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Thank you for all of the feedback on yesterday's chapter, it means a lot to me! Here's the next chapter! Happy reading!
Chapter Seven
She was coward and she knew it.
She'd called in sick after leaving the school in a rush on Wednesday. She'd told Mr. Molina that after getting to the school it had come over her. On Thursday she'd told him that it hadn't abated yet, and that she was bed ridden out of fear of having another fainting spell. And on Friday she'd told him that while she was still feeling under the weather, she would definitely be back in on Tuesday after the three day weekend for Labor day.
Isabella had been hot and cold all week in regard to her thoughts on Jacob Black. She never seemed to fully put him in a bad light because she had seen what had been in his eyes when he'd asked her if she was alright. She had seen the clear worry in his eyes. To some extent, Jacob cared very much for her, even if she didn't have an exact measurement. But why? That was something that Isabella had pondered over for the past three days as she'd puttered around her shabby apartment.
At first she had tried to distract herself from both her thoughts and the immense pain she felt in her chest. This was much worse than the times previous when it had appeared and she was concerned that she was developing some kind of respiratory issue. Although on the second day of being home she had finally managed to drag the sliver of glass, if not painfully, out of her palm. Now there was only a slice in her flesh that would take a little bit of time to heal it.
She tried to read her favorite books, she tried watching television. She even considered going into Seattle to go shopping. But she could not think of anything else but the way that Jacob Black's eyes had raced over her body, trying to find where she was hurt. To find out what he could do to help her. And the more she thought about it, the more abnormal it seemed to her.
He'd asked her if she was bleeding. What an odd question to ask unless you've seen someone hurt themselves. It was as if he knew she had an open wound because the air around them had whispered it to him. And that voice. That was something unique all on its own.
His voice had gotten deeper, and stronger, and even to her she knew that it was an order. There was no denying the unadulterated power that had laced his voice when he'd asked her what happened. And although it was a demand, it was not one made out of cruelty. She could see that he was frustrated, but not angry with her. His voice made her tremble, though not out of fear. It was a voice that her inner primal soul had familiarized itself with. She felt as though she knew that voice, she felt that the voice meant safety, especially for her. And as she had felt before, much to her embarrassment, it had awakened a lust inside of her. One that she hadn't truly felt before for a male, let alone during her previous sexual encounters.
But all of those details she had picked up on had truly explained things to her. She still did not understand why she felt the need to drive back to the reservation and bury herself in his arms. Isabella could not grasp why she felt as though she was going to split apart, though she had a hunch that if she were to go back to the school and be with Jacob, that it would ebb away almost immediately. And she could not understand, for the life of her why he truly cared about her so much. Why he was so frustrated and panicked with the thought of her being harmed in some way. Why he'd been so hurt when he'd finally heard him when she told him to stop. The thought of his hurt face in Isabella's mind stirred up a new wave of pain each time.
These were not normal things that were happening to her, and she didn't understand them. But as she hid herself away within her house for the last few days of the work-week she became more and more determined to find out why they were happening.
-8-
On Saturday morning she'd woken up early. After having three days to herself and to catch up on sleep, she felt like she no longer needed any kind of sleep. It also helped immensely that the feeling like she was about to split in half went away during the night-time hours. Though, during the day it was back with a full force, which, to her was still confusing. She knew that Jacob had something to do with it, but she needed more answers.
She'd rolled out of bed with the singular mission of preparing the food she'd promised to bring for Charlie's barbeque.
After she'd scrubber her hands and brought out all of the ingredients she quickly lost herself in the blur of mixing and adding ingredients. She still thought of Jacob, but her thoughts weren't nearly so vicious as they were a few days ago. They were now a calm, constant lull in the back of her mind. To be honest she'd realized that there was never a time when she wasn't thinking about Jacob in at least some way.
She wondered what he was doing with his friends, and where they would be. She wondered what they did for fun around the reservation. She wondered if some of the boys would be at Charlie's tomorrow, but she constantly thought about Jacob.
Twice Isabella had to try and find a bigger bowl for the enormous batch of cookies she had produced, and she wondered how long it would take to bake all of them. She put the first batch in around ten in the morning, and started on the pasta salad.
Throughout the day she continued to bake the cookies, switching out one batch after fifteen minutes for another one, and this went on for hours. She'd managed to finish the pasta salad, and clean her kitchen, and do all of the dishes while waiting for different batches. And she still had more cookie dough left in the bowl.
It was finally around four o'clock when the last batch came out of the oven. She'd filled almost ten plates with cooling cookies, and wondered how she was going to transport all of these cookies to Charlie's house. Granted, it wasn't too far of a drive, but still, that was a lot of food.
