Disclaimer: I do not own anything from the collective works of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight Saga
A Good Man is Hard to Find
Louisa was aware of the pain: a throbbing, sharp stab somewhere behind her left ear that wouldn't let up. Without opening her eyes, her hand drifted to the spot to massage it, only to stop when she felt a tugging at her fingers. Her eyelids fluttered open and she found herself surveying a grey plastic… thing clipped on to her right index finger. The squeaking of… a thing drew her attention and her eyes drifted towards the sound, only to find herself face to face with a little girl with curly red hair. Louisa gasped and tried to move away, but her body felt too heavy to move.
"Sorry," the little girl said, cuddling a crocheted doll to her chest. "He told me not to surprise you. Your brain is sick again, right?"
It took a moment for Louisa to recall the little girl, her memories flowing slower than molasses in the dead of winter. Memories of sitting in a hospital room, reading books together leaked their way into Louisa's mind, and with it, a name.
"Who told you that?" she asked Kelly. She squinted her eyes, unable to decide if she couldn't see the girl because the room was too dark or because the room was rocking.
"Sir Jasper!" Kelly exclaimed with a squeal that left Louisa's ears ringing. "He was here earlier before a fairy came and took him away. He said you had a big bruise on your brain, which makes your head hurt. He used a funny word for it."
Jasper had been with her? Where was he now? Why did he leave? Louisa took a deep breath, trying to calm her accelerating heart and focus on the redhead, which she found was surprisingly difficult. "A…a…" Louisa began, only for the word to slip away from her. "Thing?"
Kelly's eyebrows furrowed. "It started with a 'C', I think. It was like, 'cushion' or something. He said it makes it hard for your brain to think."
Louisa still had no clue what Kelly was describing, but it felt pretty accurate. It was hard to think. At least, she thought that it was hard to think. It was hard to tell if it was hard to think. Louisa lifted a hand to massage her temples and let out a groan, swallowing hard and fighting a wave of nausea. "Was it a… confusion?" No that wasn't it. "No, a contusion." No that didn't sound right either. In fact, why did her voice sound so slurred? "Con-cue-sion. Con-cushion. Con-dammit."
Kelly let out a nervous giggle. "You said a bad word."
"Don't repeat it," Louisa sighed, her eyes sliding shut. "Do you know what happened?"
"Jasper said that you tripped and hit your head," Kelly explained.
That didn't feel right to Louisa. She was pretty sure she had been doing something important, but for the life of her, she didn't know what. "Where is Jasper?" He would know what had happened. He had something to do with the events that landed her in a hospital bed. That much she was certain of.
"The fairy took him away, remember? I just told you that."
What did that even mean? "What happened?"
"To Jasper?"
"No," Louisa said. "Maybe. I don't know. Where am I? Why am I here?" Her heart began to flutter in her chest as panic began to settle in. Where was Jasper? What had happened? Had something happened? Something must have happened, otherwise, he wouldn't have left. A tiny hand patted her face in concern. Why was she acting like this? Was this what Sir Jasper had meant when he said that Louisa might be confused when she woke up? She would be okay, though, right? She had to be.
"Kelly, darling," a smooth voice said, prompting Louisa's eyes to snap open. She tried to focus on the man but it was like she was looking through a frosted window. She could tell that he was blond and his voice was familiar, but… what was his name again? How did she know him? He wasn't her father and he wasn't Jasper. She knew that she knew him, but her brain couldn't seem to figure out in what context. "What did I say about touching her?"
"That her brain isn't feeling good and I shouldn't touch her in case I move her brain again," Kelly parroted, her hand drawing away. "But I didn't hurt her!"
The man drew nearer and his features coming into focus. Dr Cullen gave the little girl a kind smile. "She has a concussion, darling. Anything could hurt her. We need to be very careful."
Kelly's head drooped, her chin resting on her chest. Red ringlets fell in front of her face, swaying as she nodded.
"Chin up," Dr Cullen said, reaching forward to tilt the girl's head back up. "Why don't you go and play for a little while? I need to talk to Louisa about some boring stuff."
