I'm so sorry it has taken me so long to post. I had exams and started my second story because it was lighter than this chapter and I couldn't get this one to go right!

I hope you like it, and I will be posting again in the next few days.

Thanks for reading, reviewing, alerting and favoriting. But most of all thanks for putting up with me!

Chapter Eleven

Bella's POV

My entrance home went down about as well as I thought it would. That is, like a lead balloon.

"Isabella Marie McCarty!" shouted Dad as soon as I walked in the door "What in the hell do you think you're wearing? You look like something out of an MTV video!"

"I helped this guy from detention get his Camaro started after school and took off my jersey while I was doing. No biggie." I shrugged, hoping he'd let it go.

"There's a guy involved? You were around a guy, a guy who was in detention for being some kind of cretin dressed like that?" Dad's fists clenched involuntarily and he let out a low growl which would have been scary if I hadn't grown up in a family of vampires.

"Did you get the Camaro started?" asked Mom looking up from the Vogue she was flicking through with Alice. Mom and Alice were slightly more relaxed about these things than Dad, Edward and Jazz who had a propensity to overreact when the words 'male' and 'Isabella' were used in the same sentence.

"That's all you have to say?" spluttered Dad.

"She's a teenager Emmett. She goes to a coed school. There is going to be interaction with members of the opposite sex whether we like it or not." Mom then muttered something at Vampire speed which seemed to appease Dad and Edward but just pissed me off. I hated when they talked about me despite the fact I was in the room. She appraised me again with one eyebrow raised. "Though I do think that next time Alice takes you shopping she should help you find some more age appropriate attire. You are only fourteen after all."

"What was he thinking Edward?" Dad turned to Edward.

"Nothing savory, I'll tell you later when Bella isn't in the room. You should stay away from him Bella. He's not good for you." Edward looked at me beseechingly.

"Ugh, I'm not a child, I'm sure I can cope. Maybe you shouldn't listen in on people if you don't want to hear what they're thinking? And I'll hang out with whoever I want to hang out with!" I snapped and stomped up to my room, slamming my bedroom door shut behind me, effectively disproving the fact that I was not a child. But it made me feel better anyway.

Unfortunately, I didn't heed Edward's advice. In fact, I completely ignored it. James and I became virtually inseparable. After fixing his engine that first day after detention, James had me take another look at his engine and it became a thing after school to me to go to his place and work on his car. Once his car was finished, I started fixing up the engines on some of his friends cars. Part of me realized I was being used, but a louder part of me didn't care. Despite my obvious crush on him, James always played it cool in front of his friends. He never held my hand and told me to keep to myself the fact that we had made out a few times. Part of me thought that he was trying to protect me from his friends tormenting me for it, a bigger part of me knew that wasn't the case. I told the bigger part of me to shut up. Whenever James moved to kiss me, I sent a false future to Alice where I ducked out from under the kiss. I knew it was wrong to block Alice, she kept our family safe and she had to see the real future to protect us, but I figured a teeny tiny false future for the five minutes I got my pash on was no big deal.

Mom started to worry as well as Dad. Not necessarily because I was hanging out with a boy, because she trusted me not to do anything and because she thought Alice would see if I was going to do anything stupid. Mom worried because I was letting myself be 'walked all over' as she put it. We had several arguments over the fact that she had raised me to be an independent young woman. She was wary of James too though. Whether it was because Edward the tell-tale told her what he was thinking, or because Jasper told her his moods or just some Mothers Intuition, I didn't know. Alice was the only one who didn't seem to be anti my relationship with James. Not that she seemed thrilled by it, but she kept saying it had to happen this way, whatever that meant.

I started doing things I would normally never do. I smoked cigarettes, I skipped class. Anything to be accepted by James and his friends. Week by week my family became more anxious. But my family were held in place by Alice's visions which weren't clear, but simply lead her to believe that things had to play out as they were. That didn't make anyone happier though.

"I could kill him. Follow his scent to his house and drain him so we wouldn't have to put up with him corrupting my Bella Boo" said Dad as I sat at the top of the stairs eavesdropping the night of my latest big transgression.

"Emmett be reasonable. You haven't drained anyone since your singer and that was decades ago. You aren't going to give in for that little punk. Nothing will happen to her, she won't block Alice again and this was the first time she has." Mom tried to soothe him.

