Breaking Dawn

My teeth felt like a vise was pushing them together. “I want every word, you monster.”

“Well, you said I only had thirty seconds—okay, okay.” My expression must have convinced him that I wasn’t in the mood for teasing. “Lemme see… I phased back and got dressed, and then after he started breathing again, I said something like, ‘Charlie, you don’t live in the world you thought you lived in. The good news is, nothing has changed—except that now you know. Life’ll go on the same way it always has. You can go right back to pretending that you don’t believe any of this.’

“It took him a minute to get his head together, and then he wanted to know what was really going on with you, with the whole rare-disease thing. I told him that you had been sick, but you were fine now—it was just that you’d had to change a little bit in the process of getting better. He wanted to know what I meant by ‘change,’ and I told him that you looked a lot more like Esme now than you looked like Renée.”

Edward hissed while I stared in horror; this was headed in a dangerous direction.

“After a few minutes, he asked, real quietly, if you turned into an animal, too. And I said, ‘She wishes she was that cool!’” Jacob chuckled.

Rosalie made a noise of disgust.

“I started to tell him more about werewolves, but I didn’t even get the whole word out—Charlie cut me off and said he’d ‘rather not know the specifics.’ Then he asked if you’d known what you were getting yourself into when you married Edward, and I said, ‘Sure, she’s known all about this for years, since she first came to Forks.’ He didn’t like that very much. I let him rant till he got it out of his system. After he got calmed down, he just wanted two things. He wanted to see you, and I said it would be better if he gave me a head start to explain.”

I inhaled deeply. “What was the other thing he wanted?”

Jacob smiled. “You’ll like this. His main request is that he be told as little as possible about all of this. If it’s not absolutely essential for him to know something, then keep it to yourself. Need to know, only.”

I felt relief for the first time since Jacob had walked in. “I can handle that part.”

“Other than that, he’d just like to pretend things are normal.” Jacob’s smile turned smug; he must suspect that I would be starting to feel the first faint stirrings of gratitude about now.

“What did you tell him about Renesmee?” I struggled to maintain the razor edge in my voice, fighting the reluctant appreciation. It was premature. There was still so much wrong with this situation. Even if Jacob’s intervention had brought out a better reaction in Charlie than I’d ever hoped for…

“Oh yeah. So I told him that you and Edward had inherited a new little mouth to feed.” He glanced at Edward. “She’s your orphaned ward—like Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson.” Jacob snorted. “I didn’t think you’d mind me lying. That’s all part of the game, right?” Edward didn’t respond in any way, so Jacob went on. “Charlie was way past being shocked at this point, but he did ask if you were adopting her. ‘Like a daughter? Like I’m sort of a grandfather?’ were his exact words. I told him yes. ‘Congrats, Gramps,’ and all of that. He even smiled a little.”

The stinging returned to my eyes, but not out of fear or anguish this time. Charlie was smiling at the idea of being a grandpa? Charlie would meet Renesmee?

“But she’s changing so fast,” I whispered.

“I told him that she was more special than all of us put together,” Jacob said in a soft voice. He stood and walked right up to me, waving Leah and Seth off when they started to follow. Renesmee reached out to him, but I hugged her more tightly to me. “I told him, ‘Trust me, you don’t want to know about this. But if you can ignore all the strange parts, you’re going to be amazed. She’s the most wonderful person in the whole world.’ And then I told him that if he could deal with that, you all would stick around for a while and he would have a chance to get to know her. But that if it was too much for him, you would leave. He said as long as no one forced too much information on him, he’d deal.”

Jacob stared at me with half a smile, waiting.

“I’m not going to say thank you,” I told him. “You’re still putting Charlie at a huge risk.”

“I am sorry about it hurting you. I didn’t know it was like that. Bella, things are different with us now, but you’ll always be my best friend, and I’ll always love you. But I’ll love you the right way now. There’s finally a balance. We both have people we can’t live without.”

He smiled his very most Jacob-y smile. “Still friends?”

Try as hard as I could to resist, I had to smile back. Just a tiny smile.

He held out his hand: an offer.

I took a deep breath and shifted Renesmee’s weight to one arm. I put my left hand in his—he didn’t even flinch at the feel of my cool skin. “If I don’t kill Charlie tonight, I’ll consider forgiving you for this.”

“When you don’t kill Charlie tonight, you’ll owe me huge.”

I rolled my eyes.