When You Love Someone
Chapter Five
Isabella Renee
There is a small café where I go to think whenever life gets too hard for me.
I'm there now sitting in a window seat and watching the people outside wander aimlessly from shop to shop, talking to each other or their phones, never noticing my crying face hiding behind the glass.
A waiter comes my way again, and for the fifth time I send her a mental message to go elsewhere. I don't have the money to pay for anything this place has to offer, and I never do.
"Strawberry Cappuccino?"
The offer startles me back into the scenery of the café to make the connection that I have been spoken to by the man hovering over my right shoulder. When I turn to see him, I have to crane my neck to take in his tall frame easily topping six feet, intimidating if not for the pair of honest brown eyes smiling down at me.
Burning into me.
The moment our gazes lock, I feel dizzy and exposed, on fire and strangely freezing at the same time. For the fraction of a second, he frowns as if he feels it, too, but before I can be sure he's talking again and setting a fresh cup of some steaming beverage before me.
"I've seen you in here before," he tells me, nodding at the drink. "You never order, but this seems like something you would like."
"Thanks," I say and take an experimental sniff disguised as a sip. He could be anybody, after all, and the last thing I need is to be kidnapped. Most of the time, I never doubted my ability to take on a human if ever a situation called for it, but I'm not so sure about this specimen. This guy, whoever he is, seems solid, immovable even, and he admits to studying me which means he has the upper hand right now.
But the drink smells fine. So, for now, I'll assume he has no interior motive which is fortunate for me since I can't seem to take my eyes off of him.
"Can I sit with you?"
"Sure," I shove my backpack to the floor so he can take the seat across from me as confidently as if we have sat together like this a million times before. I am mesmerized by the way he moves so methodically and unhurried, as if he has everything under control right down to the very second of attack-
No wait. Why am I thinking about attacks? That can't be what this handsome stranger reminds me of, some predatory animal!
…is it?
"I just moved out here," he tells me as if sensing my uncertainty and eager to put it away. "I'm staying at a boarding house on Cape Street doing odd jobs until the winter sets in and I can go back home."
"The Stanford Boarding House?" I ask, amazed at my fortune. "That's one block over from where I live! What do you mean you're waiting to go back home?"
"Oh," he shrugs with a rueful smile as if he's let something slip on accident. "Nothing. It's just that there's someone in my hometown right now who I can't be around for a while."
"Why not?"
"Because we don't get along. At all."
"So you left an entire town to get away from one person?" I arch an eyebrow at him and he chuckles, finally seeing how ridiculous he looks. "It must be serious, huh?"
"A matter of life and death, and that's the truth."
"So, where is this hometown?"
"Forks, Washington," he answers and then extends his hand toward me. "Please excuse my manners, but I don't think I've told you yet that my name is Jacob Black."
"Nice to meet you!" I can't help but smile as I say his name over and over again in my mind, savoring it. It sounds exactly the way he looks: delicious. In an instant, I begin to have a series of uncontrollable fantasies of he and I taking long walks on some deserted beach. In my mind, it isn't a particularly pretty place and there is absolutely no sun, but Jacob and I are together and that makes everything –even the cold, dead feeling of the rocks under our feet beautiful. Now, water is lapping at our toes and I am giggling. Now, Jacob presses me close to him so the swell won't eat me…
"And your name?"
His question pulls me out of the daydream and back into his warm brown eyes.
"Sorry," I apologize, but he has no idea it's because of the butterflies beating against my stomach. He has to hear them, unless nothing else is discernible past the thudding of my heart?
"I'm Isabella Swan. What's wrong?"
"I have to go."
"What? Wait! Please wait!"
But he's already gone. He's already on his motorcycle, speeding away from this café as fast as he possibly can, and I am staring after him hurting as if the farther he goes the less blood my heart remembers to pump.
Why did he leave after I told him my name? That was more than rude and hurtful; it was bizarre, only slightly more bizarre, that is, than how totally obsessed I am with him and how he moves, the way he talks, the electric current that runs through me the more I say his name to myself.
Jacob Black. Jacob Black. Jacob Black.
I know where he's staying and I know his name –the only truly important tools I need to track him down and force him to reckon with me. But can I do that? Can I be so crazy as to see him again merely because I wanted to even though it seems fairly obvious that he doesn't want to see me?
"Isabella Renee Swan!"
My plans will have to wait for now, I see, as Mason comes storming through the door, hollering my name