The little girl nodded and slid out of her chair. She gave Louisa a sad look and a mumbled apology before darting out of the room. Louisa watched her go, her brain trying to figure out something, but unsure what it was trying to process. Was Kelly sick? Well, Kelly had always been sick, Louisa remembered. But she was sicker than normal. The letters ESRD appeared in her mind, scrawled on the end of a chart. A sad pat on the head. Memories that didn't belong to Louisa. Memories. Something had happened with memories. Memories and Jasper. And a closet?
"Where is Jasper?" Louisa asked again, hoping to get a real answer.
Carlisle pulled Kelly's vacated chair closer to the bed and sat down.
"He's out hunting," Carlisle explained in a low voice, even though nobody else was around to hear. "How much do you remember?"
That was a very good question, Louisa thought. What had happened? What had she been doing? Where had she been? Who had she been with? And why didn't she remember the answers?
Had she forgotten everything again?
The thought almost made her vomit. Carlisle must have been thinking along the same lines because he produced a bucket from somewhere and held it under her chin. He spoke soothing words in her ear, which might have relaxed her except... was it her imagination, or was he avoiding touching her? Was something wrong with her? Panic filled her chest and her breath came out in strangled gasps.
No. Breathe, relax, focus. Don't panic; panic doesn't solve anything. Deep breaths to stop the hyperventilation. Release the tension from the shoulders. Unclench fists and jaw. Count to ten in Spanish and back to zero in Russian. Breathe, relax, focus. It wasn't as good as Jasper, but the focusing helped somewhat, even if was more difficult than usual. That made sense. Concussions made it hard to focus. They also made it difficult to recall what had happened moments before the accident. She hadn't forgotten everything— it had gotten a bit scrambled, that's all.
Focus, relax, breathe.
She closed her eyes, drawing up a door in her mind's eye, watched as her hand reached forward and pushed it open. Her mental-self poked her head into the library, taking note of her surroundings: some of the shelves had fallen over, but nothing seemed to be on fire. That had to be a good thing. Things were still intact. A mental-Dottie wandered by and gave her a scathing look.
"As if I'd let you forget me again," she said in a huff before tossing a manila folder at her. "Now, if you don't have anything else to bother me with, I've got to go clean up your mess."
Louisa glanced down at the folder, which had the date scribbled across the front in large block letters. The pages were written by either a dyslexic gorilla or an over-enthusiastic toddler with a green crayon, making it slow reading. She leafed through the events of the day, which were unsurprisingly boring, starting with her morning routine and leading all the way up to—
"Holy shit!"
Carlisle, who had been leaning over her, jumped in surprise. "What is the matter? Are you feeling ill?"
"I kissed Jasper?"
"Yes," Carlisle confirmed. "Do you—"
"Nice." Louisa sank back into the pillows on her bed, or at least as much as they would allow. They were hospital pillows, after all. "It's hard to remember. It was very dark. Or was that because my eyes were closed? And then there was—" she broke off as more of her memories began to resurface. Anna. The man (the one who killed her?). Shhh, don't get caught. Blood? Louisa lifted her hand to her face. "Was I bleeding?"
"Yes," Carlisle said again, sitting down on the edge of her bed. "Jasper was afraid he had broken your nose at first. There was quite a lot of blood. We thought he might have given you the concussion too."
"Jasper wouldn't hurt me," she snapped. How dare he accuse him of something like that? Jasper couldn't hurt her, whether he wanted to or not. Which he didn't. He loved her and wouldn't let anything happen to her. Louisa might be foggy on most of the details at the moment, but she knew that much.
Carlisle, for his part, seemed to pick up on her sudden mood swing. He leaned back, palms facing her in an appeasing gesture, his face repentant. "I know that," he agreed. "We thought it might have been an accident. He wouldn't willingly put you in danger. We were incorrect in our assumptions, either way. He probably only played a small role in the accident." When Louisa opened her mouth to argue with him, the doctor hurried on. "Edward saw the tail end of the memory."
Louisa pursed her lips in annoyance. "Anna was there. And her… what's the name for someone who kills someone?"
"A murderer?" Carlisle provided.
"That's the bitch," Louisa said, snapping her fingers. Was she usually so foul-mouthed? She didn't think so. "Her murderer. He was at the school with her. How do I prove that? I need to prove that."
"No," Carlisle interrupted, his tone firm. "No more investigation for at least a month. Louisa, we believe that your concussion was caused by your gift. Do you understand that?"
