

"Jasper told me they have a friend who comes over frequently," she replied.

What I meant to say was, "Doesn't everyone?" What came out instead was, "You're a friend of Jasper's?"

Because that is obviously the most important bit of information you need to glean from this conversation, Bella, I chastised with an internal eye roll.

I just barely kept my jaw from locking with tension and my body from going rigid at the prospect that this woman was important to Jasper. She could be important to him the way Charlotte was, or Alice, or Rosalie, but I knew in my gut that she wasn't an Esme-type figure in his life. Which left very few options for what she might be to him.

Savannah smiled softly, dreamily. That dreamy look on her face made me want to break it.

Relax, Bella. Breathe. Do not break her face.

"Yes," she confirmed. "Of a sort anyway."

Of a sort? What the fuck does that mean?

The smile and lightness left her expression abruptly, and she went back to staring at me intently and with acute curiosity. It made me uncomfortable. It would have made anyone uncomfortable, so I didn't have to mask it. Letting the wariness envelop my features, I wrung my hands once before crossing my arms over my chest and tipping my head to the side, studying her just as she did me. Mild-mannered but not too mild-mannered.

"You never introduced yourself," Savannah pointed out, "and Jasper never told me your name."

"I don't know why he would," I said, feigning confusion. "We're not friends."

She seemed amused but unsurprised by this revelation. "Regardless, it would be nice to know what to call you."

There was no way in hell I was giving her my real name. "Paige," I supplied after a beat. "Donnelly."

Just as Savannah had, the Cullens would definitely know that I'd been here when they returned, if I wasn't still here by the time they got back. If they had to ask her about it, Jasper would know that name from Louisville. I was counting on him understanding that it was code for me being careful and treading lightly given the circumstances.

"It's wonderful to meet you, Paige," she enthused, seeming genuinely happy about it.

"Uh, sure," I said noncommittally. "You too."

She wasn't bothered that I didn't share her excitement.

"So," Savannah said. "Why did you drop by?"

I forced myself to smile and patted my duffel bag lightly. "I needed a few things I left here."

"You didn't come by to see your friends?" she questioned.

"I would have," I replied, "if the Cullens weren't off somewhere stupid expensive for winter break, but they are and I still need the stuff I left here. Are you house sitting or something?"

"Or something," Savannah answered. "Their plans changed." Then she indicated my room with a sweep of her hand and raised a brow. "They don't mind that you just walk in as if you own the place, especially when they're not here?"

"They shouldn't have shown me where they leave their spare key if they didn't want me to," I countered simply.

I didn't miss the flicker of bewilderment that colored her face at my proclamation, but that microexpression did nothing to lessen my dislike of the woman before me.

"That's true," she conceded, and just like that, her easy smile returned.

There was nothing to say to that, though I could tell she wanted our conversation to continue. In the wake of our silence, Savannah took a step toward me and then another...and another until she was so far into my personal space that all she had to do to close the distance between us was reach her hand out two inches. It made me feel immensely annoyed, and I took a step back for every step she'd taken forward. If she actually touched me right now, I would punch her regardless of the consequences.

For the umpteenth time since she'd entered the room, Savannah scrutinized me with irritating and unsettling earnestness. It filled me with awkward tension that kicked my fight or flight instinct into high gear. Since I couldn't go with fight, I sidestepped her carefully and headed to the hallway. She followed.

The Cullens' WiFi router was housed in their library, so that was my destination. Upon entering, I immediately saw why my surveillance cameras were down. The router was in pieces. Every. Single. Part of it. The casing, the circuit boards, motherboard, and CPU were a mangled mess.

"What in the hell?" I muttered, incredulous.

"That would be Jasper's doing," Savannah piped up from where she stood beside me, again standing way too close.

"Of course it is," I grumbled furiously, scowling. Why did he always have to make my life so fucking difficult?

Savannah smiled fondly. "He has a bit of a temper."

"No shit," I commented, doing my best to keep it at that instead of going on and on about how much of an ass he was. That would be failing at keeping in character even more than I already was.

I refused to think about how hot he could be when he was angry with me after I purposely pushed his buttons. At the moment though, absolutely nothing about his temper was hot. Now it was damn inconvenient, and my fingers itched to throttle him. Not to mention the fact that his anger didn't bode well for whatever situation the Cullens were in. Had Savannah been the cause?

