After leaving Maya's, Jasper sped home to inform them of the new development, mentally preparing himself for the inevitable fight that would break out. He found everyone gathered in the living room when he got home, curtsy of Alice no doubt and he wasted no time in breaking the bad news to them.
"Bella knows about us" He stated bluntly, seeing no reason to beat around the bush.
"What the hell do you mean she knows?!" Rosalie growled.
"Language" Esme chided absently, focusing mainly, like everyone else, on the problem at hand.
"I have no idea how she found out, but I was with Maya and Bella came bursting into her room yelling 'vampire' before she saw me and left."
"Did you scare her?" Edward asked, Jasper picking up on the anger building up in him.
"No" he drawled, "she walked in on Maya and I making out, causing Maya to yell at her to get out, which she did."
Emmet laughed at that, "ha you got cock-blocked!" Rosalie smacked him in the arm for that, making him let out an "ow" and rub it dramatically as Jasper shot him a glare.
"Are you sure she knows?" Carlisle questioned, trying to get the conversation back on track.
"Not for certain, but why else would she be talking about vampires? She has been obsessed with us since day one. Maya says that she hardly talks about anything else and is always asking her questions about us" Jasper said tiredly, rubbing his hands over his face.
If he was being totally honest, he was almost glad that the human had figured it out. It meant that they would finally be forced to do something about it, which would hopefully put an end to all the fighting in his family.
"Well now we have to kill her." Rosalie sighed and leaned back, "this would have been so much less trouble if you just let me deal with it at the beginning."
"Deal with it?! You can't just kill her!" Edward yelled.
"She knows about us! We've been exposed!" Rosalie fired back.
"That doesn't mean we can kill her!"
"Well if you didn't want to kill her then you should have done a better job at avoiding her and covering up YOUR mistake!" Edward let out a snarl at Rosalie's words, unwilling to admit that it was indeed his fault.
"She's my mate!" Edward declared, desperation rolling off him.
Everyone looked at him questioningly at that, not really believing him. For vampires they knew if the person was their mate right away and the idea of hurting them was too repulsive to even contemplate. Which meant that given how Edward was reacting, not realizing it sooner and having to desperately fight the urge to kill the human, the possibility of them being mates was almost nonexistent.
Rosalie let out a scoff, "So what's your plan then? Tell her about us, thereby dragging her into this world and practically ensuring that she dies a horrible death? Or worse putting our family in danger and risking our lives should the Volturi find out about this?"
Emmet nodded along with his wife, "Yeah Eddie, I mean I got nothing against humans, but this just doesn't seem like its going to end well."
"Of course that's what you would say! You never have an original thought of your own and always just agree with what she tells you to" Edward growled, gesturing between Emmet and Rosalie.
Esme and Alice sucked in a breath at that, though there had been a number of fights these past few weeks and harsh words exchanged, they were still constantly shocked by Edward's ability and willingness to verbally attack his family.
Rosalie was less shocked and jumped to her feet to defend her husband. "He's not agreeing with me because we are married you moron! He's agreeing with me because it's the truth! There is no way this is going to end well!"
Edward let out a growl at that before turning away from her to face Alice. "Well let's ask someone who can actually see the future then! What do you see happening Alice?" Edward asked as the rest of the family turned to face her then. All of them hoping that her visions could shed some light on what was to come.
"It's unclear" Alice murmured as she shifted through the future. "no one has really made a decision yet, so there are still a few possibilities, but there is one that is showing up more than the others."
"What one is that?" Carlisle asked.
Alice opened her mouth to reply when Edward cut her off, "No! That is not even an option! Your visions are wrong!"
"Edward, you know my visions only show me what might be if someone continues on the course that they are on. And right now, one of the possible futures is leading to that based on the decisions we have already made."
"What are you seeing?" Rosalie cut in, angry and frustrated at not knowing what they were talking about.
"I see Bella as a vampire" Alice admitted quietly.
Everyone had varying looks of shock on their face at this, although some, like Rosalie were more angry than anything. Jasper, who had been standing quietly off to side observing, didn't really understand why Edward was so shocked at this possible future. Now that the human knew, there were only two possible options; kill her, or turn her. Given that Edward was so against killing her, it only made sense that her becoming one of them was an option, even if his interest in the girl was fleeting.
