Interpolated - Chapter 2

Chapter 2 - Veritas

I looked at Jacob, who no longer appeared angry or upset.  I wondered if it was my mom or Jasper who had quelled his rage, but at this point, it didn’t matter.  When he finally met my eyes, I was stunned to see his pained expression.  It was as if his heart was reaching out to me with some invisible force, but his body was tied down.  He lacked control, somehow, and it was hurting him.

Had I done that to him? How was that possible?

“Tell me what on earth is going on with you, Jake,” I said.  My words came out harsher than I intended them to, but he didn’t seem surprised by my tone.

“It’s complicated,” he said slowly, which made me roll my eyes.  “I should have trusted you and explained things to you sooner, but it was a delicate situation.  Your family and everyone else have kept the truth from you because I insisted upon it.  I can see now that it wasn’t the best choice, but I really don’t know what could have been the right way.”

“Go on,” I said, feeling my mom and dad each take one of my hands in theirs.

“Nessie, tell me what you see when you look at Sam and Emily together.”

I wanted to protest about him calling me that name, but I didn’t bother.  I was more concerned with what Sam and Emily had to do with anything, and I told him that.  He insisted that it was relevant, so I considered the question and gave him an answer.

“They seem to be very much in love.  They look a lot like my family when they’re with their mates.”

“What about Jared and Kim?”

“The same,” I said, still completely confused.

“Exactly.  Now, think about Quil and Claire.”

“Wait,” I protested.  “You’re supposed to be talking about us, then you go off about your pack brothers and their wives.  Then you move on to Quil baby-sitting Claire?  I’m not seeing a pattern here, aside from the tribe.”

“Just think about what you see when Quil plays with Claire.”

“I don’t know, Jake.  He’s always happy and smiling when she’s around, and it seems like he’ll do practically anything for her.  I mean, I’ve seen him play Pretty, Pretty Princess and watch Barbie movies more times than I can remember.”

“Exactly,” he repeated passionately.

“Uhh, still totally confused over here,” I huffed.

“You just said it, Ness.  He would do practically anything for her.  It’s the same with Sam and Emily and with Jared and Kim,” he explained.  Taking a deep breath, he looked at me with a gaze so intense and meaningful that I sat back on the couch to distance myself from his eyes.  “Nessie, it’s the same way for me too…when I’m around you.  I would do absolutely anything to make you happy.”  His voice was so serious that it made me uncomfortable.

Mom and Dad squeezed my hands, both taking unnecessary breaths but staying quiet.

“Why do you feel that way?  Because you’ve known me since I was born?  And what does it have to do with your friends?”

“Something happened to me the day you born.  It’s the same thing that happened to Quil when he first saw Claire, and what happened to Sam and Jared when they saw their wives after the first time they phased.  It’s called imprinting.”

“Imprinting?” I said slowly, tasting the word as it rolled off my tongue.  “Like baby birds?  They hatch and are immediately attached to their mother?”

My dad actually laughed quietly, and I stole a glance at him before Mom silenced him by growling his name.  I looked back at Jacob, raising my eyebrows.

He scratched the back of his head before speaking to me again.  “It’s not quite the same as that, but there are very small similarities.  You know that the wolf gene only runs through certain bloodlines in the tribe, right?”  I nodded.  “Well, imprinting is a phenomenon that has accompanied the wolves.  We don’t know how or why it happens because not everyone experiences it, but the elders of the past believed that it occurred to keep the bloodlines strong through our descendents.”

“So imprinting is like…you marking territory on a woman?” I asked.

“No, but in a way, it can seem so.  An imprint is like magic.  It’s an invisible binding, and those two people are fated to be together.”

“You’re telling me that you decided when I was a few hours old that I was going to be your mate?” I said dryly.  “That’s disgusting.”

Jacob jumped to his feet, but Jasper was in front of him in a flash, pushing him back into the chair.

“No!” he protested.  “It’s not a choice, Ness.  I can’t describe the feeling.  It’s like someone tied a rope around my heart and attached the other end to you.  It’s unbreakable.  Wherever you go, I will always want to follow.  I will always want what is best for you and what makes you happy.  Think back on your life.  Do you remember all the things I’ve done, not because I wanted to, but for you alone.  I’m not bitter, I just want you to see it…to realize.”

Curling into Daddy’s side, I tried to wrap my head around everything that Jacob was explaining to me.  So little of it made sense, but I had to remember that I was a half-human, half-vampire who lived with my family of vegetarian vampires and our shape-shifting wolf friends.  Believing in some sort of crazy love at first sight shouldn’t have been too much of a stretch of the imagination. 

