For I Am Captured Straight To You
PART THREE
Jacob had never liked the word 'surreptitious.' It sounded sticky and made him want waffles. And there hadn't been waffles—of the unfrozen variety—in the Blacks' house since Rebecca had left for college.
But with him sitting on the living room couch, pretending to watch SNL while covertly watching Bella talk to Charlie out of the corner of his eye, there really was no better word to describe his behavior. He was being…surreptitious.
…waffles…
Bella was curled in a kitchen chair wearing one of Jacob's t-shirts and a pair of sweat pants that had belonged to Rachel in high school and said "Can't Touch This" across the butt (an unfortunate senior slogan). In her left hand was the kitchen phone—her cell had died a couple hours ago—and the fingers of her right were twisted in the coils of the chord, which she tugged on absently throughout the conversation. Long silences were punctuated be her short, empty responses.
"Yeah, dad."
"Mmhm."
"Okay."
"I will."
"I'm sure I'll feel better in the morning."
"Goodnight."
She slumped to her feet and shuffled over to place the phone back on its wall-mounted cradle. She sagged there for a moment before coming into the living room. Jacob focused back on the TV and quickly tried to figure out why Tina Fey was giving a lap dance to a ten-year-old who looked like he'd lost a fight with his hairdryer.
"I think I'm gonna try to get some sleep," Bella mumbled while rubbing a hand across her eyes.
Jacob looked up as if he'd just noticed her. "Ok. You look pretty tired."
Bella stared listlessly back at him, not moving.
Jacob tried again. "Goodnight. Just let me know if you need anything."
"I'm not taking your bed, Jacob."
"Sure you are. If you'd wanted the couch, you should have called it earlier." He made a point of snuggling back against the cushions. "I've got dibbs."
"But I'm smaller. I'll fit better."
Your powers of observation strike again.
When in doubt, make it sound like she would be doing you a favor. Bella loved taking one for the team. "But I might be up for a while longer watching TV. This Beaner kid is half as tall and twice as talented as everybody makes him out to be. And there's still half an hour left. I'd hate to miss it."
Bella stifled a yawn. The battle was won.
"If you're sure it's what you want."
She wandered off down the hall, and Jacob's carefully neutral lets-pretend-your-heart-didn't-just-get-obliterated-by-a-weed-whacker mask fell away. He stared at the television without really seeing it. Instead there was another film strip moving slowly across his mind filled with scenes of Embry glaring at Bella, Bella gaping back in shock, Embry walking away, Bella watching him go, Bella trembling in Jacob's arms, Bella leaking a few confused tears onto his shirt, Jacob taking her hand, Jacob driving her to his house, Bella fidgeting and looking lost on his couch, Jacob sitting beside her silently, helplessly.
It hadn't helped that he had been just as shocked as she was by Embry's behavior. In fact, he still didn't accept it as face value, even though it'd been 9 hours and Embry hadn't come begging for forgiveness and hadn't picked up the phone when Jacob clandestinely—surreptitiously—called while Bella was in the shower.
It just didn't make sense. Contemplating why Embry would break up with Bella was like contemplating why a man would blow out one of his own kneecaps with a sawed-off shotgun. You can't walk without your legs and Embry couldn't be happy without Bella. They belonged together.
Jacob knew that sounded sickeningly cliché and inspired by one of the many Disney movies his sisters had force-fed him while he was still an impressionable child. And that was all true, but that didn't mean he wasn't right. See, Jacob figured it was like this:
Bella was a seashore. The sandy part with a bunch of shells and rocks stuck in it. Not that Bella was stuck with rocks, but she was stuck with other hard, unwanted things—stubbornness, ignorance, and the occasional whining. No one thought any less of a beach because of some pebbles and broken shells. Some people even liked those things. Jacob could imagine why.
Embry was an ocean. (Jacob didn't have a good reasoning for this beyond the fact that Bella was the seashore, and if Bella was the seashore, Embry was the sea.)
The seashore was nice. But the sand was fucking hot,stuck to your feet, and got into the spaces between your toes in a way that was obnoxious but also a necessary trial that accompanied the privilege of seeing scantily clad women prance around in public. And sometimes you stepped on loose rocks.
The sea was nice. But you can't swim forever, and no one had tackled the whole walking on water problem since that Jesus guy with the hair and the beard. Plus, there was bird and fish shit floating around.
