Bella knew they were just as worried—if not more—as her but they sure weren’t showing it. From Kim she knew Colin and Brady would be patrolling the rez’s lines. Every thirty minutes, Leah got out of Jacob’s house and strolled into the dark, sniffing the air before coming in again.
Four or more vampires, she thought, against six werewolves.
She knew the werewolves were strong but she remembered The Cullens, James, Laurent and Victoria then there was The Volturi and the newborns.
For all she knew of the werewolves durability and power, they were still human to her while the vampires—truth be told—were not.
Yes, some of them were good and she hoped these trespassing vampires have golden eyes rather than red or black…she did mention the difference of their eye colors to Jacob once, didn’t she?
Although, she had no idea what the vampires would think of the werewolves and how they would react to giant mutant wolves that could kill them. Vegetarian or not, vampires were a territorial and aggressive lot.
The thought lodged in her brain and wouldn’t go away but Leah wasn’t here yet, and she wasn’t sure…her eyes dropped to Rachel who was smacking the hell out of the old TV when another thought latched onto her brain, how did Rachel know about the werewolves anyway? Did Jacob tell her sister like he once told her? Or did she get special dispensation because she was family of one of the elders? Like Sue had?
She distracted herself from the churning of her stomach with compiling questions for Jacob when her eyes shifted to Kim who was busying herself with washing dishes though now she was gazing into space, one soapy hand touching her left cheek...
…where Jared laid his fingers before phasing and following Sam.
She felt her stomach twist when Kim blinked, folded her lips into a straight line and straightened her shoulders before continued with the dishes.
In the line of her shoulders and spine, she saw strength and pride that she couldn’t help but admire. Shy, silent Kim, keeping her head up despite the sickly fear that weighed her down. This is what they have to deal with again and again, agonizing fear and mind numbing worry, trying to fill the time while they wait for their guys to come home.
She wondered about Emily who was pregnant and hoped that she wasn’t alone.
Jacob’s front door opened and in entered Leah, her eyes focused, her movements precise and even though there was a tightness around her eyes and her shoulders, she made a show of haranguing Kim for something to eat and telling off Rachel to ‘stop hammering the damn TV’ before she folded onto one of the ragged yet comfortable chairs beside the couch she was on. A scowl on her face before focusing on what Bella held in her hands.
“What’s that about?”
Bella cringed and mentally smacked herself for bringing her books on various pockets of her jacket. Especially these books. “Um. Nothing.”
She raised one delicate eyebrow. “Patricia Briggs. Mooncalled. Let me guess, it’s about werewolves.”
“A little bit.”
She snorted before snagging the book from the pile at her elbow. “Hey, Rach, check it out. She’s reading about werewolves.”
Bella tried to sink into the couch she was laying on when Rachel ambled toward them. “Hey, I know that one. It’s pretty good. Haven’t read the second one though.”
When Rachel and Leah shifted their eyes to her she was compelled to lift the book that she was reading, showing that it was the second series she was reading.
Rachel plopped her butt on the floor beside the couch and stared at her in a pointed manner. “You’re done with that, right?”
When she surrendered the book to Rachel’s grasp, she could hear Kim’s sympathetic laughter.
Leah slumped on her seat, straightened her legs and flipped through the pages, chuckling once or twice. Deprived of both her books, Bella ambled away to the kitchen where Kim was. “They’ll probably be hungry, don’t you think?”
Kim nodded while she rinsed dishes. “They usually are.”
After sharing an indulgent, amused look with Kim, Bella scoured the kitchen for anything that resembled food. She found a loaf of bread and decided to slice some cheese and prepare cold cuts. She saw Kim’s thoughtful look when she turned to get plates. “What?”
Kim smiled and turned off the faucet. “I’m just glad that you and Jacob are together again.”
Bella felt a twinge in the vicinity of her chest. “Oh.”
A subtle line appeared between Kim’s brows. “You are together, right?”
Bella played with the slices of cheese in her hands. “Not…not exactly. We still have a lot of…issues to go over.” And technically, it’s not like they’ve ever been ‘together’.
“Oh, you mean...” Kim flushed darkly but seemed determined. “Are you still… married?”
“No, no I’m not.” She shook her head and shifted her feet. She didn’t dare look over her shoulder but somehow she knew both Leah and Rachel were paying attention. “I mean, I wasn’t married in the first place.”
Kim looked taken aback. “Oh.” She blinked a few times, as if unsure how to react. “Oh. Does Jacob know?”
“Um, yes, he found out um, a couple of days ago.”
An expression came and went across Kim’s face, something that went along the lines of ‘oh, that make sense’, it made her wonder how Jacob was behaving these last few days. “So, you weren’t married but you were still together with the vampire, I mean, with…him.”
“Not really.”
Kim’s dark eyes leveled with hers, straight and silently demanding. “So, it’s over between him and you?”
She felt her heart clenched painfully and the words caught in her throat. “It looks that way.”
“You don’t sound sure.”
Bella turned to find Rachel looking at her with accusing eyes.
“I’m not. We didn’t get to talk about it…he just left.”
“And he never came back?”
“Not for a year now.”
“Jacob knows about this?”
Bella nodded and wiped her hands on a dishrag. “Yes, I told him everything.”
“Has the vampire called you or whatever?”
“No.”
“Have you tried contacting him?”
“No.”
Bella knew that this inquisition would start sooner or later but she couldn’t fight the annoyed spark that flashed and burned every time Rachel and Leah exchanged wary glances. “What?”
She knew her annoyance showed in her voice when Rachel raised an eyebrow. “Just wondering whether you’re here, with Jacob, by default.”
She tried processing that statement but, nope, she couldn’t. She gaped at Rachel, at Leah. “What are you saying? That I’m here because…because-“
“The vampire left you.” Leah continued helpfully. Right.