“What now?” I asked.  “I’m supposed to be in love with you now?  Are you in love with me, Jacob?  Is that why you’ve been acting so strange and possessive lately?  Is that why you wanted to hurt Seth?”

He scrubbed his hands over his face, falling forward until his elbows rested on his knees.  He groaned loudly, but didn’t look up at me.

“No, you don’t have to fall in love with me.  My imprint makes me unfathomably devoted and loyal to you.  When you were a baby and needed someone to care for you, that was my desire.  When you were a child and needed a playmate or tutor, I assumed that role.  Now that you’re older, things are more complicated.  You have the free will to do as you please, but since you’ve become very adult-like, it has been difficult for me to not view you a little differently.  The desire to be near you all the time is becoming something uncontrollable.”

I sat in silence, hiding my face in my dad’s shoulder and shaking my head back and forth, as if that would make all this new information disappear.  But I had asked for this.  I wanted to know the truth, and here it was.  It was so much to take in, and I did not fully understand it yet.

Hearing my barrage of questions and confusion play out in my mind, my dad rubbed my back and shushed me comfortingly.

“We’ve all known this since you were born, sweetheart,” he explained.  “You have your free will, but we have all assumed that when you were fully grown that you and Jacob would eventually be…romantic.”

“You say I get a choice, yet everything I’m hearing is telling me that I’m supposed to do this and that by…having feelings…for someone else, I’m doing something wrong.  That’s not fair!”

“Honey, you’re not doing anything wrong,” my mom piped in.  I lifted my head to look at her as she spoke.  With a quick peek at Jacob, I saw that his face was buried his hands, but I needed to focus on what Mom was saying.  “It’s just that…”

“No woman has ever not chosen the man who imprinted on her,” Jacob interrupted.  His voice was flat and tortured.  Knowing that it had come on account of me was almost too heavy to bear.

“Why is this happening to me?” I moaned.  As soon as the words escaped my mouth, I regretted them.  Jacob literally winced and fell back into his chair.

“I’ve never wanted to push you, Nessie,” he said with a new, pleading tone.  “All I’ve ever wanted is your happiness.  I’ve tried to be the best friend you could have – trustworthy, understanding, reliable – but now that you’re older, it’s harder for me to see you drift away from me.  I feel like you don’t need me the way you used to, so when you want less of me while I find myself wanting more of you…it kills me.”

“What I think Jacob is trying to say is that, because of the imprint, it’s physically painful for him at times,” my mother spoke again.  “That is not to make you feel guilty or pressured.  None of us ever thought this could go a different way.”

“But why can’t it?” I asked, needing more information.

She had some far off look in her eyes as she selected her words, as though some distant memory was being pulled from the depths of her mind in that moment.  “The imprint makes Jacob so strongly knit to you that…why wouldn’t you choose him, in the end?  He’ll be your perfect match.  Like he was designed for you alone.”

Those words, this situation, it was all too much.

Jacob’s face showed complete, resigned agreement with what my mom had just said, as though they were his own thoughts and words.  I thought he was going to leap out of his chair and grab me, but he didn’t.  I had no way of knowing if that was because of his own emotional defeat or if it was the way Jasper was staring at him so intently.

All I knew was that I needed to get away, and fast.

“I’m sorry,” I whimpered, covering my mouth and running.

I blew through the broken door before anyone could catch me, but they didn’t need to follow.  I told my dad in a few silent words that I was going home.  To be alone.  To hide.  To wallow in my own bed and try to forget what was really happening.

Realizing I was still in my dress from the dance, I tossed it to the floor, slipping into some comfortable sweats.

Alone on my bed, I cried.  I couldn’t pinpoint exactly what I was crying for or about, but I knew that I was too overwhelmed, and that was probably the root of it.

Wasn’t there enough magic in my life?

I had always been different, a one-of-a-kind.  Of course, we knew of a few other half-vampires like me, but I was the only female anyone had ever found.  I was also the only one whose mother had survived my birth, but that was on account of the preparation of my family.

Guilt plagued me for a very long time, though my dad is the only one who knew about that.  I never spoke the words aloud, but he saw it in my mind.  My conception had tortured my entire family, especially my dad, and it had nearly killed my mom.  I didn’t know – I was just a tiny baby in my mother’s belly.  As if that wasn’t enough, everyone I loved, and so many other people who tried to help, had almost been destroyed by the Volturi because of me.

