Between the Perennial Blooms || Paul Lahote

Fifteen | Daisy

"Probably someone should take this girl in his arms and hold her tight, I thought. Probably someone other than me. Someone qualified to give her something."
—Haruki Murakami | The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

• • •

"She was beautiful," Bailey told them softly, unable to help the trembling of her hands. "Beautiful in a hurried kind of way. Everything was too sharp -her cheekbones, her jaw, her teeth. Even her eyes were sharp, sort of cat-like, and a dark shade of dirty maroon. Her hair was wild too. It amassed on top of her head in tight curls that varied so many shades of red and orange that it almost resembled fire."

"That's her," Jared growled, clenching his fists around the edge of the table so tightly that the wood creaked beneath the pressure. "That's the bloodsucker who's been tiptoeing around our land!"

"She didn't hurt you, did she?" Paul questioned gruffly, unable to hide the furious glint in his eyes nor the unmistakable flaring of his nostrils. He appeared livid, even more so than the night he and Jacob battled in the clearing, and Bailey feared his body would soon begin to quake.

"No," she whispered, opting to tell a little white-lie despite the noticeable bruise on her shoulder. "She was a-almost..." her voice trailed off, thoughts lost in recollection of the woman's strange behavior and near-caring gestures that were nearly wicked, yet caring all the same.

"Almost what?" Jacob barked, taking her tiny hand in his own and holding it tightly as his shoulders shuttered.

Bailey blushed and lowered her voice until it escaped her in no louder than a mumble. "Sweet," she elaborated. "Like she liked me."

"When you say 'liked'..." Embry wondered aloud with a suspicious look on his face. He left the unspoken question to linger in the air, yet Bailey understood what he implied. As such, her blush deepened as she recalled the woman's caressing touch that was like that of the kind so often shared between two lovers -gentle, and almost adoring.

"I-I think she w-was..." Bailey gulped at the quiet snarl that escaped Paul's throat from across the room, but decided to finish her sentence anyway. "... attracted to me."

"Ugh," Jacob recoiled in revulsion, taking to squeezing Bailey's hand tighter as a visible shiver racked down his spine. "That's disgusting," he growled.

Her cheeks renewed their flush of riveting rose and she sank down further into her chair as if the lower vantage point could hide her from the multitude of stares directed her way. Paul's eyes were narrowed; sharp. When his mahogany orbs met Bailey's cerulean blues, the emotion in them had her brows furrowing over top of her eyelids and her heart hammering in her chest. Oh no, she thought, a wave of something cold and sobering flooding through her veins with all the rapture of a tidal wave. Please don't tell me he's angry with me. She didn't know why he would be, but at the same time, she wasn't sure she wanted to find out. Turns out though, he wasn't angry at all.

And he would later tell her so himself.

"Victoria," Bella breathed quickly, as if a lightbulb of realization had all of a sudden flickered on inside her mind. Her eyes traveled up to meet Jacob's with obvious unease as she spoke up for the first time since her arrival. "She's here?"

After the sickly-sweet scent lingering on Bailey's person had been identified, Jacob had called Bella soon after with a quick demand to 'get to Sam and Emily's' in as fast a manner as she deemed possible. Her arrival had been met with a short greeting to Bailey and a halfhearted 'glad that you're home', yet the sibling pair opted not to speak any further. Bailey had been sat rather abruptly down in one of the dining room chairs while the rest of the pack either took a seat around the remaining chairs at the table or chose to simply stand instead, and Bella had taken to leaning against the kitchen countertop somewhat removed from the remainder of the group. The look on her face said she didn't want to be there.