.
Helpless.
I was helpless as I watched her walk away from me for perhaps, the last time. A man no longer my brother following along smugly behind her.
A hug, kiss to the cheek and a whispered I love you was all I was left standing with. Along with that smug smile stapled to Edward’s face.
As I stood there longing to go to her I thought to myself that I should have known. It was only a matter of time before he pulled something like this. It was only a matter of time when he would take her from me. Edward never was one to deal well with jealousy and this erratic behavior only severed to better my point.
He was smart, I would give him that and my sweet Bella had no idea what she was in for. Hell, sometimes I wonder if she ever did when she entered into the relationship with the man I used to consider family. The man I have only grown to hate, even more so now.
She had been just a teenager when she and Edward started dating and I’ll admit we were all naive at the time, but things were so much simpler back then, and how were we to know back then how things would turn out.
We had all grown up together, minus Bella, she didn’t come into the picture until much later, not that we loved her any less for it.
 | ||||||
| Jasper Whitlock |
I, myself, came into the Cullen household when I was just a boy of six after my parents had died in a horrific accident. I barely remembered their faces now, but that doesn’t mean I have forgotten their screams. My Aunt Esme - my mother’s sister - along with her husband Carlisle graciously decided to adopt me and raised me as their own.
It was interesting to go from being an only child to automatically having two younger brothers to call my own. Edward being two years my junior and Emmett was four.
Our little Alice came into the family about year after I moved in. A sweet little thing she was with more energy than should be humanly possible - even for an infant - and mop full of black hair. I called her the ‘Wonder Child’ cause it was a wonder to me that she was ever here.
The wonder being that Esme was ever impregnated to begin with. After Esme had a particularly hard pregnancy with Em, Uncle Carlisle offered to have a vasectomy. I guess it didn’t take as well as they had hoped. The funniest shit was the look on his face when Esme appeared in the living room with a positive pregnancy test in hand; he went white as a sheet.
 |
| Emmett and Edward Cullen |
But we didn’t care. We were the Cullen’s we loved hard, feared no one and more importantly we stuck together. In short we loved it.
Growing up as a Cullen was the happiest times in my life, but that was all it was, a distant memory that was now crashing down around my ears.
My peaceful days were gone forever now.
I laughed out loud at my first memory of Bella. It was Alice’s first day as a freshman in high school and we were all a little surprised when Edward showed up at the house four hours before school let out with a teary eyed Alice all banged up. Even more surprising was the girl - that seemed to be closer to Edward’s age - that Alice was clinging to like a lifeline.
 |
| Bella and Alice |
In Alice’s words, Bella had, “Beat the shit outta them.” Laughter bubbled in my chest and I really did try to stop it, but one look at my sister’s animated face as she balled up her tiny fist and reenacted the entire incident, my laughter bubbled over and slipped out. I laughed, I laughed so hard I nearly fell out of my chair. Well that was until Bella burst into dining room and I got my first good look at her.
My first thought was God, she is beautiful. and the second I am a little embarrassed to admit. I had never seen anything so beautiful before that day, and it remains so after. She had a fresh shiner over her left eye and blood on her knuckles. It was the sexiest thing I had ever seen and all I could think was that she was perfect.
It was obvious that she was still growing and maturing but she stunning even then. Long rich dark hair that fell in waves to her waist and it was a beautiful contrast to her alabaster skin. Rose cheeks made more prominent when she blushed and wild amber eyes, almost mimicking the color of honey.
Embarrassingly, I’ll admit that I observed her closely that first night, hardly being able to remove my gaze from her and as I did I found that her personality only furthered her beauty. She had a loving heart and a wicked temper which was only increased by the presence of the ever annoying Emmett. But it was her fierce loyalty to my family that caused the dark haired beauty to steal my heart.
When Bella had sat down to tell her side of things we all laughed. She too, was quite animated in the telling. She apologized to Carlisle and Esme for getting Alice into more trouble, by starting a fight, but when she had heard those “snooty bitches” picking on the Cullen’s, a family that had shown her nothing but kindness that she would have never forgiven herself.
I was sorry to see her go at the end of the night, but I took comfort in knowing I’d see her in the morning. I would be seeing a lot of her in the near future seeing as she and Alice would be spending a lot of time together in detention.
