Chapter Text
"Bella."
The sound sent a lightning bolt through my chest, awakening every nerve, but it was not the voice I had expected. The hole in my chest throbbed, but far off, numbly.
Then again: “Bella? Bella, stop. Look at me.”
“Jake?” I said, and turned.
He was standing waist-deep in the bushes, and his face made my insides twist into knots. Something was very, very wrong.
“What is it?” I said.
He made a soft squeaking sound at the back of his throat. “Were you going to jump?”
I looked over my shoulder. A wave crashed against the rocks, throwing spray up. The sound had been inviting just a minute ago, reckless, heedless, joyful in its turbulence. But now I felt a weird ache in my stomach at how close to the edge I was, and stepped away from it.
“Are you stupid?” Jake said hoarsely. “Really, Bella, are you stupid? You saw how the waves are down there, and you were going to jump without me? Have you stopped caring? Do you really value your life this little?”
I heard the sounds of bushes snapping before I heard the footfalls, and the huge black wolf emerged from the underbrush beside the trail, glanced at me, and swung his huge head over to Jake.
“We’re fine. Go ahead, I’ll meet you there,” Jake said, and Sam turned, surprisingly quickly for his size and was gone.
“What happened?” I said.
“Harry Clearwater had a heart attack,” said Jake dully. “Sam’s going to help.”
“Is he going to be…”
“It doesn’t look good.”
I felt a massive wave of guilt. Now, when another wave crashed against the cliff, I cringed and stepped fully away from the edge. I hadn’t really looked at it before, but the way the water churned and the wind slapped my face with cold veils of rain… I might have drowned there, and then Charlie — god, poor Charlie — would have an even worse phone call to contend with on this gray day. And Jake would think it was his fault.
I swallowed around the painful lump that was suddenly in my throat. “Oh my god. I’m so sorry —“
“It’s fine,” Jacob lied. His face was twisted up, so upset I could barely stand to look at it. “I’m glad I saw you. I saw the truck when we came around the ridge, and I was afraid that the redhead —“
“Have you seen her?”
“We lost her scent this morning. As long as you’re here, though…” He breathed out heavily. “I’ll follow you down to the truck. Charlie will be at the hospital. You can wait with me.”
I nodded mutely, feeling tears start in my eyes.
“Go ahead,” he said, nodding to the trail, and I started down it obediently, feeling my legs move almost without my permission. A moment later, I heard the whuff of a giant creature’s breath, and glanced over my shoulder to see the vast russet wolf, walking slowly behind me.
I drove to the Black house on autopilot. I was barely even aware of the road as it passed beneath me. I felt numb with shock, as though I really had just emerged from that cold water.
Why?
I could clearly remember the greedy, selfish emotions of my walk up the trail, and they made me sick. That was who I was now? I went to go risk my life, like it was worth nothing, over a voice from the past?
The hole in my chest ached terribly at that thought, at the concept of putting him in the past, but I was fixating on something else, something I hadn’t even known I remembered: the way that Charlie had looked when Sam carried me out of the woods, so long ago, when he had thought I was missing. The haggard expression of terror in his eyes that didn’t even abate when he was holding me, and the look of sickening fear that developed there when I could not respond to his, or anyone’s, words.
Was that the emotion that I wanted to inspire in the people I loved? In the people that loved me? Was that what I would contribute to Charlie’s life, and Renee’s, and Jacob’s?
I got out of the truck. It was misting here, not raining as heavily as it had been near the coast. Jacob was already standing by the porch, his hands in the pockets of his cutoff shorts, his eyes dark and unreadable. He did not speak as I approached.
The words that leapt immediately to my lips were I’m sorry, but I repressed them for the moment, understanding that they were the wrong thing to say, at least now.
“I was being selfish,” I said. His eyes opened slightly, surprised. “I… I was in my own head, and I wasn’t thinking, and I should have. I’m sorry.”
He watched me with those intense eyes. “Why did you do it?”
I winced. “I… needed… to feel something.”
He took two steps toward me, halving the distance between us, and I was the one who closed the gap, and he wrapped his arms around me. I laid my cheek on his chest, over his heart, and felt its familiar steady thudding.
“You can’t do that, Bella,” Jacob said softly into my hair. “You can’t risk your safety like that. It’s not fair to anyone. It’s not fair to me.”
“I won’t do it again,” I said. I meant to lie, but the words had the ring of truth.
Jacob went to sleep, exhausted and unable to bear the prospect of waiting for Billy to return with news. I sat down in his tiny room next to him on a cramped seat, and stared out the window at the misty forest.
I kept seeing Charlie’s face behind my eyes, the flash of the expression he had had the night Sam Uley carried me out of the woods. Harry’s heart attack had pushed everything into perspective for me, sudden as cold water.
I thought about the visions. Would I chase them forever? They would fade eventually; I knew that from the motorcycle riding. When I got accustomed to the thing and it no longer felt so dangerous, the voice did not speak. I could keep looking for fresh, dangerous things for the rest of my life, chasing the momentary pleasure of reliving those memories.
