DISCLAIMER: I do not own nor do I claim any rights to Twilight and the universe therein.

A/N: Omg, we're back again: Nineties pop is love. I am posting this now instead of going to class. Naughty me.

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Chapter 17: Hit On

Jasper:

I had felt anxiety as I approached the house, so I might have wrenched the door open unnecessarily hard in my hurry to find the source of the emotion. I immediately found myself engulfed by Bella, her hands tight around me as she babbled nervously, asking me if everything was okay, if I was okay.

Then her hands were everywhere, tracing the shape of my skull through my hair, trailing down my neck, spanning my shoulders and dipping down my spine. I had to stop her hands as they got dangerously close to an area I had no business wanting her to be.

"I'm fine, everything's fine. Just relax," I said as I caught her wandering hands between us in a tight embrace. I found myself mouthing soundless calming words into her hair. As Bella relaxed and regained her senses, she tried to pull away. I found myself unable to stop the tightening of my arms. An errant and irrational thought drifted across my mind…

She belongs with me.

The thought dazed me, my arms relaxed, and Bella stumbled free. Her confusion echoed my own. I tried to portray some semblance of normalcy as I walked to the couch and Esme.

"Why are you home so soon?"

I tried for a causal nonchalance.

"Jeez, Mom, way to make me feel welcome." I could not shake these nerves. I grabbed a spool of yarn and tried to keep my hands occupied as I tossed it higher and higher. When I threw it so high that it grazed the ceiling, I realized that conversation had completely halted and the room had become focused on my actions. I had never answered Esme's question. I told her about speaking to Alice on the phone and about Alice's premonition, and as I did so I got a punch of strong, but tangled emotions from Bella. I looked over at her, but her face gave nothing away. I felt the need to cut the tension that had spiked in the room. I struggled and managed to pull my gaze from Bella back to Esme.

"What did you two guys do all day?"

Suddenly Esme felt defensive, as if she knew her answer would upset me.

"We just talked, is all." I had never heard her sound more like a fussy teenager and less like an ancient maternal vampire.

"What about?" I leaned in toward Esme.

Bella answered.

They had talked about Bella. All about her past, who she was, where she had come from. Bella had privileged Esme with that knowledge—had trusted her enough.

More than she trusted me.

I couldn't help the anger that seeped into me. I could tell by Bella's shock and annoyance that my feelings were evident on my face. I wasn't mad at Bella, I wasn't sure I could be mad at Bella. I was angry with myself for being somehow…deficient. Not enough for her. It upset me that she needed more than I could provide.

When Bella curtly excused herself (yup, definitely annoyed), I followed her outside to where she had planted herself on one of the large rocks that bordered our property and separated our yard from the encroaching woods.

"Bella, I must apologize. I have been terribly rude today, and you have done nothing to deserve it."

Bella mumbled her response, "Damn skippy." She looked at her fingers as she picked off bits of fluffy moss from the stone's surface.

I couldn't suppress all of the grin that appeared at her words. I think she noticed my mirth, because her own lips turned up in response.

Perhaps that smile forced me to say what I had had no intention of telling her. I told her that I had left school to see her sooner. I told her how I didn't like seeing her alone, and Bella was quick to defend Esme as an excellent companion.

That's not what I meant. How to make her understand?

Suddenly I was revealing my asinine and irrational fear of leaving Bella alone.

"I didn't like being away from you." I said. I waited for her response to my ridiculous confession and I suddenly felt like the years of being independent from oxygen were catching up, the air felt heavy and I struggled to pull it in.

"Oh." She said.

I had never wanted Edward's power more, although even he couldn't tackle this particular case. What was she thinking?

The silence dragged on as she stared at her bare arms intently.

"I watched you leave this morning." She said.

"I know." The brief conversation seemed to ease Bella's mind and as her emotions smoothed out, her body relaxed into the rock. We sat looking up at the darkish and wispy clouds for a while until I again felt propelled to confess.

I told her that I was jealous that Esme knew everything there was to know about Bella while I relied on information gleaned here and there. I told her that I wished I had been there for her to talk to.

I promised myself I would be there for her to talk to in the future.

"I like that you want that," she said, and I felt like someone had pumped warm sunshine into my veins, like I was sparkling on the inside and the little electric shocks were bouncing against my bones.

Bella wanted me to know all about her life. I knew it couldn't have been easy for her to talk about the first time, but she was willing to do it again. For me.

