Chapter 3: Ghosts of Glory
"Some wounds aren't made by teeth. Some are made by silence, pressure, and fathers who never learned how to love without a ledger."
By Tuesday, Edward Cullen had vanished like a guilty conscience on spring cleaning day.
He wasn't at school. No cryptic smirks in the hallway. No coat-swishing dramatic exits. Even his Volvo was gone from its honorary "brooding vampire" parking spot.
The Cullens sparkled in this dreary town, which made Edwards disappearance all the more noticeable. Though the rest of the Cullens were still here.
Emmett laughed too loudly during gym class. Rosalie looked like she was mentally filing restraining orders just by existing. Alice, dressed like fashion week had thrown up on her (in a chic way), gave me sharp little glances from across the cafeteria. While Jasper looked haunted in the usual Civil War PTSD kind of way.
Jessica theorized he was sick. Mike leaned toward mono and offered to help me "study" after school. Angela just gave me a soft, curious look that I couldn't interpret. No one else seemed particularly concerned that Forks' favorite porcelain statue had peaced out.
Only I knew the truth because I just had to follow the trend. Stupid disco vamps and my inability to put down a good book.
He sure as hell wasn't sick or contagious. He was just brooding like a budget Stefan Salvatore.
Sure he was dangerous in a I can eat your face off kind of way. But honestly I think he is just more terrified of what I might do to him just by existing.
To be fair, I did smell like cosmic irony and poorly repressed sexual tension. Which if I translate that into angsty vampire it apparently means I'm his own personal brand of heroin.
At lunch, I picked at a salad while Jessica regaled us with a blow-by-blow of Mike's performance in gym. Spoiler: he didn't know I was listening and accidentally took a ball to the face.
It was the highlight of my week so far.
Angela sat beside me, I appreciated her presence, she was soft-spoken and easy company. If anyone at this school might actually notice that something was… off with me, it would be her.
She hadn't said anything yet. But I got the sense she saw things she didn't say out loud.
"Hey," she said quietly as Jessica and Mike got into a debate about volleyball scores.
"Yeah?"
"I'm glad you're sitting with us."
I blinked. "Me too."
A beat passed.
"Forks is weird sometimes," she added, tone low.
"I can handle weird," I said. "Weird is like my natural habitat."
She smiled at that, and we returned to our lunch.
I kept my head down in class, doodled DNA strands in Biology, and avoided the subject of Edward entirely. Nobody asked why I was now flying solo at my lab table, and I thanked my lucky stars that Mike hadn't been able to convince the teacher to let him sit with me.
It helped that I made myself invisible.
Smile enough to pass for normal. Don't correct anyone's vampire lore. Don't tell Rosalie you know she could crush a man's skull with her bare hands. That was one fem-fatal I did not want to piss off.
Definitely don't tell Alice that her whole future-view thing is about to get very complicated.
After school, I drove Clementine home through rain and fog, headlights cutting through the mist like a B-movie monster's POV shot.
Charlie's cruiser was already in the driveway. I parked, grabbed my bag, and headed toward the porch where I found him waiting with two mugs in hand.
"Peace offering," he said, holding out one.
I took it and inhaled. Cocoa. With cinnamon. Be still my overly sentimental heart.
"Did I miss a major holiday?"
"You looked rough this morning. Figured sugar and warm things might help."
"You're either turning into a dad therapist or a snack witch."
Charlie snorted. "I'll take that as a thank you."
We sat side by side on the porch steps, watching the neighborhood dissolve into fog and trees.
"Anything new at school?" he asked casually.
I shrugged. "Same old teenage emotional roulette. Half the boys think I'm mysterious. The other half think I'm dating a vampire."
Charlie coughed on his cocoa.
"Kidding," I said, smirking. "Mostly."
He gave me a look. "You always joke like that?"
"Only when I'm repressing anxiety."
He made a noise halfway between a laugh and a sigh.
