Vices and Venom (Twilight Fan Fiction)

Chapter Three: Unfinished Endings

Sitting at the table was the dinner I ordered from a local restaurant for Jacob. I was surprised to find that the ever-advancing world had caught up with Forks, and there were now delivery drivers. I ended up ordering Jacob a medium-rare steak with scalloped potatoes and corn for the sides. The driver's curious eyes lingered on my face for too long, then on the house. He didn't ask if I was Charlie's granddaughter, but I noticed that he bore the same facial structure as his father, Mike Newton. According to the software on my phone, his name was Michael as well. Michael had his father's clear blue eyes, but instead of that same pale blonde hair, his was honey brown.

 I didn't keep up with the lives of my former classmates outside of Angie, but if I recall correctly, Mike ended up marrying a woman he met on vacation in California. The two lived there for many years before deciding to move back to Forks, Washington when his father became ill. Apparently, he took over Newton's Olympic Outfitters prior to the old man's passing.

 I heard the familiar roar of the Chevy pull into the brick driveway. His footsteps paused seconds before he should have made it to the front door. I was curious about the thoughts running through his head, and I imagined him mulling over whether or not he was making the dumbest decision of his entire life. 

I looked down at the outfit I was wearing, a black sleeveless tencel wrapped jumpsuit. My goal was not to look too formal since I wasn't sure what this was. As soon as his fist went to connect with the door, I pulled it open.

 His eyes roamed over me, taking me in just the same as I was doing to him. He must have had similar feelings regarding the attire because he was dressed in a pair of dark denim and a burgundy v-neck that appeared to be tailored to him. 

"Hi, Hals." He smiled, relaxing for the time being.I tilted my head to the side, offering him a small smile back. 

"Hello, Jake." I moved to the side, allowing him space to enter the house before pulling the door shut. 

"I assume this is where you intend for me to sit?" His voice was light as he took a seat where the food was waiting for him. I had decided to plate it with the glass dishes I had gifted Charlie the summer after graduating from University. I would always joke with him about how none of his dishes matched. 

"You cooked this?" He asked, picking up the fork and digging into the food. 

"Uh, no." I smiled, taking a seat across from him. "I actually had it delivered from DoorDash." 

He rolled his eyes, letting out a snort. "Fair enough." 

"I don't know where to start," I admitted, leaning back in the old chair. 

Jacob put the fork full of food he was about to eat back down on his plate. "When did things get so complicated?" 

I sighed, thinking about the moment I decided to move in with Charlie. "Honestly, I think we could track this back to my birth, but I think things specifically became complicated when the Cullen's moved back here." 

It's what triggered the shifter gene in Jacob's generation, and what had altered my entire life. If I never would have moved to Washington, maybe things wouldn't be the way they currently were. Perhaps I was the reason everything was complicated.

"I think life is just complicated no matter what stage you're in." 

Jake considered this for a moment, "I definitely think it was the Cullen's."

I rolled my eyes at his comment and watched him take a sip of the aged whiskey. "We can't really blame them for wanting to live as close to a normal life as they possibly can." 

He shrugged in response to this. "What did you end up graduating in?"

"I have a master's in developmental psychology."

"Any boyfriends?" My instinct was to pull a jacket around my shoulders to block out the coldness creeping into my heart.

"Um, I had one serious boyfriend after everything happened between us. We dated for three years before he passed away."

He studied my reaction to his question for a moment, then reached out his hand. "Come on."

"Jake," I said, watching him walk around the table when I didn't take his outstretched hand immediately. 

"Fine." My hesitancy to allow him to touch me was clear, but I relented, taking his warm hand in my cold one. 

Jacob pulled me into the living area, then onto the couch with him. The feeling of his warmth was a nice addition to the coldness I usually felt. The cold wasn't uncomfortable. I had always preferred the cold, but I could get used to his warmth. Maybe his hot and my cold could even one another out. 

"It's less formal here." He teased, his hand not letting go of mine.

I bit my lip, looking down at the fabric on the sofa. "What about you? Was there anyone else?"

He ran a hand through his dark hair, letting out a bitter laugh. "There were a few one to three-year relationships. The women in my life expected me to propose after being together for so long, and they didn't like it when their boyfriend was leaving in the middle of the night. Especially not when I couldn't tell them about what I was doing. It makes sense now that they were looking for me to commit to them. It just wasn't ready."

The couch creaked as he repositioned himself. "The ones who turned a blind eye to my behavior were the ones I broke up with myself. Then there were the emotional outbursts and hitting things."

He must have felt me tense beside him because he explained that he never laid a hand on any of his girlfriends but when he became aware of how his outbursts were impacting their well-being, he stopped dating entirely. Jacob didn't want to harm them, and he mentioned that he felt it was unfair to drag them along when he wasn't ready to be with anyone emotionally. 

"I think I was always caught up in how right we felt." He admitted, his voice barely above a whisper. 

I shook my head. "We hurt each other, Jake."

"I know, but this -" he motioned between us, "this always felt right. Maybe we just needed to grow up."

"We still have a lot of obstacles to work through. Time isn't a magic device that fixes all the problems of the past. It makes it easy to forget them, but what we don't work through will come back eventually." I thought about how I had yelled at him this evening, it was so easy to go back to that impulsive teenager who handled situations with her harsh words or avoidance, just as it was easy for him to blindly unleash his anger. Time may have moved on, but the root of our problems was so deeply embedded into our foundation that we would have to find a way to grow from them into something else. Sitting here, talking to him, that was easy. It was when the rest of the world pushed in on us that Jacob and I would be forced to realize our differences.We spent the rest of the night talking about where life had taken us.

 I told him about the years I had spent studying in Ireland, and the stone thatched cottage I had bought by the sea. It was the closest I had come to finding peace in a very long time. The cottage was something plucked out of a fairytale, and when I wasn't at University, I spent my day painting and finding inner peace. 

Jake talked about how after Billy's death, he bought a motorcycle and spent two years on the road, bouncing from one location to another. His pack worried about him the entire time but knew he would come back when he was ready. He admitted that he considered never coming back, but eventually, the roads all became the same and he grew tired of the openness. He was itching to get back to whatever home was.

I smiled at this because I felt the same way. I was always trying to find my home, and I wondered if maybe home wasn't a location next to the sea. Perhaps it was something else entirely.