The Twilight Saga Collection part 1(246)

Like how she’d seen me dying...and she’d seen me becoming one of them. Two things that had not happened. And one that never would. My head started to spin—I couldn’t seem to pull in enough oxygen from the air. No lungs.

Jacob was entirely in control now, very still beside me.

“Why do you do that?” he asked. He tugged lightly at one of my arms, which was bound around my chest, and then gave up when it wouldn’t come loose easily. I hadn’t even realized I’d moved them. “You do that when you’re upset. Why?”

“It hurts to think about them,” I whispered. “It’s like I can’t breathe...like I’m breaking into pieces....” It was bizarre how much I could tell Jacob now. We had no more secrets.

He smoothed my hair. “It’s okay, Bella, it’s okay. I won’t bring it up again. I’m sorry.”

“I’m fine.” I gasped. “Happens all the time. Not your fault.”

“We’re a pretty messed-up pair, aren’t we?” Jacob said. “Neither one of us can hold our shape together right.”

“Pathetic,” I agreed, still breathless.

“At least we have each other,” he said, clearly comforted by the thought.

I was comforted, too. “At least there’s that,” I agreed.

And when we were together, it was fine. But Jacob had a horrible, dangerous job he felt compelled to do, and so I was often alone, stuck in La Push for safety, with nothing to do to keep my mind off any of my worries.

I felt awkward, always taking up space at Billy’s. I did some studying for another Calculus test that was coming up next week, but I could only look at math for so long. When I didn’t have something obvious to do in my hands, I felt like I ought to be making conversation with Billy—the pressure of normal societal rules. But Billy wasn’t one for filling up the long silences, and so the awkwardness continued.

I tried hanging out at Emily’s place Wednesday afternoon, for a change. At first it was kind of nice. Emily was a cheerful person who never sat still. I drifted behind her while she flitted around her little house and yard, scrubbing at the spotless floor, pulling a tiny weed, fixing a broken hinge, tugging a string of wool through an ancient loom, and always cooking, too. She complained lightly about the increase in the boys’ appetites from all their extra running, but it was easy to see she didn’t mind taking care of them. It wasn’t hard to be with her—after all, we were both wolf girls now.

But Sam checked in after I’d been there for a few hours. I only stayed long enough to ascertain that Jacob was fine and there was no news, and then I had to escape. The aura of love and contentment that surrounded them was harder to take in concentrated doses, with no one else around to dilute it.

So that left me wandering the beach, pacing the length of the rocky crescent back and forth, again and again.

Alone time wasn’t good for me. Thanks to the new honesty with Jacob, I’d been talking and thinking about the Cullens way too much. No matter how I tried to distract myself—and I had plenty to think of: I was honestly and desperately worried about Jacob and his wolf-brothers, I was terrified for Charlie and the others who thought they were hunting animals, I was getting in deeper and deeper with Jacob without ever having consciously decided to progress in that direction and I didn’t know what to do about it—none of these very real, very deserving of thought, very pressing concerns could take my mind off the pain in my chest for long. Eventually, I couldn’t even walk anymore, because I couldn’t breathe. I sat down on a patch of semidry rocks and curled up in a ball.

Jacob found me like that, and I could tell from his expression that he understood.

“Sorry,” he said right away. He pulled me up from the ground and wrapped both arms around my shoulders. I hadn’t realized that I was cold until then. His warmth made me shudder, but at least I could breathe with him there.

“I’m ruining your spring break,” Jacob accused himself as we walked back up the beach.

“No, you’re not. I didn’t have any plans. I don’t think I like spring breaks, anyway.”

“I’ll take tomorrow morning off. The others can run without me. We’ll do something fun.”

The word seemed out of place in my life right now, barely comprehensible, bizarre. “Fun?”

“Fun is exactly what you need. Hmm . . .” he gazed out across the heaving gray waves, deliberating. As his eyes scanned the horizon, he had a flash of inspiration.

“Got it!” he crowed. “Another promise to keep.”

“What are you talking about?”