I Never Meant to Start a War

Jasper had always been as frozen as winter’s chill, but I had never seen him act so cold.

His whole demeanor had shifted when he had heard the words that he had wished not to hear. He wanted to hear me say that I loved him, that I wanted him back, that I would willingly leave Paul behind and would open my heart to him and stay with him for the rest of eternity. He heard that words I spoke, but he didn’t seem to understand them at first.

And then, he was scowling, growling, and he knew that he had finally lost a battle.

“You’re picking him?!” he snarled, hands clenching at his sides. I wanted to look back toward the moon that shined outside, toward the small hope I had deluded myself into thinking represented me, but I didn’t. I couldn’t look away from his cold, fathomless eyes, couldn’t look away to something that I knew would just manage to tell me that even if it was trying, it was still being held back. It still couldn’t break through the clouds.

I should have known that this would be the most difficult moment of my entire life.

I looked him in the eye. “Yes,” I answered, small.

That just made him angrier. Defeat wasn’t an easy concept for him, not when he had been so successful up until now. He stepped forward, and I stepped back.

“Why?” he demanded in a snarl. “What does that filthy, disgusting mutt have that I don’t?”

“Don’t you dare,” I hissed. “I love him.”

“I want to know how you could possibly pick a worthless, loveless mutt!” he yelled.

I looked him in the eye. “You must be really pathetic to make a mutt look good.”

Before my human brain could process what was happening, Jasper had dove at me. He grabbed my shoulders and forced me to slam into the wall, his hands gripping my forearms in a deathly grip, his face in mine as he growled. Pure fury flickered through eyes that used to show how much he loved me. I winced, but it didn’t touch him. I don’t even think he noticed that he was holding me too hard, dangerously so, too blinded by his rage.

I looked up into his enraged, hateful black eyes, and suddenly missed the pure gold ones.

“I don’t know what he’s done,” Jasper snarled, “but it’s completely changed the way you look at me. I can tell, in your eyes, in your emotions. I don’t know what made you hate me.”

“I hate you,” I whispered, “because of this.”

He didn’t understand at first, but it didn’t take him longer than a heartbeat to understand. He understood in the way he gripped me, in the way he hated me, in the way that he wanted nothing more in that moment than to let his emotions take control.

I blinked, and he was on the other side of the room, looking at me with wide eyes. My body relaxed, but soon came the burning ache, a shot of pain. I tried not to acknowledge it, just watched the vampire I loved carefully.

If he could cry, I had a feeling the tears would be running down his cheeks.

He brokenly cried, “I don’t want to push you away. I don’t. I love you. But everything I do is pushing you into his arms and out of mine.”

The tears that he couldn’t shed ran down my face as I looked at his broken soul and wished that I hadn’t ever had to become such a heartless monster. “I’m sorry, Jazz,” I heard myself whispering, my voice shaking. The tears came faster. “I’m sorry.”

He looked at me as I reached over and grabbed my phone and my keys from my nightstand, and followed when I began to walk downstairs. For lack of better words, he looked how I felt—lost.

It was until I reached the front door that he reached out and grabbed my wrist, stopping me. “Wait,” he whispered. “I can’t lose you.”

I didn’t want to hurt him, but I knew there was no other way to get him to let me go. I looked at him and mustered everything I had, tried to hate him.

“You already have,” I told him as coldly as I could. “I thought you were the one that told me to pick?”

The grip on my wrist tightened, tightened, tightened, and, like he had upstairs, he began to forget that I was human.

“Marie?” he whispered half-pleadingly, half-spitefully as he gripped my wrist to the point that the pressure was no longer bearable in any sense of the word. I cringed and squirmed, but he didn’t let go, didn’t notice, his eyes locked on me.

I looked up at him.

“Let me go, Jasper,” I murmured. The tears came faster and heavier and the pain in my wrist couldn’t equal the pain in my heart as I looked into his eyes and pleaded, “Let me go.”

Somehow, in that moment, he knew he had lost me.

As if it mattered anymore, he slowly, slowly, slowly let go of my wrist, letting it drop down to my side as he watched me with pain in his eyes that could only come with a broken heart. He watched me turn and leave him behind. He stood there and tried not to move as I started my car, backed out of the driveway, and pointed my car in the direction of the only place I could ever feel safe at the same time as unwelcome.

I doubted being in Forks with the Cullens around would never feel right again.

Despite the screaming in my wrist, I managed the wheel with both hands, never looking behind me although I was sure he was following me. When I caught sight of white blurs among the green of the trees, I knew my suspicions were correct, and I knew that he was desperately thinking of any possible way that he could get me to come back to him. Anything.

But there would come a time where he couldn’t follow me anymore. And that time came.

In my rearview mirror, I caught sight of Jasper standing in the middle of the road, back yards away, staring at my car and knowing that this was it. I felt the car stop without my foot realizing it had hit the brake. Jasper’s eyes watched with a slight shine of hope.

I sat there for a moment.

In complete silence, ignoring Jasper’s broken stare, I finally left him behind.

~*~

By the time I reached Paul’s house, I found myself wondering how I had managed to drive safely here through the tears that obscured my vision. I stumbled up to the front door and, once again, didn’t consider what I would say if it wasn’t Paul that answered until the footsteps were sounding closer and closer.

Carrie opened the door, looking shocked. “Marie, are you okay?!” she demanded frantically, reaching forward as if to take my hand. I flinched away, the wrist still screaming. She froze.

Slowly, I shook my head.

“I didn’t know where else to go,” I whispered to her brokenly.

Carrie stepped forward and folded her arms around me in a warm, loving embrace. I relaxed a little as she whispered, “You can always come here, sweetie.”

She led me inside in a blur and ushered me upstairs.

“Paul’s not home,” she told me. “He’s patrolling, but he should be home soon. Until then, you’re welcome to stay here. Are you staying the night? I could get you some comfortable clothes if you like.”

I don’t remember telling her I was staying, but she disappeared and reappeared with a pair of sweatpants, telling me that I could borrow one of Paul’s shirts. She led me to a room, the last room on the right, looking off into the forest, and as she pushed the door open, I took a deep breath as the cold night air swirled around me; for a fleeting moment, I looked to where my window would be, expecting to see Jasper.

But I blinked. I wasn’t in my room. And, more than likely, Jasper wouldn’t be back.

A flash of pain ran through my chest as Paul’s mother pointed me to the bathroom and invited me to make myself at home before rushing down to deal with Annabelle, Paul’s little sister, who was yelling for her downstairs.

It was all a blur.

I hardly remembered getting dressed in a pair of gray sweatpants and an old black shirt of Paul’s, but that was what I was laying in when I curled up on top of the sheets of his bed, the sting on my heart clenching my lungs in a death grip as I tried to breathe. I ran my hands over my cheeks, but there were no tears left to push away. They were still in my eyes, waiting to fall, wanting to express just how much it hurt to let your heart break apart.

I closed my eyes and waited for everything to fall back into place.