Chapter 7: Enter Player

"Fire Meet Gasoline" by Sia

To my love,

I'm glad you and Rosalie had a chance to bond. I'm sorry to say you will need that new level of support. You should see the wolves again soon. Whatever you hear, whatever happens, stay strong, my Bella. You have a family around you that loves you dearly, and I will always be with you. Know that and be brave.

Forever yours,

Edward.

P.S. I love you.

Edward's latest letter was not on my bed as usual, but waiting in the garage when Rosalie and I returned home. She read it over my shoulder when she saw that I would allow it.

"How could he know that?" I asked her.

"I have no idea," She responded thoughtfully. "We can ask Alice."

"Ask me what?" Alice was suddenly right behind us. I handed her the letter. She frowned.

"How did he know that?"

"It's true?" Rose and I both asked in surprise. Alice nodded.

"I can't see," she said. "I was waiting for you two to get back—I was scanning through all of our futures and we all disappeared." I couldn't help but laugh at the disgruntled expression on Alice's face. She really hated it when the wolves clouded her visions.

"When?" Rosalie asked.

"Everything goes blank in about an hour."

"But we're on good terms with the pack." I said. "Nothing to worry about, really."

"As far as I know, people only disappear from my visions when they interact with wolves or when they die, Bella," Alice sighed exasperatedly. "If you two weren't back in time to interact with the wolves—"

"Oh," I said, understanding. "Sorry, Alice. I had to stop for another quick hunt. Rose and I… ran into a few humans."

"I know," Alice chirped, her mood brightening a little. "I did see that." Alice burst into a fit of giggles then, and Rosalie laughed with her.

"Entertaining, was it?" Rose asked.

"Immensely," Alice laughed. "Everyone else thinks so, too, and they didn't get the visual. Carlisle and Esme might feign disapproval when you two get inside, but they're really proud of you, Bella. Jasper too."

I wasn't sure how to respond to that. Thankfully, Emmett chose that moment to appear.

"Glad to hear you had some fun, Rosie," He immediately turned to Rose with a huge grin on his face. "Billy Black just called—Sam and Jacob are already back, rounding up the rest of the pack now, checking up on everyone…" Emmett kept talking, but my mind was instantly elsewhere… Jacob.

'I'm in love with you, Bella. love you, and I want you to pick me instead of him.' Jacob's voice lurched out of my foggy human memories and filled my mind. Several muddy memories of him blurred together, but they entwined in a way that made perfect sense. "You love me too. Not the same way, I know, but he's not your whole life… Not anymore… You could be happy if you let go. You could be happy with me…" I knew those sound blips were out of out of order and out of context, so I tried to fill in the gaps, grasping at all my vague memories of Jacob. I only needed to find one: 'Until your heart stops beating, Bella, I'll be here…'

Until my heart stops beating.

"Bella?" Jasper's voice jolted me out of my reverie. I felt his calming influence before my eyes found his face. He was standing just behind Alice, but he was quick to take a few steps forward when the torrent of emotions I was sending out didn't relent. He took my hands and focused his soothing power on me, patiently holding my gaze until I spoke first.

"I haven't seen Jacob since the fight with the newborns," I murmured. "Since I was human…"

"He's your best friend," Alice offered reassuringly, and while it really was comforting to hear my vampire best friend refer to him as such, I had to wonder if she knew… "I can't see him, but I'm sure he won't hold your change against you."

"I kissed him," I admitted, my body quivering as I tried to restrain the dry sobs poised to spring from my chest. "He kissed me again, right before the fight with the newborns, and I kissed him back." Jasper's grip on my hands tightened momentarily, but I didn't bother trying to make sense of it. "I kissed him and I told him I loved him, not as much as Edward, but… Edward died just hours later, and I…" My own battle against the searing pain in my chest was lost then, and dry sobs wracked my entire body. Still, between my sobs, I went on, my voice shooting up into a new octave. "Edward told me he understood, but nothing can excuse what I did! I told him I loved someone else right before he died to protect me!"

