Chapter 22
We gotta get out of this place

If it's the last thing we ever do

We gotta get out of this place

Girl, there's a better life

For me and you
We Gotta Get Out of This Place- The Animals

Bella opened her mouth and pushed the last of the pickle inside. She chewed it noisily much to the disgust of her colleagues. "What?" She asked slowly.

"That's just nasty." Alice muttered, taking a bite of the lasagna Bella had given her the previous day.

It was finally Friday and everyone seemed to be excited for the end of the school day so that their weekend could begin. Even the students were behaving for the most part, and the day seemed to be going by flawlessly. Bella, Alice and Demetri had taken their normal lunch table in the teachers lounge and were chatting about their upcoming plans.

"I can't wait for Saturday." Alice sipped her iced tea with a pleased smile tugging at the corners of her lips. "I can thank him for the gifts and we'll have a lovely night."

Demetri munched on some pretzels and glanced at Bella. "She seems to be in L-O-V-E."

"It would seem so." Bella concurred.

"You're going to have to tell us all about your date on Monday." Demetri told her seriously. "You can't leave out any detail."

Alice nodded enthusiastically. "Of course!" She took another bite of her lasagna before speaking again. "You have to do the same. Aren't you going to the tavern?"

"We are." Demetri couldn't help the light blush that danced across his cheeks. "It's so nice to have Max talking to me again."

"Demetri, you're too cute." Alice commented. "Who else is going to the tavern?"

Demetri took a swig of his pop before answering. "Well aside from me, Bella and Max, I invited Corin since she seems to love hanging out with us."

Alice and Bella exchanged glances. "There might be a reason for that." Alice muttered under her breath.

"What?" Demetri looked at the women with confusion.

"Nothing." Alice replied. "So just the four of you?"

"And Jacob." Bella piped in. "He's coming too."

"I would've invited Julia too, but as it turns out, she doesn't work here anymore." Demetri shrugged and chewed on another pretzel.

"Since when?" Alice gasped, shocked by the information.

"Beats me." Demetri replied honestly. "But there was that sex scandal with some students a few weeks ago, and I going to assume there is a correlation." Demetri shrugged and munched on another pretzel. "But who really knows. Maybe the school is trying to avoid a lawsuit."

Alice frowned at Demetri's words. "Poor Julia. She was going through that divorce too. Her life sucks."

Bella pulled a slice of coconut cake out of her lunch bag and took a large bite. Demetri and Alice exchanged glances and looked at her as though she had sprouted two heads. "What?" Bella asked between bites.

"First pickles, now cake? You are going to make yourself sick." Demetri commented.

Bella shrugged, enjoying the taste of the sweet cake on her pallet. "I'll be fine." She polished off the rest of her cake as the bell rang, ending their lunch. The teachers headed their separate ways to their classrooms, ready for the day to be over.

At the end of the day, Bella wasn't surprised when Jane came up to her desk at the end of class with a 'question'. She had managed to avoid the student all week, but she had gotten side tracked with her plans for the following day, which caused her to fall behind in packing up her things. By the time she had gathered her thoughts, all of the students had left the room-well, all of them except for one. Jane. "What can I do for you Jane?" Bella asked politely, even though the student grated on her nerves.

Jane, as usual, had her short pale brown hair pushed behind her ears. Gray eyes were locked onto Bella's with a quiet intensity. "It was a porno wasn't it?"

She spoke so softly that Bella almost didn't hear her. "I beg your pardon?"

"Porn. That's where I saw you from. I'm right aren't I?" Jane looked pleased with herself while Bella merely looked bewildered. "That's why you didn't want me to remember where I've seen you."

Bella tried to remain expressionless but couldn't help allowing her face to show just how flabbergasted Jane had made her. "You watch porn?"

Jane shifted uncomfortably in front of Bella's desk. "No, but my brother does. I've caught looking at some weird things." Jane looked down at her feet, then seemed to shake the feeling of uncomfortability and looked directly into Bella's eyes. "So you admit it, you're a pornstar?"

Bella sputtered a laugh and had to quickly take a swig of the room temperature water sitting in a bottle on her desk. "Jane, I have not been in any pornos. And also this topic is not school appropriate so I'm going to have to ask you to refrain from asking such things." After clearing her throat with the water, she placed it back onto her desk. "But thanks for the laugh."

Jane seemed let down by Bella's response and walked towards the door. "I swear I've seen you somewhere."

"Why is it that big of a deal?" Bella asked her seriously. "You seem really adamant on trying to figure out my secrets." Bella smiled at her student. "Trust me, I'm just your regular ol' teacher. Nothing special about me."

Jane pursed her lips, but didn't say anything more as she left the classroom.

Bella breathed a sigh of relief once her student had gone. She felt that Jane would finally give up her crazy search for where she had recognized Bella. Bella knew that if Jane had seen her anywhere, it was most likely from the news from when Edward had lost his mind at their wedding and tried to kill Jacob. It had been years since the incident and she wanted to move past it, but it seemed like even Edward himself wouldn't allow her to move on with her life.