Her gift? Like a birthday gift? And what did sleuthing have to do with her concussion? When she asked Carlisle for clarification, he gave her a sympathetic, tight-lipped smile, leaving Louisa to try and put together what felt like a million piece jigsaw puzzle. She was a… psychometrist. Had she been using her psycho-thingy recently? Yes, that's why she was in a closet with Jasper. "I used my gift, and saw a vision of Anna," Louisa muttered under her breath, less for Carlisle's sake and more to organise her scrambled thoughts. "I've used my power before, though. I usually get headaches from it."
"We're not sure what caused it," Carlisle admitted. "You're MRI shows that your hippocampus has grown. We have hypothesised that it swelled this afternoon and in the process, created too much intracranial pressure."
"That pesky hippocampus," Louisa muttered, closing her eyes.
"We can't be certain of course," Carlisle continued with a chuckle, despite the heavy conversation. "You are the only human that possesses the gift of psychometry that we know of, making it difficult to conduct research on the matter."
She rubbed her hand across her face, trying to think but finding it very difficult to. That was the concussion, she supposed. "Where is he?"
"Hunting with Alice. He accidentally drank some of your blood. He seemed to be in control of himself, but it was better to be safe."
Louisa took a deep, shuttering breath. That was fine, sensible even. So why was her heart beginning to pound? "When will he be back?" she asked, hating the way her voice wobbled. It couldn't be healthy to be so attached to your boyfriend of two months. But Jasper wasn't merely her boyfriend, was he?
"You'll be released in a few hours, I suspect. Your father has been notified, but he does work quite a distance away," Carlisle said in a soothing voice, reaching forward to pat his arm. "Alice said that he will want you to stay with him for the night at the motel, but you'll be able to see Jasper for a few minutes before—"
"He's not coming?" Tears began to prick at the corner of her eyes and she blinked, attempting in vain to stop them from falling. The worst part of it was that she didn't even know why she was crying. She had been away from Jasper before and had never reacted like this.
"It's not safe for him to be here, darling," Carlisle replied, his cold hand rubbing up and down her arm in what was intended to be a calming gesture. "He's consumed human blood and we don't know how he'll react to being around humans."
"He won't hurt me," Louisa tried to argue.
"We don't know that," Carlisle said. "But we also have to think about the other patients in the hospital. It might not be safe."
Why did he doubt Jasper so much? Sure, Jasper didn't have the best track record when it came to following the Cullen's strict diet, but that didn't mean he couldn't control himself. He had visited her before in the hospital and there hadn't been a massacre then. There was no need to doubt that he wouldn't stay in control again. Besides, Kelly had said that he had been present before, and that was before he went hunting. Louisa wanted to tell Carlisle this. She tried to tell him this. But her tongue felt too big for her mouth, the air too heavy in her lungs, and it took her a moment to realise that she was angry. Livid, in fact, that anyone could doubt that Jasper couldn't be trusted. Her mate was a good man. How dare Dr Cullen suggest otherwise?
"Carlisle," a beautiful voice said only seconds before serenity filled the room. "You said that you were going to speak with her, not cause her distress."
Like a magnet attracted to metal, Louisa flew forward before she even realised what she was doing. Carlisle let out a startled gasp and moved to stop her. The heart rate monitor screamed when the digital reader was ripped off her finger. Jasper stepped forward to catch her, one arm wrapping around her waist whilst the other cradled her head to his chest. She buried her nose in his shoulder, breathing in his comforting scent. It felt like she was choking and unable to breathe, but not from terror, but rather because of relief. He tilted his head down to press a kiss to her temple before easing her back on to the hospital bed with a gentle hand and sitting down next to her.
"You shouldn't be here, Jasper," Carlisle said in a low voice.
"Then release her from the hospital, because I'm not leaving her side." While it wasn't rude, his tone was full of authority that she had never witnessed before. It wasn't aggressive, but rather a confidence that his orders to be followed with a swift, militaristic-like precision. Gooseflesh erupted across her skin and she realised that this was the Jasper that the Cullens were most familiar with. Not the gentle boy he was with her but a dominating and aloof war veteran.
