I Followed Her, and She Led Me to You

Chapter 8

The night of prom, after getting home and changed into hunting appropriate clothes, Alice and I had left the house for a weekend alone. We needed to talk, to spend some time alone and decide what exactly was happening now. We ran to a little clearing we often went to, it was in the middle of the forest, miles away from anyone, and all ours. Everyone had a space like this, where they could just be together. I sat at the edge of our little clearing, it was no bigger than our bedroom at home, leaning up against a large oak tree with my legs out in front of me. Alice gracefully danced up to me and sat between my legs, her back against my chest, and my arms wrapped around her tiny waist.

"I don't want to hurt you Ali, you have been my life for so long and you deserve so much better. I'm sorry."

"Don't you dare apologise for finding a new form of happiness Jazz, and don't you worry about me. I have known this was coming since I woke up, and we will always be in each other's lives, just differently than we have been." She seemed so sincere, but how could she be so ok with this, I was supposed to be ending our half century marriage.

"I will always feel remorse for this Alice, I love you and I always will, and I can't help that it's changing. It's killing me Ali." I hated that I needed to hurt the one I loved the most to forge a relationship with the one I would love even more.

"Well don't. I'm a big girl Jazz, I can handle it. It's not like we didn't know, just now you've noticed. It's just going to be a little shock to adjust." I was glad she had admitted about the shock, at least I knew I wasn't imagining the feeling I thought I was getting from her. There was a little sadness, but mostly a sense of eager anticipation that left me tingling with excitement at the thought of what was happening.

"So was I right, is it Bella?" I needed to know, it would be terrible if I was wrong and it wasn't Bella and I messed that all up.

"Yeah it is. You aren't annoyed that I kept it from you, are you?"

"No, if you had told me from the start I wouldn't have believed you, and probably managed to mess it all up. But this way I was able to get to know her first and become friends."

"Good. But be careful with her, she is rather young and quite inexperienced at the whole dating thing, and to just announce to her that she is your mate and you are going to be together forever would definitely scare her." Alice warned me.

"I know, I'll give her my utmost respect and treat her like a fuckin' queen, if that's what she wants."

Alice laughed at me, "I know you would, but I think Bella is actually pretty low maintenance, definitely a good choice for you. Just be a gentleman and slowly court her and she will fall head over heels for you."

And she was right. Just in the past couple of months Bella and I had formed an easy friendship where we could just be ourselves and it was comfortable. Bella knew most of my past, although I hadn't gone into detail about my time with Maria or shown her my scars, and I knew a lot about her past. We didn't feel the need to censor ourselves around each other the way I could see Bella censoring herself around Edward. And I didn't just mean censoring swearing, although both Bella and I were comfortable with a small amount, but her behaviour. Around Edward she was very reserved and quiet and always apologising for something she had done. Part of that was she was aware of how her blood affected him, but even little things like she would apologise for looking at something of his, or asking a simple question. She didn't do that around me at all. Apart from the one time we were hanging out and she walked into a wall and apologised to the wall as a reflex. Silly Bella.

"So what do you say soldier," Alice said in a mock serious tone, using her nickname no one else used for me, "one last roll in the hay? Or grass seeing as we're in our clearing." She was quietly giggling by the end of her sentence, completely aware of how stupid she sounded trying to be serious.

"Well anything for you ma'am." I replied, laying on the accent as thick as I could without laughing as well.

"Good," she replied as she spun around to face me, taking my face in her little hands, "coz neither of us is gonna get any for a while after tonight." Her accent even came through more than usual, normally she kept it fairly hidden claiming it made her sound stupid, but when she was feeling especially lustful it always came through.

So we, like so many clichéd couples from proms all over the world, spent our prom night together, although unlike all of those teenagers, it was not our first time and it wasn't awkward and uncomfortable. It was our good bye to each other after so long together. We spent the night under the stars in each-other's arms demonstrating our love in the most intimate ways we knew. I loved the feeling of Alice's soft, unblemished skin against my own, harder, scarred skin. But this would be that last time. This was truly it.

Sometime after dawn, when the clouds had finally covered the sun again, giving us a good day to be in public, we began to make our way back home although we looked far more dishevelled than when we left the night before. I had accidentally torn Alice's shirt clean in half, and she had thrown mine into a muddy puddle, so we had left them there in our field, under a rock where we could come and get them later. We didn't feel like taking our ruined clothing with us right now. We found a couple of deer as we dawdled home and had a quick hunt, although we had hunted in the days before prom so we looked our best, not tired and crabby like we did when we were hungry. It was the middle of the morning by the time we saw the house again, and we had a plan for what we were going to do today.

We were surprised however by the sound of loud laughs as we made our way to the front door of the house. Apparently Bella had decided to eat her late breakfast on the front porch accompanied by Emmett, and they were the ones to see us emerge from the trees at a human pace.

"Had a good night then, you two?" Emmett called out, which was obvious due to me being dressed in only my jeans, and Alice in her jean shorts and bra.

"It was fantastic thank you. Now I would like to head inside and get changed." Alice politely said as she made her way to the stairs to the door.

"Get changed? I think you mean get dressed!" Bella giggled.