After Bella had made it home, courtesy of Alice, she found her husband cooking dinner. "Oh no…" Bella entered the kitchen to find it reeking of garlic. Her vision swam briefly as the air was thick with pungent smell. It assaulted her nose and caused the poor woman to lean against the doorway of the kitchen as she felt her stomach to churn.

"Hey Bella!" Jacob greeted happily. "I saw the lasagna was gone, so I thought I'd make some spaghetti." His smile slipped when he saw the look on his wife's face. "Are you okay?"

Bella's stomach lurched and she turned from the room and skittered into the bathroom. She had barely made it to the toilet before she was puking up her guts. Pickle juice mixed with halfway digested coconut cake spewed from her lips and into the porcelain bowl. Bella could hear her daughter exiting her bedroom, and barely managed to close the door so she wouldn't be subjected to seeing her mother in such a state. She continued vomiting into the toilet until her stomach had emptied it's contents.

Afterward, she flushed and rinsed her mouth out with water. But unfortunately she could still taste pickles and coconut on her tongue. While it tasted delicious going down, coming back up was another story. Once she left the bathroom, she began to feel better, until she took in the smell of garlic. Her stomach seemed extra sensitive to the smell and if there was anything left in her stomach, she would have promptly upchucked.

Bella hurried by the kitchen and began opening all the windows in the living room, hoping to alleviate some of the smell. As she was taking in a deep breath of the fresh air, she felt warm arms engulf her from behind. "Honey, are you okay?"

The arms around her felt so soft and strong, she couldn't help leaning her weight backwards to rest against her husband. "I'm fine Jake. I just didn't expect you to be cooking spaghetti today." She patted her stomach gently. "I wasn't ready."

Jacob nuzzled into the back of her head, and she ended up with mussed hair. "I put too much garlic, didn't I?"

"Maybe a little." Bella turned around so that she could face him. "But it's alright. I'm fine." She leaned up to kiss him on the lips, but remembered that she had just vomited. So instead, she kissed his cheek sweetly. "But Alice will definitely be happy that you cooked your famous spaghetti."

Jacob grinned at his wife. "I made extra just for her." He admitted, then took Bella's hand and led her to the couch. "Do you want a pickle or something?"

Bella couldn't help her lips twitching into a smile. "Maybe later." She patted the seat next to her and Jacob quickly took it, resting his head on top of her shoulder. "How was work?"

"Pretty normal. Is it weird I'm still angry that I never got paid for my time in South Carolina?"

"Of course not." Bella scowled when she thought of the money Jacob had been promised, and then he had been robbed because of errors with the company. "I still don't understand how they think they gave you the money, but you didn't receive it."

Jacob sighed in exasperation. "One of life's mysteries." He muttered in annoyance. The couple sat in a comfortable silence for a while, and the only noise they could hear was their daughter in her room playing with Midnight. "There is something I've been thinking about." Jacob side glanced at his wife who peered up at him curiously.

"What is it?"

"How do you feel about moving?"

"Moving?" Bella thought about their apartment. They had lived there for as long as Renesmee had been born. She could still remember buying all the furniture, spending weeks assembling it until the place felt like home. She and Jacob had to sleep on an air mattress for nearly a month because their bed had been on backorder. Meeting their neighbors had been quite the experience. Maggie and Liam, the elderly couple downstairs, had cooked them a welcoming casserole that had fed them for days. Alice and Bella became fast friends which only intensified when they found out that they were coworkers. Meeting Caius had been quite the ordeal as he was very abrasive even on their meeting. Bella had made it her mission to avoid him at all costs, which worked out well for the most part. Bella had grown to love their apartment and all it's quirks. "Why do you want to move? Do you not like it here?"

Jacob looked around their cozy home with unabashed fondness. "I love our apartment. But I don't like that Edward knows where we live."

"We don't know that for sure." Bella murmured. But even she heard the falseness in her ears.

"He has our numbers, he threatened you at Charlie's house." Jacob's body tensed as he recalled Renesmee's birthday. "I don't want him to be able to hurt you, or Renesmee."

Bella thought about Edward's threat. He wanted her life to suffer the way his had. Clearly he had lost his mind and didn't even think about how he had already messed up her life. "If he's watching us, won't he know if we move?" Bella asked quietly.

Jacob cursed under his breath. "I didn't think about that. Maybe we should leave the country."

"Jacob." Bella looked into her husband's eyes warmly. "I don't think fleeing the country is the right thing to do. Besides, we have steady jobs right now. Do you know how hard it is to find employment?"

"I know, I know." Jacob sighed in defeat. "I just want to keep my family safe."

Bella took Jacob's hand and ran her thumb over his knuckles. "For now, we're okay. If Edward tries anything crazy, we will call the police and send him right back to jail. Where he belongs." Bella spoke with confidence that she didn't feel. She was scared of Edward, yes. But he hadn't tried anything. A part of her was hoping that Edward had made empty threats to her to scare her and make her paranoid. Then again, empty threats weren't Edward's forte. He always came through with his promises. Always.

A/N: Is anyone still reading this story? I realize that it hasn't been updated in a year, and for that, I apologize greatly. For the next 4 weeks, I will update every Monday. If you've stuck with the story since the beginning, I'm sorry for the wait! But I hope you continue to enjoy this story :)