"I don't mind it so much," she admitted unabashedly, inching closer to me so that she was hovering at my shoulder and nearly in my face. It was the closest she'd been yet; any nearer and she would be kissing my chin.

I gritted my teeth for a moment, and then turned to her, cocking a brow and not caring in the least that I was breaking character this time. "We really don't know each other well enough for you to breathe on me."

A demure expression contorted her face as she stepped back but not before she leaned in and inhaled deeply. "I apologize."

I turned my face away and pursed my lips, hands twitching at my sides.

Do not break her face.

"Did you just sniff me?" I asked, looking at her out of the corner of my eye. If I looked at her straight on, I thought I really might break her face.

Savannah shrugged. "I apologize, again... It's just, has anyone ever told you that you smell amazing?"

The moment the word "smell" left her lips, I finally figured out why I didn't like her.

She smelled like Jasper and not in any way that was normal. Savannah flat out reeked of him. His scent clung to her like Peter's clung to Charlotte and vice versa, the way each of the mated couples in the house always smelled so much like each other it was actually difficult to tell whose scent was whose...unless you had a nose like mine and had spent enough time with each of them to puzzle it all out. It was always especially strong after they'd, well, mated, which meant...

Son of a bitch!

Savannah was either Jasper's fuck buddy, his new girlfriend or his actual, honest-to-God mate. Since Jasper didn't like being touched by anyone, not even Peter and Charlotte, and vampires didn't sleep, there were no other plausible reasons why she would smell so strongly of him.

Mate.

Mate.

Savannah could be Jasper's mate.

Oh God, what if she's his mate? The thought made me feel so physically ill that my hand flew to my stomach in a useless attempt to quell the nausea, my heart constricted in my chest, and to my utter horror and embarrassment, my eyes stung with the beginnings of tears. No! No, no, no, no, no! You will not cry. This is not you. You do not cry over boys, and you especially do not cry over that boy! He's not yours. He never was. This was always going to happen. He was always going to find the person he was meant to be with whether that's Savannah or not.

If I had been paying closer attention the curious crinkle to Savannah's brow and the inquisitive tilt of her head might have registered in my immediate awareness more clearly, but I wasn't, and I was too distracted by more important things at the moment to bother.

I took a deep, steadying breath and released it, refusing to analyze what all this meant. Jasper was my friend, and friends wanted each other to be happy. Crazy chemistry and attraction aside, I did want that for him, so I couldn't be upset if he'd found the person he was meant to be with. I couldn't even be upset if Savannah was his girlfriend or just his fuck buddy. Despite what our near-kiss suggested, he and I were never headed down any of those roads anyway. We couldn't. There just flat wasn't any roads for us. None at all.

So why didn't any of that make me feel the slightest bit better?

"Once or twice," I answered a little wryly, forcing a smile on my face that was so fake there was no way Savannah couldn't see through it. "The Cullens are strange that way. I don't get it personally."

"You wouldn't," she said matter-of-factly, another smile gracing her lips, this one with an air of mystery. She looked like she had a secret no one else knew, only I did know.

"I might demand an explanation one day," I replied. "It would probably dial down the weird. I'm just not sure I want to know."

"Does Jasper's family make you nervous?" she queried.

Not the Cullens but Jasper's family. Either she didn't know anything about them beyond their first names or the only person Savannah truly cared about in this house was Jasper.

Because he was her mate? Everything about her said they weren't newly acquainted, but if they'd known each other for a long time, did that mean they'd been mated for that long? Could mates become estranged? Were there some things not even mates could forgive? Was that why he found the idea of mates so awful? Could Savannah have done something Jasper hadn't been able to get past until now or was it the opposite? Could you know your mate for years before you figured out what they were to you? Or could you know someone for a long time and just be friends and then one day they were suddenly something more?

You have got to stop obsessing, Bella. It won't get you anywhere, and it doesn't matter.

"Sometimes," I lied, crouching to gather up the mangled pieces of the WiFi router and moving past her, again without inviting her to come along.

