A/N: Remember how I said I was all caught up and that last chapter would be the last daily update for a while? Apparently I lied, you all have no one to blame but yourselves for giving me the reviews and encouragement to finish the next chapter. The ending is a little bad, but if I hand't stopped there, who knows how long this thing would be. Thanks guys!
Chapter 5
It was incredibly hard, both for Rosalie and Emmett, to allow Bella to leave for her next class. Even with the promise that they would hang out after school, the two vampires were itching for the school day to end in a way it never did before. Emmett literally had to literally pry Rosalie's hands off of Bella's arm so Bella could go to her next class, and Rosalie had to bite back a snarl when he did so.
Once released, Bella wandered toward the door in a daze, and Emmett and Rosalie nearly blurred across the room to "save" the human when she rammed her hip into a lunch table as she passed by...then nearly into another student...then into a trashcan...followed by her tripping over thin air, and then into the cafeteria door...a few minutes later they heard her apologize to someone after running into them too. Bella made it near impossible for them to calm down with all of the bruises she was accumulating before their very ears. Somehow, they managed not to run after her.
"I told you that you two would love my surprise," Alice teased as she floated past them, grinning when she caught both of them staring after her. "You know, I have gym with her, and Edward has AP Biology...if I bring Jasper with me, I might just be able to get the secretary to change things up…"
"I'll switch into AP biology, you switch into Gym?" Rosalie said to Emmett, who immediately nodded.
"Hell yeah. Let's get it done first thing tomorrow." Emmett swallowed hard, his emotions almost overwhelming him. He still didn't get what was going on with Bella, but never before had someone hurt him so much just by existing, yet made him feel so whole at the same time.
The rest of the day went by in a daze for them. For the first time in a long time, both Rosalie and Emmett were desperate for the school day to end. They would hang out in the halls, desperate to just get a glimpse of Bella's brown head, but didn't dare approach. Despite how she had acted in the cafeteria, Rosalie was still afraid of overwhelming the girl and causing her to run, while Emmett still struggled internally with the entire situation.
Bella had a similar struggle happening. She didn't know why the people from her dreams actually existed, and despite the pull she felt toward them, she felt a little wary. Everything was just working out so strangely, and Bella had learned long ago that not everything was what it seemed. During Jessica's ambush for information with the encounter, her new sort of friend let it slip that Rosalie and Emmett were dating. Just like that, it felt like Bella's heart had been crushed to powder.
The draw she felt to both of them had been different, but so strong. She already knew what she had been feeling for Rosalie. Now, knowing that they were together...she needed Rosalie, her heart screamed at her for the blonde. But she needed Emmett too, and the idea of hurting either of them, especially with whatever weird crush she had, made a swell of panic rise in her stomach.
She couldn't hurt either of them. She wouldn't. Not like that.
Bella marched out of her last class of the day with several new bruises from getting way too intense with dodgeball and the resolve to put some distance between her and the two. That resolve instantly vanished when she caught Emmett and Rosalie outside of the locker room, clearly waiting for her. Emmett shot her a huge grin, Rosalie a small and way too sexy smile, and Bella was pretty sure her heart stopped beating for a second.
"I'm so sorry," Bella said as she realized they had to have been standing out there for a good five minutes at least. "I didn't realize you guys would be waiting out here for me. I took a shower and…" spent way too long thinking about how to deal with them.
It was a good thing Bella was looking at the floor, because if she had been looking at Rosalie, she would have seen Rosalie's eyes darken to black at the thought of her mate in the shower.
"It's no biggie Bella," Emmett rushed to assure her. He couldn't help but grin, having listened in on the dodgeball game. "For someone who runs into everything, you sure are a beast on a court huh?"
Shit. Had they been watching her? Now Bella couldn't help but blush, especially when she realized they had watched her leave the cafeteria. "I'm not clumsy," Bella muttered softly in protest, earning a snort from Emmett. "I'm serious! I'm not clumsy!"
"Really? Then what would you call what happened in the cafeteria?" Rosalie teased, wanting to see more of that blush. She was instantly rewarded as Bella turned a darker shade of red.
You two dazzling the hell out of me. "That was a one time thing," Bella chose to say, hoping it was the truth. She started to walk as if to get away from the embarrassment, Rosalie and Emmett falling into step on either side of her.
"Really? Cause I'm pretty sure it was like a six or seven time thing," Emmett said with a chuckle, earning a backhand to the stomach...hard.