But there was that place where the sand and the water met so frequently that it was damp and sandy all at once and all the time. And that was the best place to walk. Because it wasn't hot and you left those nifty footprints behind that people liked to take pictures of to blow up into motivational posters about God giving people piggyback rides. And that was Bella and Embry in a nutshell (not the piggyback rides, but the whole 'coming together to form perfection' bit). Other people even liked to sink their toes into them.
Including Jacob. Especially Jacob.
He fell asleep trying to decipher the exact meaning of Embry's words.
He woke up to the sound of Bella's sobs.
Normally, Jacob could have slept through a tropical hail storm tornado or, at the very least, Quil and Embry playing Modern Warfare 2 at full blast in Quil's basement while Jacob snoozed under the air hockey table. So he was fairly certain it wasn't the sound of Bella's muffled crying that woke him. It was something inside of him, something instinctual that said, "Jacob, get your fucking ass off the couch and go make sure Bella hasn't managed drown face-first in a pool of her own tears."
Groggily he rolled to his feet, stumbled precariously around the living room for a few wobbly steps, and then made his way down the hall toward his room. The door was open—probably because of their crap A/C—but Jacob pulled it shut behind him so they wouldn't wake Billy up. Bella didn't hear him enter.
She was sprawled on her side, pillow clutched to her chest like a life raft as she navigated the waves of sobs that shook her body from head to toe.
Too tired to hesitate, Jacob sat on the edge of mattress beside Bella's bent legs and laid a hand on her trembling side. He was also too tired for tact. "It's okay, Sweetheart. We'll find out why Embry's being such a douche, and you can make him do humiliating, emasculating things before agreeing to take him back on the condition that he gives you daily foot massages. You've really got the best end of this deal. You'll see."
"D-d-don't ca-c-call me-me tha-at," she choked out over a wheezing breath.
Right. That was Embry's name for her. Definitely too tired.
"Okay, honey," he sighed. Was this the part where he was supposed to ask about her feelings? Would it be appropriate to start calling Embry offensive names? But as angry or upset as she may have been in that moment, Jacob knew she loved Embry just as much as she had that morning when she'd spent hours relentlessly scouring the reservation for him. And Jacob refused to believe that Embry loved her any less.
Deciding he couldn't hurt anything if he kept his mouth shut, Jacob simply sat and ran a slow hand up and down her back while listening to her sobs turn into sniffles, which turned into silence. It was dark in the room, but there was enough moonlight coming in through the window that it illuminated her glassy eyes and the dried tear tracks on her cheeks.
As far as Jacob could tell, Bella was staring at nothing in particular when she suddenly parted her lips and said slowly, "I know why he did it, Jake."
Jacob wasn't sure he liked the idea of her trying to find reason in this madness. If it could be explained, then that made it real and not the fluke that Jacob was imagining it to be.
"Maybe he's being blackmailed by Sam and his band of merry men," he offered only half jokingly. "And they were just out in the woods robbing all of the rich people who…creep around in the trees."
"No, Jacob," Bella responded as if he'd been completely serious. "I know why, and it's not Embry's fault." She finally met his eyes. "It's mine."
"Honey, you can't know that."
"I do. He even said it was."
"No, he said—"
"He said it was because of Monday."
Jacob assumed "Monday" was a codeword, one of the little special phrases only Embry and Bella could understand, not because it was a secret because they were Embry and Bella and they spoke their own language. Because Jacob couldn't think of anything life-altering that had happened on Monday. Bella and Embry had talked on the phone for nearly an hour Tuesday afternoon, and everything had been fine then. Jacob had even heard Bella's laughter on the other end more than once. Embry himself had been in a surprisingly good mood about the three pages of physics homework he'd had to do.
"I don't get it, Bells. What's Monday?"
She shifted in her spot, brushing a few errant strands of hair from her face and redirecting her suddenly shy gaze to the mattress. So quietly he almost didn't catch the words, Bella said, "Monday…was the first time we'd slept together."
Jacob's brow furrowed. "Nuh-uh. You two fall asleep together all the time."
"Not that, Jake." She shook her head. "It was the first time we…had sex."
Oh.
"And I know I must have been awful because now Embry doesn't even want to talk to me."
Oh.
"I don't think…" Jacob didn't know what to think. Bella—blushing, homebody Bella—had had sex. With Embry. She was no longer a virgin. Somehow that made her less Bella and more Bella all at once in a way that Jacob couldn't quite wrap his head around. The only thing he knew with absolute certainty was that it made her less his Bella.
