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Chapter 14-

Jasper's POV-

"Edward!"

Bella woke up with a start, the first word out of her mouth being that of her ex-boyfriend's and my brother's.

Was I disappointed?

Probably, yes.

"Jasper." She noticed my presence, an uncomfortable smile creeping onto her face as she pushed a strand of her hair behind her ear, a very common mannerism for the human she had once been. "Um, why are you in my bedroom? Where is Edward?"

Bedroom?

"Look around you, Bella." I frowned.

What was the last thing she remembered?

We were currently in the middle of the woods, Bella having just opened her eyes after a gruesome pain of three days that had changed her life forever.

Wasn't she starving? Or feeling the maniacal urge to kill?

"Oh." She stated. "Um, why am I in the middle of…well…nowhere? Where is Edward?"

Ok. This was going to be difficult.

"What is the last thing you remember?"

She looked terribly confused. Or probably mentally debating over my sanity. "Um, I guess, I remember Edward promising that he will be the first person I see when I open my eyes in the morning, considering today is my birthday?"

"Which birthday?"

No. This was not good.

"Jasper…I don't…"

"Please answer me." I begged.

"Eighteen. I turned eighteen today. I thought everyone knew that."

No.

Fuck.

I winced, shutting my eyes tight.

Bella had forgotten the past ten years of her life?

Now, this wasn't uncommon. It was a common side-effect of the change that occurred when a human entered our world. Alice had woken up with a clean slate, never to recover her memories fully.

Would Bella too never remember completely these ten years of her life?

And her kids?

Had she forgotten them too?

I did not know whether to feel sad or relieved.

"Now, will you please tell me, where Edward is? I don't want any surprises. I made that rather clear! Have they sent you to keep me distracted while those two evil twins plan something embarrassing and over-the- top for me? I will never forgive them, if they do." She folded her arms over her chest in finality.

"Actually," I sighed, running a hand through my hair.

Come on, Jasper. This is your chance.

"Edward is dead, Bella."

She wasn't going back or even pining over that jackass. Period.

She was my mate.

Mine.

I had kept it hidden for rather too long. But it ended today.

"What?" she whispered, her eyes wide like saucers. "How? When? I don't understand."

"Please calm down, Bella." I took her in my arms, rubbing a hand over her back.

God. This felt so good.

I was going to hell.

"It happened a few nights ago. You remember Victoria? She came back to take revenge for the death of her mate. All of them are dead. She came with an army. I was out hunting at that time."

"Alice didn't see them coming?" she looked devastated.

What was I doing?

"No. She didn't."

No choice now. The first lie was said; I had to keep climbing this mountain of lies. Or else my mate would never trust me again.

"Oh." Bella looked as if she wanted to cry. "Why can't I cry, Jasper? I am not as heartless."

"About that."

Another lie? What was I doing?

"Well, Victoria got to you before Edward could. You are now one of us."

She did not respond verbally, looking down at her body in newfound curiosity and disbelief, a hand raised to check whether it sparkled in the sun or not. "Explains the itch in my throat."

"Bella, you must be thirsty…"

She waved me off. "Please tell me more, how many of them were there in that army? Poor Esme. They got to her, too?"

"Bella, I don't want to talk about it." I couldn't keep lying to her. "Let's not talk about it." Ever again.

"I am sorry." She gulped. "I am being insensitive. You lost Alice, too."

Typical Bella. Even if such a painful moment for her- had it all been true- she was thinking about me.

"Yeah, about that…um…Alice and I were never together." Finally, some truth in this sea of lies. "It was just physical between us. We were never mates."

"So, she was like a companion to you?"

"Yes." I nodded my head in agreement. "We both knew that it wasn't to last. Whenever we would have found our respective mates, we would have gone our individual ways."

"But the intimacy between you both…" she trailed off in nervousness.

"Again, simply physical. I have never loved Alice. And the feeling was reciprocated. We were just good friends." Who had sex.

Made it easier for me when I wanted some alone time from the family. Alice never uttered a word when I decided to go and live with Peter and Charlotte for a few months or years at a time. She simply built physical relationships with Carlisle or Emmett for those durations.

What?

Carlisle wasn't a saint. No one in that house was.

And an eternity was too long to be with just one person.

Sure, they were loyal- in a way- to one another, but all of them had had other 'relations' in the past. Even Esme. She and nomad Garrett had had the longest fling out of everyone in the family. They had been together for a decade, with Carlisle getting it from Tanya during those years. In fact, Alice had been worried that Esme and Garrett were getting rather serious. There had even been the spare thought that she was thinking of leaving Carlisle. Nothing had materialized on that, though. It wasn't that easy to leave your mate.

And don't even get me started on Rosalie.

Girl-boy. She had been with both. Both together also at times.

She was a sex-maniac.

Emmett, too.

They lived for sex.

Of course, we never told Bella all of this. She would have run for the hills. Edward, the virgin, shied away from all this nudity, or as he termed it, sins. Hence, she was never told the truth. Being a vampire meant having an unusual sex drive. All of us were affected by it. All but Edward, it seemed.

I sometimes wondered if he was a closeted asexual. He sure behaved like it.

No wonder, he had lied to Bella about having a mate, when she had given him that speech about having moved on in life.

He couldn't have admitted the truth that he had pined over her for all these years. That would have been plenty embarrassing.

"Jasper, what are we going to do now?" she looked at me with such trust in her eyes. I was an asshole.

Just then, my phone chimed with an incoming message.

'Get her here.'

Peter, of course.

'Rosalie got her way out of it.'

As was expected.

'Made sure to keep her real thoughts hidden, so mind-fucker wouldn't know a thing. And didn't plan till the last minute. All clear. Believed her lie.'

Okay.

That just made things for me easier.

No one was out there looking for Bella, at least.

'Will be there in a few weeks. Want to keep her to myself.' I messaged back, shoving my phone back into my pockets.

"Well, first we feed, and then we go on a road trip." I let my hand rest over her shoulder, my mate finally all mine.