I don't own Twilight, Stephanie does. I just play with the characters.
Paul POV
The rest of the barbecue went as it always did, everyone engorging themselves in food, and mindless talking. I couldn't seem to keep my mind off of Bella and a few of the guys decided they were going to be using that as there new source of comic relief.
Yes I Paul Meraz have handed over a piece of my man card . And I haven't even had a decent conversation with the girl yet. Hell I scared her off 10 minutes after showing up.
"Hey guys, I'm heading over to Bella's, I'll meet you up at the cliffs." Jake said walking through the front yard in the direction of Chief Swans place.
And we all headed up the cliffs. My own personal paradise.
See everyone here knows me as the hard ass. The one with 'issues'. I've found that being an ass hole is a whole hell of a lot easier in dealing with shit than anything else.
A few minutes later the girls showed up. Guess the finished packing up the barbeque. Having bonfires were the best way to get out of clean up duty when there's a barbeque. Sam makes the younger ones stay behind to help. While Jared, Seth, and me usually come up first to gather wood and what not.
But tonight was different. Tonight Bella was going to be learning that all the legends and 'stories' that she heard a kid were all real. And I was scared shitless that she was going to high tale it the other way. Yeah I can only imagine how that was going to work out.
"Hey Bella guess what, all those stories you were told growing up. Well there all true. Me and these ass holes around this pit are all big fucking dogs. Oh and by the way, fate decided you are my soul mate. Why don't we go back to my place and make it official."
Yeah I can totally see how that wont freak out or piss anyone off. Fucking hell how am I going to do this.
"Calm down Paul. It'll be alright. Geez take a fuckin breather." Jared said.
"I know man. Sorry. Just freaking out here a little. What if she doesn't take this well?"
"We don't know if she will. We just have to tell her and see where it goes from there." He said while gathering more wood.
I walked through the trees on the other side of the ledge that I like to sit and think on. While breaking through the tree line I heard someone singing quietly. And the voice was angelic. I sat back and watched as she pushed her arms out to the side, mimicking a bird with its wings spread.
It's not far to never-never land
No reason to pretend
And if the wind is right
You can find the joy of innocence again
Oh' the canvas can do miracles
Just you wait and see
Believe me
God she was beautiful. I didn't want to scare her by sneaking up behind her so I stayed back a little.
"Where'd you learn that?" I said, breaking the silence.
"It's a song by Christopher Cross, called Sailing. When ever I hear it I think of this place." she said still looking out over the water.
I took my chance and walked up to the ledge and sat down beside her. She looked so peaceful right now. A complete one-eighty from the girl I met earlier. And because of it she seemed even more beautiful.
"Why this place?" I said after a few moments.
"I don't know really. Whenever I think I'm not going to make it through the day, I think of this." She said waving her hand around. I realized in that moment that Jake was right. Something bad had happened to her. I wanted to know. I wanted to help ease some of that pain that I saw in her eyes.
"I don't think you can get closer to heaven than this. The wind blowing, the sound of the birds in the distance, the waves crashing on the rocks. The colors of the sunset. It doesn't get much better for me. And when I close my eyes and take it all in all I feel is serenity."
Its funny how I always thought of this place as my own little piece of heaven on earth. I was glad in a way that I wasn't the only one that thought that though.
"That's pretty deep Ms. Swan." I couldn't help but add in. She seemed so lost in thought. In a way, lost in her own mind.
She looked up at me then, while I was studying her features. I was trying my hardest to figure her out.
"Yeah, well what I've been through, and with what I've seen, a little piece of this feels like heaven. There's no worries here. You can just 'be'. she replied.
That's all I needed to know. Now I know that something bad happened. I could try to be her rock, try to help her if she wanted it. If she'll let me in.
"You know you can talk to me if you want, about anything you want. I wont judge you." I told her, just hoping that if she needed anyone I would be here. I just hope she'll come to me when she's ready.
"Thanks. Maybe I'll take you up on that sometime. But right now I really want a couple of roasted marshmallows. Its been a long time since I've had one." Breaking me from my Bella trance, I giggled as a stood up and offered my hand to help her up.
She took it almost immediately and I felt a warmth spread from my hand to the rest of my body. We walked hand in hand back to the fire. I let her hand go and sat down on the piece of driftwood that I usually set up for myself. I didn't want to pressure her into sitting with me, but when she came over and placed herself beside me I couldn't help the smile that broke across my face.
Billy decided to start the stories and as he was telling them I was roasting marshmallows and passing them over to Bella. I don't even think she noticed while she was eating them because she was so in tune with what Billy was saying. She smiled a lot, and when Billy started talking about the cold ones, I noticed she started shaking a little bit.
I wrapped my arms around her, tucking her into my side. Giving her a little of my body heat to help warm her up a little bit.