"Bella, don't do this to yourself," Alice cut off my hysterics. "Edward understood, just as we all do—honestly, I think you were the last person to figure out that you loved Jacob. He insisted on it from the start, and we all saw it too. We also saw how much more you loved Edward, so we never brought it up." Even as Alice's words did offer me a little comfort, a break in Jasper's calming influence distracted me. Where our hands still touched, a string of emotions I couldn't make sense of broke through the current of calm washing over me: Jealously followed by guilt, love followed by denial, followed by confusion. I looked up to meet Jasper's ambivalent gaze and he quickly dropped my hands.

"There's fear in you I can't quite understand," he spoke in a jarringly detached tone of voice. "Are you afraid because you still have feelings for Jacob?"

"I'm not really sure how I feel about him, actually," I found myself almost whispering in response to Jasper's abrupt shift in attitude, my instincts telling me to placate him or run. "That's not what I was thinking about. That whole time he was trying to win me away from Edward, the driving force behind it all was that he wanted me to stay human. He was always so repulsed by the idea of me becoming a vampire. I guess I'm afraid—"

"Jacob won't still love you?" Jasper pressed.

"No," I almost growled. Jasper's strange behavior could only be described as hostile, and my effort to placate him had failed. He had to feel how much I was struggling—

"Then what?" Jasper demanded.

"Jasper," Emmett cautioned, but too late. I snapped.

"I don't know, Jasper!" I growled furiously, sinking into a fighting stance without making a conscious choice to do so. "I don't know, okay! I haven't the slightest idea what the hell is wrong with you, but leave me the hell out of it!" Jasper was tensed to counter my spring, but even in my sudden rage I wasn't that stupid. I leapt over Rosalie, expecting no opposition from her, and I ran out of the garage before Jasper or Emmett could try to stop me.

"Bella!" Alice called after me, but I could hear no one pursuing me. Still, I ran even harder. I ran as fast as my legs would carry me, desperate to find a haven where I could have just one moment of peace.

I ended up in Edward's meadow.

'Tell me what you're thinking. It's still so strange for me, not knowing.' Edward's voice emerged from my human memories again, and I could almost feel him beside me. Though I knew his voice was coming from a memory long since passed, I replied in earnest.

"I'm thinking of Jacob… I'm afraid to see him again."

'I don't want you to be afraid.'

"I know you don't, but… What do you want? What do you want me to do? It wasn't supposed to be like this—Victoria's still out there somewhere, our family and the wolves are determined to catch her, I'm so afraid that someone else will get hurt… What if it's Jacob? Or Alice? Or…" I meant to say Jasper's name, but I choked. I had a million more questions for Edward, but there was only one that really mattered. "Why did you leave me?" I whispered to the empty meadow. "You promised you would never leave me again."

'I am so very sorry,' Edward from my memories whispered in reply. I could almost smell his sweet breath on my face again. I could almost feel his cool hand in mine. His angelic voice was a tender caress against my ears… and then it was gone.

"Bella?" Though Jacob's voice was soft behind me, it was thunderous in contrast to the whispers of the past. I whipped around to see an incredible sight: Jacob's russet skin seemed to give of a subtle glow from within. Though he stood several feet away, I could sense the excess of heat radiating from him. He stood before me clad in nothing more than an old pair of denim cut-offs, and he blended in perfectly with the surrounding forest. He was in his element, as my new eyes could plainly see… That was when the smell hit.

A light breeze blew through the meadow and it was saturated with the scent of burnt rubber, truck exhaust, and a terrible wet dog smell. The highly concentrated scent alerted me to the fact that Jacob was not alone, and there was something about the scent that registered as threatening. I instinctively tensed to defend myself. A menacing growl came from somewhere behind Jacob and I growled in reply, sinking into a crouch.

"Whoa, Bella, take it easy!" Jacob pleaded in alarm. I heard movement behind him and I was about to loose another warning growl, but Jacob beat me to it. "Paul, if you attack her, I swear I'll phase and bite your ears off!" Paul. The most temperamental wolf in the pack. Of course he was growling at me. As my mind caught up with my body, allowing reason to overrule instinct, I was able to regain my composure and straighten out of my fighting stance.

