Dusk - A Twilight Reimagining

5 - Poisoned Soil

She slammed her hands down on Jacob's desk. Bella leaned in and hunched her shoulders like a green-eyed panther eyeing its victim. From his lone lamp, a bright beam of light shined over Jacob's features. It highlighted his soft cheekbones, the divots in his forehead, the bumps around his nose,  and his amber eyes. The closer she looked at them, the more Bella realized just how yellow-gold they were. 

But that wasn't the point of her interrogation. 

"What do you know about the dark, Jacob?" she asked lowly, moving the light closer to his face. 

Jacob pressed his lips together and took quick glances from his lamp to Bella's eyes. He let out a sigh, trying to feign confident tranquility. His feet—those assholes—betrayed him entirely as they shuffled under the desk. "Is this really necessary-"

"You're fidgeting," Bella pointed out. 

"You're interrogating me!" he shoved the blame on her, praying to the Gods for salvation and mercy—any God at this point, someone please save him. Jacob gulped as Bella's eye twitched.

She knew all his weak points—had grown up knowing them. Through their years of friendship, Bella stored away not only his favorite foods, activities, and topics of conversation but his body's nervous ticks. He never expected her to use them against him like this. The brunt of her distrust slammed into his heart like a train, and he forced his hands to grip his desk instead of clawing at his chest.

Bella drew back, crossing her arms as her dark hair swished back like a reeling snake. There was a twitch in his jaw, a code she had no dictionary to translate. "You're not telling me something. Why did you tell me to stay inside at night!?"

"Because there are animals outside, Bella! C'mon!" He pleaded, finding himself backed up to the edge of a rocky cliff. Jacob stood so close that the cold upswept wind raced along his spine and lifted his long, braided hair. Sweat gathered in his palms—he dared not take his hands off the desk now.

"You're lying!" she accused. "There were animals in Arizona too!"

"Not bears!"

"TELL ME WHAT YOU KNOW, DAMMIT! You warned me of a bigger shitstorm, then I go out once in the dark, and THERE'S A MAN WHO DOESN'T MAKE NOISE WHEN HE RUNS STALKING ME! That's no fucking coincidence!" Bella ranted on, trying to push the limits of her knowledge. She grasped at straws as her anger built without purpose or destination. It burned deep in her stomach, and smoke rose through her throat to cloud her eyes, the haze preventing her better judgment from taking her fury out on her oldest friend. 

"Bella, listen to yourself-"

She scoffed, a bitter taste of poison on her tongue. "God, you're always such a wet fucking tissue! Your voice is higher, your feet keep shuffling, your eyes shift to your door, and you're trying to tell me you're not lying to me?! Grow some balls, Jacob!" 

Silence slipped in between the wind that stroked along Jacob's scalp, his feet halfway off the rocks. His lungs seized up as he stared into Bella's venomous green eyes. Jacob felt heavy as a boulder yet weightless like the breeze all at once. His mind ran only one question by his wolf-like earthen eyes.

Who is this part of his best friend? 

"Bella Swan," Mr. Black scolded, Jacob's bedroom door opening without Bella hearing it. He regarded her with a painful look of disappointment, slicing through her nasty demeanor and washing over her like a downpour of ice.

The fire flashed brightly throughout her soul, and then as quickly as it grew, it disappeared. No embers remained after its raid—only a badly burnt forest and her best friend frozen at the edge of that damn cliff he was cornered into. One that she cornered him to.