The Unwanted Imprint

Chapter 2

TW: Mentions of abuse

Carlisle brought the unconscious girl to his home, where Esme was standing in the doorway. "What's going on?" She asked him as Carlisle walked inside, placing Nichole down on a couch. "Who is that?"

"I found her in the woods while I was hunting." Carlisle explained. He rushed into his office, where his medical kit was. "There's a lot of bruising, hopefully there isn't any kind of internal bleeding. Someone had chased her into those woods, I could hear someone shouting her name. Whoever it was, she was terrified of them, possibly a family member."

"My God..." Esme whispered. She looked down at Nichole, who was still unconscious.

"Carlisle?" Edward appeared in the doorway, looking at his foster father. "Are you sure that it was a good idea to bring her here? You know that Jasper is still fairly new to our way of living. She has cuts and scratches all over. He's going to smell that as soon as he walks through the door."

"Have Alice take him somewhere until I can get her cleaned up."

"Carlisle, she can't stay here. You have no intentions of turning her. She's human, keeping her here would put us all in danger."

Carlisle sighed, running a hand through his blonde hair. "I don't have a choice, Edward-"

"Yes, you do have a choice! Fix her up and then take her back to wherever it is that she came from."

"Edward, I can't do that."

Nichole groaned at that moment, and both men looked over at the teenager as she started to revive. Carlisle gave Edward a look before kneeling beside Nichole. "How do you feel?"

"Like I participated in a sumo match...and lost epically." Nichole responded, slowly sitting up.

"You have a lot of injuries, you mind telling me what exactly happened to you, and why you were running through the woods?" Carlisle shot Edward a look, telling him not to say anything. He knew that Edward had probably read Nichole's mind, and knew exactly why Nichole had been running through the woods. But Carlisle wanted to hear what happened from the girl herself, it would establish a level of trust between them.

But Nichole just shook her head. "It was nothing." She said to them. "Just me being stupid, careless."

"Sweetheart..." Esme spoke up then. "You can trust us. We know that this wasn't an act of carelessness, that someone hurt you."

"No, really, it was nothing." Nichole insisted. "Actually, I should probably be going."

"Well, at least let us feed you first." Esme looked up at Carlisle. "Darling, would you please grab her something to eat? Poor thing looks like she hasn't eaten in days."

Carlisle nodded his head, and he motioned for Edward to follow him out of the room, it was clear that Esme had a plan here.

"I really don't need anything to eat." Nichole objected, even though she was starving. She needed to get home, maybe her father was so drunk that by morning he would forget that this whole thing had ever happened.

"Oh nonsense, I can't let you leave without at least giving you a little something." Esme responded. "I don't think that your mother would be too happy with me if I were to do that, now would she?"

"I can't say." Nichole said as she shrugged her shoulders. "She died when I was younger."

"Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that." Esme sat down next to Nichole on the couch, taking her hand, and Nichole shivered a little bit at how cold it was. Was she okay? Why did her hand feel so cold?

But Nichole was also feeling something else as well, she was feeling like she could trust Esme, like she could tell her everything that was going on in her life, how much of a hell it was, and not only would Esme understand, but she would try and help her if she could.

Esme seemed to sense what Nichole was feeling, and her voice softened a little bit. "What's your name?"

"Nichole. Nichole Williams."

"Nichole...why were you out there in the woods?"

Nichole bit her lip, looking down at her hands, which had started to shake a little bit. Esme took her hands to steady them, her grip firm and reassuring. "Nichole, my name is Esme Cullen. My husband Carlisle and I, we want to help you, we can help you, but in order for us to be able to do that, you have to tell me everything that's happened tonight."

Nichole nodded her head, swallowing thickly. "I guess that in order for you to completely understand, I have to go back a few years. my mother died when I was eleven, I was spending the night at a friend's house, it was my first sleepover, everything was fine until it was time for us to go to sleep. I...I was scared, I wanted my mom. So my friend's mom called her, and she came to get me. Well, on our way home, it had started to rain really hard, we could barely see a foot in front of us. There was a pickup truck that had been coming in the opposite direction, its tires lost traction on the road, it started to fly towards us..." Nichole fought back the tears that had sprung to her face. "I survived, Mom didn't. Dad took her death really hard, he started to drink, a lot. He blamed me for Mom dying, and I guess that he had a point. A lot of the time he drank to the point that he just passed out, but there were times that he didn't, and those times he was violent, angry. He would attack the person that was nearest him, and that was usually me. That was what happened tonight. But tonight was worse than it's usually been, tonight he had a knife in his hand, he...I'm fairly sure that tonight he was going to try and kill me."

Esme was silent for a moment. "Well..." She spoke slowly when she finally did talk. "Nichole, you're not going back there."

"But I have to, I don't have anywhere else that I can go."

"Yes you do, you can stay here with us." Esme didn't know how the others would take this yet, especially Rosalie, but it was something that she would deal with when it came time to deal with it.

"Oh, I couldn't do that." Nichole shook her head. Esme and Carlisle seemed like really nice people, but for them to just take her in like that? She didn't want to be a burden on them. "I'm sure that you have enough on your plate as it is."

"Nonsense. Nichole, everyone that lives here has some kind of past, they have things that they would give anything to forget. We're all broken in one way or another, so trust me when I say that you're going to fit right in here. Let me talk with my husband about it, but I'm sure that he would give no qualms about you being here."

She had been right about that, but as Carlisle pointed out, it wasn't him that they had to get the approval of. "We need to see what the rest of the family has to say about it, Esme, see what they think about it, probably put it up to a vote."

"And if we're outnumbered? We can't just put her back where she was. Her father almost killed her tonight, next time, he might just succeed."

"I wouldn't be bringing her back there, worst comes to worst, she goes into the foster system."

Esme definitely hadn't liked that idea. She'd heard a lot of things about the foster system, and Nichole wasn't going to be put in there, not if she could help it. "When will everyone be back?"

"It should be shortly. I had Alice keep Jasper away until we could get her injuries under control.'

"Nichole, her name is Nichole."

"Now that Nichole seems to be alright, we'll have everyone come back so that we can talk about things."

Esme nodded her head, she knew that the only thing that she could do now was wait and hope that everything would work in Nichole's favor.