Rosalie and Emmett's eyes widened, afraid Bella had hurt herself. Before they could rush her to the nurse in full panic mode, Bella just sighed.
"Damn, you've got abs harder than I do," Bella said with a confused frown, looking down at her slightly stinging hand before looking back up at Emmett. "What's your regimen? My muscles are pathetic compared to yours."
"I think you're perfect," Rosalie was quick to assure Bella, trying not to appear too lusty as she wrapped her arms around one of Bella's. To Rosalie's surprise, Bella got a strange intenseness to her eyes as she shook her head.
"No, I'm still not good enough. I'm nowhere close to my goal," Bella almost snapped, agitated. Her hands curled into fists, and she seemed so upset it worried both vampires immensely.
"What is your goal, Bella?" Rosalie asked as Emmett just stared at Bella uselessly. He wanted to help, needed to, but he just didn't know how.
At Rosalie's question, Bella flipped from intense to strangely embarrassed. "You don't want to hear about that," Bella mumbled to herself with a blush, aware of how crazy her ideas would sound to anyone outside of her family.
"Trust me, we do." Rosalie's assurance didn't do much to encourage her, mainly due to the unintended purr in her voice at seeing Bella blush. Bella started to flounder even more and would have tripped over her own feet had Rosalie not kept a strong hold of her arm.
"If you tell me what your goal is, I'd be able to help more," Emmett added eagerly, finally knowing what to offer. "I can come up with a regimen that would totally get you to where you want to go even faster."
For a moment, Bella hesitated. She had let her goal slip to friends and even strangers a few times, and always got the strange "is your head okay" look from them in return. She had grown used to it, even, to the point it didn't even affect her anymore. However, if she got that look from either of them, she knew it would hurt.
"Bella?" Rosalie murmured, pulling her to a stop so she could look into the human's eyes. "Are you okay?"
Emmett looked equally concerned. "I didn't mean to push you, swear," he said, a touch of panic in his voice. "If you really don't want to tell me, that's cool." But he looked like a kicked puppy, so upset that he might've upset Bella, and that look was impossible to ignore.
Ugh, she was going to crack. Bella could already tell she wasn't going to be able to deny the two anything. She started to walk again, pulling on the arm Rosalie was still attached to while doing her best to sling her other arm over Emmett's shoulders.
"It's just some stupid goal," Bella said with a shake of her head and a laugh the two vampires could tell was forced. "It's my dream to become strong enough to fight a bear. Not just any bear, either; I want to be able to kill a grizzly."
Emmett and Rosalie froze in surprise, and because of her grip on the two, not to mention Rosalie's grip on her, Bella was jerked to such a sudden stop she almost went flying backwards. Again, the only thing that stopped her from falling were the two people who caused Bella's sudden clumsiness in the first place.
"Are you okay?" Rosalie asked worriedly once she made sure Bella was steady on her feet. Emmett clearly wasn't the only one who was strong, Bella couldn't help but think with a strange thrill inside of her. "You didn't wrench anything, did you?"
"I'm fine," Bella said, trying not to show how embarrassed she really was. "What about you two? I did nearly drag you both down after all." She had tried to joke, but found Emmett hadn't laughed; something in her told her he definitely should have, and the fact that he didn't was a concern. Turning to her new friend, she saw him frozen, a wide eyed look on his face. "Emmett? You okay dude?"
A grizzly bear? Why did Bella want to fight a grizzly bear? Memories of those few moments before his turning flashed through his head. Images of Isabella begging for someone to save him, trying to stand between him and the bear, trying to pull the bear off him with her incorporeal hands as she cursed her own existence, cursed the grizzly bear, cursed God for making her like this and making her witness her brother get mauled without being able to help. How even through the pain, he had felt more worry for his sister's emotional state, had even felt at peace as at least this way he could be with her for eternity.
"If only I were stronger! If only I were still human, I could have saved you from all of this. I'm so sorry, Emmett. I'm a failure of a sister." Emmett hadn't remembered when he had heard those words, only the heartbreak behind them.
"Emmett?" Bella put a hand on the big man's shoulder, and it was that contact that snapped him out of it. "Where'd you go?"
He saw the worry in Bella's eyes, and he felt a need to make sure he never caused it in her again. "Eh, just zoned out for a minute," he tried to play it off, but damn was it hard. It was always hard when he was pulled back into a memory of Isabelle. "So, why a grizzly? Did Yogi Bear steal your picnic basket? Are you out on a quest for revenge?"
