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Nate shook his head a little, trying to shake off his previous thoughts. The white ceiling of his room no longer offered him any distraction or respite. He lay back on the bed, letting the cold mattress steal some of his body heat, and reread Bella's last message:
B: "Are you awake? I don't know if you took advantage of the suspension to sleep in."
A faint smile spread across his face. Bella wasn't one to write for nothing. If she did, it was because she truly meant it. Or because she needed to.
Nate shifted a little under the wrinkled sheets and replied,
N: "Sort of. Are you still in class?"
The cell phone vibrated seconds later.
B: "Yeah, I'm in the gym now. I took advantage of the class to sit down and take a break from today. Jessica can't stop telling everyone about yesterday. According to her, it was a fight straight out of a movie, like you almost killed Mike with one punch."
He snorted in amusement. In a small town like Forks, gossip spread like wildfire.
N: "Well… giving Jessica credit, Mike fell faster than even I assumed."
B: "I don't think anyone can take a hit like the one you gave him yesterday without being destroyed. You told me you used to box in your old town, but you didn't tell me you were Muhammad Ali."
A soft laugh escaped Nate.
But what came next changed the tone of everything.
B: "On a slightly different note… in biology, I sat with Edward Cullen. It was… weird. He talked to me a lot and seemed concerned about how I was doing after yesterday. He was nice. He even asked me if you and I were dating."
Nate's brow furrowed involuntarily. He raised his eyebrows, not out of annoyance, but because it was obvious. There was no jealousy. None. But there was a certainty that sank into him like a warning: Bella no longer spoke of Edward as someone distant. She was excited. She said it without saying it. It was noticeable between the lines.
N; "And what did you tell him?" he wrote, trying to sound casual.
B: "No. But it was weird. He'd never talked to me that much. Or… I don't know, it was like he'd suddenly changed."
N: "You may have already caught another poor boy from Forks in your nets."
Bella responded with an angry emoji, followed by another message that, for Nate, weighed more than he expected:
"His eyes were amber today—almost...gold. When I met him, they were dark. Did you notice?"
Nate stood still.
Amber?
The image of Edward came to him. The day before, when they were talking in class, before the incident with Mike. He had dark eyes, almost black. Like Alice's.
Although… he didn't get to see Alice again that same day. The class with her was after lunch, and by then he'd already been suspended.
He frowned.
It could have been the light.
It could have been something else.
He forced himself to rationalize it. Maybe contact lenses, or even a strange optical illusion from the reflection in the classroom windows. But deep down, he knew the coincidences were starting to outweigh the explanations.
He answered lightly:
"Maybe he's just hypnotizing you with his gaze."
"I don't think you need your gaze to hypnotize people, although I must admit your eyes are… pretty."
That last sentence didn't surprise him. He'd anticipated it even before reading it. He knew her. Bella didn't throw out adjectives at random. If she'd written "beautiful," it was because something inside her had already given way. Because Edward had broken through that first barrier that Bella had taken so long to break.
And yet, he felt bad. Not for Edward. For a moment, he thought of Jacob.
Poor Jake. He's going to suffer. Bella doesn't realize it yet, but she's already trapped. If a guy can get her to talk about him like that, without sarcasm or filter, then he has nothing to fear from the competition.
Sigh.
That's something I'll have to address another day.
He set his phone aside, its screen still lit. He got out of bed and returned his attention to the box he was examining. The cardboard was slightly damp in one corner from condensation. He opened it more carefully this time as if touching it more delicately would make the difference in its preservation.
It had been a while since Bella's last message. The silence that followed was strange. Almost thick. As if something in the air had suddenly descended, like a rain-laden cloud before a storm.
Nate had already finished unpacking everything that was left in the box: old photographs, some notes from his mother, folded newspaper clippings, quite a few of his father's notebooks, and a couple of drawings he barely remembered doing.
He had laid them out on the floor in meticulous order, lined up like pieces of evidence on a detective table. Everything had its place. Every object, its silence.
It was then that a noise cut through the stillness. The cell phone vibrated. A call.
Eric.
That's weird. I thought he was still mad at me.
Nate responded immediately.
"Eric?"
The voice on the other end was agitated, almost breathless. The words came out in a rush as if panic didn't give him time to breathe.
"Nate! Bella… she almost died! Tyler's truck went straight into her in the parking lot! I saw the whole thing! I don't know how she survived, it was… it was like a miracle!"
Nate's heart raced at once, and in his mind, he couldn't help but recall another call that had changed his life, the call in which he was told that his parents had passed away.
"What did you say?"
"The truck went out of control and almost crushed her! I was right there! Before I knew it, Cullen was on top of her! He was lifting her!"
The air thickened. The room became smaller. Nate felt a hard knot in his stomach.
"Is Bella okay?! Is she conscious?"
"Yes. But they're taking her to the hospital. Edward is going with her."
And then, silence. A brief one. One that lasted just long enough for everything unsaid to accumulate.
"I'll let you know if I hear anything else," Eric said, but Nate wasn't listening anymore.
He'd dropped his cell phone on the bed as he hurriedly put on his jacket. The fabric was still cold from the hook where he'd left it. He shrugged it on without bothering to button it. The icy wind blew through his open sleeves as he walked toward the door with quick, steady steps.
He didn't care.
He ran down the stairs almost two at a time, his heart pounding in his chest as if he too wanted to run.
Author's Notes: Don't forget the Powerstones! :)