ACTUALLY READ THIS ONE:: I hadn't planned to update so soon but I was reading over chapter 15 when I realized I screwed up. Major !shit! moment. Chapter 15 has been edited. Jake and Bella never held hands. Ever. Sorry. Go reread it if you want to, it's only a few paragraphs that have been changed. I'm so sorry and I'll be sure to read the chapters before posting them.

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"Oh, Bells. It's okay. It was such a long time ago, I've dealt with it," despite his words I reached out and grabbed hold his hand that was bringing the food to his mouth. Although I knew the day would come I couldn't imagine losing either of my parents so early in life.

With one last tight squeeze I loosened my grip on his hand, but his held fast. I tugged and my hand came loose and Jake's coffee cup crumbled. Pain surged through me, not physical pain, but mental pain.

"Jake, I'm sorry. I just—I just can't do that when it means something else to you."

"Bells, no, I'm sorry. I know—it means nothing—it just—feels good," his face was a mix of pleasure and pain. I didn't know what to say. Jake had to know that I didn't hate him, that wasn't why I couldn't hold his hand. I did love him, I just wasn't in love with him. That stupid two letter preposition meant everything to me, it was that fine line between what I wanted and what Jacob wanted. That one word separated us and pained us.

My throat cracked and I dug my fingernails into my palms in hope of stopping what was coming. "I'm going to go. Uhm, go to the bathroom."

I stumbled out of my chair and walked into the bathroom and cried into a towel in hopes that Jake wouldn't hear me.

"It's not hard to find the truth, what is hard is not to run away from it once you have found it."

UNKNOWN

Cupid's Chokehold; Chapter Sixteen. Bella.

The rest of the hospital visit went well, with both of us being forced to think on our feet when Billy asked us questions that we didn't have answers to. We both choked on our own spit when he asked about children, "Dad, we want to wait till we both graduate," Jake said quickly.

It was dark when we left the hospital and I groaned as I slid into the cold interior of Jake's car. "That was exhausting, Jake," I slumped to the side and leaned against his shoulder. I turned my cheek closer to his arm, which was bare and warm. Jake reached into the backseat and found a big sweatshirt, which he wrapped around to my shoulder that was still exposed to the cold air of the car.

"You're home Bella," Jake's voice interrupted the void I had fallen into at some point in the ride. I felt the car pull into a driveway, when the wheels didn't give way to the gravel I opened my eyes and looked around. We were at my home.

I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and took off my seat belt. Jake had gotten out of the car and opened my door, I let him help me out and leaned on him as we walked to the door. My legs were heavy from being sat on in the car ride and despite my deep sleep from the night before I was still sleepy. Jacob opened the door and toted me into the house, transferring me to the couch.

"Was the door open?" I asked, stretching out on the couch and pulling the blanket down on top of me.

"No, I could see the key on the doorjamb," he pulled the blanket down to cover my feet then took my shoes off for me. "You should hide it better."

"Because vamps are really hesitant when it comes to breaking locks?"

"It's not just vampires that you have to be careful of Bells."

"This is Forks, half the people here don't even lock their doors to begin with," he tucked the blanket further around me but stopped.

"Did you want me to take you upstairs?"

"No, I'll get up in a little bit…. What time is it?"

"Around 7."

"PM?" Charlie should have been home at this point. He should have been sitting on the couch waiting for me to come home and make dinner.

Jake smiled and nodded slowly, "Sleep a little too hard in the car?" He sat down next to me and began rubbing my back, I pushed his arm away though, rolled over and sat up.

"Charlie only works half days on Saturdays, then he's on-call for the rest of the weekend. It's Forks though, so he never actually gets called in. What if Victoria did something else?" I looked up at Jake, frowning. The worry lines that had begun to appear on his forehead deepened.

"Bella, almost everyone has been patrolling. We don't want what happened to Dad to happen to anyone else. There must have been a bad accident on the road; it was closed off. I had to take another route, that's why it took so long to get home. I'll stay with you until your dad gets home," he tried to comfort me by rubbing my back but once again I pushed his hand away. I got up from the couch, catching myself on Jake's knee when I tangled my legs up in the blanket. "Bells, don't worry."

"Jake, I just need to know why he's not here. What if it's him who Victoria has?" the thought finally crossed my mind and my empty stomach twisted with fear.