My latest transgression had been to block Alice so that James and I could go and get tattoos. Mine was low on my right hip, an intricate Celtic cross. I thought it was awesome and ironic seeing as in four years I would be a vampire. The rest of my family thought I was insane. They were pissed as hell, all of them, and it took a lot to get Nana and Gramps pissed. Even more than the tattoo, they were pissed that I had been blocking Alice. She was our safety net and with me giving her false visions, she wouldn't be able to see anything bad happening to one of us. I hadn't thought it would matter for an hour or so. But after the blow up from this one I wasn't ready to admit to the whole me and James pashing and me blocking Alice from it fiasco. So now Alice and Nana were disappointed in me and everyone else was pissed. Not a good feeling. I fingered the Cullen Crest locket around my neck and wondered why I insisted on hurting my family for a guy who was clearly using me. That and why I had thought I would be able to hide the bloody smell of a new tattoo from a house full of vampires.

"Then let's just leave!" seethed Dad. "I can't drain him, we can't kill him, so let's go start over somewhere new. I don't like this, I don't trust him. It's like he's got her brainwashed!"

"It's an infatuation" responded Mom. "She's never had any friends outside of us before and she's a teenage human girl. She's flattered by the attention and doesn't want to see the fact he's using her. She's a smart cookie. She'll snap out of. Have faith in her Em."

"We can't leave yet." Alice piped up. "It hasn't happened yet. I can't tell what it is, but I'll know when it does. Something needs to happen before we can leave. It makes her stronger, leads her towards her future."

"Do you know what her future is?" asked Mom.

I could hear the smirk in Alice's voice as she responded. "I do. But that's for me to know and the rest of you to live out. All I'm going to say is that she makes the family even happier in the future that we were when she first came into our lives."

"Alright then." Gramps cut in. "We stay, and we let this play out how it is supposed to. But we will all be keeping an extra special eye on Isabella because although things need to play out how they should, we will not let anything hurt her. And in order for that to happen, there will be no more tampering with Alice's visions Isabella."

I gasped as he poked his head out the living room door and looked up to where I was sitting on the landing.

"Did you really think you could eaves drop on vampires my precious child?" he asked me. "Go to bed, get some sleep, you have school in the morning."

The next few weeks passed without incident. I still spent time with James, but was getting on better with my family too. It was like we had come to impasse. They hated him, I thought I really liked him and Alice knew that it had to happen like this. My Dad and Edward still glared at him whenever he came near them, Jasper helped them by sending him large doses of fear and Mom and Alice simply refused to acknowledge his existence, in much the same way that he continued to refuse to acknowledge mine when we were with his friends.

Then one Thursday my family decided they were going hunting for the weekend a little further afield than normal. I had a geometry test to study for that was coming up on the Monday and Alice foresaw no issues with them leaving me at home alone on Friday night, they would be back late Saturday night. Inviting James over never crossed my mind. My family draining my pseudo boyfriend didn't seem like a great way of staying in said pseudo relationship. If I even wanted to stay in it.

James however had other ideas once he found out about my being at home alone. And James was drunk. And Drunk James was even more of a douche than sober James, and he always got what he wanted. I accidentally let slip early on Friday evening by text that I was home alone, but studying and wanted some time alone. James had argued it for a bit, but I had held firm and he had dropped it. Or so I thought.

I was studying for the aforementioned Geometry test at 10pm that night with my laptop on my knees in Edward's bed. I know I'd given up sleeping there a while ago, but they were all away, and it was comforting. Besides, no one would know except Alice who would see it, and Edward who would smell that I had been in there. But they were my two closest confidants, and neither would say anything to the others. Not that anyone would care. But I just felt awkward about it. I had just settled myself in with a cup of tea and put Edward's piano songs in the I-Pod Dock when there was a knock on the door. That in itself was odd. The Cullen's never had anyone knock on their door. I snuggled down in the covers and held my breath. Not a particularly useful thing to do but for some reason I felt that the stiller I held, the less chance there was that whoever was out there would realize I was in here.

Then my phone vibrated causing me to leap about three foot in the air and spill hot tea all over myself and most of Edward's bed. Hoping for Alice with a vision of who was outside, I flipped it open eagerly. James. And he was the one outside. Shit. Fuck. Shit. No, this was fine. Alice would see that I hadn't invited him here. I'd just go downstairs and tell him to leave. Alice would see that too, and I wouldn't get in trouble. Sure enough on my way down the stairs to deal to James, a text from Alice came through telling me I was doing the right thing, but that the boys had started to head back towards home anyway. What Alice couldn't see until I had told James to leave and he had decided his next course of action, was how he would react.