Isabella stared at the clock for a while and found that the throbbing in her chest had diminished once again. She was glad for it, and decided to get into some pajamas again. In her room she looked at her curtainless windows and was actually glad that both windows faced into the woods behind the apartment. She'd hate for one of her neighbors to see her stripping down.
She pulled off her shirt and jeans, slipping out of her dirty clothes. She released the girls from their confinement and sighed as she held them in her hands. She tried to apologize to them for forcing them into a bra for the entire day. The way they ached certainly meant that they weren't listening to her.
Releasing them she turned to her dresser underneath her windows and pulled out a soft blue camisole that she pulled over her head and grabbed a new pair of underwear from her top drawer. As she slipped the new pair on she felt a blazing heat slide up her spine. Her head lolled back on her shoulders as she let out an uncontrolled, breathy moan. The heat continued to slide through her veins at a tortuous pace. There was no escaping the feeling as it flowed through her body until it reached directly into her core. She felt the heat settle, and she was unsure of what it was, but it certainly felt better than anything she had ever experienced. Perhaps her lady bits were trying to tell her to get her act together and find someone to have sex with.
And yet, with this strange heat flowing through her body the only thing she was reminded of was the heat signature that Jacob carried with him. It was like he was a walking space heater, and it drew her towards him. She wanted to be immersed in that incredible heat while being wrapped in his arms. She wanted to feel his body covering hers like a blanket so that she would be completely safe and happy. She wondered what it would feel like to have his hot hands trace her curves, and wake up feeling his warm lips skimming across her shoulder. There were so many things that his heat made her want to do.
As she left her bedroom and walked into the living room she felt the heat slide back out of her body. It left her freezing and she wrapped herself up in her blanket. This house was such a piece of crap, that the heater now apparently worked in her bedroom, but ceased in the rest of the house. What a joke.
She plopped down on the couch and turned the television on to the news station and waited for the five o'clock news. She didn't even make it to then before she'd passed out on the couch. And in her dreams she lay peacefully in the burning hot arms of Jacob Black, and there was nothing to make her think it was wrong.
-8-
When Isabella woke up, it was bright in her living room. She had to squint from all of the sunshine flooding the room, and it was with a bit of confusion that she managed to register that it was actually a nice day, something that was almost non existent in the town of Forks.
The television was still on and some woman was babbling on about raising money for some kind of charity. Isabella pushed herself up off the couch and took a closer look out her window. By some miracle there was not a cloud to be seen in the sky, but this did not make Isabella want to get off the couch any more that if it had been thundering outside.
Today, Isabella would be forced to socialize not only with her father, whom she had never had a very stable relationship with throughout her life, but also many people from the reservation, who probably knew her name through their children... Who she taught.
"This will be interesting," Isabella whispered to herself before going back to her own room and getting ready for her shower. She didn't spend much time under the hot water, her nerves making her jittery and somewhat breathless. Her chest did not hurt today, even in the slightest, which made her feel a bit better. It was almost a comforting feeling that bloomed there now. She quickly dressed in a pair of modest jean shorts and a cream colored three-quarter sweater with thin black stripes running horizontally. She slipped on a pair of black flip flops and brushed her hair out, leaving it down to dry.
As she looked at all of the plates on her kitchen counter she sighed. This was going to be difficult by herself. She stacked up five of the plates into a pile, each wrapped individually in tin foil. She snatched her keys off of her kitchen table and walked outside, pleasantly surprised with how warm the sunlight felt on her shoulders. She put the first stack of plates in the passenger seat and then followed with the second stack and the large bowl of pasta salad she had made.
When she was finally on her way to Charlie's house she felt her anxiety grow again. She had a feeling that Jacob would be among the boys from La Push at her father's house and she found that all of her bravado about demanding answers from him was quickly waning. She wondered if he would think she had gone crazy. Or maybe he'd play it off as if he had no idea what she was talking about.
Isabella turned onto her father's street and searched for a parking space out front of his small two-story white house. As she parked on the curb she saw the window in the upper right corner of the house and recognized it as the bedroom she used to stay in on her infrequent visits to Forks when she was younger.
Straightening out her sweater, she got out of the car with the bowl of pasta salad in her arms. In the warm air she could smell a grill out in the backyard and hear the loud chatter of many guests. The sun felt nice with the slight breeze blowing around, but Isabella could feel heat sliding up her body once again. She tried to ignore it as she walked up the sidewalk to the front door and walked into her father's house.
There weren't many people inside of the house because they were all out back, but as Isabella walked into the kitchen she saw two women standing at the counters.
"Hello?" Isabella asked.
The two women turned around and looked at her. The older one's face lit up with recognition while the younger of the two scrutinized Isabella for another moment.
"Oh my gosh! You must be Charlie's daughter, Isabella, right?" one of the women asked. She was short and plump with a kind face. The other, the younger one, was thinner and a little bit taller than Isabella, with angular features. She was much younger, and honestly she was a gorgeous girl. Maybe the same age as herself. They were both clearly natives from the reservation.