Bella snorted, but the concern was still there. He felt Rosalie subtly kick the back of his leg, out of Bella's view.
"You're scaring her, idiot. Dial back the intensity," Rosalie hissed at vampire speed, well under a human's hearing range.
Emmett forced his body to relax, and it was only when he grinned more naturally at her that Bella's body relaxed itself. A huge gust of air left the human, as if she had been unable to relax until he did. It made Emmett guilty.
"Not sure," Bella said with a shrug. "It's just what I've wanted to be able to do for as long as I can remember. According to my parents, I've had a few weird habits and fears basically since birth. Some of them used to drive them crazy."
Rosalie knew she shouldn't ask, that it might make something worse. Still, this girl made her want to know more. Made Rosalie need to know more.
"Really? Like what?" the blonde asked despite herself.
"Just some stupid things. I always refused to wear dresses once I got older but before that it was all I would wear, insisted on the house being spotless, didn't like my dad going out into the forest alone...for some reason, I was also super scared of my dad getting mad at me." Bella sighed as she remembered her biggest fear, one that she still struggled with to this day. "The worst is this one problem of mine. Nothing ever happened to me, or even to my parents, but ever since I could talk I was always so afraid of home invasions."
This time, both Rosalie and Emmett couldn't help themselves from freezing up, but Bella was too wrapped up in her own thoughts to notice.
"What?" Emmett just had to ask.
"Yeah. I can't remember it well, but my dad still has videos of it somewhere. Apparently I was terrified. I kept saying that these two men had broken into the house and killed someone. I was so sure it would happen again that I even had night terrors about it." Bella felt a shiver of fear just from remembering how scared and sure she had been. "Even now, I'm still overly obsessive about making sure everything is locked. My parents had to install security systems to calm me down."
"Bells…" Emmett started, voice cracking with emotion.
Bella looked up at him, cocking her head to the side in curiosity, just like his sister used to do. He could almost see his sister's figure over Bella's body. "Yes, Emmett?"
There was no way this could all be a coincidence.
If he hadn't been a vampire right then, he would have broken down right there. Instead, he pulled Bella into such a hug that Bella could have sworn her back cracked. She felt his emotion, felt that she needed to give him a hug, reassure him, make sure to calm him down. At the same time, it was so hard to breathe.
"Emmett, strength! You're forgetting how strong you are again," Bella laughed, although the laugh was more of a gasp.
It was almost like hearing Isabelle again, and it took everything in him-and a warning snarl from Rose- not to hug Bella harder. He loosened his grip and closed his eyes, all too aware of Bella's warmth, of how she hugged him and rubbed circles on his back like he was a child. If any kids had hung around after school, they would've been gobsmacked by the scene, but thankfully the halls were empty.
Once Emmett had calmed down, he pulled away with a sheepish grin. The image of his sister was gone, replaced by Bella. "Sorry about that, I don't know what came over me," he lied, because even after everything that happened, he had no idea how to explain.
"Anytime you need me, I'm here," Bella assured him, and she meant it. Regardless of how strange this whole situation was, she already knew she couldn't deny Emmett or Rosalie anything. Her plans to avoid them, even if just a little, were definitely impossible to carry out now. It would break her own heart to do so.
Rosalie, aware of the strong emotions of her best friend, didn't want to interrupt the moment. Despite this, her instincts refused to be ignored, aware of how in turmoil Bella was feeling. So she pressed up against her human's back, wrapping her arms around the girl's waist and resting her head on Bella's shoulder. She couldn't stop the smirk when she heard Bella's breath catch and her heart stutter. Finally, her looks were something she could use to her advantage, and she was definitely going to milk it for all it was worth.
"Bella, we really need to see those videos," Rosalie whispered near Bella's ear, feeling the girl shudder in her arms. Rosalie was tempted to try and get more of a reaction out of her, but at Emmett's frown, coupled with the protective glint in his eyes, she decided it definitely wasn't the time. "Please."
"Sure thing," Bella said, because who wouldn't want to show her new best friend and the biggest crush she ever had one of the most embarrassing videos that had ever been taken of her? She could only hope she wasn't already whipped. "But um...there's just one thing I want to do first."
"What do you need?" Rosalie asked.
"Of course Bells!" Emmett said at the exact same moment.
Overwhelmed by the intensity from the two, she gave them a hesitant smile. "Can we just hang out first?"