Honestly, Jacob had no idea why he was so surprised. Embry and Bella had been dating for nearly eight months. Bella was an adult and Embry was a hormone-riddled teenager, so of course they would have sex. The only reason it had taken this long was probably because they were the two most emotionally awkward people alive and Charlie owned several guns. And yet Jacob would have never expected…
Why the hell hadn't Embry told him? Wasn't that something a guy was supposed to brag about and rub gleefully in his virginal best friend's face? (Okay, so Embry was only a guy in the loosest sense of the word, but still.)
And Bella! She thought that she had been bad at it? As if that were even possible.
Jacob cleared his throat and redirected his attention to Bella, who was looking ashamed and mournful. Dear god. He did not want to be having a conversation about Embry's 'needs.' "I really don't think Embry would break up with you because of something like that. He loves you."
And Jacob tried to imagine a scenario in which it wouldn't feel like the best fucking thing in the world to…
"You couldn't have been bad," Jacob said firmly.
"How do you know?"
Consult any one of the wet dreams I've had in the past six months.
"Because…look at you, Bella." He gestured vaguely at her, and the next thing he said just sorta…slipped out. "You're sexy as hell."
She rolled her eyes and huffed. "Yeah right, Jake."
"It's true," he said, feeling suddenly defensive that anyone (including her) could doubt that she was the single most desirable woman Jacob had ever encountered. "Your hair, for starters, is in a near constant state of sex-hair because you drive with the windows down, and Embry can't keep his hands out of it. You've got the biggest eyes I've ever seen and they just suck a guy in, you know? Your nose is small and pretty perfect. And your lips, well, the bottom one is fuller than the top, but it makes me want to touch it. You're small but in a feminine petite way that stands out because your legs are so…"
Watching him carefully, Bella stirred and started rising onto her knees.
Words stopped forming in Jacob's brain. It was too congested processing the sight of Bella's smooth, bare thighs, which were revealed inch-by-lazy-inch as the blanket fell away from her body. He swallowed.
Funny, he could have sworn she'd been wearing pants the last time he saw her.
Dude, roll with it.
"…because your legs are so…"
Her face is not in her lap. Try again.
"…are so long." He caught her eyes which were now just a few inches from his own.
There you go, champ.
"You really think I'm pretty?" she murmured.
His mouth opened, closed, and then opened again. "I think I used the term 'sexy,' but, um, yeah."
Bella was watching him in a way he'd never seen her look at Embry, so he wasn't quite sure what to make of it, but his gut clenched with something like anticipation. Was this how she looked at Embry when they were in private? Lucky bastard.
"I think you're sort of beautiful."
Jacob blinked. He opened, closed, and re-opened his mouth. "You…what?"
Her hand touched his face. "You're sort of beautiful, you know?"
Jacob didn't have a response, which turned out to be a good thing, because then his mouth would have been awkwardly half open when Bella leaned in and kissed him.
It was a light, quiet meeting of lips that Jacob wouldn't have really counted as a kiss had the other person not been Bella Swan. But it was. So she might as well have been giving him a hand job for all of the rushing heat and want that surged through him at the rather chaste gesture.
The kiss lingered between them lazily until Jacob's paralyzing uncertainty dissipated enough for him to press back and start coaxing more from it. Then Bella slowly drew away.
Jacob's eyes were closed, so maybe it was because he couldn't see her face that he had the courage to say, "I've wanted to do that for a long time."
Or maybe it was just stupidity.
His eyes slid open. Bella had rocked back onto her heels and looked shocked. "Really?"
Jacob glanced away sheepishly. He hadn't meant to say that. It sounded creepy and made him look like an asshole for wanting to kiss his best friend's girl. But what did he have to lose? "Yeah."
Bella seemed to soak in his admission carefully, making sure to catch every last bit of it. "You think of me…that way?"
"Sometimes."
Only when I'm breathing.
"I had no idea, Jake."
"I know."—man, did he know—"But can you blame me for not wanting to broadcast it? I—"
She did that thing again where she kissed him. Only this time, there was less uncertainty and more tongue. And Jacob—being the poster child for sexually depraved teenage boys everywhere—reciprocated automatically.
One moment she was leaning awkwardly against his shoulder while he was twisting to accommodate her, and the next she was crawling into his lap, her calves hugging his thighs and her chest pressed against his. And of course their lips were…quite close.
But all of that touching quickly became secondary to the feel of Bella's heat against his dick, separated only by the cotton of her underwear and his thin pajama pants.
With Bella pressed against him like that, three things became quite clear. One: Jacob was not as tired he'd thought he was. Two: Bella was not wearing a bra beneath that shirt. And three: He wanted her naked and writhing underneath him—preferably screaming his name while praising his stamina and skillful command of the female body.
