"You know that moment when you look in to someone's eyes and you can feel them staring into your soul and the whole world goes quiet just for a second?"

UP IN THE AIR

Cupid's Chokehold; Chapter Thirty-Four. Bella.

Sometimes life has a funny way of running away from you, and there's nothing you can do except learn how to run faster, jump higher and go farther just so that you can keep up with it because getting left behind isn't an option. Things get pushed to the wayside, you lose focus on things that you had your eye on since you knew about them, certain things began to matter less and some things began to matter more.

It was July third and it had been a number of weeks since vampires had last been in Forks. The town had turned back in to Mayberry and everyone's selective memory had been turned on full force. Forks High was being repaired and made even better by the massive fundraising efforts of Mrs. Stanely. The memorial for the lost counselor had been held, diplomas had been sent out and a grand graduation ceremony was being planned to make up for the one that was cancelled. Almost everyone I knew was packing up to leave for college.

Even things at the reservation were oddly normal, at least as normal as things could ever become here. The wolf boys that didn't have a "ball and chain", as some of them called it, were still running wild. Emily was raging with hormones from being very pregnant, somehow in the two months since she had 'come out' she had exploded. And when it was two o'clock in the morning and I was sleeping in Jake's arms and I was awoken by the sound of an almost rambling car I knew that it was Sam going to the 7/11 to pick up Funyuns or sour cream or an apple.

After weeks of making fun of Jake and Sam, Embry and Quil both imprinted. On the same day. After failing English Embry had been sent to summer school and had ended up imprinting on the student teacher who was seven years older than him, Embry had pulled out of class but the jokes had still ensued with the boys. I was pretty sure they had gone through every way to match up 'cougar' with 'wolf'. Luckily, Ms. Stone had a thing for younger guys. Later that day some of Emily's family showed up for a visit and Quil imprinted on her niece, which wouldn't have been so bad except that her niece was two. So, maybe things weren't so normal at the res, but…well, maybe this was normal.

In mid-June Dad found a house on Hemlock Lane. It was a quiet cul-de-sac that was surprisingly devoid of kids, so it was the perfect place for him to get old and retire in. Which he had promised he would do in the next five years, but I was sure that he would stretch that out to seven or maybe even ten. The house had one bedroom.

I think that secretly Jake liked playing house. I think he very much wanted me to be a fifties housewife with the poodle skirt, apron and sensible heels. He wanted to come home from school (yes, school!) and see me taking a meatloaf out of the oven. And I was almost certain that in an even more secret place than that wish he had an intense desire to see me pregnant. That wasn't going to happen though. I had been very firm in my ten-year plan of college, marriage (I cursed the word, but I knew that Jake loved the idea of a wedding ring on my finger… and a small part of me might have enjoyed the idea as well), career and family. Jake wasn't, however, opposed to the idea of pre-marital sex, which is how I ended up here.

Naked, in his arms and listening to the rain pound on the roof tiles. I had woken up naturally, perhaps urged by some silent force to take pleasure in the private symphony I was being given. The quiet in-and-out of Jake's deep breath, the rustle of cotton as he moved his feet beneath the blanket, never once letting go of me. The constant tick-tick-tick of the bedside clock. And the cycle of the rain, as it hit the tiles, ran down the roof, in to the gutter and over the edge on to the recently laid cement patio outside the French doors. If I listened closely, the rustle of the leaves and the crash of the waves even blended in to my own little nighttime performance.

I experienced something I had never felt before and it could be summed up simply; I could do this forever. The monotony of the day in and day out of this new life for me would be no hardship. Some people liked to live life by the edge and be spontaneous and never plan a thing, but I found something very comforting in being able to see the next ten, twenty even thirty years of my life as I lay here in bed in the arms of the man that I love.

Everyone I knew was packing up to set off on the adventure of their life, to discover and find out who they were and learn who they were to become, but I had already done that. I had already had my adventure, in fact I think it would be safe to say that I had the Thanksgiving dinner of adventures. My life was not a bar hopping and experimenting with girls in college kind of an adventure. My adventure was unorthodox, but I ended up in the right place anyway.

I traced the wooden ring on the right ring finger. The soft wood had become an almost permanent fixture on my hand since Jake had given it to me. I knew that he meant it to symbolize his love but it also reminded me the day that I closed that chapter of my life and began to move on.

&

"You smell like vampire. What did you do?"

I wasn't sure what I was expecting him to do or how he would respond. I also wasn't sure what I was going to say. In my life I had done a lot of stupid things but this one really took the award home. And now was the time that I was to make my acceptance speech.

