New Moon (Twilight Saga #2)(93)

I shook my head. "If I'm silly, then you're dangerously unbalanced."

He chuckled. "Get some rest, Bella, honey. You look exhausted."

"I'll try."

Charlie honked his horn impatiently.

"See you tomorrow," Jacob said. "Come down first thing."

"I will."

Charlie followed me home. I paid scant attention to the lights in my rearview mirror. Instead, I wondered where Sam and Jared and Embry and Paul were, out running in the night. I wondered if Jacob had joined them yet.

When we got home, I hurried for the stairs, but Charlie was right behind me.

"What's going on, Bella?" he demanded before I could escape. "I thought Jacob was part of a gang and you two were fighting."

"We made up."

"And the gang?"

"I don't know-who can understand teenage boys? They're a mystery. But I met Sam Uley and his fiancée, Emily. They seemed pretty nice to me." I shrugged. "Must have all been a misunderstanding."

His face changed. "I hadn't heard that he and Emily had made it official. That's nice. Poor girl."

"Do you know what happened to her?"

"Mauled by a bear, up north, during salmon spawning season-horrible accident. It was more than a year ago now. I heard Sam was really messed up over it."

"That's horrible," I echoed. More than a year ago. I'd bet that meant it had happened when there was just one werewolf in La Push. I shuddered at the thought of how Sam must have felt every time he looked at Emily's face. 

That night, I lay awake for a long time trying to sort through the day. I worked my way backward through dinner with Billy, Jacob, and Charlie, to the long afternoon in the Blacks' house, waiting anxiously to hear something from Jacob, to Emily's kitchen, to the horror of the werewolf fight, to talking with Jacob on the beach.

I thought about what Jacob had said early this morning, about hypocrisy. I thought about that for a long time. I didn't like to think that I was a hypocrite, only what was the point of lying to myself?

I curled into a tight ball. No, Edward wasn't a killer. Even in his darker past, he'd never been a murderer of innocents, at least.

But what if he had been? What if, during the time that I'd known him, he'd been just like any other vampire? What if people had been disappearing from the woods, just like now? Would that have kept me away from him?

I shook my head sadly. Love is irrational, I reminded myself. The more you loved someone, the less sense anything made.

I rolled over and tried to think of something else-and I thought of Jacob and his brothers, out running in the darkness. I fell asleep imagining the wolves, invisible in the night, guarding me from danger. When I dreamed, I stood in the forest again, but I didn't wander. I was holding Emily's scarred hand as we faced into the shadows and waited anxiously for our werewolves to come home.





15. PRESSURE

IT WAS SPRING BREAK IN FORKS AGAIN. WHEN I WOKE UP on Monday morning, I lay in bed for a few seconds absorbing that. Last spring break, I'd been hunted by a vampire, too. I hoped this wasn't some kind of tradition forming.

Already I was falling into the pattern of things in La Push. I'd spent Sunday mostly on the beach, while Charlie hung out with Billy at the Blacks' house. I was supposed to be with Jacob, but Jacob had other things to do, so I wandered alone, keeping the secret from Charlie.

When Jacob dropped in to check on me, he apologized for ditching me so much. He told me his schedule wasn't always this crazy, but until Victoria was stopped, the wolves were on red alert.

When we walked along the beach now, he always held my hand.

This made me brood over what Jared had said, about Jacob involving his "girlfriend." I supposed that that was exactly what it looked like from the outside. As long as Jake and I knew how it really was, I shouldn't let those kinds of assumptions bother me. And maybe they wouldn't, if I hadn't known that Jacob would have loved for things to be what they appeared. But his hand felt nice as it warmed mine, and I didn't protest.

I worked Tuesday afternoon-Jacob followed me on his bike to make sure I arrived safely-and Mike noticed.

"Are you dating that kid from La Push? The sophomore?" He asked, poorly disguising the resentment in his tone.

I shrugged. "Not in the technical sense of the word. I do spend most of my time with Jacob, though. He's my best friend."

Mike's eyes narrowed shrewdly. "Don't kid yourself, Bella. The guy's head over heels for you."

"I know," I sighed. "Life is complicated."

"And girls are cruel," Mike said under his breath.

I supposed that was an easy assumption to make, too.

That night, Sam and Emily joined Charlie and me for dessert at Billy's house. Emily brought a cake that would have won over a harder man than Charlie. I could see, as the conversation flowed naturally through a range of casual subjects, that any worries Charlie might have harbored about gangs in La Push were being dissolved.