26

Jacob Black? Who in the hell was Jacob Black and why did they think he was in any way related to Bella? There hadn't been a Jacob Black involved in the Gathering of Twilight, that he could remember at least. He and Bella had been the youngest of the children, and none of the older children were named Jacob. So who the hell was he, and why did they think he could be her stalker?

"I have a half-brother?" Bella asked, her eyes flickering to him before she looked back at Felix. "You're saying I have a half-brother?"

"I am."

Bella shook her head and looked at Charlie. "Did you know? Did you know I have a half-brother?"

"No!" he exclaimed, and as everyone turned to look at him, he put his hands up. "I swear I didn't know, Bee. I never would have kept something like that from you."

"Nobody except me knew about Jacob Black, Bella." At those words, everyone turned and looked at Felix, who had his arms folded in front of him. "He wasn't a part of the Gathering of Twilight. He was spared that particular horror."

"Who is he? I don't understand how I could have a half-brother out there and not know about it."

"Jacob is your birth father's biological child. Phillip Dwyer fathered him when he was only fifteen, just a few months before he and your mother ran away and joined the Gathering. I doubt neither he nor Renee even knew Jacob existed. His mother was from La Push, the Quileute reservation out by Forks. His mother, Rebecca, had him when she was only fourteen years old. The tribal elders forced her to marry one of their sons, a man named Billy Black. Billy was older than Rebecca by a good ten years. He was heavy-handed with both her, and Jacob if you listen to rumor. He never let Jacob forget that he wasn't his real son, that he'd only married his mother to keep her from being shunned. Anyway, Rebecca died when Jacob was ten, you would have been about three and half, almost four years old. She had cancer, and her death hit Jacob hard. Well, I suspect Billy Black hit Jacob hard. When Jacob was thirteen, Billy fell off a cliff and broke his back in several places, causing him to become paralyzed from the waist down. People speculated that Jacob had pushed him, and to be honest, it wouldn't surprise me if he had."

"Why?"

"Because that boy had been treated like scum, not just by his step-father, but by the entire reservation. He was bullied and targeted because his mother got pregnant by a white man, and then left with nothing but her unborn child. From all accounts, Rebecca was the only peace that boy ever had, and when she died, he lost his way. Jacob left La Push on his eighteenth birthday and joined the Army, but he was dishonorably discharged after a year and half. We're still trying to get a copy of his official record, but my sources tell me that he assaulted one of his bunkmates. He denied it, of course, but, well, they didn't believe him so they cut him loose. He's roamed around the country ever since, but his last known whereabouts were in Los Angeles, where he works as a roadie for America's Sweetheart."

"He's on my crew? You're telling me that one of my crew members is my half-brother?"

Felix nodded and pulled his phone out of his pocket. He pressed his fingers on the screen a few times before he turned and held the phone out to her. Bella shifted her eyes to Edward first, before she reached for the phone, and he saw the way she flinched as her fingers brushed against the palm of his hand. Felix almost smirked, and it took all Edward had not to leap across the room and beat him into the floor. The smug bastard enjoyed their reactions a little too much, if you asked him.

However, right now Bella was his main focus, so while she looked down at the man in the picture, so did Edward. Jacob Black was tall, broad in the shoulders and had long, jet black hair that hung down to the middle of his back. He wasn't smiling and his eyes were dark, foreboding as he stood with the rest of her crew. He had his arms folded in front of him, the bottom of his shirt rising just enough to show the delicate beige of his skin tone.

"He's not the man who broke into my house," Bella said, holding the phone to Edward, who stood it and began to study the picture.

"And how can you be sure?" Felix asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Well, besides the fact that he's clearly bigger than the man in the video, by several inches, his skin tone is darker, and he doesn't have the tattoo on his hip."

"She's right." Edward tossed the phone back to Felix, who caught it with ease. "It's not him."

"I think we'll still take a look at him, seeing as tattoos can easily be covered with make-up." Felix shoved the phone back into his pocket. "Newton and Denali look better for it, seeing as we can tie them to being physically close to your house, but we're being thorough, as is our job."

"I don't understand any of this," Bella whimpered, wrapping her arms around her torso before she turned and walked out of the office, leaving all of them just standing there.

Edward made to follow, but Alice threw her hand up stopped him, and said, "Let me," before she followed Bella out of the office and into the living room. He clenched his hand into a tight fist before he turned and looked back at Felix, who was watching him closely, a little too closely if you asked him, but nobody ever did. They just expected him to accept the man's help. It didn't matter that just being in the same room with him was like living through Hell over and over.

"You could have told her about half-brother a different way. You didn't have to crush her like that."

