Jacob moved around me to sit by the table, and it suddenly occurred to me how big this room was without the entire pack inside of it. The light seemed dusky without all of their bright voices echoing back and forth, and the comforting rumble and heat of their bodies. The discussion had lasted little more than an hour; it was two o'clock in the morning. A kernel of hope that I would get home to Charlie and he would never know I'd been gone appeared, and then dimmed as I took in Jacob.
He was very still, his wide brown hands laid open and flat on the table. He looked at me from under the black shadow of his brow, and the only evidence of his breathing was the slow rise and fall of his shoulders. I knew him now--I knew the wolf now. He was deliberately posing as human. Deliberately trying to remind me that he knew he was, and would always be, a man.
It didn't quite work. The long, tapered nails ending in sharp points painted a very different picture, one his gaunt cheeks and scarred body did nothing to render false. Even the way he breathed—his slow, human movements seemed forced to me. Everything underneath the satiny skin could disappear, even the reason and imagination in his mind, all replaced by the monster I'd met in the corner of my bedroom.
And then he lifted his head—just a sliver—and the light fell on his eyes. Warm, dark, rich with the man I loved. I saw the future in his eyes.
But was it a lie? Another myth I made, like the one I'd created around Edward and I so long ago? My heart wasn't afraid of making a fool of me, but I didn't know if I could survive it twice; the woman I was now wouldn't grow and change as much as the girl I'd been then. I felt myself choking on the sea and crossed my arms over my traitorous chest, buckling a bit before I righted my body and deliberately looked at him again. His hands were clenched. He knew when I was in pain.
"I love you," he said quietly. The words flew like a bullet into the dark recess beginning at my sternum. He never blinked, the warm irises altering everything else about how dangerous he seemed.
"I know, Jake," I said. My own hands shook, and I tucked them further in against my sides, hoping he wouldn't notice and knowing he could smell everything he couldn't see—the rise in pulse, the spike of adrenaline in my perspiration. I knew I would need to sit down if I wanted to seem calm, but I just wasn't ready to. I wasn't ready to be calm.
"Why are you so mad at me, Bella?" He still hadn't blinked. It was such a strange difference from the typically roaming eyes from before that I almost commented on it, but I focused on the question and exhaled deeply.
"Why were you chasing Edward around my bedroom?" Jacob answered with no hesitation.
"Because he was in your bedroom." The last words rung out like distant thunder, menacing and bleak.
"You have no right to act like that about anybody being in my bedroom, Jake—you have no right to come to my dad's and endanger him, to make a spectacle just because you feel insecure!" I realized I was panting. My hands had reached out before I noticed and braced against the table so that I was slightly closer to his face, the face I loved so much. Could he understand? I didn't want to tell him that Edward had watched me sleep every night, that he wouldn't let me go anywhere, do anything, that he'd decided might be dangerous…I didn't want to tell him because I was ashamed of how much I'd loved it when I was younger. I didn't want to admit that it had taken me years to know that wasn't love.
"I have no right?" Suddenly Jake was standing too, leaning towards me with his lips curling. I didn't back down even as his shadow blocked the light from above, and the rage creeping in to his voice was terrifying. "There's another man in your bedroom, and I have no right to react at all?"
"No!" I wanted to slap him, to shake him, to be strong enough to act like him. "He's not some guy, Jake, he's the guy I turned down to be with you!" Our faces were inches apart, the tension crackling between us like lightning. Jacob's shook, and I knew he could hear my heart pounding loudly. His words crept out from behind clenched teeth.
"How am I supposed to know you're really with me when your vampire ex is lurking in your bedroom, Bella? What am I supposed to think?"
"That's the thing, Jake—you're supposed to think." My mouth snapped loudly shut, the teeth clapping against each other. "Like a human. Not just react, like…like—"
"Like what," he growled. "Like a dog?" His voice was icy and low now, and out of the corner of my eye I saw that his nails were digging in to the wood of the table, sinking through it like knives through butter.
"Yes," I whispered. There was an explosive crack, and before I realized what was happening the air was full of tiny shredded pieces of wood. Jake had turned and thrown the chair he'd been sitting in against the wall, shattering the heavy pine like fragile glass with so much force I hadn't seen it happen. He stood facing away from me and towards the wrecked chair, his massive shoulders heaving as his entire frame blurred. My body involuntarily began to shake with fear—and worse, I knew he would smell it, and know.
"Dogs are loyal," he growled. His voice was strange—fighting his transformation made the words thick and surreal. He refused to look at me, continuing to stare at the shards of wood littering the floor in front of him. "You've never been especially loyal, Bella—it's not one of the qualities you're known for—"
"You have no right to say that," I gasped in horror. If he'd wanted to frighten me, to hurt me, he'd succeeded. My mind replayed a dozen rebuttals, throwing them all away as I scoured myself for disloyalty and felt the sting of shame. How dare he make this about me--
"If anyone has the right, I have the right!" Jacob's face was once again inches away from me—I hadn't thought it possible, but my heart pounded even harder, and instead of fighting the urge to smack him I fought the urge to run. My body startled backwards and my anger dissipated into outright fear; his hair swung wildly around his head as his shoulders shook like a human earthquake, the air filled with his hot, gasping breath. I couldn't see his eyes but behind the mask of his hair I saw his mouth, a feral scowl marring the lips I loved. "If you can have your goddamn vamp over for sleep overs than I have every goddamn right to chase him!"
"Listen to yourself, Jake," I whispered. "Do you really doubt me? You know why he was there—he wasn't there for me! You know why—just think about it—"
"I am thinking, Bella!" He threw his head back, his eyes tightly closed, and I saw tiny drops of blood on the table from where his nails cut in to his palms as he balled his fists. "I am trying and trying and thinking and thinking—about him in your room—and this---this is what it does to me—"
"You're not thinking then, damn it!" I couldn't keep the rigid sob out of my voice. "You're not thinking about last night, you're not thinking about how much I love you—I am loyal, Jake…" I sobbed openly between the words. "I am so damn loyal that…I will stay with you…until you leave me." I couldn't stand any more, my knees giving out as I crumpled in to the seat, my head hitting the table. "I will stay until you imprint," I gasped out, and the choking darkness in my chest rippled and flexed like poison, salt and ruin filling my mouth.
I stayed that way for what felt like years, lost in grief and humiliation. My rage was spent. So many things that I knew Forks held, lingering beneath the brightness of my brief comfort, raked across my heart: the pain of losing everyone who had ever loved me, in any true, benevolent way; the curse of never knowing what I wanted until it was too late; the endless difficulty of being a human surrounded by non-mortals. Jacob would have to leave me, I realized. No amount of wondering when or pretending otherwise or even love would keep it from coming. I hated the wolf in him for many reasons, particularly when they mimicked the things I'd hated about Edward….but I hated the wolf for imprinting most of all.