I was forced to mature quickly, and not just because of my rapid growth.  There came a time when my dad just couldn’t stand it any longer.  My guilt and feelings of responsibility hurt him, so he explained a lot to me.  I already understood quite a bit about sex from all the reading I had done, so Daddy didn’t have to go through the mechanics of it all to me.  What he did explain was that he and my mom fell in love while she was a human.  After they were married, they consummated their relationship, never knowing that it was possible for her to get pregnant.

What he told me next was exactly what I needed to alleviate my guilt.  He said that, while my birth killed her human body, it allowed him to change her without loathe or hesitation, which he had been struggling with since the day they met.  He actually thanked me for that.  Then he explained how empty he had felt for so many years, as though he was less than a man because he lost his human life at such a young age and could never experience life the way mortals did.  I filled a void for the entire family.  None of them could have children or grandchildren, so I became the little one they always pined for and thought they could never have.

In a way, I saved my father from hating himself for what he was, for not being able to stay away from my mom, and gave him a gift he never would have imagined.

My life gave Daddy and Mom their fairytale.

All the negativity and self-hate I felt was washed away when that reality sank in to my mind.

I completed the family.

“There’s just a bit more than that.”

My dad’s voice pulled me from my thoughts, and I found him and my mom standing at my bedroom door.  I motioned them in, and they sat with me on the bed.  They hugged me, wiping away my stray tears.

“How could there possibly be anything more?” I said hopelessly.  I wasn’t sure my mind could take anything else at this point.

“It’s that completion of the circle idea you had,” Dad said.  “You did more than fill in the holes for the Cullens.”

“For the ten-thousandth time tonight, I am confused,” I sighed.

Mom squeezed my hand.  “It’s more about me than anything else, honey.  If you want the whole truth, you’re going to get it tonight.  Keeping things from you has not been good on our part, but it’s all very complicated and it just hasn’t mattered since you were born.”

“Confused.”

“Okay, okay, I’ll get on with it,” she said, offering me a small smile.  “Years ago, when I was human and Jacob hadn’t yet phased, he was my best friend.”

She went on to describe what she called a very dark time for her and my father.  I learned that Uncle Jasper had accidentally tried to attack Mom and that Dad felt so awful that he left her for a while.  It was awful to imagine them ever being apart, but I listened with rapt attention as she went over every important detail, from her dangerous activities to saving Dad from the Volturi.  It was no wonder they hated ever being apart now.

“During that time, Jacob and I were very close, baby.  He…fell in love with me.”

“He loved you?” I asked incredulously.  I thought about all the times I had seen Mom and Jake together in my life, and while they were good friends, he never looked at her with the eyes my Dad did.  There was nothing more than platonic interaction between them.

“He did, but when he knew that I had chosen your father, that there was never any other choice for me, he accepted it,” she said slowly.  “When we returned from our honeymoon, knowing that I was pregnant with you, Jacob could not seem to stay away from me.  It tortured him to see me hurting, just as much as it tore your father to pieces.  I felt this innate need for him to be there with me, and when he was close, there was comfort.  It wasn’t romantic at all, it was without words or explanation.  At the same time, he felt very drawn to me, not because he thought he could take me away from Edward, but because he had to stay near me.”

“Did he imprint on you too?” I asked, trying to grasp her explanation.

“No, not at all.  Imprinting happens the first time a wolf sees his…mate…after he’s changed.  That never happened for us.”

“Then why was he so drawn to you?”

“Because of you, sweetie,” she said, reaching up and stroking my cheek.  Her honey-gold eyes were full of love, giving me the answers I needed.

“Because of me?” I whispered to myself. 

Dad gave me a light pat on the back.  “Yes.  Even in your mom’s belly, his entire being was drawn to you.  Even his soul, perhaps.”

“Wow,” I muttered stupidly.  I couldn’t find any other words.  What was I supposed to do now?  Just decide to fall in love with Jake to make him happy?  I was mature and almost fully grown, yes, but I couldn’t just force myself to feel something that wasn’t there.

I cared for Jacob deeply, and I knew that there would be a deep hole, a void, in my life if he were not there.  Even though I didn’t crave his attention or presence as much as I used to, I still wanted him there.  How selfish did that make me?  If he truly loved me and wanted to do anything it would take to make me happy, would he stand idly by while I opened my heart to someone else?

“Yes, I believe he would,” Dad said, answering my thoughts.  “It would hurt him, but your happiness would become his happiness, and he would eventually accept that as his place in your life.”

“He’ll just do whatever I say?”

“Not exactly,” Mom answered.  “It would not be easy for him to see you with someone else.  He would struggle.  You have the free will to decide what you want, but you need to understand that we all assumed you would eventually be with him.”

“Completing the circle,” Dad said.