Despite the harshness of his tone, there was a tenderness in the way his large hands held her face, his thumbs wiping away her errant tears. He bent down and rested his forehead against hers and she could feel his slow breaths fanning across her lips, close enough to kiss. And kiss he did, this one slower, sweeter, and infinitely more gentle than their last. There was no desperation or frenzy, though it was no less passionate. It was warm and loving and so inexplicably Jasper that for a moment Louisa thought her heart might actually burst because it felt so full. When he pulled away, she swore could still taste him on her lips.
He ran his nose across her cheek, along her jaw, down her neck, coming to rest over her carotid. He lips skimmed over the delicate skin there for only a second before parting, his tongue sliding over her pulse point. She jumped in surprise at the sensation and she could feel his amusement at her actions. He placed a gentle kiss over the same spot before sitting up, his dark brown eyes watching her with nothing less than unadulterated love. His hands slid down her sides before coming to rest on her hips, thumbs massaging the skin where her shirt had ridden up.
Dr Cullen had to ruin the moment. "It's not safe to be touching her," he said after clearing his throat with an awkward cough. "We don't know how active her gift might be or what the consequences of using it in a concussed state." Which explained why Kelly had been scolded for touching her. She knew she wasn't that delicate.
Jasper's lips pursed as if he were considering his adoptive father's words, fingers freezing, though he didn't remove them. "Do you think it is something she will adapt to? If we were to practice, she might be able to control it."
Dr Cullen took the seat next to her bed, his elbows resting on his knees. "It's hard to say," he admitted. "I've never heard of a human using a supernatural gift before. At least not in the capacity that you do, Louisa."
"I'm an overachiever," Louisa drawled before moving to lay her head in Jasper's lap.
"Except in Spanish," Jasper said, running his fingers through her hair.
"¡Qué te jodan!" she deadpanned moments before squawking in protest when Jasper nipped at her ear.
"It does pose a fascinating question, however. If this is what you can do now," Carlisle mused, his expression pensive. "I do wonder what you will be able to do when you are changed."
The two vampires continued with their (rather boring) speculations, for a while longer. Louisa tuned them out, choosing instead to close her eyes and focus on the sensation of Jasper's fingers in her hair. Eventually, Dr Cullen's pager went off and he excused himself from the room. They watched him go and it was a few moments before Jasper finally turned back to look at her. The corner of his mouth twitched and his eyebrows were furrowed. Every few seconds, she would feel the fleeting influence of his emotions before they disappeared.
"I'm okay, Jazz," Louisa whispered.
He leaned down and kissed her forehead in response and she tilted her head up, trying to capture his lips. She made a noise of protest when he pulled away to pick up his backpack. He withdrew a worn hardback novel and shifted her so that she was sitting up, propped up against his side.
"I know it's not Sherlock Holmes, but I like it."
"The Hobbit? I never pegged you for a Tolkien fan."
Jasper chuckled and pressed a kiss to her temple. "It's one of the first things I bought after leaving the army. It took me a while to figure out currency. Imagine my surprise when I found out that Confederate money wasn't accepted anymore. Have you read it?"
"I've seen the movies."
Jasper scoffed. "Jackson added a completely unnecessary love triangle. The book is much better."
"Then, by all means, read away," she said before ducking under his arm and snuggling into his side. Just as he flipped open the book and turned to the first page, a mop of red hair peeked around the doorway, and Kelly inched her way into the room. Her eyes shifted around as if she were looking for someone who might try to stop her, and, finding none, trotted up to the side of the bed.
"Can I join?" she asked in a hesitant voice, looking up at the two teenagers with wonder.
Jasper glanced down at Louisa, thinly veiled panic etched across his face, not trusting himself around the girl. She gave him an encouraging smile, trying to convey her support without words. Kelly had made her way to the bed, eyes wide and hopeful. His nervousness lasted for only a second longer, his features softening as he gave the girl a small smile.
"You'll like this one, I think," Jasper said, sliding his hands under Kelly's arms and lifting her up onto the bed and positioning her on his other side. "It has a dragon in it."
"Read," Kelly demanded, pointing at the book resting in his lap.