"James!" I opened the door. "You can't be here. How did you even find out where I live? You have to go, I'm studying, and my Family will be home soon." That was a lie. I had no idea how far away they were. I took a deep breath. "Have you been drinking?" It was a rhetorical question. I could smell it on his breath.

"You lying to me little girl?" he slurred. "You said they were away until tomorrow, so I'm coming in."

Oh hell no. I wanted him gone. Now. Looking at him swaying slightly in the porch light all I could see were the negatives about James Hunter. His stringy, greasy, dirty blonde hair. The big black bags under his eyes and the sallowness of his skin. He was pale, but not in the good way that my vampires were, in a way that made him look slightly ill. His teeth were slightly yellowing from smoking for too long. His eyes were bloodshot and he was leering at me. This was the guy I had been pushing my family away for for the last few months? Was I so desperate for friends outside my family that I would follow this asshat around like a lost puppy despite the fact he was blatantly using me and didn't respect my wishes? Apparently I was. God I was pathetic. But not anymore. But I didn't want my family to see me being bullied anymore, they had seen me being pathetic for long enough. So foolishly underestimating James, I did what I had sworn not to do. I blocked Alice and showed her me telling James I was sick of being his lap dog, him leaving and me going to bed. Which to be fair was what I envisioned happening, just with a bit more argument. What I didn't see was what happened next.

"I'm not lying James, they changed their plans. And besides that, I don't want you to come in. I don't want you here. In fact, I don't want you anymore. You treat me like crap. I've been your freaking mechanic for the last few months and gotten nothing in return. You won't acknowledge me in front of your friends, I'm better than this. I'm better than you."

"You've wanted me since the day you met me, and I think it's about time you got your wish. You've been teasing me for months, never letting it get too far. You love playing the innocent card don't you? Never letting me go further than a few kisses. Well I know you're up for it. I know you want it. So it's time to stop being a cocktease and give me what I came here to get."

"Leave. Now." My voice came off shakier than I had intended. Had I been leading him on? I didn't think so. I mean, yeah I liked him, wanted to kiss him, but I didn't think I'd ever given the impression of wanting to go further than that, I was fourteen for Christ's sake.

"Oh little girl, I'm not going anywhere. I'm coming in." he pushed past me and grabbed my wrist as he dragged me into the house. He pushed me up against the wall and I got my fist free and swung for his nose. This was not going to happen to me. I was not going to let this happen to me. He caught my fist and pinned my hand above my head. Somewhere in this the vision I was sending Alice must have dropped because the phone which I had dropped when James grabbed me was vibrating wildly across the marble floor of the entrance hall. I brought my knee up hard and fast, trying to make contact with his groin. He anticipated me before I made contact and moved himself out of my trajectory. He was stronger than me. I was fucked. So seriously fucked. I was scared, but a larger part of me was angry. Angry at myself for letting this happen and angry at James for doing this to me.

My vision clouded with red as I struggled and lashed out against James as best I could.

"Keep moving little girl. I like the feisty ones the best. It always feels better when they struggle." He rasped in my ear.

I lost it. Whether it was the implication he had done this before or the fact I knew exactly what he was intending to do to me, I don't know. I could sense the red haze that clouded my vision contracting and expanding. I don't know what happened or where it came from, but before I could event think, James bounced off me and flew into the wall opposite me, sliding down it and hitting the ground with a resounding crack. Had I done that? He didn't move. He didn't appear to be breathing. The red faded from my vision and I felt it worm its way back into the recesses of my mind. I curled into a little ball on the cold marble floor and cried.

I don't know how long James and I lay on our opposite sides of the marble floor, both still, the only sounds my breathing and the occasional sob. I vaguely remembered the front door almost flying off its hinges as Edward, always the fastest in the family, flew into the room and scooped me up into his arms, holding me tightly against his chest and rocking me back and forth like I was a little girl again. Hot on his tail were Dad and Jasper who both skidded to a halt when they saw James slumped, unmoving against the opposite wall. I remember Dad taking me from Edward and murmuring in my ear, but the words aren't clear, just loving little nothings to calm me down. I had stopped crying when Edward picked me up. Mom, Alice and my Grandparents were next on the scene. Mom scooped me up from Dad and flew me out of the room and upstairs, Alice hot on her tails. I was changed into a T Shirt of Edwards and my flannelette pj pants. The rocking motion continued and a piano started up playing my lullaby from the floor below, but no one spoke and I was grateful. I eventually fell asleep cradled in my Mother's arms with my face buried in her neck and my hands fisted in her long blonde hair.