Just as Bella was about to begin, we both heard the noise of a car turning onto our long highway. The rest of the crew was back.

Esme poked her head out of the front door and Bella shot to her feet like she had a demon on her heels. Esme looked slightly chagrined, but she said,

"The rest of the kids are coming back." Bella let out a slightly panicked giggle and walked to the house, tension evident in her shoulders and back. As upset as I was about the interruption, I couldn't help but be amused by her reaction. She looked back at me only once, and I rose fluidly to my feet as she did, my eyes never leaving hers. Bella jerked her attention back in front of her. She snagged the door and held it open for me, I stared at her and gestured to the open door until she realized I would not enter until after she had. She went in, a small grin gracing her features.

I refused to avert my gaze from her, even as my siblings poured in, laughing and joking. Edward immediately looked at me as he read the dark nature of my thoughts. I had been thwarted in my mission of learning about Bella.

I was not a man who took lightly to being thwarted.

Edward felt cautious and nervous as he read my thoughts. In my periphery, I saw him shake his head slightly.

Every so often, I caught Bella's eye as she chanced a quick look at me. Whatever harsh intensity she saw there made her look away abruptly, every time. My frustration built as my family prattled on about school. As if school mattered! As if Bella cared about these people that she had never and would never meet. I found myself digging my fingernails into my palms as I balled my fingers into fists to stop my self from grabbing Bella, tying her down somewhere and forcing her to talk.

A loud clatter halted the conversation. Edward had stood up so quickly that his chair had smashed to the ground and several pieces of wood splintered off. He was crouched and shaking. If looks were lasers, I would have been decapitated where I stood.

Apparently my thoughts had been too rough with Edward's Bella. I sneered even as I thought it.

She's your Bella? Is that it? Because you made her? Broke her, ruined her, and accidentally made her? Do you really want to assert that claim? I'm sure it'll go over so well…

Edward lunged at me, and I heard a high pitched scream before I saw a petite body throw itself in Edward's path. My world narrowed to the pale body that absorbed Edward's attack and fell to the ground, unwilling to fight back.

"Bella!" I heard an unearthly scream call her name. It sounded exactly like I felt. I didn't realize until I felt soft hands pressing under my jawbone that the shout had been mine.

"Shh…" Suddenly Bella was the one calming me down. My mind raced as I looked at the woman who sat on the floor, nursing her forearm.

Oh my god. Esme.

Before I could move, Emmett had thrown Edward through the large bay window in our living room. The glass shattered, and the struts snapped as Edward fell into the lawn. Rose was simultaneously helping the injured Esme and stopping her from trying to break up another fight.

"Are you okay?" Bella was asking me for the second time that evening.

"Yeah, he didn't even touch me."

"You're fine then?"

When I nodded the affirmative, Bella abruptly dropped her hands from my face and stormed out the front door. I followed quickly behind as she walked over to where Edward and Emmett were grappling on the ground. She stood over them as they rolled on the grass, fighting for dominance until her patience snapped.

"Enough." The words was harsh and raspy, so un-Bella, and the animalistic quality was like a punch to my gut. She should never have to sound like that, I thought, although a smaller part of my enjoyed the vicious sound coming out of innocent Bella.

Bella grabbed Emmett by the scruff of his neck and pulled him off of Edward. She look surprised for a moment as Emmett dangled from her hand like a pinata, and she turned her shocked expression to me.

"Newborn strength." I muttered. Bella seemed to take the revelation in stride. She dropped Emmett beside her and lifted Edward to his feet.

"Are you okay?' She asked him.

Edward nodded and reached a hand toward her. "Bella—" Her punch landed straight across the flat of his jaw and the quick snap of his head cut his words short. He seemed more stunned by the fact that she had hit him than the hit itself and he regained his bearings momentarily.

"What did I—?"

"How dare you attack Jasper? He is one of the few people you have looking out for you. He believed in you and risked his own neck to protect you when you attacked me. He has been nothing but patient with your seemingly endless capacity for violence. You are…" She searched for the right word, "disgusting." She fairly spat it.

Edward looked taken aback. I doubt anyone had ever spoken to him like that before.

"Bella, if you knew the things he was thinking—" She cut him off again.