"You sure you're doing okay here, Bells?"
I sipped my cocoa, letting the quiet sit for a moment.
"I think so. It's… different. But not in a bad way. You make it easier."
He blinked, genuinely surprised.
"Thanks, Bells."
"You're a good dad."
His ears turned a little pink.
"I mean it," I added, nudging his elbow with mine. "You have always tried to be there for me. That counts for more than you give yourself credit for."
We sat in silence again, it felt… safe and was a rare moment of silence before the coming storm I knew was about to be my life.
But this moment also made me hope that maybe this world wasn't just about danger and fate. Maybe it could also be about this.
Two warm mugs, quiet porch steps and a dad who tried.
I went to bed early that night. Not because I was tired (even though I was) but because something tugged at me.
It wasn't anxiety or dread.
It was more like a pull.
The same pull I'd felt while I was in the first dream. The one that said, he's waiting.
The dream came to me, it was almost like falling into water.
The heat hit me first. It wasn't like the dry heat that hit my face when I was in Phoenix. This was a Southern heat. It was dense, wet and it crawled across the skin in drips as it pooled around you.
I stood just off a dirt path near a familiar plantation house. The sun was low in the sky, casting long shadows that flickered like ghosts through the trees.
That's when I saw him.
Damon.
He was seated on a broken crate near a fence post. He was shirtless, with sweat clinging to his skin and bandages half-wrapped around his side. Even from a distance I could see the red bloom of his own blood soaking through the cloth. His posture screamed pain and pride in equal measure.
He didn't see me at first.
He was too focused on wrapping the bandage tighter with one hand, as his teeth gritted together.
"Need a hand?" I asked softly.
He jerked, startled by my sudden appearance and then blinked.
His mouth twisted into something that might've been a smile if he weren't bleeding.
"You again."
"Me again."
"You know for a hallucination, you sure are a pretty."
"I don't think I'm a hallucination."
He narrowed his eyes, studying me. "You don't belong here then."
I walked forward anyway. "Neither do you."
He huffed a laugh and winced as he pulled the cloth tighter.
"Let me," I said, kneeling beside him.
He didn't protest. Just watched me with tired, curious eyes.
I peeled the cloth back gently. The gash was long, shallow, and angry looking. It was probably from a training accident or a too-eager officer trying to prove something.
"You joined?" I asked.
He nodded. "It was on my father's orders. I apparently had a duty to uphold the family name."
"You didn't want to?"
"It's more like I wanted to matter to him," he said. "Didn't know that meant bleeding for someone else's idea of honor."
I met his gaze.
He looked young. Too young to already be this bitter.
"Most people vanish when I say things like that," he murmured.
"I'm not most people."
He looked at me again, truly looked at me.
And he must have seen something.
Maybe he wasn't fully conscious of it yet, but what whatever it was, it was there.
A male voice called out from the house it sounded sharp and judgmental. Which was probably his father.
Damon flinched.
"That your old man?"
"Unfortunately."
I glared toward the voice. "I hate him."
"That was fast."
"I'm just observant and he sounds like an judgmental prick."
He smiled then, for real. "You're trouble."
"You don't even know the half of it."
"I want to," he said softly.
The dream shifted again, it started to look like the edges were fraying, and time was twisting.
"You ever feel like you were supposed to be more than this?" he asked, voice raw.
"All the time."
He looked at me like I was the only steady thing in a world built to drown him.
"I don't even know you but I feel like you make the pain quieter ghost girl."
I took his hand. "I'm not a ghost, Damon. Think of me more like a storm in disguise."
"Then let me drown in you."
I opened my mouth to reply but the dream pulled away before I could answer.
I woke up with my fingers clenched in the bedsheet and my heart trying to hammer its way out of my chest.
The feeling of his skin felt warm, and real, to the point where it still lingered on my fingertips.
He wasn't just a dream to me.
Not anymore.