"Well, ain't you bossy?" He said with a laugh before picking up the book again. Louisa closed her eyes, relishing in the feeling of Jasper's voice rumbled in his chest. "'In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort…'"
No Stone Left Unturned
The only good thing about having a concussion meant that she didn't have to go to school for the rest of the week. Instead, Louisa spent her days with Esme at the Collins' home, which had finally been vacated by the police. Louisa began the boring task of cleaning up the mess that had been left behind by both the intruder and various police officers. It was slow going as Louisa had to sort through trampled clothes and torn bits of paper piece by piece, trying to decide what was salvageable. Her bed, for instance, had been cracked in half and was beyond saving. Until a suitable replacement could be found for her bed, Louisa would be sleeping in the lounge. Dottie had offered to share her bed with her older sister, but Louisa had declined, citing her frequent headaches making it difficult to sleep. She could hardly say that Jasper refused to enter Dottie's room, after all.
Esme worked almost non-stop, patching up the hole, and, upon Louisa's request, removing most of the bookshelves in the room. It wasn't like Louisa had that many books, and she didn't want the reminder of how the intruder had concealed his frequent comings and goings. Alice had arrived one afternoon carrying an armful of new clothes to replace the piles of clothes that had been destroyed. Louisa pointed out that all the clothes were at least an inch too long and wouldn't fit, prompting a vague reply from the psychic.
Jasper was surprisingly firm about Carlisle's investigation ban, though Rosalie was far more liberal, showing up daily with status reports about the case. The most exciting development, by far, was the agreement of Bernadette Krantz, Anna's best friend, to be interviewed. Rosalie had burst into the Collins' house with the news one day, eliciting a surprised squeak from Dottie who had been sitting next to Louisa in the lounge. Rosalie ignored Dottie's response and vaulted over the back of the couch and settled herself on the cushions next to Louisa. Dottie, who had always been intimidated by the tall blonde, muttered an excuse under her breath before scurrying out of the room.
"You'll sneak me in to watch, won't you?" Louisa almost begged.
"Naturally," Rosalie scoffed, rolling her eyes to produce the optimal dramatic effect. "As if you'd miss this."
"This is why you are my favourite Cullen."
"Don't let Emmett hear you say that," Rosalie replied, slouching down on the couch and throwing her legs across Louisa's lap. "He'll be crushed."
Their conversation drifted back to the case, and she tossed theories back and forth with her friend. As they spoke, Louisa got the distinct feeling that Rosalie was withholding information from her, or at the very least trying to distract her, which didn't make much sense, as Rosalie had a very low tolerance for bullshit and small talk.
When asked how Sergeant Todd was taking their meddling, Rosalie groaned. "He's as insufferable as always."
"I have a theory about that," Louisa said, pushing Rosalie's legs off and standing up. She didn't of course, but Louisa had a niggling feeling that her friend didn't want her to go upstairs. "I left it up in my room. Follow me."
True to her intuition, Rosalie sat up and grabbed Louisa's wrist, holding her in place when she turned to leave the room. "No, I believe you," Rosalie replied. "You shouldn't be moving around."
"I also shouldn't be discussing the case, yet here we are," Louisa pointed out, pulling away and making her way towards the staircase. "Is there a reason you don't want me to go into my room?"
Rosalie swore under her breath, confirming Louisa's suspicions. "Has anyone told me that you are annoyingly perceptive?"
"One or two people." They were at her bedroom door which was closed despite the fact that Louisa remembered leaving it open. She tossed a curious look over her shoulder to Rosalie who was standing behind her with an exasperated expression. Louisa gave her an impish grin before pushing open her door and stepping inside her room only to stop in confusion when her brain processed the sight in front of her.
Jasper was sitting at her desk, watching her with amusement, twirling a pen between his long fingers. A laptop she didn't recognise was humming from where it sat in front of him next to a stack of her neglected schoolwork. Esme had evidently finished her renovations, and with the removal of a majority of the built-in bookshelves and a fresh coat of light green paint, the bedroom looked less cramped and more cosy. The most startling addition, however, was a familiar full sized bed that had been tucked into the far corner of the room.
"Is that your bed?"
"Technically it's your bed now," Jasper pointed out. "You were supposed to keep her occupied, Rose."
"If you know how to keep secrets with her around, please inform me," Rose snapped, brushing by Louisa and crossing the room to sit in the window seat. "Between her and Edward, nothing will ever be safe again."
Louisa was too preoccupied with the large piece of furniture to feign offence. "How did you even get it into my room?"
