chapter 2

Chapter 2 – Stitches

I didn't come back home. Not that night anyways. I ran until I reached the meadow, our meadow. Edward could surely find me if he really wanted to. I felt raw, flayed open with an emotional knife. I knew, on one level anyways, that I'd overreacted. It wasn't their fault that I missed my truck.

I missed a lot of things. Ever since I'd gone to the graveside memorial to see the casket that was supposed to hold me being lowered into the ground, it had felt like a part of me had been buried there. The good part.

I loved Edward, it was true. I loved all of my adopted family, not that I'd ever admit it out loud. At the end of the day though, there was something that I was missing, a lot of somethings actually. Everyone else in my new family had a tale, a tragic and unavoidable reason for their current existence – from Carlisle's start as being the son of a man of god that was turned in an act of revenge to Jasper's tale of being stolen out of his army in the middle of the night by a vampire warlord to even Edward's own tragic beginning when he was dying from the Spanish Influenza.

And what did I have? A foolish folly to try and one up a master manipulator. It would have taken exactly two brain cells to realize that James had never had my mother. Looking back it was so obvious that I'd been played for a fool, two finger fiddle and all that. If my coven ever did add another member to the family, my story wouldn't be one that was being told.

I couldn't even be a vampire right, I was supposed to be volatile, do unexpected things, want human blood so much that I would willingly go after my own family and friends to get it. I did, somewhere in the back of my mind, want to taste human blood but I was able to easily catalog it and push it aside, which wasn't natural.

All of my siblings, excepting Rosalie, had tasted human blood and even she had killed humans. It seemed that the only person I had actually killed was myself.

The time I had to myself at night I had been been using to keep tabs on my family via online searches even though I knew I could never see any of them again and that it did me no good other than to wallow in my own self loathing.

Alice, Jasper, even Rosalie... they had all told me that trying to keep an eye on things would do me no good except to hurt me further. I knew it, but I couldn't help myself. My mother and her husband had settled into a fairly permanent residence in Florida because Phil had been signed by the Suns in Jacksonville. It was a minor league which wasn't surprising, but a regular contract for Phil was a good thing, like I'd always said, he wasn't good at playing baseball.

As for Charlie, I'd read the newspaper articles where he'd stated that he planned to retire by forty-five, citing an opinion that he no longer felt young or fit enough to continue as the chief of police past that. In the photos, he looked closer to sixty than the forty-one that he really was. I knew that it was my death that had aged him like that, and I constantly worried that the next article I would read would be one stating that he'd passed.

Meanwhile, most of the kids at school had all but forgotten my brief existence in Forks, WA. Jeremy Stanley was the favorite for becoming Valedictorian, but that was only because Alice deliberately missed certain things on her tests and homework. Something, that when we finally moved on and I got to restart school, I'd been advised that I would have to do too. It was bad for anonymity to make the newspapers if you became something like a Valedictorian or Salutatorian. We could be good, great even, but we couldn't be perfect.

Mr Weber, his daughter Angela, and the twin girls, Isis and Josie, had been featured on the front page of the Forks Forum on one of the weekly editions that had been printed in early July after Mrs Weber had tragically died in a car wreck in a Seattle pile up. A couple weeks later there was second article in the newspaper where Angela had been interviewed, stating that she was going to go to a Christian University in the winter as she planned to graduate early.

Meanwhile, as per Alice, Lawrence Mallory was the star quarterback this year. Not that Forks's football team had ever been all that boast worthy. Alice had informed me that her and Taylor Crowley were still a couple, unlike some of the high school couples, they'd actually survived the summer with their relationship intact.

Makayla Newton who had briefly dated Jeremy had broken up with him over the summer. Ben Cheney had started dating Angela sometime after I had supposedly passed away, but they were now on hold indefinitely as a result of Angela losing her mom. And Alice had informed me that Eric Yorkie had recently started dating Kane Marshall, a boy who had lived just around the corner from Charlie.

The only ones that I didn't know anything about were those on the res, the Blacks and the Clearwaters. I wondered about both often. As per Edward's ability to read minds when we'd met them that night after my funeral we had found out that there were several other kids on the res that looked like they'd soon be changing, Jacob Black was among them.