I bit my lip. Part of me cringed back from the honesty of these thoughts, knowing that objectivity meant that I had to change, that there was only one right way to move forward from this: to leave it behind. To give up the hallucinations and try to make a life, as best I could, without the echoes of Edward.
My eyes burned with tears of loss; for what, I wasn’t sure. For my poor father, losing Harry? For the visions? For the tiny seed of hope that I hadn’t even dared admit to myself that I had clung to, the fragile little wish that Edward would come back? Could I really give that up?
Jake snored softly, drawing my eyes to his face. He was so young when he was asleep, his face sweet and uncomplicated, so much like the goofy sophomore to whom I had brought the motorcycles so long ago. With a tiny, fibrous rip in my heart, I realized that I could give it up. It would be miserable, no doubt, but I could do it. If I had Jacob.
The wound in my chest throbbed terribly, and I changed topics, casting around for something else to think about, something pleasant. I stared out the window to the mist on the trees, trying to breathe slowly and deeply, and eventually felt my eyelids sag. I fell half-asleep to the sound of Jacob’s breathing.
The sound of the front door opening awoke both of us, and I started upright, every muscle in my neck and shoulders aching from the weird position I was in.
Billy and Sam were just shutting the door behind them as they came in, and one look at their faces was all I needed to see. There were tear tracks on Billy’s cheeks, and Sam’s usual composure was gone. His face was twisted, agonized.
“Oh, Billy,” I whispered. “I’m so sorry.”
He nodded, wiping his cheek with one hand. “It’s going to be hard.” Jake hurried to his father and took his other hands, his face childlike with grief.
“Where’s Charlie?”
“Still at the hospital with Sue. There’s… arrangements to be made.” I swallowed.
“I’ve got to go back,” Sam mumbled, and ducked out the door.
Billy rolled slowly back to his bedroom. Jake sank onto the couch, head in his hands, and I sat down next to him and rubbed his shoulders, feeling more helpless than I had felt in a long time.
“I’ll take you home,” he said softly after a long while. His eyes were red and a tear traced his cheek, but he didn’t seem to notice.
“Okay,” I whispered, and we went out to the truck. I looked out into the woods, barely seeing them. I had suddenly gone numb to the hole in my chest. There was a hard lump in my throat, but it barely hurt. I felt alive and hyperfocused, like I was at the edge of a precipice, walking somewhere high up to some very important destination.
I had wished once that Jacob was my brother, but our relationship wasn’t brotherly at all. I realized that now. I just needed him. He was essential to my survival. He was comforting and familiar. I had been alive in the before times, in those hideous gray four months, but I had not been awake. He had awoken me, and he had made me stronger.
And yet it was wrong, wasn’t it? Wasn’t the love I had for him not comparable to the love I had had before? I would have to tell him. I would have to be honest. I would have to lay it all out. He needed to know that he was taking on damaged goods.
Would it be so wrong, to selfishly cling to my own personal sun? When I knew, even in all of my rationalizing, that he would choose me without hesitation, that he would take me in spite of it all?
Jacob turned off the engine and turned to me, his eyes on mine, and I got the strange and novel feeling that he knew exactly what I had been thinking. He wrapped his arm around me, pulling me tight against his side, and I sighed in relief without thinking, to be held together so completely.
“I’m just glad you’re okay,” he whispered into my hair. “What happened with Harry… I couldn’t stand to be away from you. Not even for a second.”
Tears blurred my eyes helplessly.
“I was thinking about those couple of weeks after I joined the pack,” he said softly, still speaking into my hair. “How I didn’t tell you what was going on, how it took me so long to control myself before I could come and see you… I’m so sorry, Bella. I broke that promise once. I’ll never break it again. I’ll never leave you alone like that again.”
In a strange flash of insight, insight so obvious that it was blinding, like the sun breaking over the horizon, I realized the difference between the two of them, Edward and Jacob. Edward had thought that he knew better than I did what would make me happy, and he didn’t stop to listen to me when I told him otherwise. And Jacob, on the other hand, listened to what I had told him. He minded the boundaries I had set for him obediently, respectfully, even when I pushed him away from parts of me that I was leaving for someone who had left me already.
Jacob would not leave me.
The hole in my chest throbbed agonizingly just at the thought of what I was considering, but I ignored it.
“When we were apart,” he murmured, “I would run around your house at night, just to make sure you were safe… I spent so much time lying out there looking at your window, wanting to hold onto my shape just long enough to tell you how much I missed you.”
I felt a sob twist my throat, a sob of some emotion I could not have named if I tried, and I moved my head just enough to kiss the smooth bare skin of his shoulder, feverishly warm against my lips.
He stayed perfectly still, not daring to move until I tilted my head back and pressed my lips gently, hesitantly against his, and his mouth gave softly and warmly beneath mine in a way I had never before experienced. An unexpected rush of heat suffused my chest, and I closed my eyes, letting the feeling wash over me.