Love Bite

Chapter 16

I DO NOT OWN CHARACTERS OR TWILIGHT

For the next three weeks that went by, things got spectacularly weird.

Bella, of course, had no idea what she expected to happen next, but it was not what she got. First of all, Victoria seemed to have given up on her. When Bella went back to school the following Monday, she was gone, and when Alice checked her visions, she saw the redhead boarding a plane to Volterra, Italy, the Volturi capitol city. Bella was stunned, and when she asked why, all she got was a grim look from Alice and a short, "I don't know."

She grew excited and asked Alice, "Isn't that a good thing? Now she won't be after me anymore!"

Alice's reply was very foreboding, "No, Bella. I'd say it's actually a bad thing. And Victoria is most certainly still out for you. She's not the type of girl that just gives up."

Alice's logic for that was that she preferred Victoria where she could keep an eye on her, and that the Volturi must have called her back for a reason; a reason she did not know, and that not knowing what the Volturi were thinking was never a good thing, according to the pixie.

That dashed most of Bella's good feeling about it, as did the news that Victoria was not the only one who had left. The same Monday, Alice informed her that Jasper had also disappeared, and no one was really sure where he was going. When she checked her visions, Alice could not tell where he was headed because Jasper himself could not decide.

Alice told her this news with a straight face, and Bella knew better than to ask any further about the matter. She did not want to press Alice after everything, knowing the girl must be sensitive after the emotional hell she had been through when she had been forced to pick between them and break the heart of her husband when she did not choose him. She figured Alice would talk about it when she was ready...

Except this stance on the matter left them in a totally weird place.

They were in love with each other...But they were still carrying on as if they were just friends. And not talking about it with Alice to give her the time she needed simply translated to both of them practically acting like nothing had ever happened, which was not what Bella wanted to do.

The relationship between her and Alice experienced an exponential shift, but what that shift was and where it left them, she was not exactly sure. Everything had changed between them...And nothing at the same time. It was absolutely maddening and frustrating, but Bella did not know how to bring it up and figured that it needed to be Alice who decided when it would be a good time to talk about it all.

There was, however, at least one very noticeable change in their interactions with each other.

Namely the fact that they now kissed.

A lot.

Like, a lot.

From the day of her near death experience and the profession of both her and Alice's love for each other, the weirdness kicked in, starting most noticeably with the kissing.

It was never public. It always happened in a natural sort of way, whenever they were alone or hanging out together. Bella was afraid that after everything she would have to contend with Alice shying away again, with the pixie distancing herself while she collected herself. But it happened in the entirely opposite way.

Almost every day for three weeks, they hung out together, usually at Bella's house because of what Alice had dubbed 'family issues' that was only one thing on a growing list of things they both seemed to have silently agreed not to talk about.

And they kissed.

They could be goofing around, watching TV, doing homework, lounging around bored, it didn't matter. Bella could be in the middle of debating some random topic with Alice, like over the semantics of using a brush as opposed to a comb, and out of nowhere, when they were in the middle of making joking jabs at each other over their preferences, their lips would get locked up. Bella was never even entirely sure how it happened. One second she was brandishing a brush in one hand and waving a comb at Alice in the other, and Alice was laughing, and the next the vampire leaned in and captured her mouth with her own lovely one, and they kissed.