"I am, yeah. It's nice to meet you, what're your names?" Isabella asked. She set down the large bowl of pasta salad on the small round kitchen table and smiled at the two women.
"I'm Sue Clearwater, and this is my daughter Leah. Your father and my husband have known each other for a long time. Much longer than he'd probably admit," the older woman smiled at Isabella and she laughed a bit. "Did you bring anything else? I know Charlie said something about a dessert and a pasta salad. We need all the food we can get in order to feed all of those boys out there."
"Actually, there are about ten plates of homemade cookies out in my car. I can go get them," Isabella turned to leave the house again, but Sue stepped forward and grasped her hand gently.
"Nonsense! I can get one of the boys to do it. Leah, could you go get one of them?" she asked her daughter, who was still staring at Isabella with an unidentifiable look on her face. It made Isabella uncomfortable as she squirmed a bit under the gaze, but Leah left out the back door to the backyard and Isabella physically relaxed.
She smiled at Sue and just then a large male walked into the house. He was tall like Jacob and his friends at school but his face was so much like a child.
"What's up, mom?" the boy asked, looking at Sue with a sweet smile and then looking at Isabella.
"This is Charlie's daughter Isabella, she has some things in her car, could you do me a favor and go get them?" Sue asked her son, although Isabella could not see the similarities between this sweetly smiling giant and the round, kind woman in front of her.
"Sure, which car is it?" Seth asked her with another bright smile. Isabella found it to be contagious and smiled back.
"It's the crappy blue Kia Rio on the curb. You can't miss it," she joked. Seth and Sue both laughed and Seth left the room with a nod. Sue smiled at her again and then spoke.
"I'm going out back to check and see that the boys haven't messed up any of the cooking. It's a good thing Emily is here, because they'd be lost without her! Come on back once you're settled, I know everyone would love to meet you!" the older woman said one last time before she walked out the back door that Leah had gone through before.
As she left Seth came walking back into the kitchen with the two stacks of plates neatly balanced in his hands.
"Wow, that's impressive," Isabella said as she watched him set them down on the counter.
"Nah, it's nothing. But those smell really good," he said with that same smile still plastered on his face. He really was a cute kid, if not a little on the huge side.
"Thanks, how old are you Seth?" Isabella asked casually as she began to unwrap the pasta salad.
"Oh. I'm seventeen," he stated and Isabella choked on the giant breath she inhaled.
"Holy cow! You certainly had a growth spurt growing up, didn't you? Are all the boys like that on the reservation? You guys are like giants!" Isabella asked him with a nervous laugh. Seth's smile retreated a bit on his face, but he tried to laugh with her.
"Yeah... I guess... I never really noticed how tall we all were. It seemed normal... Do you need anymore help?" he asked as he edged towards the back door. Isabella shook her head and sighed.
"No, but thank you Seth. Tell my dad I'll be out soon if you see him," she said. She saw him nod out of the corner of her eye and then leave out towards the backyard. Isabella felt her hands start to shake out of the nerves of finally getting answers from Jacob Black.
She'd have to get him cornered somewhere and make him answer every single question that she had; why all of these things were happening to her. Her anxiety made her stomach tingle and feel as though she was floating in an airplane doing a nose dive. Her skin felt clammy to her, and she could feel her heart racing under her rib cage. She had to get a hold of herself.
"There's nothing to be afraid of," she whispered to remind herself. She heard the click of the screen door open. Assuming it was either Sue or her father she turned with a small smile on her face.
"I'll be out in a min-" she stopped mid sentence.
Standing, full height in front of her, was Jacob Black. He did not look angry, but a bit frustrated. But there was something else underneath the superficial layer of emotion. There was something more in the way he looked at her, standing alone in her father's kitchen.
And this time, instead of running, Isabella stood firmly in her spot and crossed her arms over her chest. She set her gaze on Jacob's dark one, trying to ignore the sensation of wanting to propel herself into his arms. She had a mission, and she was going to get answers.
"Jacob Black, you have some explaining to do," she spoke to him and watched, satisfied as his eyebrows rose in surprise. But then he seemed to relax and Isabella was sure she saw a smile tug at the corner of his lips, which surprisingly, made her relax in her spot.
"I will always tell you the truth, Isabella," he said in his deep voice, and Isabella relaxed completely. She nodded and looked down at the counter. She drew in a deep breath, looked back up at the tall boy standing in front of her, and prepared herself to be called crazy.
Don't hate me for leaving it there! You'll just have to wait and see what happens during Isabella's confrontation! :) I hope you liked reading this chapter. If you want, you can leave some feedback on the chapter. Thanks for reading!