How Quickly is Forever - Chapter Two
A/N: I want to thank goldengilrl2707 for making me not one, but two amazing banners for my story. She did such a great job, I couldn’t make up my mind which one to use, so I decided I’m using them both! Also thank you to the great beta’s at Project Team Beta who work so quickly and efficiently and for free.
Chapter Two
JPOV
Fuck!
What did I expect? I knew this day would come eventually. But, fuck! She was still so young. She totally blind-sided me, and I was so shocked and surprised, I made it worse. As if it could be worse.
I didn’t know what to do. Who could I go to? Who could I talk to? Who would understand this? Who could help me make sense of this crazy shit-fest? I thought of going to Carlisle, but he was too close to the situation. I knew he would remain calm and impassive and that was what I needed, but I still felt he was too emotionally involved, and hell… I’d admit it; I was embarrassed.
Edward had the advantage of reading her mind and giving me some insight on how to proceed, but I couldn’t go to him! If I thought Carlisle was too closely involved, Edward was much worse. I’m sure his fatherly instincts would be to try to kick my ass first and ask questions later. I didn’t need to add insult to injury to the situation by beating the shit out of Edward, no matter how much better that would have made me feel.
No, I needed someone who could relate to the unique situation. There was only one person who came remotely close. Quil. He was imprinted and would understand that it wasn’t like I could just walk away and start over, which is what I wished I could do. That was an impossibility, and Quil knew that. He’d also understand the grotesqueness of the age factor.
The added twist in this was that Nessie didn’t look five years old.
I was going to be sick.
God. I wanted to beat my head against a tree, and I would if I’d thought it would help. I didn’t know if I was more angry or scared shitless. I knew I shouldn’t be mad at her. I mean, it wasn’t her fault. Least of anyone, it wasn’t her fault. She was a little girl, and I just was not going there with her.
I mean, I was normal. Jesus, I had feelings like that. Feelings that I’d had to squelch; shrink-wrap and stick away in some faraway place so I wouldn’t have to look at them or deal with them until a later date. But I was twenty-one. A twenty-one year old virgin.
Fuck my life.
I did have those feelings, but they weren’t for Nessie. I’d give up sex forever before I’d touch her that way. At least until she was… I don’t know, thirty or something.
In the beginning, I’d been confused. The imprint was so overwhelming. I’d thrown myself into the distraction of having someone else besides Bella to focus on, care about and be fascinated with. It was wonderful. Then as time went on and we all settled into our new roles, I became the brother. The protective, concerned big brother. And then, somewhat of a mentor.
But this?
Fuck.
I had to find Quil and talk to him before anyone found out what had gone down in the woods with Nessie. I tried to tell myself to stop freaking out so much, it really hadn’t been that big a deal. But to me, it was.
Because I knew the first step had been taken, and Nessie was not one to back down.
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RPOV
I wanted to scream into my pillow and throw things as hard as I could against the wall! But they would hear me. And I was not telling them anything! My stupid father and his stupid mind-reading. He was pretty cool about keeping his mouth shut, but if my mother ever found out…
I lay prone on my bed and kicked my legs in frustration. I looked down at the black lace top that Auntie Rose had bought for me to wear today, and with a stifled cry I ripped the front of it open, the silver eyelets bursting off and flying through the air.
I’m so stupid!
Everyone in this family was prettier and smarter than me.
Now Renesmee, I could hear my father’s always calm, rational voice tell me, that’s because we’ve had years to learn how to do all these things. You will too, one day.
But I didn’t want to know all these things some day - I wanted to know everything and be everything and have everything now!
I laid my forehead against my forearms. What made me think he would want me?
They all looked like porcelain, with their perfect flawless skin. I was too skinny, had stupid red hair, and a flat chest.
But Jax…
He was beautiful. Bronzed and smooth, with a perfect smile that made me warm inside.
I stood up from the bed and savagely tore the rest of the lacy top open and threw it across the room. There was still blood on my chest and in my hair from the stag that he’d taken down earlier. I licked my palm and rubbed it away. Then I unsnapped my jeans and slid them down my thighs. I hooked my fingers in my panties, but decided to leave them on. There was hair there now and to be honest, it kind of freaked me out.
