Disclaimer: twilight belongs to Stephanie Meyer, all other ideas are mine.

"Bella" Charlie says pulling me in to a quick hug.

The hug has long since stopped surprising me. After you've lived through the exactly the same thing over and over again you stop being surprised by almost everything. My father looks just the same as all the other times I've seen him, even though his expression becomes a little more pained every time I greet him with less and less enthusiasm.

I can't help it. I've tried to greet him more excitedly over the years but I'm tired and I've always been a bad actor. Charlie may miss a lot, but he is a cop and he's observant like me. He knows when he's being lied to and like every other time he just chooses to ignore it. Denial seems to come naturally to Swan's.

I should tell him, I should blurt it out now. I'd built up the courage to tell Renee before leaving for the airport. She'd been very accepting with me not going to live with Charlie, but had suggested that I use the already paid for ticket to at least go visit him and tell him myself. I hadn't seen him since last Christmas she had reminded me, and then I had felt guilty. So with a heavy heart I'd boarded the plane planning on the best way to break the news.

" I've missed ya Bells."

"You too dad."

"I'm so glad you decided to come here for your last year of school, I thought you hated forks. 'Too much rain'." He says quoting one of the things I'd told him to get him to come visit me in California for two weeks instead of me going to see him.

"Yeah" I say awkwardly, "actually about that..."

Tell him my mind is screaming. Tell him. But I can see the hurt flash briefly in his expressive chocolate brown eyes, which are identical to mine. Then comes the acceptance and defeat. It's then I realise that in all the times I've come to live in forks he's never actually believed I would stay. It's probably why he never said anything all the times I ran off somewhere leaving him. Then I feel awful. You know what they say about the best made plans...

"... I'm really glad to be here too."

...gang aft agley.

His eyebrows raise and a look of shocked surprise flitters across his face before he clears his throat and pats me on the back.

"Well I guess we'd better get home kiddo, there's a game on this afternoon. Billy and Jacob are coming 'round to watch it. Their TVs broken."

And that's the end of the conversation until we get to the house and he shows me my new, or old depending on how you look at it, truck.

After unpacking all my stuff I get started on dinner whilst reading a new novel I picked up at the airport, and surprisingly it's not a classic. I quickly realised that there's only so many times you can read the same book without eventually getting incredibly mind numbingly bored by it. Besides, I feel as if I've somehow out grown the works of Bronte, Austen and Shakespeare. Their stories about mr Darcy and Heathcliff suddenly seemed silly and fickle. A love that transcends all boundaries only seems sad and depressing not awe inspiring and romantic as it used to. Love is hard, it's not all sunshine and daisies.

As I'm taking the curry sauce off the heat the door bell rings. Billy and Jacob are here.

"Smells good" Billy comments from the hallway as Jacob wheels him inside. "Thanks" I shout, "I hope you like chicken pasanda."

"Bella, it's good to see you, you've grown."

"Thanks. Dinners served."

"Looks good bells" Charlie says warily before tentatively taking a bite. He's always like this at the first meal, always afraid that I'm as bad a cook as my mother. He sighs in relief at the taste and digs in with gusto.

"There's crumble for pudding."

Jacobs grins. "We should come round more often."

"Who's playing again?" I ask as they start to talk football.

"Mariners and the bears" Jacobs whispers excitedly from beside me.

"Huh" I say and then grin. "Hey Jacob, I bet you 50$ the mariners win 32 to 17."

The table goes quiet and Charlie stares at me. Jacob looks shocked before he grins madly and holds out his hand for me to shake on it. "You're on."

"You know I feel bad taking your money like this."

I nod absentmindedly, going back to my food. "Just tell me who wins." There's no amount of money that would make me willing enough to watch a football, game myself. No chance.

After collecting my winnings from Jacob, it wasn't really fair but I have to get some enjoyment from somewhere, I went to bed. After an hour of tossing and turning though it became evident that I wasn't going to get any sleep anytime soon. Giving up I pulled out my new book and got lost in the words of Cecelia Ahern's 'A place called here'.

By the time lunch rolls around next day I'm ready to kill someone. I have no idea how the Cullen's do it. Doing high school over and over again is enough to make anyone insane. By now I know almost all of the lectures off by heart and haven't revised for anything in what feels like years. I spent most of the morning thinking about new recipes to try for tonight's dinner. If I was a vampire I definitely wouldn't spend eternity in a place most consider to be a living form of hell. I feel ready to choke Jessica with her own tounge if she doesn't stop yapping at me, I don't know how I'm supposed to keep my cool through lunch.

Luckily Angela seems to sense my distress and steers me away from Jessica to sit next to her. I smile gratefully at her. Is this what I sounded like when I first met the Cullen's? Just another bratty immature teenager? I knew I wasn't quite at the level of Jessica but I was still terribly inexperienced with the world, a side effect of constantly living with my head inside a book. Did they see me the way I see my classmates now, naive and childishly innocent?

I slowly eat my cafeteria bought sandwich as I ponder the how's and why of the Cullen family. I wonder if my life is like this sandwich, it looks alright but then when you start eating it it's kind of disappointing. The lettuce is wilted and floppy and the tomatoes are sour. It's ok for now but it'll only put you on until you get home and can have something better. Was I only a distraction for them? Surely there must have been other humans that had discovered their secret over the years,I can't have been the only one.

"Bella, are you coming to biology?" The nearness of Angela's voice makes me jump. I look around to see the cafeteria almost deserted. Everyone is heading to class. While I've been lost in my thoughts the bell must have gone. I don't know why I always do that to myself, think about all the reasons the Cullen's befriended me. It never helps. It doesn't really matter why the took me into their family anyway, just that they did.

I give an apologetic smile to Angela and drag myself to biology where the real fun will start.

As I sit down I decide to do something I've never done before.

"Hi I'm Bella." I hold out my hand for Edward to shake.

His jaw clenches shut and the pencil in his hands snaps with a load snap. He turns slowly towards me and it seems as I'm the whole world fades away and there's nothing but me and him. No mr Banner at the front sorting papers or kids on the back row defacing the textbooks. We are the only two people. When he finally faces me I can see the hard set of his face and the wild animalistic hunger that rages in his eyes. Crap, I forgot that I was his singer. Sometimes it's easy to forget the Cullen's are dangerous blood sucking vampires when they constantly smother their base instincts with false humanity, a fact I'm reminded of as I look into the face of my killer/ would be boyfriend, fiancée, husband.

He takes a deep breath and his honey golden eyes roll back in his head. His control snaps.

BEEP BEEP BEEP! BEEP BEEP BEEP!

~44