I couldn't help but smile. This felt like home to me. My background….my history….didn't mean anything anymore. Nothing mattered but her.
I looked across the fire to where Sam and Emily were sitting. They both smiled at me and I prayed that we would be like that. I finally know what the imprint is like. Why Sam is the way he is with Emily. Why Jared is the way he is with Kim. Quil….well I couldn't help but chuckle at that one. His imprint was only 2 but even then I didn't understand the connection between them. Even if it was just a big brother type connection. I do now.
I understand how you want the person sitting next to you to be happy. And seeing the sadness in Bella's eyes, even when she was trying to make everyone think she was happy, only made me hurt to help.
"Bella." Billy said, pulling me out of my self induced brain funk.
Here we go. I kept repeating to myself. God I hope she takes this well.
"We need to tell you some things." Please, please, please. Don't freak out.
"Go ahead Uncle Billy." She said nonchalantly.
"We need you to stay calm, and listen to everything we say."
Someone needed to calm me the fuck down. God I hope she takes this ok.
"O.K." She said.
"The reason we brought you here tonight was not only to retell the legends. We also brought you here to tell you, that these legends are all true. Cold ones exist. Shape shifters exist. And they exist around us tonight."
I took a quick glance at her to see how she was doing. Internally I was coming up with a back up plan to rectify the fuck up if she does decide to take off.
It was too quiet though. Her mouth was hanging open just a little bit. And the next words she said surprised the hell out of all of us.
"I know."
And then she blacked out. Falling backwards, I quickly grabbed her and laid her onto one of the blankets Emily brought.
"What the fuck just happened? How the hell did she know it was all true? Someone please help me out here, I'm kind of freaking the fuck out." I said. I knew I was going to phase.
"Paul, go in the woods. Embry, Quil, Jake, your closest to her, go with him. I'll get Bella home and we'll try and figure out what's going on."
I made it into the woods and barely got my shorts off before I phased. I heard the other 3 come up behind me so I turned to them.
"How did she know." Quil said
"I'm not entirely sure, but we need to know what happened to her in Phoenix." Jake said
"Did you see her stomach?" Embry said.
I couldn't help but growl. I didn't like anyone looking at any part of her.
"Oh shut the fuck up. When you picked her up her shirt rode up a bit. Dude her stomach has quite a few scars on it." Jake said
"Well we cant just come out an ask her. She's fucking sad man. Have you looked into her eyes, I know I haven't known her as long as you guys, but I can see the pain there. I can feel the pain there." I said
"Well we'll just have to sit back and wait. Get her to trust us enough to tell us what happened. I know I'm not going to be the one to come out and ask her. Hell I just got her back I'm not taking any chances with her leaving because the curiosity got the best of me." Embry said.
"Yeah your right. Lets get back over to the chiefs place and check up on her." I said making a mad dash across the wooded area in the direction of her house.
When we entered the yard we all phased back, pulled our shorts up and ran through the back door.
"Is she alright, where is she" I said walking through the kitchen and into the living room.
There she was laying on the couch, still unconscious from the cliffs.
"Has she woken at all?" Embry said.
"No, not yet. We figured we'd wait until you all got back. I figured Paul would want to be here when we tried to wake her up."
He was right. I did want to be there. I moved slowly over to the couch and kneeled down on the floor in front of her. She started whimpering a little , saying words in her sleep. Mostly broken but I did catch a few. "No", "Stop". "Don't want to hurt any more." The last one got everyone to perk up quickly. And I started rubbing small circles on her hand.
"Bella. Bella hunny wake up." I tried. Still nothing,
"Bella, come on. Everyone's here and they want to make sure your ok." I tried again.
She still wasn't responding so I grabbed her shoulders and started shaking her. After a few minutes of this she shot up quickly and screamed. Then she started crying.
"Hun you ok? Why are you crying? What's the matter?" I started firing off questions, not really giving her the chance to answer them.
She looked at me and gave me a small smile and then looked up to see everyone standing around us. Concern all over there faces.
"I'm fine you guys, Really. Just tired." She said
"That didn't look fine Bells. What the hell happened out there, and how the hell did you know about all the legends being true." Her father spoke up.
"Memories dad. Sometimes they get a bit overwhelming. Really I'm fine. I'm going to go to bed. I'll talk to you more tomorrow." She said getting up, and walking across the living room.
"I will say one thing though." She said when she made it to the stairs.
"I've had my run in with a few cold ones." And she disappeared up the stairs.
Charlie turned to everyone and he had an expression on his face I've never seen on him. Pissed, absolutely livid. He walked across the room and grabbed the phone off the hook.
Dialing a number that I know wasn't local because he had to put the area code in first he waited for someone to pick up.
"Hello" someone on the end said
"Renee don't lie to me, what the fuck happened to Bella 2 years ago."