I felt freaky enough with Grandpa always studying and measuring me, poking me. Even though he’d stopped doing it so frequently, I still saw his eyes looking me over constantly, mentally calculating, like I was some kind of grotesque science project.
That’s exactly what I was. I was so grotesque I wasn’t even allowed to wander freely among other people.
That’s not why, and you know it, my subconscious chided me.
So I wasn’t grotesque, but I was still a freak. I waited a beat, but my subconscious didn’t have a rebuttal to that.
I leaned back against my dresser and slid to the floor. I drew my knees up and rested my forehead against them. The tears spilled over and silently ran down my face.
We hadn’t gone far when we’d left the house to hunt. I was hoping I could get him to trek up beyond the canyon where we usually hunted. But he’d complained that he’d eaten too much, joking that he’d not only eaten his own share of supper, but mine too, so as not to hurt Auntie Alice’s feelings.
Dusk was falling, so we didn’t have to wait too long before the wildlife began coming down to drink from the stream.
I was sitting on a large boulder by the water, Jacob lying beside me, his muzzle in my lap. I was petting him absently when we both smelled the stag making its way to the stream with trepidation. It must have smelled us, too. Jacob had it down on the ground before it even spotted us. Its thick throat was between his jaws as its legs flailed and its eyes bugged. Jacob bit down on its jugular and the stag’s eyes glazed and its body ceased movement.
Jacob ripped the neck and belly open and backed away, letting me drink. He usually ate a small portion of the flesh just to keep me company, but he’d warned me beforehand that he was too full tonight. He didn’t really like to eat raw animal flesh unless absolutely necessary. He much preferred my mother’s cooked meals and fast food from town. But for me, he usually partook so I didn’t drink alone.
I rested my head against the giant buck, my arms wrapped around its neck, my fingers smoothing over the soft fur like the satin on a baby’s blanket as I drank. Jacob slipped into the trees to phase back. By the time he rejoined me, I was done.
I wiped my mouth, and sat back on my haunches as he squat beside me. I watched him haul the stag by the horns into the trees, where the buzzards and other scavengers would pick and eat it down to the bones. The animal was huge, but Jacob dragged it around as if it were a rag doll.
Then he shook his shoulder-length hair from his eyes, lifted his arms over his head and executed a perfect dive from a fallen tree into the cold water.
“You coming in, Ness?” he hollered to me. His voice echoed through the canyon.
I shook my head, mesmerized as he glided through the water, his powerful arms slicing the surface and propelling him quickly downstream. He did an underwater somersault and came back against the current, the way he’d started, like he was doing laps. I watched him, spellbound. His thick calves pounding the water as he went back and forth. Finally, he stopped suddenly and made a triumphant whoop. Smiling, he waded his way through the stream to where I was sitting.
He pointed to his dripping hair against his shoulder. “You’ve got blood in your hair, angel,” he told me absently, before throwing himself down on the rocks beside me to dry off.
I could see his heart thumping with exertion from his workout, just underneath his sternum. Water ran down his sides, staining the slate gray rocks beneath him. His feet were sprawled out, and I couldn’t help grinning as the line from one of my favorite fairy tales ran through my head, and I said it out loud.
“Grandma, what big feet you have!”
“The better to kick you with, my dear,” he chuckled, his eyes still closed.
“Grandma,” I said, giggling, edging closer to them. “You’ve got hairy toes!”
“Leave my toes alone!”
“Ew, Jax, you’ve got hella hairy legs!”
“Hey, watch your mouth, and leave this hairy beast alone.”
I reached out tentatively and ran my hand up over the thick black hair of his shins and over his knee, toward the perfectly smooth lower section of his thighs. He bolted upright, reaching out and pulling my hand away so fast it hurt my shoulder.
“Knock it off, Ness. Keep your hands to yourself.”
Was it my imagination or was he mad at me? I lay down alongside him and snuggled into his side. I felt him stiffen for the slightest second, and then he put his arm around me like he always did.