"She needs to toughen up, Cullen. The people after her aren't going to cuddle her just because she cries, and you need to stop being her boyfriend, and start acting like her bodyguard."

"You should keep your thoughts about her out of your fucking mouth," Edward snarled, but turned and walked out of the office, through the living room, and out onto the front porch. He had just wrapped his hand around the white wooden post when the door opened behind him and when he looked back, he felt himself tense when Charlie walked out. He knew Bella trusted him, but there was just something about the man that didn't sit right with him, something that scared him.

Before either of them could speak, however, the sound of one of the ATVs echoed from inside the garage and they looked over to see Alice drive out of the garage and head toward the Hangman's Fall.

"Should we follow them?" Charlie asked.

"No," he replied, even though his instinct was to in fact follow them. He trusted Alice, but she hadn't exactly hidden her distaste for Bella, or his need for her in his life. Instead, Edward turned and looked at Charlie. "You and I need to talk."

Charlie tilted his head to the side before saying, "Yeah, I think we do, but I need coffee, so maybe we can talk inside."

Edward nodded and followed the man back into the house, through the living room and into the kitchen. He poured them both a cup of coffee before they settled on either side of the table. For a few, terse minutes, they just stared at each other. There were so many questions inside Edward's head, so many things he just didn't understand, but he didn't know where to start, how to ask them without sounding like he was accusing him of abusing Bella, because it didn't take a genius to see that he honestly considered Bella to be his daughter.

"When Bee was seven, she got real sick, Edward. Fever, nauseous, pain centralized on the right side of her belly. She barely let me touch her at this point, but I knew I had to take her to the hospital. She cried and begged me not to make her go, said she promised she would feel better, like . . . like that something she could control." Charlie's lips trembled. "I had to force my daughter to let me take her to the hospital. Her appendix had burst and they had to sedate her in order to take her into emergency surgery. The surgeon said if I had waited any longer, she would have died. She would have died, Edward, because the thought of anyone touching her was scarier for her than being that sick."

Charlie picked up his coffee cup and took a sip. "Maybe I should have told her from day one. Maybe I should have broken her when she was five or six years old, because it would have broken her, Edward. She was barely hanging on as it was and I tried to help."

"You think not telling her why she felt people touching her all time, letting her think there was something wrong with her, didn't fuck her up even more?"

"I'm sure it did," he admitted. "But I looked into the eyes of a little fragile, delicate girl, who had no memories of the Hell she survived —"

"She didn't survive," Edward interrupted. "We may have lived through it, Charlie, but we didn't survive. You don't survive being held down while grown men . . ." Edward swallowed the bile that crept up his throat. "I never forgot what it felt like when they would rape me, when they took turns climbing on top of me and raping me, Charlie. Never once have I forgot the pain, the humiliation, the shame," he cried, using the palms of his hands to keep his tears from falling. "I never forgot the sound of her crying, begging them to stop, and screaming for them to stop. It's haunted me for twenty-five years, and I can guarantee it's haunted her, too."

"I wish we could have stopped them long before they ever laid a finger on either of you, Edward. I truly do."

"But you didn't, and I don't blame you for that, because if you and Dad hadn't been called in our parents' murders, we probably never would have known another life other than that, but it's hard to trust you, Charlie, when you could have taught her how to fight back."

"I tried, Edward. I fucking tried, but she just refused to even talk about what to do if someone tried to attack her. When I did push her, she'd have panic attacks and lock herself in her room for days. I reached out to therapists, asking them for advice, and they all said the same thing: forcing her to learn to fight was only going to do more harm than good. We couldn't be one more person forcing what we want on her, we had to leave the choice up to her."

"Did you ever take her to a therapist?"

"Once," he admitted. "Right after she had her appendix out. Realizing that she would rather die than let someone touch her scared me, Edward. I found a therapist who specialized in childhood trauma. His named was Dr. Gerandy, and he was supposed to be highly recommended, but after one session with her, with us, his suggestion was just to dope her up on medication and have her committed, said she was hopelessly lost. One fucking session with a seven year old girl with more . . . more heartbreaking, devastating trauma than he could even imagine, and he wrote her off as damaged. She was seven years old, and he refused to fight for her, and I refused to let her slip the cracks like that. I searched for other therapists, but she refused to go back, said she didn't trust anyone other than me. When Ro came along, when Ro fought for her, it was first time I had ever seen someone other than me fight for her, Edward."

"I would have fought for her," he whispered.

"You did, Edward. Every day before your Dad and I got y'all out, and every day since, every time you . . . you fought for her, by living, by not forgetting her. Maybe I should have told your dad that she was alive, but I was scared, Edward," he whimpered.

