I Never Meant to Start a War

“Why did they leave?” I asked into the silence. Jasper didn’t sigh or make any sound like the mention of his family hurt him, though I knew it did. His hand around mine tightened and his arm held me closer to his chest.

We were sitting in the house now, and I wished his mother figure was there just so I could congratulate her on the spectacular interior design. The entire inside of the house was as magnificent as the outside, bringing in a light that I didn’t know was existent in a hazy rain. Jasper had me pulled to his chest from where we sat on the couch, the television off and all of the lights on a dim setting, just me and him, there to talk. But I hadn’t known how to begin.

He took a deep breath to prepare himself and pulled away from me, sitting down conventionally next to me and not touching me in the slightest. I looked at him as he collected himself, looking so sad.

“Marie, I know you might not believe me, but you need to listen to me, okay? Please? For me?”

“Of course,” I whispered.

And he began.

He told me a story of a young general in the Confederate side of the Civil War, and his hardships and his army, and how he was prided by so many even though his age was too young to be in the army to begin with. And it didn’t matter to the soldier. As long as he was there, he didn’t care if they would find out.

They never did.

His experience in the Confederate Army ended when he met a woman in Mexico—a woman named Maria. She changed everything, he told me. She made that soldier into something that was no longer human, something more. She turned him into a vampire and took him for her own.

He did a lot of things that he now regretted. Things that he thought were nothing different than all that he had done for the Confederates, because all he felt he was doing was the bidding and training he was told to do by someone above him. He saw nothing wrong in what they did. Not until he met a newborn named Peter, whose love for another newborn, Charlotte, showed him that this wasn’t just about which side was going to win. People were losing those that they loved.

So he left. He ran away like those lovesick newborns, but he soon realized that he had nowhere to go. That was when that soldier ran into someone that he would never forget—someone named Alice.

Alice took him to a family of vampires that didn’t believe in killing humans for their blood, and instead feasting on animals for their bloodlust. The leader of this coven believed in seeing the good in people and saw the good in the lost soldier. He gave him a home and a family that loved him like he never thought they would. That soldier became someone more.

That soldier became Jasper Hale.

By the time the story had ended, my head was leaning against his shoulder and his arm was tucked around me again, pulling me closer once he was sure I wouldn’t pull away. I didn’t know what to say for a while, so we sat in a silence and listened to the rain. I could have fallen asleep right there, in his arms, without a care in the world, because all of the answers were falling into place for all of my questions.

I whispered, “That was a brave soldier.”

He chuckled. “He likes to think so, but everybody has their weaknesses.”

“Blood being his?”

“You find this funny, don’t you?”

“At the moment. The actuality of it hasn’t quite sunken in yet.”

I felt him shake his head before reaching up and touching my cheek, his chilled touch lingering long after he dropped his hand. A smile twisted onto my face, and I was almost certain that his face mirrored mine.

But I remembered something.

“You know, you never did answer my question.”

“Which one?” Jasper asked, sounding distracted as he laid his head against mine, pulling me closer with two arms. The intimacy was astounding at this fast pace, because I had never had anyone touch me like this, intimately and lovingly. It made me wonder how I had been able to cope with casual touch for my entire life to this point.

I almost lost my train of thought. “Why did they leave?”

“There are some . . . dangers of being what we are. We may sound much more appealing because of our appetite, but the bloodlust is still there, Marie.” His voice was somber. “Sometimes we lose control. That’s precisely what happened.”

“So they left?”

“Because Edward asked them to. We know the dangers.”

I had seen Edward with Bella Swan, and I had almost been envious of the way they looked at one another with such a strong emotional connection that it could have knocked me off of my feet any day. So hearing this was almost the same as hearing a bluff.

Jasper could tell immediately. “Edward left because there was an accident that could have been the end of her life. He convinced the family to leave as well, but I was not so easily swayed.”

“Why not?”

I suppose he couldn’t, because he looked like he should be blushing. I blushed for him.

“But what happened to make him want to leave her?” I whispered, knowing that the details had been what he wanted to dodge. But I wanted to know, because I was just curious or because his reluctance was a little alarming, I didn’t know. He looked down at me and judged my expression before breathing a sigh.

“Alice insisted on throwing her a birthday party. Bella got a paper cut.”

My stomach turned. “It was that easy?”

Jasper nodded stonily, his face an unreadable mask. “The scent of running blood is tempting to us all, even if the scent isn’t nearly as lovely. It pushed Rosalie off of the edge. I can’t say I couldn’t blame her, because even Edward was pulled toward it, but I think the only thing that stopped me was that I thought about you.” He took a deep breath, and I was sure my skin should have crawled because it was my blood that he smelled. He exhaled heavily. “Your scent is unique, because it is very easy to control yourself around. It’s not nearly as mouthwatering as some, but not vile. It’s almost perfect.”

“But if I were to have been the one with the paper cut, would they have been able to resist?”

“I cannot tell,” he told me, “because Bella’s scent is much more appealing. But yours is still fresh, running blood.”

I thought about the horror of it for a lone second—the family with bloodthirsty eyes, all turned toward her and preparing to take the blood that they want from her veins. The thought that they shouldn’t hurt her, but oh how they wanted to . . . it chilled me to the bone ever so slightly. “Rosalie attacked her?”

“She attempted to. We managed to snap ourselves out of it in enough time to stop her from getting close, but by then it had turned into mayhem. The emotions . . .” He winced.

“What do you mean?”

“By what, darling?”

The pet name knocked me off of my game for a moment. “What do you mean when you outline the emotions?”