"Through the window," Jasper replied in a tone that made it difficult to decide if he was kidding or not. When he noticed her hesitation, he reached forward and pulled her down into his lap, burying his face in her mane of hair. "I hardly need it and I can always make another."
A fuzzy feeling, one that made her feel loved and cared for, spread through her, starting in her chest and warming her all the way to the tips of her toes. She turned her head to nuzzle his neck and tried to convey her thanks without words. She must have done a sufficient job because she felt his arms snake around her and a purr rumble through his chest. Rosalie had enough tact to pull out a magazine and flip through it to give them a semblance of privacy.
At some point, Louisa realised that her eyes had closed, and when she opened them, her eyes focused on the laptop on her desk. It wasn't Jasper's and Rose refused to use anything that wasn't an apple product so it couldn't be hers either. And seeing as her laptop had been destroyed by the unwelcome guest and the hard-drive seized by the police as evidence, she knew that it wasn't hers.
"Emmett tried to save your old one," Jasper explained when he noticed her gaze. When Louisa didn't reply, merely blinked in surprise, he ploughed on, an undertone of worry lacing his voice. "It's not too much, is it? Alice said it would be fine but if it's too much I can—"
She cut him off before panic could set it. "It is fine, Jasper. It was very thoughtful." She tilted her head up to place a kiss against his cheek. "Thank you."
He relaxed under her touch and pulled the laptop closer, his fingers sliding over the trackpad while he showed her the new device. "It has all your files on it," he said before she could ask. "It's best you don't know how Emmett did it."
"It runs faster than that dinosaur you had too," Rose called out.
"I bought that two years ago," Louisa informed her.
"Precisely."
Louisa grabbed a pen from her desk and chucked it at Rosalie, who dodged it without bothering to look up from her magazine. She huffed in annoyance and snuggled back up to her boyfriend, who lifted a hand to run through her hair. The gift was a bit extravagant and would be hard to explain to her father, but Louisa recognised that Jasper's heart was in the right spot.
"My laptop," Louisa said suddenly, sitting up and turning to face Jasper. "He destroyed my laptop."
Jasper looked at her, confused. "Yes," he said slowly. "That's why I bought you a new one."
"No, like, why?" She closed her eyes and managed to bring up the image from her room, though it was foggier than she would have liked. The bed had been flipped, the drawers had been pulled out. Her backpack had its contents spilt on the floor.
She glanced over at Rosalie, who had dropped the magazine on the bench and was leaning forward. "Does it matter?"
"How many people break into a house and start ripping pages from books?"
"Someone who wants it to look like a burglary?" Jasper guessed.
"Then why break the laptop?" Rosalie countered. "Lou's right, it was a weird scene. He trashed the room, sure, but he obliterated her laptop."
"We thought it was because he saw me working on the case on my computer," Louisa said. "He had a camera in my room, after all. But think about it, how powerful would those cameras need to be to see what was on my screen?"
"Way more high-tech than what they found," Rosalie agreed. "He might have heard you talking about the case and assumed that that was where you kept your notes?"
"But why?" Louisa asked, a twinge of pain flashing across her brain. "What is it to him? Why does he care so much that someone is trying to solve this case?"
"People have tried before," Jasper reminded her, reaching up to massage her scalp. "And there's been a lot of opposition from the town. That's why Chief Swan doesn't tell people the case is still open."
"But breaking and entering with a side of vandalism is a bit different than complaining to the Chief of Police," Rosalie pointed out. "Lou is right. Whoever broke in is way more invested in stopping this case from being solved. What they did is going way beyond the call of duty."
"Exactly," Louisa replied. "But why would someone break into my house and destroy my laptop? That's the part that doesn't make sense to me."
"What if it was to scare you off?" Rosalie suggested. "It could have been a power play. To show you that he was in control of the situation and not you. That's why it was your room and not the whole house."
"You think he was a sending a message to me? Telling me to back off from the case?"
"Oh hell," Jasper said suddenly, his body stiffening beneath her. His hands were on her hips in an instant, holding them so tightly that she was afraid he might leave bruises. "Whoever broke into your house— they had to have killed Anna." When nobody spoke, only stared at him in confusion, he continued on, speaking so fast that he was tripping over his own words. "Think about it. Anna was killed in a locked house. Our intruder also managed to get into a locked house. What if they got in the same way? And if they did, what are the odds that two different people know about a tunnel that shouldn't even exist?"