Even more importantly though, they blamed us (vampires) for their change, claiming that the Cullen's return to Forks had been what had started the transformations again. I couldn't help but wonder if Jacob had shifted yet, if he now hated me as much as his father clearly had. Did he now know that my death was a farce?

I doubted I would ever find out the answers, for though Billy had decided that the treaty hadn't been breached after all, it had also been made exceedingly clear that they would not interact with us, even though Carlisle had tried to convince them otherwise.

All of this knowledge had been safely pushed into the recesses of my mind because I'd been able to shield myself under the flimsy excuse of curiosity until tonight. The truth was though that my change had left a gaping hole in the form of massive amounts of regret, but as time had passed, I'd been emotionally stitched together. After having spent the summer with Edward, focusing on our future, learning how to live this life.. it had healed me, at least at the time.

Tonight though had awoken all the festering wounds I'd compartmentalized. I wasn't a Cullen and I never would be, I was too much of a freak, even when living in a group of them. That thought, that realization left a a tear in the sutures I'd worked so hard on. Charlie.. another tear, Renee.. another, my friends, my truck. Every little thing was ripped open and bleeding. Not physically of course as I would never bleed again, but mentally and emotionally.

I could feel every tiny wound in my mind and I didn't know how to repair myself, not this time. None of my adopted family understood, not really. Oh sure, they all had regrets, all had memories that troubled them, but while they regretted the loss of their humanity, their mortality, their souls even... that wasn't what I regretted. I wanted to be a vampire. But what I regretted was all the things that were left unfinished, all the pain I'd left other people with, all the stupid mistakes that I could have avoided.

I had never fit in as a human among my peers and now it was clear that I would never fit in as a vampire either. Ever since I'd realized how important Edward was to me, knowing what he was, seeing his family... part of me had always believed that I would make a better vampire than a human, that I would fit in more. It turned out I had been dead wrong.

It was easily proven in how I'd successfully managed to alienate myself from Rosalie within weeks of my change, not that it had taken much to do that...

– – –

Edward and I were running back home after my successful kill of a bear, the first one I'd ran into, sadly my clothes hadn't fared all that well. I was about a month and a half old to this life, and for one of the first times since I'd been changed, I had truly enjoyed the hunt. The flavor of bear blood had been better, more satisfying, than the deer and elk that we normally hunted. I had yet to try a mountain lion, which I knew was Edward's favorite.

"Oh look, it's the new favorite," Rosalie said from where she stood on the porch leaning against the wooden column.

Edward hissed loudly, I couldn't be sure if it was at her comment or her thoughts. "Not now, Rosalie."

"I say it should be now. What right does this boy have to change our futures so irrevocably. He was changed, you've shown him the ropes, now it's time for him to move on. He has no place in our family."

"Beau is my mate, Rosalie. Our family is the only place for him now that he's a vampire."

"Really, he's your mate? Then why are you two staying in different rooms? Have you two even had sex yet?"

"Sex isn't all there is to loving someone. You know that."

"No but it tends to help solidify things. It also would make this ridiculous claim of you being mated more believable. Frankly, I still believe you're straight. After all, how else could you have not even noticed Tanya, Irina."

I froze where I stood, turning into a statue. I knew the names, of course. I'd been told about the Denali cousins, but I had yet to meet them, and it had never been mentioned to me before that the succubus sisters had taken a fancy to my Edward.

"You're just jealous that I never liked you that way."

The first thing that I registered was that he didn't confirm or deny how he felt about them. I'd have to talk to him further about the Denali's.. later. Then what he really said registered in the forefront of my mind. I saw red.

Edward reached out to grab me, probably because Alice had seen a vision in the house, but it was too late. I dived at Rosalie, leaping up the porch steps easily. I tried to grab onto Rosalie, but she'd already spun around the column, leaped over the railing, and landed down on the grass.

I crouched on the balls of my feet and pounced at Rosalie who dived to the side at the last millisecond. Then her teeth were at my throat, but they weren't there long as Edward threw Rosalie off of me. Alice and Emmett grabbed Rosalie, holding her back even as Jasper and Edward grabbed onto me to keep me from diving at Rosalie again.

In my rage I hadn't even noticed that the rest of the family had even come outside...