To say I was intrigued with the little Bell would be putting it far too lightly, because in my mind it was so much more than that. So much that I had practically drove my Uncle Carlisle up the wall until he spilled every thing he knew about her and more importantly what Bella had meant when she said the Cullen’s showed her nothing but kindness.
When Carlisle finally broke, he laid it out for me. He told me all about the life of the infamous half-breed of the underground. I growled at him when he called her that, I hated the term half-breed but that is, in fact, what she was; half Italian and half Irish. A mixture frowned upon by both sides.
Bella was born, Isabella Marie Swan, to Charles and Renee Swan. I had heard the name before and I knew he at one time was one of Carlisle’s oldest friends and most trusted ally‘s. Her mother, Renee; the daughter of a well-to-do Irish family that oddly enough had dealings with our family. Her father, Charlie; an ex-soldier of the Volturi Mafia. It was an odd pairing in my book but who was I to judge.
Story was, that Renee ran off with another man, leaving a toddler Bella in her father’s care. Sad part was that Charlie ended up leaving Bella as well about six years later, only he left on the end of a bullet. There are a few suspicions on how he died. One story being that Charlie had in someway betrayed the Volturi family and Aro had him assassinated. And some say it was all over a dispute on a gun shipment that turned bad. I think both stories are bullshit, if you ask me. Charlie was a very capable man and had even more capable friends, no, this was something that had been planned for years, though, who knows if that mystery will ever be solved. I just thank my lucky stars that Bella was out with the nanny when it happened, I couldn’t think of her being in that house and have to watch her father die. I had done that myself.
Bella being only eleven at the time and having no living relatives to speak of, Bella was set to be placed in Child Protective Services. My uncle and aunt couldn’t stomach the idea of one of our own going into such a nasty place and had a mind to adopt her themselves. I can’t even begin to tell you how happy I am that didn’t happen. Thankfully a comrade of Carlisle’s came forward and asked that he be allowed to adopt little Bella. My uncle said he was stunned that a man such as Alistair would wish to adopt a child.
 |
| Alistair O' Doyle |
I laughed again, remembering the shutter that ran through my body that bit of information. Bella was Alistair O’ Doyle’s daughter. I had only met the man in person a handful of times, but I knew enough and heard enough whispers from the guards on detail. The man scared the shit out me, to be frank. And I had to think well, shit, no wonder the girl could brawl, her adopted father was a living legend.
Carlisle had also set up a trust fund for Bella for Alistair to control until her twenty-fifth birthday, not that see would need it being his daughter, Alistair was very well off.
I could tell you that I slept peacefully that night, my dreams filled with the beautiful brunette that had already wormed her way into all our hearts, but I didn’t. I was too consumed in my thoughts of her, she had suffered so much in her life, and I felt we were kindred spirits, her and I. My heart went out to her and I had a feeling my life would never be the same.
The next morning she showed up at our door, bright and early. It was Edward who opened the door to great her and I cursed myself for staying in bed so long. I could her explaining to Edward that she was here to pick Alice up for school seeing that they had detention together for the next several weeks. And I could hear them laughing together as she retold the story of her getting her prom tickets revoked to keep them from getting expelled.
I mused to myself that Bella must have really worked those girls over to warrant such punishment. From what Bella said, Jessica Stanley came from a wealthy family and had a close relative that had a seat on the school boards council, and it really didn’t help that Jessica was the girl who had to have her jaw wired shut.
When Edward asked her if she had all to do over again would she do it differently, she replied with a simple, “Fuck that!”
Yeah, not my best idea.
She smiled at me in almost a devilish way, it made me a little nervous and rightly so, this was all before she balled up her tiny fist and punched me…hard, and told me to “Shut my big fucking mouth,” before she stole the keys to my Ducati that were hanging in the foyer and took off with a giggling Alice.
Now that I think back, I know I fell in love with her that day.
Days turned into months that turned into years and Bella remained. In just shy of four years Bella became the heart and soul of this family; another daughter for Carlisle and Esme to spoil, another sister for Emmett to torment at every turn and Bella had and always will be a hero to Alice, but more importantly she became my best friend and the love of my life.
There weren’t many days of those four wonderful years that you couldn’t find us together, but as my luck would have it she starting dating Edward. I couldn’t blame her, though, I never had the balls to tell Bella how I really felt; to tell her I had been insanely in love with her since the day our paths crossed.
As I watched Edward loading the last bits of luggage into their SUV, I wished had. Maybe things would be differently now.
