I pulled up in front of the small house by the cliffs and tried to shake the glass out of my hair before I approached. I wondered if they could hear the truck. If he were here, he'd know exactly who had pulled up; the truck announced me wherever I went.
Instead, Sam met me on the porch before I made it up the stairs. His short, dark hair completed the image of a bristling wolf in human form, the firm line of his mouth mimicking the hard planes of his face and body. He loomed over me. Emily peeked out of the door behind him, a full foot shorter, the beautiful side of her face the only one I could see.
I burst in to tears.
It was too much—this wasn't how I wanted to return to Forks. I wanted to inconspicuously move back in to the world I had left, try to make sense of what had happened here so many years ago, try to be some of what I was when I first arrived. Someone that had existed before real love, and loss. Someone that had never hurt anyone. Instead, I had to walk back in to their lives to say that I had brought the worst kind of trouble imaginable back with me. I prayed that Jake was nowhere near, took a deep breath, and realized Emily was hugging me.
"What happened, Bella?" Concern twisted her eyebrow, her hands gently picking lost glass shards from my hair. Her nimble fingers collected them, preoccupied, but her eyes were wide and expectant. Sam moved down two steps, closer to us, but his arms were still folded across his wide chest.
"She—Victoria—she attacked me at a rest stop near the state line. She broke the window—"
"She broke the old truck, is what she broke!" A new voice joined us, darkly laughing from behind the shattered side of my truck. Quil stood up and waved at me absently as he continued to survey the damage, and then I noticed Embry loping towards us from the trees. "Look at what Bella did now!" I would probably have smiled if I were able to breathe, Embry having already started to chuckle.
"So she's moved on from breaking people, huh?" The woman's voice was cutting. Leah strode out from behind Embry, tall and lean, her hair much longer than before. She unlashed a pack of cigarettes from the cord on her thigh and lit one up as she stared at me. Hard.
Emily put her hands on my shoulders and pushed me towards the door. "Let's go inside so you can clean up."
"Charlie," I said. It was all the explanation I could muster.
"Does he know you're here?" Her determined expression faltered, and I took advantage of the pause to step back towards the truck. My mouth opened, but Sam stopped me in my tracks.
"Does she know you're here?" His expression stayed still, unjudging, but formal. Quil came up beside him and turned towards me, his expression undeniably excited. The contrast between them was so familiar I almost began to cry again, but I held it together and nodded my head. No doubt she knew just where I'd gone.
"Sweet!" Embry's exalted cry startled me, and I jumped. Emily put her arm around me again. It felt like I'd stepped in to a time warp back in Phoenix; I was revisiting my life six years ago as if nothing had changed. Then I noticed my hands, Emily's hands. We had aged. We were surrounded by men who couldn't.
And Leah. "Oh yay. Another giant vamp-hunt on behalf of the biggest vamp-tramp that ever walked the earth." Leah's dour tone was new. She was past bitterness now, and every syllable was laced with casual acidity. "Let's go inside and talk business." She stubbed her cigarette out on the bottom of her bare foot, her eyes bored. "Leave the heart-breaker's club here to sort out how she gets home." And with that, she stalked past Emily and I into the house, the two younger boys following and Sam staring down at us.
I was surprised when he apologized. "I guess she's better than she used to be, but that attitude still isn't the best home-coming you could wish for." His eyes softened. "Don't worry Bella, the boys have been spoiling for this one ever since we lost track of her scent." He didn't need to mention that after I'd left Forks, she'd gone too. Emily's protective hand never left my shoulder.
I rode to Charlie's with her, and he looked thrilled with my arrival. However, it didn't take a practiced policeman's eye more than a second to realize that I wasn't driving my truck or unscathed; scratches none of the rest of us had noticed covered the left side of my body. None of it needed medical attention, but the fear of a father welcoming his daughter home from a long, lonely road trip is hard to assuage. Emily left us to the gently smoking breakfast he'd prepared, but I followed her out to the car to thank her.
That was when I remembered. "What about my truck, Emily? Should I send a tow-truck over to get it?" I winced, thinking about how I was about to be stranded in the house I had fled from, surrounded by woods that doubtlessly held the stuff nightmares are made of.
"I'll take it over to Jake's." Emily waited for my eyes to calm down before she continued. "When he comes in from the woods, about every other week or so, he does repairs for money. I'll just bring it over there." I appreciated all of the information she shared with me, knowing she didn't have to and thinking that I would never ask. Even if what it told me was a little unsettling. My arms crossed over my heart protectively, and as I realized what I was doing I forced them by my sides and put some more of my pride away.
"When he…comes in from the woods?"
"He spends most of his time as a wolf now, Bella." She spoke matter-of-factly. In spite of her kindness, she hadn't forgotten how I'd treated Jake. "He just works to make sure Billy has enough money for the bills, and that Sam and I can feed everybody." She grinned. "He's the best mechanic for miles. There's usually quite a pile waiting for him." She didn't bother saying he wouldn't notice my truck in that pile. It was a sure bet that he would; what he would do when he knew, though, I wasn't sure.
We said goodbye and I went inside to face Charlie. I hadn't even bothered to organize a lie. I was just going to tell him I ran in to a building, and let things fall where they may. He would believe me; my reputation for having accidents had never changed the way my reputation for breaking hearts had.