Bella was hardly the first girl he'd kissed, but she was the first one he'd ever kissed like this, with the frenzied groping, rough, disjointed kissing, and the eager grinding that were all clearly leading toward something. There was purpose in the way she yanked up on his shirt and how his hands slid up the backs of her thighs and beneath her underwear to touch her bare ass.
She was so soft and smooth under his against his skin, but he could hardly concentrate on what he was doing when she was purposefully driving him crazy. Her tongue was tracing his clavicle like it was a page in a fucking "how to draw" book. Five of her fingers were curled around his shoulder while the rest of them seemed to be everywhere at once, scratching at his chest, pressed against his back, and flirting dangerously with the waistline of his pajama bottoms.
Her quick, heavy pants warmed his ear. "We could…"—she rolled her hips forward, sliding her crotch along his hard-on—"…and then you could tell me for sure. Whether I'm any good."
He swore. Probably gripped her thighs too tightly because she gasped and then moaned into his neck. How was it possible to sound legitimately bashful and seductive at the same time? God, the thought that with just a little bit of readjusting, he could take her right there in the next ten seconds were almost enough for him to combust on the spot.
Jacob shivered, pinched his eyes closed, and forced himself to silently count to three.
Five.
Ten.
"Jake?"
God damn, what was he doing? This was Bella and…oh, God…he was dry humping her. Dry humping Bella.
Yeah, the girl you've been panting over for a year. It's a real shocker that you've ended up here.
"Jacob?"
But, Christ, she was with Embry, his best friend since they were in diapers. They'd both pissed on Linda Carpenter's face. Might as well be Siamese twins.
Nuh-uh. Finders keepers, losers weepers.
Bella was not a thing to be won or lost. She was a person, his friend. He loved her. She was hurting, and his solution was to stick his hands down her pants.
She's not wearing pants. Remember?
"Shut up."
"What?" Bella blinked at him, face flushed and lips parted invitingly. For half a second Jacob considered kissing her again. It was what he wanted to do. It certainly seemed what she wanted him to do—and a lot more. But the after would be awful. She would regret, and then he would regret, and they could never be close again, not in the same way they were now (well, not now). They would never be Jake and Bells again.
Jacob shook his head. "No, I wasn't talking to you. I was thinking. Out loud."
"Oh." She hovered uncertainly above his lap.
"Bella—"
"Jacob—"
"I think I'm going to go back to the couch now," he said before she could change his mind. He was already cursing his own fucking rationality.
"Why?" she pleaded, still gripping his shoulders.
"This is wrong, Bella. You only want this because you're upset, and I only want it because I'm a selfish asshole taking advantage of you."
Fuck, he really was a piece of shit, wasn't he? What kind of person did that to someone he cared about? Disgusted, he took his hands off of her, forced them not to slide back down her legs as they dropped lifelessly to the bed.
Suddenly, he was overcome with the need to get away from her. He couldn't stand looking at her a moment longer. All he could see was what he'd almost done, what some twisted part of him still wanted to do.
He stood so abruptly that Bella stumbled backward. She steadied herself with a hand on his arm, but Jacob shrugged her off immediately and headed toward the door without a backward glance.
"Jacob!" she cried.
He paused with his hand on the doorknob. "Go to sleep, Bells. Tomorrow we'll just pretend this never happened. Okay, honey?"
He didn't wait for her response.
Jacob deserved a fucking Emmy. And two or three Oscars. A Tony. Maybe even one of those surfboards that some b-list association gave out (the Narcoleptics Choice Awards, or something).
It had been two weeks since That Night, and Jacob had not only continued seeing Bella on a regular basis, but had managed to do so without staring at her legs every time she entered or left a room or engaging in any awkward silences.
At breakfast the morning after That Night, Bella had tried to bring up what had happened.
"Jake, I think we talk about last night. I want to apologize. It was wrong and you were right—about me, not about you. You aren't selfish," she'd said.
He had taken another bite of eggs and said, "Will you pass me the butter?"
And that had been the end of that conversation—permanently, if Jacob had his way, and it seemed that he did. After that initial hiccup, Bella hadn't tried talking about it again, and things had returned to almost normal.
Minus Embry.
He was still being a douche. Even though he'd returned to school that Monday, Embry didn't acknowledge Jacob or Quil's existence in class. He didn't acknowledge anyone's existence except for Mad Paul and Jared's. They walked around with matching haircuts and matching disregard, and the even sat together—discussing what color blouse went best with Sam's eyes, Jacob hypothesized. But he hadn't gotten close enough to properly eavesdrop.