"Oh har-har, at least we are getting some!" Alice joked around with Bella. It was no secret that Edward had pretty much rejected Bella's advances. That was partly why things started to go so rocky in their relationship, he wouldn't compromise at all.

We all laughed and that distracted Emmett from blocking the door long enough that Alice was able to dart in, and up to our room to find some clothes. Bella was obviously a little uncomfortable with the casual attitude we had about others seeing us in a state of undress. I guess she would just have to get used to that if she was going to be around us for any length of time, it was difficult to get proper privacy when everyone had superhuman senses; that was why everyone had a meadow of clearing or something that they used for nights together.

I stayed on the porch a little longer talking with Emmett and Bella, just asking about their plans for the day. They were going to play some video games for a while and have a bit of a movie day. Emmett felt the need to look after his little sister while she was still unable to do some things due to her broken leg, and now that she and Edward had broken up he felt the need to let her have what he thought was a stereotypical teenage girl 'after breakup' day. Just killing things in video games and watching movies where things get killed. He may be old, but he was more in touch with what actual teenagers did than anyone else in the family.

I had been out here for a while before I noticed Bella was quieter than normal and not really contributing to the conversation. Then I started to feel her emotions. Slight confusion, and a bucket load of lust. Almost enough to send me flying. Why was she suddenly feeling so much intense lust? I quickly peaked out of the corner of my eye to look at her, and her gaze was stuck on my naked chest and stomach. She felt that for me?

"Jazz man, where are you?" Emmett questioned impatiently.

"Nowhere, here. Listening. What?" I was babbling again.

"Well you were clearly somewhere that had strong emotions because you haven't responded in over a minute, and now you are babbling like a girl."

"Fuck off Emmett." He was pissing me off and I couldn't concentrate properly, so I walked off with a quick, "See you later Bella." I needed to get changed so I could go out with Alice.

As we were no longer together, Alice and I decided to stop wearing our wedding rings. We had always worn them, on our hands at home and in places where people didn't think we were teenagers at the local school, and on a chain around our necks for school and places we needed to be discrete. But now, we felt it would become strange to wear them all the time, but it would be worse to not wear them. So we were going to Seattle to a jeweller to have them remade into other jewellery. Alice was going to have her engagement ring which has a large ruby with several small diamonds surrounding it made into a pendant, and her wedding ring and current chain made into a newer one to wear the pendant on. I was going for a simple gold chain, made thicker than my current one buy adding in the gold from my wedding ring. This way we could continue to wear the jewellery we had given each other as a promise of our love, without giving our future partners a reminder of our past lovers. But it was still hard to destroy something that was a part of our everyday routine.

We drove to Seattle quickly, borrowing Edward's Volvo because neither of us had our own, and Alice didn't feel like taking my motorbike, and found a good jeweller. He wondered why the two of us, obviously so young, had matching rings we wanted to have remade, but with some bullshit story about Alice being my step sister and our parents recently dying, he seemed to be okay with changing the jewellery. I think he was just concerned that we were trying to hide something, such as a Vegas wedding from our family. A good enough concern really, if I were in his position I wouldn't want angry parents blaming me for something their stupid kids did.

We left our precious jewellery with him and went shopping for a couple of hours. He said it wouldn't take too long as he wasn't doing anything else for the day; business was slow and he was worried that cheaper factory made jewellery was killing his business. Alice and I decided we should think about having separate rooms, and for that we needed to buy some things for ourselves. I offered to move into my own room as Alice had far more things than I did, especially clothes. And Alice was extremely grateful for that.

I decided I didn't need a bed for my room, which would be the study that was next to our room I the Forks house. When Esme was designing the house Alice had ensured there was another room that someone would be able to have if the time came while we were in Forks. And I guess it did. So now we were browsing a number of couches in all sorts of colours and fabrics and styles and sizes, for the perfect one for my room. Alice had insisted that we try every one, and even made me lay on a few to measure if I could comfortably or not, and finally we settled on one. It was a large, modern but comfortable three seater lounge in a soft neutral coloured leather. Alice said it was perfect for the current colour scheme, but I didn't really care. All I cared about was that I could lay on it to read, or to cuddle with someone. Shit my mind kept going back to things like that, and always about Bella. I needed to stop, I had only broken up with my wife a few hours ago.

Because we had gone to a specialty furniture place, apparently, we needed to give them time to make the couch to our specifications, so we could pick it up in a week's time, until then I would have to make do.

By the time we had ordered and paid for the couch we had received a call from the jeweller saying he was done, so we picked up our remodelled rings and started the drive back to Forks. It hit me then, it was over. No more me and Alice, only the future now, and for the first time since I had met Alice all those years ago, I was alone again.

"Don't worry love," damn I must have projected my worry, "we only have a month of school left, and then you are free to court Bella full time." Alice was so happy for me, I couldn't help but feel it too. I really loved her, but now it had changed, I felt the love for my soul mate, I just hoped that she loved me back and we could start our forever.

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A.N.: Thanks for all the amazing feedback for the first part. So far only a couple of reviews, but the amount of follows and favourites has been amazing, and inspired me to write more. Thank you, I'll update again very soon.

xx