"What were you scared of?"

He shrugged his shoulders as he wiped his tears away. "I was scared that someone take her away from me. Marcus or someone like him. When she and Ro said they wanted to leave Wyoming, move to California, I wanted to tell them no, tell them they weren't ready, because I wasn't ready to lose my girls, but she needed her music to be heard, and I couldn't stand in her way. I offered to come with them, but Bee said no, said she needed to learn to live without me. It hurt, Edward, that she didn't want me around, but I tried to not to let her see how much that hurt me."

"Why?"

"Because it wasn't her job to take care of me. It was my job to take care of her. So I let her go. Knowing Ro was with her helped, and we talked all the time. I kept a bag packed in the backseat of my truck, so I could be ready to come down when she needed me. Not if, Edward, but when. When Ro told me about the letters, I begged Bee to let me come, to let me move in with her for a while, but she always said no, always said she was fine. She didn't take the threat as seriously as Ro and I did until the first break in. Someone being inside her house scared her. She doesn't let anyone inside her house. Edward. It was the only place where she didn't hold back, where she didn't have to put on a brave face and be America's Sweetheart."

"She hates being called that."

Charlie laughed. "I know."

The door to the kitchen opened and when they looked over, they saw Tyler walk into the room with his laptop tucked under his arm. He paused and looked from Edward to Charlie and back.

"Edward," Tyler said, tilting his head toward him. "Haven't seen you in a while. You good?"

"Hanging on," he replied. "How's Lauren?"

Tyler smiled. "Keeping my ass on the straight and narrow. Much like your girls is, from what I can tell. Never seen you so protective over a client, but then she's never been just a client, has she?"

"She's important to me," he gritted out.

"Oh, we know." Tyler didn't say anything else before he walked through the kitchen and into the garage, letting the door close with a resounding thud.

"Asshole," Edward muttered under his breath.

"Can I ask you something now, Edward?" Charlie's voice drew his attention from the door and back to him. "Can I?"

"I guess."

Charlie smiled. "Are you in love with my daughter?"

"Love? I . . . I don't know what love feels like. I care about her. I need her. I . . . I can't live without her again."

"Kind of sounds like love to me." Charlie picked up his coffee cup and took another sip. "She needs you, too. I've never known her to look at someone the way she looks at you, and while the father in me doesn't like that my daughter is looking at a boy . . . not a boy, a man like he's the only person in the room, I can't deny that she needs you, Edward."

"I won't hurt her, Charlie. I'll never hurt her, and I won't let anyone ever put their hands on her again. Never again."

"I believe you, but I'm going to ask you to trust me, Edward. Trust that everything I've ever done was with her health and wellbeing in mind, that I never meant to hurt her, and that I love her just as if she was born with my blood running through her veins."

"I can try," he offered. "That's as much as I can offer right now, because I don't trust easily."

"I accept that."

The door leading into the garage opened and when they looked over, they saw Bella standing there. Her eyes shifted from Edward to Charlie and back before she grabbed the hem of her T-shirt and said, "Hey."

"Hey." Edward stood up. "Did you have nice ride with Alice?"

"I did."

"Good, good," he said, clearing his throat before looking around the room.

"Can I have a minute alone with Charlie?" she asked, causing Edward's tense, but knew her father was important to her, so he simply nodded and said, "I'll be upstairs."

As Edward walked into the living room, he stopped suddenly when he found Emmett and Rosalie with their lips pressed together, his hand on the side of her breasts, and her fingers were tangled in his curly brown hair. Edward's eyes widened, and he cleared his throat, unsure how Bella was going to feel if she walked into the living room and found the two lip-locked, and also watching his brother sucking face with someone was disgusting.

Rosalie pulled herself out of Emmett's embrace, her hand coming up to rest on her chest as her eyes shifted to Edward. "Oh, fuck me."

"Don't mind me," he said with a smirk. "I'm just passing by, but Bella and Charlie are on the kitchen, so . . ."

Emmett scooted away from her, his eyes wide as he stared at the kitchen door, almost like he was expecting Charlie Swan to come after him with his belt. Edward laughed inwardly as he turned and headed upstairs to the third floor, stopping and giving Esme a kiss on the cheek as they passed each other. She simply smiled and patted the side of his face, the way she always did when it was just the two of them. He almost turned and walked into his bedroom, but instead, he found himself sitting on the side of Bella's bed, playing the words Charlie had asked him over and over.

Was he in love with Bella Swan? Yes, he was, but would she ever love him back? That was the one thing he wasn't sure about.

Thank you for all the AMAZING reviews! So, our boy is admitting that he loves her, but will she return the feeling?