“Just let me drive you home,” Jacob insisted. Unbelievably, he had the nerve to wrap his arm around my waist.
I jerked away from him.
“Fine!” I growled. “Do! I can’t wait to see what Edward does to you! I hope he snaps your neck, you pushy, obnoxious, moronic DOG!”
Jacob rolled his eyes. He walked me to the passenger side of his car and helped me in. When he got in the driver’s side, he was whistling.
“Didn’t I hurt you at all?” I asked, furious and annoyed.
“Are you kidding? If you hadn’t started screaming, I might not have figured out that you were trying to punch me. I may not be made out of stone, but I’m not that soft.”
“I hate you, Jacob Black.”
“That’s good. Hate is a passionate emotion.”
“I’ll give you passionate,” I muttered under my breath. “Murder, the ultimate crime of passion.”
“Oh, c’mon,” he said, all cheery and looking like he was about to start whistling again. “That had to be better than kissing a rock.”
“Not even remotely close,” I told him coldly.
He pursed his lips. “You could just be saying that.”
“But I’m not.”
That seemed to bother him for a second, but then he perked up. “You’re just mad. I don’t have any experience with this kind of thing, but I thought it was pretty incredible myself.”
“Ugh,” I groaned.
“You’re going to think about it tonight. When he thinks you’re asleep, you’ll be thinking about your options.”
“If I think about you tonight, it will be because I’m having a nightmare.”
He slowed the car to a crawl, turning to stare at me with his dark eyes wide and earnest. “Just think about how it could be, Bella,” he urged in a soft, eager voice. “You wouldn’t have to change anything for me. You know Charlie would be happy if you picked me. I could protect you just as well as your vampire can — maybe better. And I would make you happy, Bella. There’s so much I could give you that he can’t. I’ll bet he couldn’t even kiss you like that — because he would hurt you. I would never, never hurt you, Bella.”
I held up my injured hand.
He sighed. “That wasn’t my fault. You should have known better.”
“Jacob, I can’t be happy without him.”
“You’ve never tried,” he disagreed. “When he left, you spent all your energy holding on to him. You could be happy if you let go. You could be happy with me.”
“I don’t want to be happy with anyone but him,” I insisted.
“You’ll never be able to be as sure of him as you are of me. He left you once, he could do it again.”
“No, he will not,” I said through my teeth. The pain of the memory bit into me like the lash of a whip. It made me want to hurt him back. “You left me once,” I reminded him in a cold voice, thinking of the weeks he’d hidden from me, the words he’d said to me in the woods beside his home. . . .
“I never did,” he argued hotly. “They told me I couldn’t tell you — that it wasn’t safe for you if we were together. But I never left, never! I used to run around your house at night — like I do now. Just making sure you were okay.”
I wasn’t about to let him make me feel bad for him now.
“Take me home. My hand hurts.”
He sighed, and started driving at a normal speed, watching the road.
“Just think about it, Bella.”
“No,” I said stubbornly.
“You will. Tonight. And I’ll be thinking about you while you’re thinking about me.”
“Like I said, a nightmare.”
He grinned over at me. “You kissed me back.”
I gasped, unthinkingly balling my hands up into fists again, hissing when my broken hand reacted.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“I did not.”
“I think I can tell the difference.”
“Obviously you can’t — that was not kissing back, that was trying to get you the hell off of me, you idiot.”
He laughed a low, throaty laugh. “Touchy. Almost overly defensive, I would say.”
I took a deep breath. There was no point in arguing with him; he would twist anything I said. I concentrated on my hand, trying to stretch out my fingers, to ascertain where the broken parts were. Sharp pains stabbed along my knuckles. I groaned.
“I’m really sorry about your hand,” Jacob said, sounding almost sincere. “Next time you want to hit me, use a baseball bat or a crowbar, okay?”
“Don’t think I’ll forget that,” I muttered.