Chapter 3

Bella dreamed that night of Jake and of things that used to be. She dreamed of him telling her that he loved her. And when she woke she could smell his scent lingering in her bed. Today she was off, and Jake had gone to do some work at the garage. She wanted to pull the blanket over her head and get swallowed up in the warmth and darkness it would give her. She knew that Charlie would not be up for awhile longer. Her alarm clock showed the time as 7:30. She couldn't lay here with his scent in her face. She couldn't think with his scent surrounding her.

She was confused as to what she needed to do with Jake, about Jake, about her feelings.

She checked in on Charlie who was still snoozing lightly on the couch. I have time for a walk, she decided. The TV was humming low on the morning news. She walked over and kissed her dad on his forehead. "Love you, Dad."

She moved toward the door and pulled her jacket off the coat rack on her way out.

It was a beautiful day. She decided just to carry her jacket. It was May and she was loving the almost warmth that was in the air. She began a light jog down the sidewalk. She knew if she went any faster she would fall on her face but it felt good to feel the wind on her face. To clear her nose of his scent. To think. She could think better without his smell lingering in her nasal passages.

Did she still love him like that?

Edward had been awoken by the loud roar of a motorcycle coming to life. He looked at his watch. 6:30. Two whole hours after he'd gotten to sleep again. He did that when he was alone, two hour shifts of sleep and awake until his target was up and moving.

About an hour later she came barreling out the door. Looking confused but as soon as she was out in the sun, something that was a rarity here, she smiled and took a deep breath. Maybe her lover shouldn't have left so early. Maybe she was wondering why she'd awoken to find herself alone. Something had her face twisted into the face she often made when she was thinking or worried.

In her situation, she worried quite often.

Or had she always been this way?

Edward tried to remember her.

Forks high school had not been his favorite place to make memories. He had moved to Seattle to get away from this town. Carlisle had insisted on his family living somewhere small like this. Safer, he had said. Edward knew Carlisle was trying to keep him out of trouble. An adopted teenager isn't your average law abiding citizen most of the time.

Edward had thought he was well behaved enough. He'd had his parents for almost his whole life before they had died of avian influenza. A pandemic had broken out in the Chicago area. When they caught on to what they had, Edward had been quarantined and given all kind of shots hoping to stop it. Dr. Carlisle Cullen had been the one who had to deliver the news about Edwards parents.

Then he had proceeded to let Edward know that he was offering him a home. Edward had no other family in the area so he had taken the opportunity to have a place to live. This was nothing new to the young doctor. He had two other teens leaving with him at the time. Alice who'd been with them for about 5 years at the time, and Emmett. Emmett had been camping with his family and the had not properly stored their food. A bear came sniffing around. Emmett was one lucky man.

Alice didn't talk about her family because she'd been in the system for most of her life. She just said it didn't matter because finding her family may have come late in life but it was better late than never.

Carlisle and Esme, his wife, seemed to be into collecting strays. It all came down to the fact that they had lost a child when they first got married. This had meant that Esme would never be able to bear young of her own. She longed for her three misfit children to give her grandchildren though she wasn't even forty yet. Emmett had been married since he was nineteen to Jaspers older sister, Rosalie Hale. No kids for them yet.

And now Alice, who was Edward's age, had gone and fallen for Jasper. They were married and very much in love. It left Edward very raw and lonely feeling.

Edward had spent two years attending school here in Forks. He was very to himself during that period. He'd spent his classes in the back and had spent his lunches at the table with his family. He'd been so absorbed in his own world that when they gave him the files for this case, he'd not been able to place a face to the name Isabella Marie Swan. He'd figured out that she'd been in his class and had even started going to the school mid semester the same year he'd joined Forks High.

He had no idea why she was jogging down the side of the road, she could barely walk without harming herself much less this accelerated pace. This had to be a bad idea for her.

She reached the end of the block and turned to start back to the house. She spotted it then. That damn silver Volvo that was everywhere now. It was parked across the street. That man who drove it, well, he looked familiar, but he did not live in that house across the street. The same people have lived there since before Charlie moved into his crackerjack house he's lived in before Bella was born.

That's it she'd had it with this stalker. She moved on to the house like she hadn't noticed and then went in a put her jacket on the coat rack. She checked on Charlie. Still asleep. Then she stepped back out into the sunlight.

He was wondering if she was going to continue to jog up and down the sidewalk again. She had gone in apparently to drop off her jacket, deciding it was warm enough she would not need it. She paced back and forth a couple of times right in front of her house's walk way, then she jet into the street.

Right for his car.

She knocked on his window. "Hi." she said through the glass. "can we talk? Well, can you tell me why you are stalking me?"