I needed to get the hell away from her, to distance myself from the awkwardness, from my realization and from her aversion to boundaries. Savannah did not get the memo; she trailed behind me, practically literally on my heels.

The destroyed router meant I was stuck at the house for much longer than I'd hoped I would be. I couldn't use my own tools to get it back in working order, and I didn't have the spare parts either, but Emmett might—Please let him have the parts so that I don't have to go all MacGuyver—and I could use his tools.

As we walked down the stairs, Savannah asked, "Are you leavin'?"

"No," I said, my voice coming out unintentionally sharp.

Damn it! Get it together, Bella! I reprimanded, unable to understand why I was having such a problem. Other than this woman being Jasper's potential...something, there wasn't anything about her that should have pushed my buttons except for how often she violated my personal space.

She smiled delightedly. "Good."

I ignored her and snagged Emmett's spare keys from their hook next to the garage door, dropping my duffel bag below the key rack, before I switched directions and exited through the back patio door. My new destination was his workshop, which was nestled in the woods about a mile north of the house.

"Where are we goin'?" Savannah inquired with brazen enthusiasm.

"We?" I questioned as I took off at a brisk walk, eyeing her circumspectly in my peripheral vision.

"Of course," she said, lengthening her strides so she could keep pace with me. "You don't expect me to let you wander off into the forest alone, do you?"

"Actually, I do," I bit out. Savannah's curiosity should have been sated by now, and even though it clearly wasn't, she needed to take the hint and leave me the hell alone for both our sakes. "You're Jasper's—" I nearly choked on my next word— "friend, not mine."

"But we could be friends," she countered, "if you want. I'd like to be. I've never met anyone like you before."

Nope, no we most definitely cannot be friends. And what does that mean, and how could she possibly say something like that when she's known me for ten minutes?

"Then you need to get out more," I told her.

Instead of taking offense, she chuckled. And I need to brush up on my ability to insult people because clearly, I am losing my touch.

"That was a compliment," Savannah informed me patiently.

I don't need your fucking compliments!

"So, where are we goin'?" she repeated.

"Emmett has a workshop out here," I answered.

"Why are we goin' there?"

Why are you a pain in my fucking ass? I sniped in the only way I could: silently. Do not break her face...or any other part of her.

Kicking her in the twat would be more satisfying than I could rightly admit to, but nope, Bella, nope, off limits.

"Because it's a workshop...with tools...tools that I can use to repair the collateral damage of Jasper's ridiculous temper," I said with a shake of the hand that held the ruined router, my impatience and dislike bleeding through just a little. "Unfortunately, there are no tools in the world that can fix his idiocy."

"You don't like him, do you?" she asked.

Not right now, I don't. I had to physically bite my tongue to keep from snapping those words at her. Thankfully, no blood was drawn, and that little bit of pain centered me.

"It's not that I don't like him," I hedged, which was true enough. "We don't really talk."

"Well, I can't imagine anyone not likin' him, so maybe you should talk to him," Savannah suggested, smiling. "Then you will."

"Sure," I demurred blandly, and it was obvious from her stupefied expression that my lackluster reply was not the response she had expected for her suggestion.

"So," she faltered, swinging her arms, "why is it so important for you to fix their router? Can't you get on the internet at your house?"

"Not at the moment," I responded.

"Why?" she hounded. "And how do you know how to fix it?"

I turned my gaze to her, tilting my head as I observed her. "You ask a lot of questions."

"You make me curious. You're interesting," Savannah mused, biting her lip in contemplation. "I feel...drawn to you."

"That's not creepy at all," I muttered under my breath, knowing she would hear. And what does that even mean?

Irritated and awkward did not even begin to cover how I felt now, and she was way too close to me yet again.

Savannah cringed, the movement barely noticeable but there all the same, and I wasn't sorry I'd made her feel bad. I actually felt pretty damn good about it. I really didn't like her.

Do not break her face.

In the spirit of averting suspicion, however, "I'm grounded if you must know. All access to electronics has been prohibited, but I need to check my email. Some of my teachers are supposed to contact me about make-up exams, but shockingly, my parents don't really care about that. Even so, I'd rather not wait until my punishment is up to read them which would be last minute and leave me decidedly unprepared, so I'm circumventing them in the name of academia."