"What he thinks, he keeps to himself. Thoughts do not hurt people. Your actions, however, show a complete lack of care for anyone other than yourself. Jasper has to live with the knowledge of those around him are feeling. He does not, however, use that as an excuse to act without any forethought or consideration for others. Your behavior is shameful."

With that she stormed back into the house. She made it up the stairs and into my bedroom before anyone else moved. Rose and Esme appeared at the destroyed bay window and Emmett stood up from where he had been sitting on the lawn. Edward's shame and embarrassment was overwhelming. When he saw Esme, he rushed over to her, lithely jumping through the shattered glass.

"Esme, I am so sorry." Esme hadn't even considered an apology necessary. She felt nothing but love and sympathy for her poor, lost son. I, on the other hand, felt like ripping Edward's head from his undead body, but after Bella's speech praising my control and restraint, there was no way I could give in to the urge.

Esme was soothing Edward's conscience, trying to bring back the smarmy, overconfident Edward we all knew and tolerated.

"She doesn't understand how hard it is for you." Esme whispered to Edward. "She doesn't know how much your talent puts you through, how much she is asking of you. Just give her time; she'll come around. The two of you are so much alike…"

I couldn't help but roll my eyes as I turned my back and went back into the house.

"Where are you going?" Edward shouted.

"To clean up your mess." I paused in the doorway, "Again."

I went upstairs and joined Bella in my room where she sat, near tears, on the bed.

She started speaking before I had even closed the door. "I have done nothing for this family except drive you guys apart." She said.

"Bella, you know that isn't true."

"Isn't it? There's no way you could have fought this much before. There's been a fight every day since I…woke up. You would have torn each other to shreds by now if it was like this normally."

"Bella, there is no 'normally' with us. Sometimes we get along effortlessly, for years even, until something makes us fight again. We have our periods of strife, just like any family." Bella quirked her right eyebrow at me and I smiled under her look of abject astonishment.

"Alright, granted, our periods of fighting tend to be more violent and longer lived than other families', but what about 'vegetarian vampires' makes you expect any kind of normal from us?"

Bella wrapped her arms around my neck and groaned into my shoulder.

"Jasper." Her voice was breathy, almost a moan, and my entire body reacted to the sound. Her voice slid over my neck, down my spine, and curled around and settled somewhere deep in my stomach. I had such a guttural response to the sound; I wanted to pin Bella down to the bed and mark her as mine. This warred with the other (thankfully stronger and more sane) instinct to protect Bella from aggressors who wanted to do just that.

"Jasper," she said again, "How do you always know exactly what I need to hear?" I felt a glow of pride and an unnatural warmth in the bottom of my toes.

I wasn't used to being the strong one, the confidant one. After living most of my life (and afterlife) as an irriplaceable commander in a giant war machine, my years of helplessness with the Cullen's had really affected me. Here, I was the weak link, a liability.

Bella didn't see me like that. She saw me as strong, capable…

Maybe even heroic.

"Back at ya, Bells." Her only response was to curl her fingers deeper into my shoulders. We sat like that until Bella's breathing shifted, caught, and leveled out at a slow dragging pace.

"Bella?" I spoke as quietly as I could. "Bells?" I slowly peeled her away, using my hands to slowly lower her arms and compensate for her movement so she wasn't jostled. When she was curled in my arms in front of me, I realized what had happened.

Bella had fallen asleep.

I gently laid her on the bed and brushed her hair off of her face. As my fingers trailed over her cheekbone, she turned her face into my palm and nuzzled my hand.

"Jasper."

This time when she mumbled my name, the jolt didn't hit me in my stomach, it struck somewhere deeper, lower, more powerful. I froze, stunned by the impact her sleepy speech had on me.

Bella sighed and rolled away, curling onto her side. I felt a pull, like her distance yanked on a bungee cord that was hooked deep in my guts, and every inch she moved away from me stretched the cord and yanked on the securing hook harder.

Oh god.

I couldn't think about it, because if I thought about it, I would acknowledge it, whatever it is, or isn't—it would make it real and I couldn't handle real right now. Just ignore and move on and forget and repent—

My cell phone twitched in my pocket, and I reached for it and flipped it open on instinct, my fogged brain not registering the name on the caller ID until after my traitorous lips had already spoken.

"Hello?" I'd said.

"Hiya." The melody of her voice was as familiar to me as my own, but it was laced with a sadness I wasn't accustomed to hearing. I took a last look at Bella and fled to the hallway. I took a deep breath.

"Hi, Alice."