The one time Jacob had tried approaching Embry, he'd brushed him off and shot him a stern look that Embry usually used to say, "Fuck off, I'm studying." It was defensive, not aggressive, and left Jacob feeling lost.
Bella was being a trooper. She was quieter and more reserved than normal but hadn't broken down since That Night, at least, not that Jacob could tell, and Bella wasn't one to keep that level of pain to herself. (She liked to think that she did a good job of suffering in silence, but just because she didn't talk about feeling shitty, didn't mean it didn't show. The lip gnawing and gloomy stares into the middle distance usually gave her away.)
She kept coming to La Push to hang out. Kept calling Embry's house every day only for his mom to answer and say he wasn't in or wouldn't come to the phone. Jacob assumed Bella was too wounded from their last face-to-face confrontation to risk going over there in person. She was waiting, like Jacob was waiting, for Embry to come to his senses, to get through whatever funk he was in and come begging to have her back. Not that Bella would ever openly admit that was what she was doing. But it was obvious. She hadn't given up on them—on Embrella—yet.
Because Jacob knew that if she had, he'd be dealing with something a lot worse than the occasional moments of longing silence.
When Bella's birthday came, and La Push was too silent and foreign, they left and made a spontaneous trip to the junkyard. What should have been a few gratuitous hours of window shopping for Jacob quickly turned into some sort of post-break-up/mid-life crisis for Bella, who decided that it was imperative she buy two scraps of metal and that Jacob turn them into functioning motorcycles for them to go gallivanting around on through La Push—and other areas Charlie wasn't likely to catch them in.
It was a reckless idea, Jacob knew, but when Bella smiled up him for the first time in days, there wasn't much to do be done about it. They lugged the scrap-metal-wishes-they-were-bikes back to Jacob's garage.
And the world kept spinning.
"This movie sucks balls."
"Yeah. Spaceballs."
Snickers.
"Congratulations, you've finally attained a sixth grader's sense of humor. Soon you'll be able to outwit the furniture."
"Mel Brooks would appreciate my jokes."
"Hardly an impressive endorsement considering he wrote, directed, and starred in this piece of shit."
Leah and Seth's bickering came from the couch behind Jacob, who was lying on the floor atop a heap of cushions and blankets. Bella was lying to his left, and Quil was sitting in the recliner on her other side, eyes wide and following the action on the television intently. It was Saturday evening at the Clearwater's, and they'd decided to forgo the usual game night agenda of poker, kemps, Taboo, and Dirty Minds in favor of movies. (It was implicitly understood that without Embry they had an odd number of players, but no one wanted to poke around that Chinese finger trap, so they just agreed that they were all just really tired.) Fortunately—or unfortunately if you were Leah—Seth had gotten first pick, so they weren't stuck watching some estrogen orgy like Ten Things I Hate About You or Ever After, which Leah and Bella had been eyeing respectively.
It didn't take much mental exertion to watch Spaceballs. It was simple. It was funny. It was perverse. And the lead female had nice boobs. Jacob didn't think it was fair to demand any more than that from a movie.
Usually he wouldn't have had a problem relaxing and letting his mind slowly regress to the hormone-driven and half-witted state of teenage boyhood, where accidental references to genetalia were the pinnacle of male humor and never sounded contrived. UsuallyJacob found comfort in the mindlessness of being Quil for an hour and thirty minutes, knowing that when the credits began rolling, he'd gain back all of his IQ points and self-respect. Usually.
But not that night.
"Jacob." Bella nudged him with an elbow.
"Hm?"
"Are you okay?" she murmured.
"Why?"
"You've been staring at my feet for five minutes."
Had he? Jacob was in fact looking at her socked feet. He'd been noticing how when they were lying side-by-side, Bella's feet-stopped at the middle of his calves. (No wonder she had so much trouble staying up straight! He'd fall over too if his feet were as small as hers.) But he'd only been doing that for, like, a second.
"You sure about that?"
She nodded. "Yeah."
Damn. He wouldn't allow himself to look at her legs, so he was staring at her feet? What. The. Fuck.
Dear God. Somehow—in the last ten minutes—he'd subconsciously developed a foot fetish specifically for Bella Swan's size six feet. How did she not realize what she did to him? He couldn't keep his eyes off her fucking feet. Did it really take him putting his hands inside her underwear and grinding against her hot…
Abort!