"Clever girl," she praised, grinning.

"Not really," I denied.

We finally arrived at Emmett's workshop, and I made quick work of unlocking the door and turning on the lights. Scanning the mid-sized but well set-up space, I bee-lined for the section I required.

Emmett was not a man with one interest or hobby. He was a tinkerer, a renaissance man, puttering around with pursuits that ranged from woodworking to leatherworking, welding arguably brilliant metal works of art, painting, sculpting, special effects makeup and a million other things, but the most useful of his hobbies to me at the moment was his passion for inventing; particularly his love for programming and building computers.

I love you, Emmett McCarty.

I wasted no time getting to work, flicking on his work lamps, laying out the pieces of the broken router, gathering the tools I needed and fixing a magnifying headpiece that I didn't actually need around my head. After that I went in search of his supply of spare computer and electronic components, rummaging through the two boxes for the ones I needed. Luckily, Emmett had everything.

As I settled into the intricate, tedious chore of cleaning up Jasper's mess, I decided it was high time to turn the tables on Savannah. Now I was going to make her uncomfortable.

"I wouldn't have pegged you as here for Jasper," I stated casually.

"Why?" she wondered. "Who did you think I'm here for?"

I shot her look of disbelief. "Carlisle," I said, making my eyes go wide and doe-like, innocent. "You know because he's a doctor, and your eyes, they're...weird. I don't mean it as an insult—" I totally mean it as an insult— "but do you have a disease or something? I've never seen anyone with red eyes before. It kind of freaks me out."

Savannah smiled stiffly. "It's a genetic disorder, one with no cure, and there isn't a treatment to help manage it either."

"Sorry if I did insult you or if it's a touchy subject you obviously don't like to talk about," I told her. I'm not sorry.

"It's fine," she assured.

Damn it!

"The Cullens must really like you," she commented after a few tense moments.

"I guess," I agreed with reluctance.

Savannah smiled sympathetically and trailed her fingers from the crease of my elbow to my wrist. My body went rigid at the contact, but she didn't appear to notice; she merely continued to stroke my skin with fascination and something akin to...reverence?

I really didn't like her.

Do not break her face.

As more and more tempting as the prospect was becoming, I just didn't have the time.

"So soft," she murmured softly, too low for a normal human to have heard.

Do not break her face!

"You pretty much have your own bedroom here," Savannah continued. "There's no guessin' about it."

"It's not my room, it's a guest room. For guests," I dismissed. And if she takes this opportunity to confirm that she's staying with Jasper, I cannot be held responsible for my actions. "I really don't stay here that often. Mrs. C just has a tendency to go overboard with the creature comforts."

She chuckled heartily, and I rolled my eyes, knowing she couldn't see. Before long, however, I could no longer tolerate her touch without resorting to some sort of violence, so I met her gaze and then looked pointedly at her hand.

She pulled away slowly without offering an apology—she certainly didn't look sorry—and clasped her hands in front of her.

"You left your stuff here," she said, not willing to let what I meant to the Cullens go just yet.

"I forgot it," I muttered, sounding embarrassed and timid. "I do that sometimes."

Savannah nodded thoughtfully, as though she was reluctant to believe me but ultimately accepted my answer as the truth.

"You never did say where you learned how to do that," she reminded me, stretching to prod at the motherboard I was currently working on. Why, why, couldn't she just leave me and my damn stuff the fuck alone?

I swiftly moved it out of her reach and glowered at her. "Don't touch!" I snapped, quickly losing my previous air of timidity. "It's rude, and you still ask a lot of questions. That's also rude."

"You make me curious," she reiterated simply, shrugging.

"Yeah, well, rein it in," I said grouchily. "This is intricate, involved work. It takes a lot of concentration. Quit distracting me."

So I could do this in my sleep, but I would do just about anything to get Savannah to shut up and back off.

Do not break her face.

"Sorry," she responded, edging closer yet again, and I hunched my shoulders, trying to make myself smaller—it wasn't wholly an act. Savannah was quiet after that, hovering and partially bowed over my project as I worked and pretending to watch my progress with single-minded focus; but I didn't miss her surreptitious glances in my direction out of the corner of her eye.

The silence didn't last long.