It seemed that everyone was too shocked to speak after Jasper's proclamation. Louisa brought her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, trying to swallow the urge to vomit. Sure, she had a (somewhat) unhealthy fascination with true crime. But the knowledge that a murderer had access to her when she was sleeping? It was enough to turn her stomach. She was suddenly grateful that Jasper had insisted that he camp out in her room for the last few months. If he hadn't been there, would Louisa even be sitting here, having this conversation? Jasper must have had the same thoughts because his arms snaked around her, holding her so tightly to his chest that it hurt.
At last, Rosalie broke the silence with her musings. "I wonder if previous tenants got the same treatment. People reported that the house was haunted. Maybe he was messing with them too?"
"Can you find out who used to own the house after the Sweet's moved out?" Louisa asked. "We should talk to them and ask what actually caused them to move out."
Rosalie nodded before opening up the window and sliding out, evidently deciding that using the front door like a normal person would be too slow. They watched her go, staring at the open window long enough for the room to drop several degrees. After what felt like hours, Louisa managed to extract herself from Jasper's embrace and crossed the room to slide the window shut. She sank down onto the window seat and stared at her boyfriend who was sitting still as a statue in her desk chair.
"I know you don't like it—"
"Correct," was his sharp reply. He knew just as well as she did that she wasn't about to forget about the case; she didn't have to say it out loud. And whilst she was resigned to the fact that she would have to see it through, he was reluctant to let her. There was so much tension in his shoulders it looked like the slightest touch might break him in half. She yearned to cross the room again, curl up in his lap, relax his muscles, and soothe his worries. She could see that her decision was hurting him and the knowledge broke her heart. But she couldn't stop, just like she couldn't stop when her father and sister begged her to. She felt disgusted with herself. She raised her hands to rub them over her face, partly to stop the tears that were pricking her eyes from falling, but mostly so that Jasper couldn't see her face.
A dumb sentiment, all things considered. He could, after all, feel her emotions.
Cold fingers wrapped around her wrists, pulling her hands away to reveal her face. He was kneeling in front of her, eyes pitch black. But even with their darkness, she could still see the agony in them. She didn't realise that she was crying until a sob escaped her. She grabbed either side of his face and pulled him closer, placing her lips on his, trying to convey her feelings, even if she didn't understand what they were. The kiss wasn't sweet or happy. It was angry and sad, aggressive and possessive. It was passionate, not in a loving way, but an obsessive, all-consuming way that crushed her lungs. Still, despite all of the negative emotions swirling between them, she wanted— no, craved— more.
"I'm sorry," she managed to choke out when she broke away for air.
Jasper didn't respond so much as growl in response, pulling her off the window seat towards him. She went to him, wrapping her legs around his hips. Despite their feelings, despite knowing that they could only get comfort from the person that hurt them, they were still drawn to each other. Jasper's teeth raked over her bottom lip to the point that he almost broke skin and when she gasped, his tongue forced its way into her mouth. But as strong as Jasper was, as ironclad his will was, she was just as stubborn, and she wouldn't let him win. She shifted, sitting higher on his hips and forcing his head to tilt backwards, her tongue pushing against his, fighting for dominance. It was hard to tell who won (perhaps neither of them did), but Jasper eventually pulled away, his lips trailing down her neck, nipping at the skin.
"I'm sorry," she repeated. She felts a sense of self-loathing, knowing that she was not only the reason behind his pain but also because she was unwilling to fix it. There was a compulsion, a deep need to finish what she had started, that wouldn't allow her to walk away from the case. "I'm so sorry."
Everything sounded hollow and inconsequential. Her words didn't mean much when she couldn't follow through with her actions. But she truly was sorry for causing him pain. Still, she needed to tell him, somehow make him understand. When his nose skimmed back up her jaw, running across her cheek, that warm feeling rushed through her again.
He may not like her actions or her reasoning, but he knew.
"Would 'sorry' have made any difference? Does it ever? It's just a word. One word against a thousand actions." ― Sarah Ockler
A/N: Well? What did you think? Thoughts and theories are cheerfully read when I'm on my lunch breaks at work. -Checkalexa
