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.
"Yes, his eyes, so dreamy..." she teases, scrolling through the page she'd found on covens.
"His eyes weren't red." Jacob proclaims, ignoring Bella's remark.
"Okay?" Bella asks, hand pausing her scrolling to look at Jacob, who's now sitting up.
"They were like...gold or something." He says, climbing off of the bed to join Bella at the computer.
He takes control of the mouse, scrolling up until they got to the link that was ominously named "features". They both leaned in, the chair squeaking, as they skimmed the page.
"Red eyes...human blood...yellow eyes... animal blood." Jacob mutters, pointing to the paragraph he was paraphrasing from.
They both stared blankly at the screen for a minute, trying to piece together what that meant in regards to their situation.
"If his family isn't drinking human blood," Bella starts, glancing up at Jacob, "maybe this group thought they could get away with taking out humans without being noticed."
Jacob shrugs at the suggestion.
"But they aren't just murdering humans." Jacob points out.
He's right. They aren't just enticing a couple of people into a secluded area and then attacking them. They clearly weren't doing this for blood. Billy was technically human, but he wasn't an easy target. In both the human and supernatural world, it was a big gamble, going after Billy. They hadn't even stopped, according to the news that was circulating, they'd smashed into Billy and Charlie and kept going. Not one person stepped out of the band of cars to even see if they were dead, to attempt to feed. Then, as if it couldn't get any riskier, they targeted Jacob, who they definitely couldn't feed from.
"They're attacking werewolf packs?" Bella poses.
"Or maybe they're trying to push the Cullen's out." Jacob mumbles to himself.
It seemed like a wild assumption to make from the surface, but it became more and more plausible the more Bella thought about it.
A coven saunters into Forks out of nowhere. They see that not only are Cullen's not drinking from humans, but are also not killing off the werewolves that reside within their territory. These new vampires are making this a spectacle on purpose. It's a show for Edward's family. A declaration that they're taking over.
"He's not one of them," Jacob declares as if that hadn't been apparent for the past five minutes, "I mean he is, but he's not."
Truly an epiphany.
"He saved me." Jacob points out.
"Sure did." Bella agrees, trying not to sound too sarcastic.
She's waiting for him to get to a point, but he just pauses, eyes staring at his own bedroom door.
"But he went after them."
Great. Now he's worried about Edward. Edward the vampire.
Bella realizes she needs to interject before Jacob goes running off into the night after his little boyfriend.
"You should talk to Dad, see what's the best thing to do."
Jacob gives a curt nod.
Bella also knew that Billy would take one look at Jacob and know. He'd see it as clear as day. He'd know how to deal with it.
If he hadn't noticed it already.
'Cause it would've been obvious, to even Bella, if she wasn't so worried about his reaction to Billy's accident.
It wasn't just him swooning over Edward after realizing that he wasn't in the group of vampires attempting to kill him. It was how sad, devastated he'd been when he'd found out that Edward might want to hurt him. The way it seemed to eat him up more than his father being in a wheelchair. He'd been angry at that sure, but he hadn't mourned the loss the same. He hadn't cried.
The juxtaposition from being so sad that he'd barely eat to bouncing around in his room was too stark to miss.
Bella wasn't going to call him out on it, ask him if that's what was happening. She assumed he hadn't had time to even figure it out for himself. So, she just watches as he continues to pace until he spins around and eyes Bella.
"She kissed you."
It's an unexpected pivot. She'd assumed Jacob would be stuck on Edward for the next day or so. Maybe he'd start talking about him like they were going to run off and get married or maybe he'd talk about him like he was some nice stranger Jacob needed to help. Either way, he'd be absolutely entranced.
"Mm?" Bella hums, eyebrows shooting up as if she has no clue what he's talking about.
"Oh, c'mon!" Jacob exclaims rolling his eyes.
Bella's about to brush away the astute observation as some kind of trick of the eye, but her brother already has that shit-eating grin in place.
"So, are you going to text her tonight or what?"