"What are you doin' for New Year's?" she asked.

Do not break her face.

"Do you mind?" I complained. At her confusion, I clarified, "You're blocking my light."

"Sorry," she offered immediately, adjusting her position so that she was no longer interfering and yet it still didn't provide me with any more personal space. If this was how she was with Jasper, I didn't know how she was still in one piece.

"You say you're sorry a lot," I observed.

Savannah's eyes turned sad and regretful. "I know."

"So stop doing things you need to apologize for," I told her waspishly, and if I wasn't mistaken, I'd just given this woman I ferociously disliked relationship advice, and since she was in a relationship with Jasper…Jasper, the man I most definitely did not have feelings for—I was taking that back—would be the one who would benefit from it. I probably should have felt good about that. As it was, I had no idea how I felt.

My latest remark did the job of getting her to back away from me. She almost looked like she'd been struck, which I couldn't help but find curious...and a little satisfying.

"I've been tryin'," she said, her voice and demeanor now tinged with devastation and hopelessness. "I really have. It hasn't been workin' out very well."

"Go about it a different way then," I suggested as I continued to work.

Her brows furrowed. "That's it? It's that simple?"

"A lot of things in life are complicated, Savannah," I pointed out. "That isn't one of them."

"It's really that easy?" she questioned, every part of her awash with skepticism.

"Simple," I corrected her again. "Not easy. They're not the same thing, just like hard and complicated aren't."

"But how?" she practically pleaded with me, taking hold of my left bicep and swinging me around to face her. She grabbed my other arm as well and shook me. "How do I do it? How do I change?"

I tensed in her grasp but made no attempt to escape it, no matter how much I wanted to, but still shied away from the contact. I gripped the motherboard in my hands just tight enough that the force wouldn't break it. The same couldn't be said for Savannah, who was clutching me hard enough to bruise.

"I already told you how," I said. "Don't do the same thing over and over again and keep expecting a different result. You want to be a better person? Be one. If the first way you try doesn't work out to get you there, try another one. Keep trying until you are that person. You see? Simple."

She sighed and released me, and I shook out my arms to get some of the feeling back into them. I only spared her one moment of scrutiny before I returned to my task.

"I want to believe you," Savannah claimed dubiously.

"You shouldn't take the word of someone you just met," I reproached. "Prove it to yourself. Just don't assume that you'll ever totally stop doing things you'll have to apologize for. The difference will be that when you do have to say you're sorry, it'll hold more weight. It will mean something."

Savannah left me alone after that, having retreated inside herself, and we coexisted in silence for the remainder of the time it took me to assemble the Cullens' new router.

The end result was rather elegant in my opinion, even if the crude casing I'd had to improvise didn't make it pretty. Now all that was left to do was to test it out, so I cleaned up my mess and started the trek back to the mansion.

Just as with our initial trip, Savannah spent the walk back at my side and too damn close to me. Every other step her arm brushed mine, and I wanted to twist it off and beat her with it. Thankfully, or not, all limbs remained attached.

Once again, she hovered as I plugged in all the necessary cables and booted up the computer without backing off at all, encroaching on me like she didn't even realize she was doing it. How that was possible since she was within licking distance, I did not know. I also didn't know if that made it all more or less disturbing.

As soon as I realized Savannah wasn't going to stop without prompting, it took a great deal of willpower not to snap. "I hope you don't plan to just hang out behind me, reading my emails over my shoulder," I said carefully. "Because that would be another thing you'd have to apologize for."

"Right," and with a lithe hop backward and another sheepish expression, she maneuvered herself so that she was on the other side of the computer and several feet away.

I pursed my lips and gave a slow nod, my hands clenching in my lap where she couldn't see.

Do not break her face.

My awesome refurbished router did its job and reconnected the Cullens to the Internet as soon as the hardware registered. It was also even faster than it had been before, and I didn't waste any time logging in to my email—I did have a cover to maintain, after all. I certainly wouldn't be returning to my room to reboot my cameras from my own computer. I didn't have a decent excuse to give Savannah, who would follow me, nor would I be able to hide what I was doing. I didn't need to do it from my computer anyway; I could do it remotely from my phone anywhere.

