Familiar Strangers (A Twilight Fanfic)

Chapter 3

 Chapter Three

Standing on the opposite side of the street, I felt like a common debauchee just staring at the empty house across the street. There were no lights on not even the porch light and one window sit halfway open with the sheer curtains swaying with the night breeze. The shivering throughout my body was constant, the aches endless as I stood there with tears streaming down my numb face. I couldn't see very much in the dark, but I could see that many people had stopped here in the last week to drop off lit candles meant for mourning of someone special in their lives that were now drenched from the rain and cards were strewn about after the wind carried them in all directions in the yard. All for my passing father I gathered, all for a man that meant the world to me even if I wasn't too good in showing that, but I knew he knew. It was just our way. We were both the same in many ways. Neither of us had to say much to each other to know what we thought or how we felt about something. Our awkward moments were collectively identical, so it wasn't a far stretch to know what not to say. I miss him.

Everyone that I have ever loved has died in some way. To be honest, I have too. There isn't much of me left these days besides a mindless, deadened creature. What I felt back at the cemetery with Gabriel must have been an attempt at my imagination of some sort. It had to be. I was always a loner anyway, but to be left alone...completely alone is something entirely different.

My eyes narrowed downward towards the wet pavement road in front of me. I could tell that I was trying to will myself to walk towards the house, but I...I just couldn't do it...not yet. How was I supposed to walk in the house knowing that my dad wouldn't be there to greet me home?

My muscles tensed to the point that I noticed that the little rigid shiny key to the house in my hand had cut through. Yeah the sight or smell of it usually provoked my insides to do the one thing I hated, vomit, but right now that was the least of my worries. I had to conjure up the nerve to walk over there. The house stood in front of me and the woods behind me. Soon the woods began to look more safe to me than walking into that house. Crazy as that thought was that is exactly what I did. I turned and marched my delusional rear end right into the woods, but I didn't get very far before I heard...

“I'm sorry sweet Bella, but I cannot allow you to walk into these decrepit woods at night unaccompanied. Care to explain to me why a young woman such as yourself for the second time tonight is carelessly putting herself in harm's way?”

My thought process went directly to my bloody hand. How stupid of me, but then again how smart of me or so I thought. His eyes followed mine, he inhaled deeply, nostrils flaring. I figured my time was up. I was about to die, but then his coal black eyes twinkled against that huge white ball in the sky and a smile formed yet again on that face of his. I couldn't decide if I were upset or just plain mad by it. I knew only one thing and I wasn't sure how I knew it but I knew he wasn't going to kill me. Men...so unpredictable. Why couldn't I just be right for a change?

“Bella, it's true that you don't know me well enough, but I can promise I didn't follow you to drain you.”

To say that I was only slightly irritated by this was an understatement. I was seriously disappointed. All I could get out of my mouth was, “Really? Well...doesn't that just...suck.” A deep beautiful laughter sprung from his chest and then it somehow changed melody in the middle and changed into one of...remorse or something. Before I knew it my legs buckled beneath me and instantly we were eye to eye with one another. His jaw constricted with tension as he spoke.

“Bella, please try to refrain from causing me any sorrow. I don't care for you just falling to the earth like a wet noodle. You could hurt yourself.” his eye lids lowered partly, only showing a half moon shape of his onyx-ed eyes and all I could think of was how life was so cruel. First Victoria denounced my blood and now Gabriel. What was so wrong with my blood that not even a vampire wanted it? All emotion evaporated within me at that moment and I could tell that Gabriel knew it. He looked at me and I swear I could see moisture filling his eyes and then he reached his hand out and held my chin up so he could look directly at me and said,