"I don't smell her here, Bella. I can't even smell the other vampires anymore. We don't even know if she has anyone, you said she's working at the school right now. She can't risk anyone getting suspicious. You need to stop making assumptions or else you're going to put yourself in a panic when Charlie is only going out for pizza or something."

I took a deep breath and tried to agree with Jake's logic. It was seven at night and it was more than possible that Charlie had gotten hungry and gone to get something to eat. I knew their weren't any leftovers in the fridge since it had been days since I last cooked, with Billy in the hospital my duties at home seemed to be getting ignored. "Okay, maybe he left a note. If there's no note I'm calling the station though."

"If there's no note I'll drive you down there myself," he seemed so certain that all would be okay in the end, but all of his friends had a sure fire way of keeping themselves safe and his family was well out of the area. "I'm going to go see if I can contact anyone, I'll just be off in the woods. Whisper my name and I'll come running."

I nodded and walked into the kitchen, I let out a sigh of relief when I saw a piece of paper on the table.

Bella,

Trouble on the highway. I'll be home late. Call the station if there's an emergency and have them page me. If Jake's still there have him stay with you.

Dad

Something was wrong. I had panicked for a reason and the fear that Jacob had reasoned away was suddenly returning. Of course I had no idea what the trouble was, but if Charlie asked that Jake stayed with me then it had to be bad.

I went back to sit on the couch and turned the TV to the main news station. I turned the volume off, as it was just the weather that was on. There were a few reasons the non-changing weather segment could be on: (1) the trouble may not have broken out to the public yet, meaning Charlie just left, (2) law enforcement may have asked the news stations to keep their lips sealed on the matter until their was more information or (3) whatever was going on really wasn't that big of a deal and I was panicking for no reason.

Jake came back into the room before I completely chewed my lip off with worry. I looked up and my hopes dropped, he was running his fingers through his hair, a sure sign of stress.

"I hate Forks," the words flew out of my mouth before I could stop myself, "You know, if I had never moved here none of this would have happened! James wouldn't have wanted to kill me, Jasper and Emmett never would have killed him and Victoria never would have wanted to kill me! Not to even mention that Edward never would have felt that he had to tear his family away from their home before they were ready!"

"Bella, darling, you don't need to carry the weight of the world on your shoulders. Despite what you may believe, you can't control everyone's actions."

"It's my fault though, Jake! Whatever happened; it's my fault!"

Jake took me into his arms, not for the first time today, "Do you want to know what happened?"

"Probably not, but I'll find out once Charlie gets home. So, go ahead, hit me with it," I bit down hard, ready to hear whatever news Jake was going to tell me—terrible or devastating I was going to have to deal with it. I wrapped my fingers around Jake's shirt, which had been cold when he first walked in but had warmed up quickly next to his skin.

"A girl was killed this afternoon," my knees gave away but Jake's arms kept me up, "Everyone is saying that it was suicide; her wrists are completely ripped up, but some of the pack was down there and it was the vampire. Victoria. She fed off of the girl, but there's still enough blood on scene to have it look like a suicide. She wasn't killing to feed, she was killing to scare us—"

"Who was it? What was her name?"

"We don't know; we couldn't get close enough. She has blonde hair, but beyond that we don't know anything. It was more important to try and find Victoria, but she's clever, she got away."

My stomach twisted again with fear and I was waiting for it to just completely rip apart. I took several deep breaths as Jacob rubbed my shoulders, I couldn't let myself get worked up and torn up about something I didn't know the answer to.

"She was probably just a tourist, Bells—"

I pulled away from him and stared at him in aghast, "Like that makes it better! Just because I don't know her doesn't mean it's not as terrible! It's my fault Jacob! I'm the one who brought Victoria here, my actions did that!"

"Terrible things are going to happen, Bella."

"NO! Terrible things are having your house broken into, wrecking your car in the snow and not being able to afford to fix it. Terrible things are being snowed in or flooded out. Having a vampire suck your blood out of your veins is not terrible… it's something else. It's not supposed to happen, Jake. Or you're not supposed to know about it. Maybe it would be easier if I could believe that it was a suicide, but I know the truth."

I was on a roll and kept on going with my train of thought, "You know, all the stuff they say about truth, about how it will set you free it's all a bunch of… lies! It doesn't set you free or make your life any easier, it's hard! It's insane."

"Sometimes the only sane answer to an insane world is insanity," Jacob said slowly.