My teachers had emailed me the day after I'd been suspended, just as I knew they would. As I faked skimming their contents for Savannah's benefit, my eyes drifted to the desk next to mine—to Peter's cell phone.

It was an opportunity. The Cullens would know I was here the moment they got within a few miles of the house, and they would wonder...and panic. I had promised to stay away and cut off all communication, and they would want to know why I had broken that promise. The real question was what would bother them more: not calling before I showed up here or that I came to the house at all when I'd been asked not to. It was a question with an easy answer, but maybe if I could make it look like I tried to get ahold of Peter beforehand it might soften the blow for all of us. After all, it's not like the Cullens would know the exact time I came over and for how long I stayed unless Savannah told them. All I had to do was send Peter one text message and I'd have half an excuse to disobey my orders. He would never know it was a lie...

Five minutes later, I pushed away from the desk and walked past her, but she wasn't pleased with my exit plan. Her hand shot out, fingers fastening around my wrist just as tightly as she had earlier. I would have more bruises that would be gone before I even left the house.

"Are you leavin'?" she asked.

"I got what I came here for, so yeah," I said, yanking my arm weakly. She immediately let go.

"You're not gonna stick around to see your friends?"

"Nope."

"They'll be home soon," Savannah persisted.

"But not sooner than my parents'll be at my house," I replied, my voice nearly sing-song to hide my annoyance.

She sighed, a frown twisting her lips, eyes clouding with confusion. I just didn't know what the confusion signified. In a blink, she had her arms wrapped around me in a hug that took me by surprise. My hands again twitched, curling slightly, but not enough to form fists.

Why can't I break her face again?

"You'll come back soon?" she requested hopefully, leaning back and meeting my eyes with an imploring gaze.

After a few long moments of startled paralysis, my brows shot up and my mouth quirked on one side in a bewildered grimace. I shrugged out of her embrace and she let me since my discomfort was obvious. "Um, not likely. Grounded, remember?"

"Right," she said, sounding genuinely disappointed, but then she did something odd—for just a second her eyes drifted to my mouth and lingered, and her tongue snaked out to trace over her lips. Then again, she was a vampire, an apparently hungry vampire. Not so odd after all. It probably wasn't my mouth she was staring at. Maybe it was my neck?

"Will you do me a favor, Savannah?" I asked seriously.

"I will happily do you a favor, Paige," she said, smiling.

"Tell Jasper not to destroy my router, even if I could probably fix it with a bobby pin. You should see the things I can do with a bobby pin," I bragged. "Tell Jasper that too, in those exact words."

The favor wasn't actually a favor. It was a message directly referencing our conversation in the boy's locker room just after he'd saved me from getting squished by Tyler Crowley's van; the conversation during which there had been much arguing, some flirting which happened to include the aforementioned bobby pins, and the stealing of Riley Dwyer's t-shirt. Getting Savannah to repeat it to him was meant to relay that I'd had the situation as well in hand as I could and was continuing to be careful. Hopefully, he would pick up on it and it would be enough to set everyone's minds at ease. Whether it did or not, I had a sneaking suspicion that Peter would be paying me a visit before the day was over.

"All right, sugar," she agreed, my stomach churning at the name. "It really was nice to meet you."

I merely nodded because I honestly couldn't say the same, and if I said anything at all it would be more than a little obvious.

As I collected my duffel bag from the kitchen and replaced Emmett's spare keys on their hook, my irritation over my inability to perfectly play my role threatened to eat me up, but I also couldn't help but be proud that I hadn't given into my desire to break Savannah's face.

Even if she came across as relatively harmless, the bad feeling I'd been nursing all week had only strengthened during my visit and continued to mount as I drove away, and the ache in my chest that had mysteriously faded somewhat in her presence amped up again.

oOo

A/N: Well, there we have it...Bella's return. It's not what a lot of you were probably expecting, and I know it's not what a lot of you were hoping for, but Savannah and Bella just aren't meant to throw down. That honor more rightly belongs to Jasper and/or Peter, and I have no intention of denying them that honor.

I also want to apologize to everyone that took the time to review the last chapter. I was absolute shit at responding to reviews, and I'm very sorry for that. I will do my best to be better this time.

Until next time, folks...