Parallax

Chapter 11

A part of her was constantly automatically searching for her mate in the present Jasper but she knew that she was not going to find what she was looking for, no matter how hard she looks. It was torture but she still let herself feel it anyway.

Bella turned away and took deep steady breaths to calm herself down. She's been doing that a lot lately now every time he was around. It was her own way of keeping her head together.

Jasper turned his head slightly towards her with his brows furrowed.

"You're good at controlling your emotions" he observed.

"When you're married to an empath, you learn a trick or two" she blurted out immediately and she had to keep Jasper from seeing the blush on her cheeks even when she knew it did not make a difference when the vampire could smell her blood.

"I still can't wrap my mind about that... I've always thought... I mean... having Alice..." Jasper was having a hard time trying to form the words, afraid of offending the human in front of him or hurting her with his words but Bella merely nodded.

"I know what you mean. That's what I've always thought too but here we are. I can't even say that we've got the wrong mate because looking at you and Alice, you're as much as a match for each other here as I am with the Jasper in my reality."

They were silent for a few minutes and Bella used that time to finish her coffee and settle it down on the table beside her. Jasper finally spoke.

"We never really got the chance to get to know each other. Well, the Bella in this world, that is."

"Yeah, you two would have gotten along pretty well and I'm not talking about in a romantic sense, of course." She added the last part.

Jasper smirked "I'm pretty sure we will. You're both quite something, you know"

Bella smiled.

"I hope that it won't be too late to know Bella better then, I know Alice would be thrilled if I didn't have to keep distancing myself whenever they would be hanging out"

"I blame Edward and his overprotectiveness for that" she told him and Jasper turned away from her, choosing to stare at the view outside the window instead.

"He had the right to be worried. You know my history... and my struggle with the diet. Look what happened on her birthday... you know about that, don't you?"

"Yes, I do... this Bella's memories are still fresh on my mind and we both have a knack of ingraining those painful moments of our lives into our memories so probably when I return, I would still remember what she experienced."

Jasper groaned. "I haven't been able to personally apologize to her for what I did... I'm the reason why Bella and Edward are suffering right now. I should have been much stronger..."

"No! Never blame yourself for what happened!" Bella said indignantly.

"You're not the one who chose to leave. You just became the excuse for Edward to run away" She pointed out.

"Besides..." She added. "That was an accident. You can't avoid what's in your nature"

"The thing is, it could have been avoided if I was stronger"

"You are stronger. Every single day, you expose yourself to the human world and every day, you are able to keep yourself from losing control. I know that you struggle more than the rest but you should give yourself a break.

You're an empath remember? You can feel everyone's emotions including a vampire's bloodlust. Having a house full of vampires when Bella bled and us being Edward's singer, it's bound to overwhelm an empath like you."