I watched his diaphragm as he breathed in and out, and slowly my inhalations and exhalations matched his. I could feel myself getting sleepy as his warmth cocooned me, and then I remembered something. I looked up at his closed eyes.
“Don’t you want to know what I wished for?” I whispered.
“What’d you wish for, Ness?” he murmured.
I opened my mouth and I found the words would not come out. They stuck right in my throat. I frowned, and glancing down I noticed I’d gotten blood on his stomach from my hair that was slick with it in one section. It was starting to get dark outside, so the blood was almost black instead of red in the fading light.
“Why is your torso so smooth when your legs are so hairy?” I saw his abdominals tighten when I touched them with my fingertip and ran it up over the grooves where the blood had gathered and stained him. Without thinking or knowing why, I bent my head down and licked the remaining blood from his belly.
Sitting up in a rush, he gripped my shoulders and pushed me away from him.
We stared at each other. Me, in bewilderment and him in anger.
He swallowed thickly. “Don’t ever do that again!” he hollered at me.
In the next second he was on his feet and jogging toward the path that led home.
I slowly got to my feet and stayed back as I followed him toward the house. He slowed his gait as we approached the last quarter mile. He went straight to the big house, while I turned off toward the cottage. He didn’t say goodbye. He didn’t even turn back and look at me the whole way.
So much for birthday wishes.
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BPOV
Rosalie looked up at me as I stalked into her room and threw the book on her bed.
She looked down at it, then back up at me before cocking one eyebrow at me sarcastically and remained mute.
“Romeo and Juliet?”
She blinked at me, still silent.
I tossed the second book down on top of the first.
“Perfect Chemistry?”
The last one I chucked across the room, where it hit the wall and I saw the paint dust cloud and float toward the floor. “Forever? Judy Blume? What the hell, Rose? The last two are like YA porn! Why are you giving her this crap to read?”
Rosalie’s expression remained deadpan, as if I were so crazy, she refused to even acknowledge my outburst.
“I really don’t want her reading this kind of stuff, Rose. If I find anymore, I’m going to have to tell Edward.”
“Why don’t you do that?” she said, turning her head back to her own book, dismissing me. “And why don’t you find a hobby or something while you’re at it? Maybe gardening, or painting or something. Take a class. Then maybe you can stop with the obsessive compulsive cleaning and going through your daughter’s things, and give your neurotic tendencies something else to focus on.”
“Don’t turn this around on me,” I told her, hurt.
Rose knew my sore spots and exactly which buttons to push. I’d always had a hard time filling the long days since I’d become a vampire. All I’d thought about was being with Edward forever, but twenty-four hour days with no reprieve of sleep left a lot of time to be filled, and I didn’t really have any hobbies.
This last year the boredom had really become a problem. Edward was beginning to grow tired of me looking to him to entertain me. He’d tried to teach me about music and play the piano, but I’d rather just listen to him play. I hated to shop, and never shared Alice’s passion for fashion.
The only thing I had done for recreational fun as a human was ride the bikes with Jacob. But I didn’t really see much of Jacob anymore, unless it had something to do with Renesmee.
“Look,” I said, softening my voice. “She is five years old, and -“
“She’s fifteen.”
“No, she’s not. She looks fifteen, but she does not have the experience and the years of a fifteen-year -old. So I would appreciate it if you would stop giving her these kinds of books to read. It can only be confusing to her.”
I went to the door to leave.
“Confusing to her or to you?”
Common sense told me to ignore her, but of course I didn’t. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“I mean, is the fact that Nessie is blossoming into a young woman what worries you? Or the fact that other people may be noticing?”
I knew exactly what my sweet sister-in-law was implying, but I didn’t jump to the bait. “What other people?”
“Maybe you’re worried that Jacob is looking at Nessie in a new way.”
“Jacob doesn’t see Nessie that way.”
So she’d noticed, too.
I left the room and closed the door before she tried to continue the conversation.
“Maybe it’s time to cut the cord, Bella. On both of them.” I heard her murmur.
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