“Is that what you guys think?” Leah and Rachel’s expressions were unreadable but Kim’s was an open book.
Bella felt sick at first, strangely betrayed but not on account of herself but on account of Jacob. Both Edward and Jacob were so different that she didn’t bother to compare them and never, even when she was at her most aggravated with Jacob had she ever thought that he was somehow less than Edward.
No sane woman would ever feel anything other than flattered when someone as good and as—let’s face it—hot as Jacob showered her with attention.
Do they really think that I’m that horrible? Did I make that bad of an impression? Or do they just think I’m stupid?
“That’s, that’s crazy.” She replied weakly, still shocked. A thought speared her mind and sickened her stomach. “Is that what everybody thinks?”
Leah shrugged. “It’s not like you didn’t leave him high and dry the first chance you got, again and again. The second the leech came back after he left you, somehow you just seemed to forget about Jacob, about how much he did good by you and you just walked off into the sunset with your bloodsucker. Now, here you are again like you just never left.” Leah snorted. “I expected more of him. Sure, Jacob’s a guy, but he’s never been one to think very much with his dick before.”
Kim winced but Rachel merely rolled her eyes.
Bella heard the derisive snort, the disdainful expression on Leah’s face and something rose inside her, something very close to rage that made her straighten her spine and lift her chin. It made her fingers clenched into fists and her mouth curled into a subtle snarl. “Shut up, Leah. Yes, I’ve been a flaming, ungrateful bitch when it comes to Jacob and I’m the first who’ll admit that most of the time I don’t deserve him but that doesn't mean I’ll sit here and let you mouth off about…and it’s not like I didn’t try to give him space—“
“You shouldn’t have come back here.” Leah started.
“What I should or shouldn’t do is none of your business.” Bella cut her off which seemed to aggravate Leah even more. She leaped from her seat and stood with her feet planted firmly on the floor.
“The minute your business touch Jacob, it became my business. Who do you think had to pick up the pieces when you flounced away into God knows where? Six months, he went away six months and when he came back he was hardly Jacob anymore. You broke him then, Swan and I swear, if you break him now, I’ll gut you with one claw at a time.”
Bella flinched back, not because of the threat, gruesome at it was, but because the knowledge of Jacob’s pain. “I know I hurt him.”
Leah folded her hands and narrowed her eyes.
“He told me. We dealt with it.”
She gave a derisive laugh. “Did you? Somehow I doubt he told all of it, if he did you won’t be so quick to plant yourself into his life.”
All her anger faded and changed into dread when her eyes flickered to Rachel’s flat expression to Kim’s worried one. “Everything? What do you mean?”
Leah watched her with calculating eyes. “Did you see the scars that run from his collarbone to his left shoulder?” Leah spat out the question.
“Yes, I just noticed tonight.”
“Yeah, it’s fine now, hardly noticeable but when it happened…”
Bella saw Kim hugged herself, her stance told her that whatever happened was really, really bad. A sideways glance at Rachel told her although the older girl was upset, she didn’t react as much as Kim did so she assumed that it happened before Rachel got home.
“Jake was torn up pretty good. We know that he healed worst injuries than that but for a minute there, it was touch and go. There was blood everywhere and his shoulder was pretty much mangled meat and muscle and bone. If he was normal he would’ve lost the hand, perhaps wouldn’t survive because he was losing so much blood. We couldn’t figure how it could happen, it was just the one vampire after all, anyone of us could’ve handled it in a matter of minutes.” Leah’s snarly face changed, she ran fingers through her hair, spiking up the top, as if even now, she didn’t understand. “There were no bruises, no other cuts but those on his shoulder, it was as if he didn’t fight back when the bloodsucker tore at him and we just didn’t get what happened but then we saw her.”
Leah’s golden eyes speared Bella where she stood, the look on her eyes closed to hate. “The vampire had long brown hair, pale skin, she was slender and fragile looking.”
Bella’s breath got out in a great big woosh and the world tilted for a while until she managed to grip the kitchen table. “No.”
Leah’s eyes narrowed on Bella’s pale horrified face, could practically smell the tears that wet her eyes but she couldn’t help herself, she dug in the knife a little harder, a little deeper…and twisted. “We saw it happen inside our minds, the jolt of mistaken recognition, the struggle between human and wolf.“ And pain. And love so overwhelming it swamped their mind until they were crippled by it. “When the vampire bitch came at him, he just stood there while both his instincts scream at him to kill, to hurt, to run. But he just stood there, stood there and let her kill him because he thought she was you--”
Bella was blinded by tears as Leah’s words scrambled her mind and shredded her heart into tiny little pieces. She heard voices…no not voices, sounds; helpless, horrible little sounds came out from her throat. Her hands were in front of her chest, trembling, trying to block out the images that came with Leah’s words; of crazed ebony eyes, of reddish fur clumped wetly together by blood…
“Leah. That’s enough.”
Gentle but strong hands enveloped Bella, brushing her back in long gentle sweeps while she made agonized whimpers and sounds because the nightmare-like images wouldn’t go away.
“Come on.” The voice that came with the hands was firm and clipped and she pushed her forward with a strength that said she was not to be denied and a small part of her mind registered that the cradling arms were Rachel’s.
She tried to stop; stop imagining, stop thinking, stop reacting in such a way but once again, she felt the web-like scars on Jacob’s skin under her fingertips, some of them inching much too close to his heart and her brain refused to flinch away from the ugly pictures in her head.
She couldn’t breathe at the thought of Jacob, fierce, protective, strong Jacob, frozen in the path of a vampire.
A vampire that looked a lot like her.
She felt her lungs burn for oxygen but she couldn’t breathe and soon, spots appeared in front of her eyes…and darkness beckoned.
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