“So I wasn’t just the child everyone always hoped for, or the conduit for you to change Mom without feeling like you were stealing her life.  I was the solution to your…love triangle?”

“In a manner of speaking, yes.”

“Do you think that’s why he fell in love with you in the first place?” I asked Mom.

She bit her lip, looking back and forth between me and Dad.  After a moment she nodded her head twice.  “There’s no way to know for sure, of course, but more mysterious things have happened in our lives.

“Carlisle met Esme when she was a young girl and remembered her years later, in a different city and state, when she was on her deathbed.  Rosalie took one look at Emmett and wanted to save him, even though his blood was dripping down her arms as she carried him.  Alice had a vision of Jasper the moment she awoke from her change.  Your father did not find a mate for over one hundred years, but we both believe that I was born to be with him.  So, yes, we do believe that it’s possible that fate or some other power in the universe crafted this intricate web to place you in his life.”

I wanted to vomit.

It wasn’t as though she was telling me something bad, but it was heavy.  I had gone to my first school dance and had come home as Atlas, shouldering the weight of the world.  Or Jacob’s world, at least.

“What happens if I don’t love him like that?” I asked.  “Is it possible that we’re not supposed to be mates?  And is that what he wants of me now?”

“Oh, sweetheart,” my Dad said sympathetically, stroking my curly hair.  “You’re still young.  We don’t know what the future will hold, and if you don’t fall in love with him, he will eventually learn to accept that.”

Mom added her own thoughts.  “His changing feelings are relatively new to him, baby.  While he’s assumed that you would be his mate, his mind has never thought of you romantically or inappropriately.  Your father can confirm that.”  She took a deep breath and looked me in the eyes.  “His hope is what has changed.  You’re getting older, so he cannot help but at least consider what your future may hold together.  He’s always been able to have a little bit of control in your life, but now you are almost a grown woman and you’re building a social life outside our family unit.  It frightens him to not be so involved in your life, especially when you have been growing closer to one of his pack brothers.”

“I don’t want to say he feels betrayed,” Dad began, “but it’s especially difficult for him to see you offer your affection to Seth.  You are the only one who can determine how you feel or what you want, so we promise not to tell you how to lead your life.  We will, however, caution you to be sympathetic to both of them.

“Seth’s feelings for you are genuine, but he struggles with them.  In the eyes of the pack, you do actually belong to Jacob.  Attempting to take you away from Jacob goes against tribal code, but if you are the one to choose Seth first, which it seems you have, then it is permissible for him to be involved with you.”

“Geez, this is complicated,” I groaned.

They both laughed lightly at me and nodded in understanding.

“You are still young, and you do not have to make any lifelong decisions right now.  Only you will know who and what is right for you.  Just remember that you now control both of them far more than you could ever see.”

They could tell that I was exhausted from the day and all this turmoil, so after a number of yawns, I gave up the fight against sleep.  My parents excused themselves, and once I had completed my nighttime rituals, I sank into my bed, swathed in heavy blankets that smelled of flowers and baby powder, and I fell asleep.

***********

I was glad that the next day was Sunday because I didn’t want to see anyone.  I hid in my bedroom all day long, listening to music and getting my homework finished.

Jacob called once, but I didn’t answer.  Mom spoke to him and told him that I needed time to process things.  Dad told me that he went for a run with Seth to get him up to speed on everything I had been told.  He said that Seth wanted to make sure I was all right, but was trying to be patient and understanding about what I was going through.

Grandma dropped off the pictures she had taken, along with printouts of the ones I took while we were at the dance.  Apparently, she retrieved my camera from Dad while I was sleeping.

As I leafed through them, my heart stung.  Most of them included Seth, and I was caught between how happy we both looked in those photos and how complicated things had become in such a short period of time.  In actuality, they had been complicated all my life, I just didn’t know it until last night.

I was truly concerned with how he was dealing with everything.  His hesitation with me began to make sense as I remembered the way my parents explained it all to me.  Seth wasn’t just a guy falling for a girl, nor was he a guy falling for a girl his friend cared for immensely.  He was a guy falling for a girl who was quite literally betrothed to someone else.  And there I was, unknowingly baiting him to betray someone who was his brother, mentor, and Alpha.

Was I a terrible person for that, or could my actions be excused because I didn’t know the truth?

For once, I truly wished that Alice was able to see how this would turn out, but I knew that wasn’t possible.  She had never been able to see the future when the pack was involved, and although she occasionally caught snippets of visions that included me, she could never fully see my future.