But it didn't really count as a fetish if he didn't feel turned on. It was okay to just look, right? It wasn't like he was having dirty thoughts about them. Although, they probably were one of the few parts of her body he'd never touched before, and there was something kinda sexy about the height of the arch whenever she extended the ball of her foot. His mouth would probably fit there perfectly…
You are a sick man, Jacob Black. Seek professional help. Immediately.
All this when they were covered by cute, little no-show socks. Imagine if they'd been naked feet.
"And you look kind of flushed," Bella continued cautiously, and he was not imagining the apprehension in her voice.
I promise your feet are not making me hot and bothered.
"I do feel sorta warm."
Bella frowned, but Jacob had trouble focusing on the gesture. It was as if his eyes couldn't decide where on her face to look, and the edges were all blurry. He felt…funny.
Her fingers only grazed his forehead before jerking back. "Holy crow, Jake, you're burning up!"
Seth's face appeared above them. "You sick, man?"
Quil held up a finger. "Shut up. The Dink-Dink's are on."
"You look awful, man. Maybe you should lie down."
"He is lying down," Leah muttered and tossed another piece of popcorn in her mouth. "Bill Pullman was so much hotter in Independence Day."
Bella's hand tugged on his. "How do you feel?"
"Um…fuzzy?"
Quil wrenched around in the chair. "Jesus Christ. You guys talked over the entire song."
Bella grabbed a spare pillow, fluffed it, and added it to the one already behind Jacob's head. "Well, stay still and I'll go get you a cold glass of water and a popsicle. You still have those Dreamsicles in the freezer, don't you, Leah?"
Oh, no. Bella was maximizing into mother mode, which was like beast mode but with an apron. Soon she'd be ladling him soup, taking his temperature, and pressing a washcloth to his face—all actions which would require her putting her hands on his body for extended periods of time. What if he started staring at her feet again? If it happened once, you could write it off as temporary insanity, but after a second time there'd probably be some requirement to seek out a Foot Fetish Anonymous group.
"Thanks, Bells, but I think I'm just going to head home. Catch up on some sleep."
She watched in concern as he got to his feet and stretched. "You sure you're well enough to walk back alone?"
He waved her off. "Sure sure. Just tired."
But Jacob was far from tired. In fact, as his blood started pumping through his body more rigorously, he felt a surge of energy and a renewed sense of awareness. Everything seemed sharper and warmer somehow. It was like an adrenaline rush. On steroids.
Bella nodded reluctantly and settled back down in the blankets—feet tucked under her legs, thankfully. "Okay. Just call one of us when you get home, all right?"
Hand pressed to his chest to confirm that it was indeed the sound of his heart pounding wildly in his ears, Jacob nodded absently before leaving the house.
It took Jacob twice as long to make the usual 10 minute hike home from the Clearwaters'. He stumbled into the front door hearing nothing but the sounds of his gasping breaths and stumbling footsteps. He blinked against the brightness of the lights. Blindly he made his way into the kitchen, groped for the phone, and punched in number he'd memorized long ago.
Bella answered after the first ring. "Jacob?"
Who else?
"Yeah," he said instead, not understanding why he was so damn short of breath. "I'm home."
"Are you…okay?"
Jacob squeezed his eyes shut, tried focus and hear past the buzzing between his ears. "What…yeah, I'm fine. Gonna go to sleep."
"Did you take something? There's a white bottle with a green label in the bathroom cabinet. The permanent marker has worn off a bit, but it's—"
"I know where the bottle is," Jacob interrupted, rubbing at his eyes. "I'll make sure to take some."
"You might also want to—"
"Goodnight, Bella."
The trembling in Jacob's hand was so bad that it took him three tries to get the receiver in the cradle. He collapsed against the refrigerator, head braced against the laminate. The shaking spread from his hands up his arms, to his shoulders, down his back and through his legs. Something quivered inside his chest, something that wasn't his heart, and goddamn…it felt like his skin was crawling…
"Jacob?"
He knew Billy was sitting in the kitchen entrance but couldn't turn, couldn't lift his head.
The heat.
The shaking.
The bones of his body melting inside of him.
"Jacob, what's wrong?" Billy's voice was closer now, strained.
"I can't…I can't…"
I can't even think.
"Jacob. Jacob, get outside. Now."
But his body wasn't his own. His vision swam in black and then red.
"Jacob!"
A growl burned his lungs and ripped through the air.
The world fell sideways.
AN: Next chapter should be coming this Friday or Saturday, so you wont be left in suspense for too long. ;) Everyone have a great (and safe) New Year!