– – –

Rosalie and I got in four more fights over the next month and a half until Rosalie and Emmett had taken off on their vacation in Africa, Emmett had wanted to try hunting different game. They had also went to try and track down a coven that Carlisle was good friends with so they could give Amiyah and Kerem well wishes from Carlisle.

Based on the times they had called to check in with Esme and Carlisle, it seemed that they hadn't been successful in finding Carlisle's friends, and now they were back home. I wasn't sure if they intended to stay or go back to Africa in a couple of days. I hoped it was the latter. For while I did enjoy Emmett's company, the same could not be said for Rosalie.

She wasn't the only vampire that I had alienated in the family either. Jasper too, to some extent, despised me. He was better at hiding it than Rosalie, and I knew it wasn't me per se, that he disliked, so much as my ease of control. Still there was a rift between us that didn't seem mendable. He knew more about newborn vampires than any of the rest of Cullen's and he had never met or seen a newborn with control even remotely similar to mine. He wasn't happy that his knowledge was in question.

I shook my head, looking around the meadow, remembering the first time Edward and I had come here, back when I'd still been human. The memories were blurry, faded from the change to vampirism, but still there. I remembered Edward showing off, running around the meadow too fast for my eyes to follow and then ripping a branch off of the tree next to him before swinging it into the tree he'd just torn it from. Both the tree and the branch had exploded from the strength of his swing. He'd been trying to frighten me, which he had. In that moment, he had never seemed less human.

Still, it was one of the memories I clung to harder than any other, wanting to remember the first time we'd been truly alone together and the first time he'd kissed me. We hadn't known it then, but as we'd discussed the potency of my blood to him and I'd ask if there was no hope, that there truly had been none. In the end, loving him as a human, had killed me – changed me in a way that I couldn't combat with.

Now, I would never be able to let my human family know that I was alright, that I was happy. I'd never be able to tell them that I got to keep the one thing that mattered more than anything else, they'd never know what the best part of my new life was. No one from my human life would ever truly realize that I was with Edward still, they'd never know that leaving my human life behind was worth it.

I did know that though, I knew that everything I'd left behind, all the foreseeable problems in the future, my own weirdness.. it was all worth it, because I got to keep Edward. Our love was worth all the regret and pain and fear. I could feel a small amount of my psyche scar over as I finally managed to come to terms with something that I had before just pushed aside.

As for my truck, a mere possession – which to an outsider it probably looked small and petty that I was giving it this much power over me – but it was about more than just the loss of the truck. It was about what the loss symbolized, about why it had to be lost. My faked death, using the body of a boy I'd never met, and burning both my vehicle and the body to the point of being unrecognizable. I understood why it had to be done, to give my family closure, to give the kids at school closure, and in the case of the kids at school, that was alright, I could accept that.

However, the closure it had given my parents.. seeing the pain and agony my death had caused them, I couldn't help but wonder if it wouldn't have been better for them to just have believed that I'd run away. Perhaps then, my dad wouldn't have aged two decades in a matter of weeks, perhaps my mother would have believed that I'd finally developed some of her natural flightiness and thought I'd come back on my own. Instead, they were left reeling from the loss of their child.

It was the one major part that I still couldn't come to terms with. There had to have been a better way, there had to have been a more suitable option for the sake of my parents. They'd deserved better closure than believing I'd died in some tragic car wreck. It was one tear that I wasn't able to close, I didn't know how to close this wound again. I already knew I wouldn't be able to compartmentalize it like I had before.

As for the Quileutes, there decision to view us as enemies was not something I could control, so while it was an unfortunate reality, it was one I could accept, and with that a little bit more of myself became whole again.

Perhaps the most important thing that I needed to come to terms with was marrying Edward. We were already together forever, what did it matter if we got a piece of paper and a couple of rings to prove it. In all reality, it shouldn't matter to me, no matter what I thought of marriage as an individual. Marriage might be a flawed institution, but if it was what Edward needed to be at peace with us being together then it wasn't that big of a deal. I had to accept that.

I wasn't ready to stand in front of a justice of the peace with him, but I was ready to stop running from the thought. It was time for me to be an adult about our future.

I sighed, I knew that I still felt somewhat raw, there were still things I hadn't come to terms with or accepted, but I was better than I had been when I'd run away from my adopted family. I was ready to go back home.

I looked up, noticing that it was dawn.