"Jake," I said slowly. I thought I had read somewhere that your inflection and tone made all the difference when it came to have a difficult conversation. As long as I didn't flip out, then maybe Jake wouldn't flip out. It was certainly worth a try. "Jake, please understand I didn't purposely get myself in to this. I actually didn't go looking for trouble this time, it just kind of found me. My counselor called me in to a school but Victoria turned up," Jake growled at this but didn't do anything else. I sat down next to him and took hold of his hand, it was actually quivering and cold. "Victoria killed my counselor and then tried to kill me. It was like this game of cat and mouse to her," I took a deep breath, "and then I kind of killed her."

The moment that followed was like those moments in movies where someone says something awkward at a party and it just goes dead silent. Because while I could have heard a pin drop the pin wouldn't dare do such a thing.

"You killed her?" Jake asked for clarification.

I nodded. "With a Molotov cocktail."

"You killed her with a chem lab bomb?"

Once again I could only nod. "No one was there and I guess with the way she came in your guys' vamp radar didn't go off and I knew that fire killed vampires. And we had just watched Night of the Living Dead a few nights ago and everything just kind of clicked. Trust me, Jake, if I had had any other option I would have used it but by the time the Cullens arrived there wasn't really anything they could do."

And with that, my moment of being on a pedestal and being safe ended. Jake pushed me out of the way and began pacing back and forth. Even the sight of him in just cut off jersey shorts wasn't distracting enough to stop me from trying to make my way to the door.

"I'm not--" he faltered and crouched down on his heels, rubbing his face up and down with his hands, "I'm fine, Bells. You're fine." He looked up at me from the window between his index and middle finger, "You're fine, right?"

"Uhm, a little shaken and I'll probably be sore in the morning," I sniffed my arm, "And I smell like gasoline and apparently vampire, but otherwise I'm fine."

"Oh God," Jake said under his breath. He stood up and came over to my side in two giant strides. He wrapped his arms around me and pulled me close to him. "I'm sorry, Bells. I'm sorry I wasn't there. I'm sorry that I let you go to the school alone…"

He continued on with his apologizing, but I didn't really notice because I was noticing something else for the first time. All the tension and stress that had been in my system since I threw the cocktail at Victoria had vanished, just completely peeled off like a coat of cheap nail polish. It was instantaneously exhausting. My legs gave out from under me and my eyelids fell like ten-pound weights were attached to them, Jake caught me though and held me close. He walked me over to the bed and sat down with me.

"You can sleep if you want to…"

But I didn't, not really. I was tired and about to crash like a runaway semi, but I wanted to talk to Jake. I wanted to tell him everything. Most importantly I wanted to tell him that the Cullens were going to want to come over for a little visit, probably during the time that his sisters were there.

I shook my head against his chest, "Jake you don't need to be sorry for anything. I didn't know I was walking in to a trap. You couldn't have known."

"It doesn't matter, you don't understand Bells. I'm responsible for you, if anything had happened to you it would have been my fault."

"I know you don't want to believe this, but I can handle myself," I said with a little more snark than I had intended. Considering the night, Jake let it slide.

"I'm beginning to see that now. Doesn't make me any less sorry."

I sighed, giving up, but poked him in the ribs. He kissed my forehead and then asked, "So, how did you get home?"

"Can I just tell you the whole story? Just to get it off my chest? I think if I don't say it out loud I'm gonna go to sleep and wake up thinking it was a dream." Jake nodded and listened as I told him every detail that I could remember. From the terror I felt that was pumping through my system like it was being pumped through an IV, to the way Victoria smelled as she melted and popped in to inexistence. Jake listened quietly and attentively, making no comment except for his tensing when the Cullens were mentioned.

"So, I'm supposed to ask you if want to meet with them tomorrow? To like renew the treaty or something, I don't know, I'm just the messenger." Jake looked less than pleased, which made sense because he probably wanted to see the Cullens about as much as he wanted to go to school tomorrow and take his finals.

"I guess that would be the right thing to do. I do owe them a thank you," he murmured.

"For what?" I asked.

"For taking care of you. I don't want to think about what could have happened if they hadn't shown up today. I know you think you're invincible but…"

I frowned as he began focusing on the morbid mortality of being human. "Shut up, I'm freaking superwoman right now and you're jealous so just shut up." I smiled and sat on my knees next to him.

"Make me," Jake grinned.

And I did. I shifted so that each leg rested on his sides and I bent down and kissed him firmly. His hands pressed in to the small of my back and pulled me closer. I gripped at his hair, his shoulders, anything I could get my hands on. After a moment he shifted slightly to take a breath and then groaned and pushed me away.

"Ugh, Bells, I love you but you need to take a shower."

AN: What can I say? Life's crazy. I'm sorry for not updating. I have the next chapter mostly done and I really should upload the last chapter by next week. I hope to get one more pieces of fanfiction up (one AH Twilight and one Morganville), but who knows? I'm really trying to focus on original pieces and I have a hard time balancing my writing out.

Peace and love.