"Sorry," I mumbled, still ill-at-ease as my senses screamed at me to either fight or flee from the threatening creatures slowly emerging from the surrounding trees. "Instinct." Within moments, there were a dozen horse-sized wolves standing before me, but none of them mattered when Jacob's friendly smile lit up the entire meadow. My own personal sun was back.

"Trust me, we understand," he chuckled. "We were headed for the lee—your house—to touch base with your, uh—family..." As Jacob spoke to me, his smile gradually went from natural and easy to forced and lackluster. With every word he carefully bit back, another cloud smothered my beautiful sun. "Anyway, we came across your scent and we didn't recognize it, and it was obviously a vampire, so—"

"You were hunting me?" I asked, hurt by Jacob's uneasy behavior. Of course, my behavior wasn't much better.

"No!" Jacob was instantly contrite. "We assumed it was you, but we couldn't know for sure. Besides, you know how the treaty works on our end: We don't attack a vampire in this territory unless they bite someone. We weren't going to attack you."

"Paul was," I reminded him, nodding in the direction of the larger gray wolf I recognized as Paul.

"Paul was just being Paul," Jacob grumbled, sending the gray wolf a quick glare before looking back at me. "You know that."

"Yeah, I guess I do," I murmured sadly as all my muddy memories of Paul swam through my mind. "Everything that happened when I was human is kind of cloudy now, but it's still there…" A minute of poignant silence followed my words as they sank in. Jacob took a few steps closer to me and spoke again.

"Who were you talking to, Bella?" He asked me softly. "There's no other scent here…?"

"I was talking to Edward," I admitted quietly. "Pretending to, at least. This was kind of 'our place'."

"Yeah, I remember. This isn't the first time we've found you here."

"I remember." I murmured. "I know this is technically the place where Laurent almost killed me, but… it's Edward's place too." A soft whimper brought my attention away from Jacob then, and I turned to look at the sand-colored wolf to my left: Seth.

"He thinks it's his fault," Jacob explained, following my gaze. "Because he left you and Edward with Victoria, to chase that newborn. He never stops kicking himself over that… It's painful." I took a tentative step toward Seth. Leah growled once, but no one made a move to stop me, so I closed the distance between myself and the young wolf, reaching up to gently stroke his scorching fur with my icy hand.

"Please don't blame yourself, Seth," I whispered, my voice going ever-so-slightly hoarse with emotion. "What happened was no one's fault but Victoria's. I know that's difficult to accept… Every day, I try to think of something I could have done, but the truth is Victoria was ready for all of it. She planned it all so well…"

"But I shouldn't have left," Jacob said, coming up behind me. "That's what he always says to us," Jake explained when I looked up at him. I shook my head vehemently and tugged Seth's big head down a little, so I could look him straight in the eye as I spoke to him.

"Listen to me. Right after you and that newborn ran off, a tree fell on me and made me bleed. Victoria was able to keep control of herself, but that newborn would've lost it. If you hadn't chased him off, we all might have died. You did the right thing. You did what you had to do. What happened to Edward, to me… That is not your fault. Understand?" Seth nodded once, then he took one step closer, bumping my temple with his nose.

"I noticed that, too," Jacob said. "I was expecting the bright red eyes all those other newborns had, but your eyes are almost gold." Jacob reached up and brushed my hair back from my face, to better see my eyes, and I almost jumped at the feeling. Like Seth's fur, Jacob's hand was shockingly hot where it lightly grazed my cheek. My instincts told me to flinch away from the heat, but my heart simultaneously told me to move toward it. I settled for holding perfectly still.

"It's complicated," I sighed. "I didn't hunt for an entire week, and you'll be glad to hear I haven't attacked a human. The 'vegetarian' diet is actually much easier for me to stick to than we anticipated. Carlisle can give you a better explanation."

"Right," Jacob sighed, stepping back in line with the other wolves. "We need to see Jasper."

"Jasper?" I asked. "Just him?" Jacob shrugged.

"Victoria seemed to think this other vamp would help her, but she attacked Victoria when Jasper's name came up. We need to know if Maria will be a threat now. Any chance you know her?"