Being Bella’s younger sibling came with its own quiet rhythm of pros and cons. The pros were simple, almost sacred in their familiarity..Bella understood you. She never pushed you to be louder, never made you feel strange for preferring the soft hum of rain on the roof to a crowded party. She got the whole quiet, kept-to-yourself thing because, for most of your lives, that’s exactly how she was too. You shared a language of comfortable silences, of knowing glances across the dinner table, of twin souls content in the shadowy, evergreen gloom of Forks.

Then came the con. His name was Edward Cullen.

You hadn’t trusted him from the first moment you saw him at school with Bella, something in his too perfect stillness, the way his golden eyes seemed to look through people rather than at them. Now, you knew why. He was a vampire. And his very existence had, like a stone thrown into a still pond, sent ripples of danger crashing into your once-peaceful lives. Other vampires, ancient, hungry, and vengeful, now saw you and Bella as targets. All because of him. Yeahhh… thanks, Edward. the sarcasms a thin shield against the genuine fear that now lived in your gut.

The front door slammed, jolting you from your thoughts. You looked up from the couch to see Bella frantically shoving her arms into her coat, her movements jerky with anxious energy.

“Hey, uh..I’ll be back tomorrow! Tell Charlie I left a note on the counter! she called out, not even meeting your eyes.

“Good talk,” you murmured to the empty space she left behind, the words swallowed by the sound of her truck engine roaring to life. She was a ghost in her own home these days. You couldn’t decide if she was trying to run from Forks or if she was forever chasing a certain brooding, pale figure deeper into the Olympic forest.

A quiet sigh escaped you as you turned back to the television, the remote clicking monotonously as you flipped through a blur of infomercials and static. The living room felt too big, too empty. That’s when you felt it, a subtle shift in the worn quilt draped over your legs. You glanced down.

A familiar head of dark, tousled hair emerged from beneath the blanket, followed by a pair of warm, mahogany eyes and a smile so cheeky it could only belong to one person.

Jacob Black had made himself at home, his head now a comfortable, undeniable weight on your thighs. His large, warm hands found your sides, his thumbs tracing slow, deliberate circles against the fabric of your top. “She gone yet?” he rumbled, his voice a low vibration you felt more than heard.