I stared at him, wryly, "Thank you, Mulder."

"Does that make you Scully?"

I sighed and went back to the couch, "No, I believe. I have to, I've seen far too much to even attempt to be skeptic about any of it. But Scully had it easy, you know. I mean, how can someone see all of this, put all the puzzle pieces together and not see this world for what it is…. completely filled with supernatural crap! I mean, how many murders and suicides have really been caused by vampires?"

I stretched out on the couch, "Jake, be honest with me… werewolves, vampires… that's all there is right? I mean, witches, leprechauns, fairies, Big Foot… those things don't exist too, right?"

Jake came and sat down next to me, pulling my head and torso onto his lap, "I don't know Bella, I can't give you an answer. Six months ago I would have told you none of this existed, so maybe there's other stuff out there. Maybe there's stuff out there that doesn't even exist in those Monster-of-the-Week shows. Whatever is out there, though, I'll protect you from it."

I sat up and looked up at Jake's stoic face, he seemed so sincere. I curled my legs underneath me and turned away from him for a moment, this day had been increasingly long and more questions and fears had come out of it then I had thought. The hour hand on the clock was only passing 8 but I was worn out and I had exhausted my resources in getting the answers I wanted.

"Jake," I spoke slowly, "I don't know what happened last night, but I trust you. I'm not—I'm not ready for a relationship, but… will you just hold me tonight? Please?" I knew that Jake wanted something else from our relationship, something that I wasn't ready to give, but I couldn't deny that last night was one of the best nights of sleep that I had had in a long time.

"Oh, of course Bella," he drew me up in his arms and I wrapped mine around his neck. We reached my room and Jake set me down and flicked the lights on, "Did you want to put on your pajamas?"

I looked down at my clothes, my clothes which I had also worn yesterday and through out the night. At this point if they got lost in the wash I wouldn't have worried. I nodded and went over to my dresser, "You know, Charlie might have something you could wear."

He smiled, already knowing the likeliness of anything of Charlie's fitting him was slim, "You get ready and I'll see if I can find something."

After pulling my pajamas out and changing into them I sat down on my bed realizing just exactly what I had asked Jake to do. The last time I had purposely fallen asleep with anyone was with Edward in September and it had meant something else entirely then. In the past few days and weeks I had felt closer to Jacob, despite the major ups and downs I had created earlier. I didn't want Jacob to be hurt, but by trying to keep him safe I had almost hurt him.

Just like Edward did with me.

I groaned and slumped down on the bed, slamming the back of my head on the window seal. I cried out in reaction, quickly sitting up and applying pressure to what was sure to be a long goose egg in the morning. I jumped when my door crashed opened and the doorknob punched a hole into the wall, Jacob stood in the doorway in a half dressed state. I had seen him shirtless before but the sudden intrusion into my room shocked me.

"I'm okay, just get me some ice. There's some frozen peas in freezer." His feet were pounding down the stairs rapidly. I worried if the fridge would tip over from the force that I heard the freezer door shut, but the cold bag of vegetables was on the back of my throbbing head and I suddenly didn't care.

"What'd you do?" he asked while climbing into my bed behind me. He relaxed onto my extra pillow and attempted to straighten out his legs, his feet quickly hit my headboard and I tried hard not to laugh. "Hm?" he nudged me for an answer.

"I hit my head on the window seal," I said halfheartedly quickly realizing why I had hit my head on the blasted window seal. The nerves in my stomach was back; any more of this and I was going to forget what it was like to not have pain in my stomach.

"Forget where it was?"

"Yeah," I smiled and lied down next to him. At first I had my back next to him, his chest supporting the bag of peas but that quickly grew uncomfortable since I was doing my best not to relax my entire body next to his not to mention that I was worried he would get frost bite of some sort from the peas; he still hadn't put a shirt on. I turned over slowly and gently incase he had already fallen asleep, I could only guess how tired he was and I really didn't want to wake him up.

I let the peas slip to the ground and lost the small amount of reserve I had and placed my head against his chest. He was so warm and the house was cold since the heater hadn't been on in over 24 hours (I was pretty sure that Charlie had built up some kind of immune to the cold weather as he almost never turned it on), it was hard not to want to sink into the warmth that Jacob provided.

AN: This so makes up for me screwing up a plot line, right?

-nod your heads yes.