High School Sweetheart [Jacob & Edward]

nine.

Bella's expecting silence. She assumes that they'll scramble up to Jacob's room and sit with the TV playing as background noise, thinking about how absurd their collective day had been. They wouldn't talk about feelings. They'd pretend that nothing had changed. Maybe, once they'd come to terms with what had actually happened, they'd do a bit of research to figure out how to make sure it didn't happen again. 

Instead, she watches as Jacob stares up at the ceiling, barely breathing as he seemingly recounts his day. It's almost as if he's frozen in time until his lips begin to move, quietly murmuring something to himself.

"Why'd he save me?" Bella can barely make out the words as her brother quietly contemplates the possibilities.

Jacob's brain seems to be working overtime to find some kind of answer to the conundrum. 

She doesn't interrupt his thinking, seating herself in his computer chair and turning on the monitor while he continues to ponder. 

"Maybe it was too public?" 

Too public of a place? The sky was practically black due to the heavy amount of rain beating down on Forks. People could barely see two feet in front of them. Not to mention, they'd rammed into Charlie and Billy, on a seemingly clear night, out of nowhere. 

Bella doesn't bring that information to Jacob's attention. Instead, she looks into "cold ones" wondering if there was any more recent information. Maybe there were some sightings that could explain at least half of what they'd just seen. 

"He had a better shot." she hears him whisper, "Why didn't he take it?"

The look on his face, that distant stare, reminds Bella of something she hadn't seen since she was a little girl. Since she was eight-years-old, running around in the backyard, pretending not to notice her dad and his new friend. She could see it clear as day as she peered up at Billy. Of course, at eight she didn't know what the look in his eyes meant, but at seventeen it was obvious. This isn't just some run of the mill, shallow crush that her brother will get over in a couple of weeks. 

It's been almost a decade and Billy was still here, still giving her dad that look. 

Billy, even with his inability to shift, still had certain abilities that were passed down from generation to generation, never skipping even with a lack of vampires. He couldn't shift into a beast and he couldn't heal his current paralysis. However, he could hear better than any human, could communicate with Jacob no matter what form he was in, and he could imprint. 

Bella remembered Jacob's explanation of imprinting. 

It was fairly vague, seeing as he'd never experienced it himself, but Bella didn't need the details to recognize it. 

Eight-year-old Bella could see the way Billy looked up at her dad as they stood on the deck, seemingly forgetting himself as he stood a bit too close. He laughed a bit too loud. His stare lingered a bit too long.  That's the same look Jacob had in his eye as he tried to piece together a fairly obvious truth. 

"Let's say he doesn't know them," Bella poses the hypothetical as if it isn't the only real answer, "why would they risk coming here?"

Vampires aren't exactly keen on sharing. They tended to spread out so there was less of a chance of destroying an 'ecosystem' or getting outed as supernatural beings. It was much easier to hide in plain sight when there weren't mass amounts of people going missing the moment they stepped into town. 

So, why had this group wandered into Cullen territory?

"His eyes..." Jacob mutters, and Bella just assumes he's still in the midst of daydreaming.