This had all started over Christmas break. They had returned from the University of Illinois the holidays and almost immediately he started spewing that he and Bella would be moving, and to New York of all places. His excuse, was he wanted a better life for himself and for Bella. He wanted to cut ties to the family and the business that went with it. Edward wanted to go legit, he had always thought of himself as better than us but I never thought of him going this far. I could understand not wanting to tied up in the life of an arms dealing family, but to leave us completely, it was foolish and unsafe.
He was fuckin’ stupid in my book.
Edward Cullen was the true first born son, and heir to all that the Cullen family held when Carlisle passed the torch. Edward would be leading us all, with the financial backing of the Cullen family and his college degree and clean cut GQ good looks he could do whatever the hell he wanted with his life, which included turning the business legit if he really wanted to.
But Edward has always been sullen, his distance from the rest of the family had been a near constant even through his childhood. Always quick to judge and jealous of others. When Bella had entered our lives she changed him much like she changed the rest of us, or so I had thought. He began participating in family functions and joining in with his classmates from his University, and it made Carlisle and Esme extremely happy. These intense changes in Edward is what had me biting my tongue all these years; I wanted my brother to be happy. I never begrudge him this, after all it was my fault I didn’t have the stones to get there first.
And I would have happily took my secret with me to the grave, but somehow I knew his excuses and explanations were all a farce.
I called bullshit on everything Edward had to say. He made it seem like all of his doings were for Bella’s welfare.
It was crap and even he knew it.
All of it was really. Edward was one of those children that constantly wanted to be in the lime light. He acted sullen because the attention he received was not what he wanted. Edward was sadistic, maybe even more so than me, he was just better at hiding it from others. Edward, unlike me was a prissy fucker that didn’t like getting his hands dirty and held an abhorrence for violence, but he still wanted the power and glory that others received for such acts.
That had been one of his many excuses for leaving the family; his abhorrence for blood, but what he failed to understand is that I knew that he would never have to lift a finger if he choose not too, that was what I was here for. It was what Emmett and I had been trained from teenagers to do.
I made sure to bring up that point during the family meeting that was held to discuss Edward and Bella leaving. I brought up many points that night, but they were moot now anyway. Nothing would change his mind and I knew that going into it, but that didn’t stop me from letting him know just how I felt about it. He knew I could give a shit less about him leaving, actually I made sure to stress that point, and to be honest I really don’t think Carlisle cared either. It would Alice and Esme who would take it the hardest.
My only concern in this whole circus was Bella. Edward was taking a big risk by taking her from the protection of the family, and he knew it. It was well know throughout the crime underworld, that the Volturi family had a great distaste for the Swan’s and I’m sure Bella’s existence was no secret to them. Edward might as well have been tying a lamb to the lions den.
I tried to voice my concern on this issue time and time again, and brought it up again this very night, to which he smugly replied, “Were going to college, Jasper, not war.” I had never wanted to hurt him more than I did tonight, especially when he refused to have a detailed guard put on Bella.
I informed him in nothing short of a growl that if she were to be hurt due to his stupidity, blood or no blood, he would cease to exist. He knew very well the my threat was genuine and that I would make good on it.
He only smirked at me and eyed me knowingly as he told me that Bella Swan was not my business and to leave what was best for her, to him.
Of course, I blew my top and had him pinned to the nearest wall before Emmett or Carlisle could even rise from their seats. I explained to him in only a way he could understand; it was not gentle or calm, he had to know I was serious. I told him that she was very much my fuckin’ business, I even told him my dirty little secret. Unexpectedly lips crooked up in a sort of smirk and he simply whispered, “I know.”
Helpless.
I was helpless as I watched her walk away from me for perhaps, the last time. A man no longer my brother following along smugly behind her.
A hug, kiss to the cheek and a whispered I love you was all I was left standing with. Along with that smug smile stapled to Edward’s face.
Now standing on my uncles open faced veranda, watching their taillights fade into the blackness along with my heart and I prayed. I prayed for her safety and for her to one day be brought back to me, but more than anything I prayed that no matter what happened, no matter where Edward took her she would always know how much I loved her.
I regret not following her and I regret not telling Bella long ago how I felt.
My final thought that night, as my heart sunk into the abyss that it had lived in before see strolled into my life, was how much I was going to miss her.
I would miss her so very much.
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