A smile played at his lips as he murmured down to me, “Some of my kind are in possession of a special gift to go with this gift of a second chance. Edward is able to hear the thoughts of others, Alice has the ability to see the future from the path we are on while she sees it, and I can feel and influence the emotions around me. Sometimes it’s a constant wave of endless emotion, depression, happiness, pain, sorrow, joy, curiosity; it is enough to drive me mad. But at the same time, I can turn that room of depressed mourners into one of happy-go-lucky optimists just with one thought.”

“So you know what I’m feeling right now?”

He beamed as he nodded, and I knew that he felt with his gift everything I felt for him. I just wondered if his heart shared the same philosophy.

Out of nowhere, he announced: “If you’re tired, you can just say so.”

And the omniscient comments began.

~*~

That night, I slept without nightmares.

~*~

“So does Bella know?” I asked him as he drove me to school one day more than a week later, leaning forward in my seat as I looked at his profile. We had grown close as I had predicted, but this was closer than I could have ever hypothesized. We grew closer not only in our romance part of it, becoming nearly insufferable when we were together and missing one another in the few times during the day we were apart (he had taken to sneaking into my room late at night and watching me sleep in his arms), but we also grew together emotionally. He told me that he depended on my emotions to keep him sane, because something about me always seemed right. But my emotional hold was deeper, as I had a feeling his was, because the feelings I felt for him were as molten and hot as lava.

I was beginning to constantly ask myself if I was falling in love with him.

“That I’m still here?” he clarified, shrugging when I didn’t say any different. “I suppose that she could have been told, or she will find out when she returns to school.”

I knew that he felt infinite guilt for all that she was going through, because he felt that he would be a constant reminder of what she lost when she was to return. He said that she was bad off. He had gone by with the shade of night to look in on her, to make sure she was okay.

He said that her emotions had him drowning.

He had told me before that Edward had wanted him to leave, had yelled at him because of his want—his need—to stay, because he wanted to erase this world away from Bella and to leave her to have a normal life away from mythical creatures that had proved dangerous to her in the past. He had wanted Jasper to disappear, too. But he announced to me that he couldn’t leave me without at least trying.

So he watched his family leave him behind just so he could fall in love with me.

His presence would more than likely be a constant burn for Bella. I almost felt bad because I was the reason that he wasn’t going to leave. It was a bittersweet feeling.

When we reached school and I caught sight of a big red truck, I learned that my taste of bittersweet certainly wasn’t going to be anything simple.

She was leaning against the door of her truck, tucked into her jacket as she stared down at her feet, her hair falling forward to cover her face. Her backpack laid in a slump at her feet, and she didn’t look in a much better state. From here I could see that she was thinner and more introverted, not answering her friend’s calls as they attempted to get her to answer. As I watched, they gave up on her.

And something swelled inside of me that I totally couldn’t explain away.

The moment that Jasper stopped the car, I got to my feet and began to move over to this poor, brokenhearted girl, not thinking that I would be making it worse, not thinking that I would be making it better. I just wanted her to know that she wasn’t ever alone. Because I knew exactly what that feeling was like.

She glanced up fleetingly when she heard my footsteps coming closer, but she looked up fully when I stopped in front of her, my proximity catching her off guard. She was so much thinner. So much more miserable. I felt faint but I still smiled toward her kindly, not feeling pity and knowing that wasn’t what she wanted.

“Hi Bella, I’m Marie Dunn,” I said, and she just watched me, speechless. “Maybe you’ve heard of me, since Jessica Stanley hates my guts since I punched her in the face.”

She gave me a ghost of a smile. “She mentioned that once.”

“My legacy lives on.” I grinned. “I know you don’t really know me, but I just wanted to let you know that I’ll always be here if you want to talk. I might not know what you’re going through, but I won the award for best listener in kindergarten, so I suppose that had to count for something.”

Again, that ghost of a smile, so small it was barely there, but she was so miserable that I rejoiced at the possibility.

“Good morning, Bella.” A cold arm snaked around my waist as Jasper made his entrance, cautious and as casual as he dared, but his shoulders were relaxed, even when I shrugged the arm off. The show of affection looked as though it stung her. He noticed that, as well.

“Jasper,” she whispered, glancing between the two of us. “I heard you were still here. I assumed it was about that girl you always talked about.”

I rolled my eyes. “As if my reputation wasn’t bad enough, this one comes along with a loose tongue.” I shot him a playful look and he laughed, and his empathy began to taste the atmosphere with the perfect hint of happiness. Bella didn’t visibly brighten but something stirred in her eyes.

The warning bell rang and all three of our heads turned to glance at the school we didn’t want to go into. I glanced at Bella and sighed.

“See you at lunch?” I asked her, but she hesitated. “You know, not only to save you from my arch enemy but because—nope, I think that was my main reason.”

She nodded a little numbly, but it was an agreement nonetheless.

“See you later, Bell,” I called as I dragged Jasper off, giving her a new nickname that I didn’t see her grimace at. She nodded again to me. And as I smiled back to her, I felt something stirring in me—some kind of accomplishment. Because I felt I owed her something.

Maybe I could help her.

Jasper stopped me before we walked into the English classroom, out of sight of the door, pressing me against the wall. I burned bright red as the bell chimed but he didn’t move, instead stared down at me with a wonder in his eyes.

“You’re amazing, did you know that?” he asked me, the same wonder in his voice. I shrugged.

“You’re making me late, did you know that?” I countered, but nothing could have made me happier than to be standing here with him and wondering about where we would end up.