If it were possible to have a fast forward button on life, this would have been a time I wanted one.  Then again, I didn’t want to miss out on my first high school experience.  I knew that I would eventually go through the act of being a teenage girl again with my family in different cities and states, but this one was special because I wasn’t acting.  This one time would be mine, and it would forever be my first.

What about other first experiences?  If I was destined or fated or made to be with Jacob, did I get to try dating other people first, or was I just supposed to ignore any other feelings I had and wait until I was ready to be with him?

It was so utterly confusing because I just did not feel that way about him.  I loved him, but it was not in a romantic way.  Then again, throughout my entire life, I had thought of him as my Jacob.  No one ever questioned or discouraged either of us from allowing him that position, so it just was. 

As I considered the idea of Jacob someday being my future…mate…and husband…it felt strange, yet at the same time it wasn’t as though it repulsed me.  Jacob had always taken care of me.  Part of me knew that he always would.  He would be good to me and we could be happy, but there was no ache in my heart or any other part of my body for him that way.

However, Seth’s face was plastered to the forefront of my mind.

I didn’t like the weird behavior from Jacob that began when I started school.  He wanted to know about my experiences and was always asking for details.  I wasn’t doing anything untoward at school, but it felt like an invasion of my privacy.  I returned to my earlier sentiments of this being my first time through high school, and I didn’t want everyone else to be so involved in it.  They had all been with me every single day of my life.  When it was just me and Seth at school, I was able to relax and see what it was like to live within a normal human world.  The shadow of the supernatural fell away for a few hours each day, and it was refreshing for me.

I knew that Seth understood that, especially because he had been thrust into this life at such a young age.  We had a couple classes together and then a couple others that were the same but during different class periods.  It was natural for us to share friends, spend time with each other, and do our homework together.  We had become close in the months since school started, and even though I knew him all my life, we finally had a relationship that was ours alone.  That was how my feelings slowly transformed from him being a constant – a part of the family – to my true friend, and now I felt something more.

I didn’t like that it was affecting Jacob so much, but I couldn’t simply decide stop liking Seth anymore than I could force myself to fall in love with the man who had imprinted on me.

My only real option at this point was to allow the dust to settle and then see how everything played out.  I would not be cutting anyone out of my life or making decisions at this time, but I wouldn’t rule anything out either.

Sunday was a long, slow day for me, but when Monday morning arrived and I had to get ready for school, I found myself wishing for a little more solitude.

The photos from the dance had been viewed more times than I could count, and I finally settled on placing them in an album Alice had brought me Sunday evening.  It made me miss Seth and think about our spectacular first kiss over and over again, but I was still very nervous to see him at school.  I didn’t know if he would be upset with me or back off completely for Jacob’s sake.  My hopes were set against that.  I wasn’t sure what I wanted from him, but I at least needed time with him to see.

Daddy drove me to school that day, and we didn’t stop to pick up Seth.  I assumed that had been planned with whoever was dropping him off that day.  I couldn’t keep my mind from drifting to him as we passed trees and scattered houses on the way to the school, wondering what my day would hold.

“Just try to relax and focus on school today,” he said, rubbing my knee for a moment before returning it to the steering wheel.  “Follow your heart and use your head.”

“What if I don’t choose Jacob?” I asked suddenly.  I knew he didn’t see the question in my mind because it had just come to me.  “Will everyone hate me for it?”

“Of course not.  We will love you no matter.  Even Jacob would continue to love you if your life takes a different path than we presumed.”

“That’s awful.”

“No, darling, it’s not.  If your mother had picked Jacob, or anyone else, over me, I would have let her go.  It would have hurt me immensely, but I would have supported her decision because she was happy.  That is what I always wanted the most for her.  That’s the root of love, being able to sacrifice your own desires for someone else.”

“And that’s why you left Mom back then?”

He was quiet for a moment before he confirmed my question.  “In a way, it was for the better.  Once we were back together, we knew that we couldn’t survive apart.”  He paused, taking a deep breath.  I knew something serious was coming.  “I’m not saying that you should or need to be with Seth or anyone else in order to figure out what role you want Jacob to play in your future, but it’s not an unreasonable thing for you to consider.  As I said, you have choices, and only you can make the decisions that are right for Carlie Cullen.”

A couple minutes later, we were at the school, and Daddy gave me a comforting hug and kiss on the forehead before I got out of the car.  He wished me well, and I walked slowly toward the entrance.  I kept my head down and went directly to my locker to retrieve my books and stow my jacket.

For the first time since Saturday night, a genuine smile spread across my face.  Standing in front of my locker, obviously waiting for me, was Seth.  When he saw my smile, his entire face lit up and his dark eyes sparkled.

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