Midnight Sun (Twilight #1.5)(98)

It was a place I knew well, the place I'd just considered taking Bella - a little meadow where no one ever went beside myself. A quiet, pretty place where I could count on being alone - far enough from any trail or human habitation that even my mind could have peace and quiet.

Alice recognized it, too, because she had seen me there not so long ago in another vision - one of those flickering, indistinct visions that Alice had shown me the morning I'd saved Bella from the van.

"No!" Jacob said, knowing where this was going. "You can't go there."

"It's not going to happen, Jake," Bella said, she too, knew where this was going.

"Bella..." Jacob started to say.

"Let me just keep reading," Bella interrupted and stated reading again.

In that flickering vision, I hadn't been alone. And now it was clear - Bella was with me there. So I was brave enough. She stared at me, rainbows dancing across her face, her eyes fathomless.

It's the same place, Alice thought, her mind full of a horror that did not match the vision. Tension, perhaps, but horror? What did she mean, the same place?

Both Jacob and Bella shivered, knowing what place Alice had to mean.

And then I saw it.

Edward! Alice protested shrilly. I love her, Edward!

I shut her out viciously.

She didn't love Bella the way I did. Her vision was impossible. Wrong. She was blinded somehow, seeing impossibilities.

Not even a half a second had passed. Bella was looking curiously at my face, waiting for me to approve her request. Had she seen the flash of dread, or had it been too quick for her?

I focused on her, on our unfinished conversation, pushing Alice and her flawed, lying visions far from my thoughts. They didn't deserve my attention.

"If it's not a flawed vision..." Jacob started, gritting his teeth.

"It is," Bella said, her voice calm though she was a little afraid. "Edward won't let it be."

"Does he even have a choice?" Jacob hissed at her.

"He muddled up Alice's visions before," Bella said. "When he stopped talking to me... he'll do it again."

"Right," Jacob said, not believing it, but hoping it was true.

I wasn't able to keep up the playful tone of our banter, though.

"Won't you want to tell your father that you're spending the day with me?" I asked, darkness seeping into my voice.

I shoved at the visions again, trying to push them farther away, to keep them from flickering through my head.

"With Charlie, less is always more," Bella said, certain of this fact. "Where are we going, anyway?"

"You should tell him at least," Jacob said.

Alice was wrong. Dead wrong. There was no chance of that. And it was just an old vision, invalid now. Things had changed.

"Right," Jacob said again, in his non-believing hopeful tone, and then added stiffly, "but that doesn't mean you should take her to this meadow of yours."

"The weather will be nice," I told her slowly, fighting the panic and indecision.

Alice was wrong. I would continue as if I hadn't heard or seen anything. "So I'll be staying out of the public eye...and you can stay with me, if you'd like to."

Bella caught the significance at once; her eyes were bright and eager. "And you'll show me what you meant, about the sun?"

Maybe, like so many times before, her reaction would be the opposite of what I expected. I smiled at that possibility, struggling to return to the lighter moment. "Yes. But..." She hadn't said yes. "If you don't want to be...alone with me, I'd still rather you didn't go to Seattle by yourself. I shudder to think of the trouble you could find in a city that size."

Her lips pressed together; she was offended.

The Bella who was reading the book wasn't offended by this... she was too busy worrying about what was going to happen next to be offended.

"Phoenix is three times bigger than Seattle - just in population. In physical size - "

"But apparently your number wasn't up in Phoenix," I said, cutting off her justifications. "So I'd rather you stayed with me."

She could stay forever and it would not be long enough.

I shouldn't think that way. We didn't have forever. The passing seconds counted more than they ever had before; each second changed her while I remained untouched.

Bella grimaced... that sounded so sad, the way that he described her changing every second...

Jacob grimaced, it sounded liked Edward wanted her to be a vampire... or at least part of him wanted that so that she would always be by his side.

"As it happens, I don't mind being alone with you," she said.

No - because her instincts were backwards.

"I know." I sighed. "You should tell Charlie, though."

"Why in the world would I do that?" she asked, sounding horrified.

"Because it's the right thing to do," Jacob said.

"So you always tell Billy where you go?" Bella questioned.

"Um..." Jacob said.

"That's what I thought," Bella said.

"I don't..." Jacob started, but Bella had started reading again.

I glared at her, the visions I couldn't quite manage to repress swirling sickeningly through my head.