II. Bruises
It doesn't take long for Jacob to figure out that Bella doesn't like to watch romantic films. They sit at his house or in movie theatres watching the most brutal and horrific movies, ones with zombies getting dismembered or aliens clawing into people's flesh or diseased dogs with red eyes snapping their sharp teeth, ones that always end with the screen filled with blood like an abstract painting with red paint thrown aimlessly all over the canvas, and she never even flinches. Only once during a movie has she ever gasped and covered her eyes with her hands, impulsively leaning her head into his chest to hide it further, and then recovered quickly to look up at his amused, smirking face and explain apologetically, "I don't like needles."
But if a couple starts kissing in a movie they're watching, or even holding hands or grabbing onto each other in fear, he's noticed she will suddenly become even more detached from the watching experience than she usually always is, looking down absently like she can't handle seeing it. Sometimes she'll even start to uncomfortably squirm in her seat a little like she feels like she's going to be sick.
It's just strange to him, now that he knows everything. That freak boyfriend of hers was just like a creature out of the kind of movies she has a taste for now. Yet none of the scenes of people getting attacked by them hit close to home. It's nothing about the Cullens' monstrous nature that scares her. It's love and intimacy that she's learned to be afraid of. Sometimes when she reacts like that to a movie they're watching together, he feels an impulsive, strangely protective need to do something - put his arm around her or take her hand securely, somehow convey the words I'm here and I'm not going anywhere. For what it's worth.
But then he always realizes his complete helplessness. It does no good to help a bruise heal by putting more pressure on the same place.