Honestly Jasper couldn't even find a reason for a fleeting interest in the girl that Edward had. She annoyed and angered him for the trouble she was causing his family. Not to mention that from what he had seen she was whiny and demanding, never satisfied with what she had. She had two parents that loved her and came from a good family, which was more than some had, yet the fact that she had to share it with Maya upset her. Added to that, the way that she treated Maya; being rude and insulting her at every opportunity and treating Maya like she was somehow inferior to herself upset him to no end. Which left him leaning towards the option of killing her more than turning her. Yes, he wanted his brother to find the same happiness that he had, but did it have to be with that girl?
Noticing the growing anger directed at him, he looked over to see Edward glaring at him. With a sigh, he began the process of blanking his mind, a trick he had picked up over the years to help hide his thoughts from his brother. While he was not at all intimidated by Edward's glare, knowing full well he could easily beat him, he did not want to be dragged into another pointless argument. His brother had a bad habit of judging someone based on their passing thoughts and starting arguments based on it, and Jasper just did not have the patience or energy to deal with it today on top of the whole Bella situation.
Instead, Jasper leaned back against the wall and watched the argument play out. Attempting to use his gift to stop it from getting out of control.
In the end, the debate, or really the shouting match, wound up lasting almost all night and it was not until the early morning that Jasper could get away to tell Maya about their final decision. Crawling through her bedroom window, he found her sitting cross-legged in bed watching origami tutorials on mute with paper scattered all over her bed.
"Darlin' what on earth are you doing? You hate crafts like this where you have to be so exact."
Maya let out a huff of frustration as she set down her very lopsided crane. "Well, I had to do something while I waited for you didn't I?"
"And the reason why you are not asleep is because ...?" He moved over to her bed and began clearing it off so that she could get into bed, placing the paper, which he noted was her old math homework, on her desk.
"Because I was waiting for you." She restated, crossed her arms stubbornly. "So? Fill me in. What did your family decide on?"
He let out a sigh and picked her up so he could pull back her sheets. Obviously, he was the only one of the two who was concerned about her need for sleep and he figured the only way he would get her into bed was to put her there himself. He set her down on the bed before toeing off his shoes and laying down next to her. She snuggled up to him and once they were both comfortable, she sent him an expectant look.
"Well?" she prompted.
He ran his hand through his hair in exasperation as he remembered the meeting. "It started off okay, people gave reasons why we should or shouldn't kill Bella." Maya gave a snort at that, muttering "three guesses as to who was on which side."
Jasper sent her a smirk and flicked her on her forehead. "Hush. Now, as I was saying, we were debating what to do with Bella and Edward was trying to convince us to leave her be. Although the only real points he had was she is an innocent human and that he thinks she is his mate."
Maya pulled back at that to see his face, "You're kidding right? There is no way. He would have known right away and never would have been tempted by her blood if she was."
Jasper gave a nod at that, "yeah that was pretty much our thoughts on the matter, but he's not listening to reason and appears convinced of it. But anyways, after that we asked Alice if she had seen anything yet, but apparently the visions are still shifting. She did see one outcome where Bella becomes a vampire, which set Edward off. In the end there was a lot of arguing, but we never really came to a decisive answer. So for now, we are going to avoid her completely and do what we can to convince her that she is wrong about us being vampires."
"That is a terrible plan" Maya stated.
Jasper gave a nod of agreement, "Yes. But Edward was being dramatic and threatening to leave us and such if we touched her. Not to mention he just would not stop arguing so eventually we gave in in the hopes that it would just shut him up."
"So what you are telling me is that Edward had no good arguments or reasons, he just wore you all down" Maya summed up, not at all impressed with Edward.
"Pretty much" he agreed. "And now it's time for you to sleep. I want you to get at least an hour or two before you have to get up for school."
Maya let out a huff and rolled on top of him, a smirk growing on her face. "Or ... since there are only two hours till I have to get up anyways, we could do something a lot more fun." She leaned down to press gentle kisses along the side of his neck making him groan.
He quickly pushed Maya off him and back into her spot on the bed, firmly holding her down so that she could not roll on top of him again. "Darlin' you need your sleep."
She pouted at him, "you're no fun."
"Yes, I know I'm terrible, trying to make sure you sleep so you can make it through tomorrow" He drawled sarcastically with an eye roll. "Now sleep" he commanded while sending her waves of tiredness.
As Maya's eyes began to drift closed, she shot him a tired glare. "Cheater" she mumbled before falling into a deep sleep.
When Maya woke up the next morning, she immediately regretted staying up the night before. She was tired and wanted nothing more than to crawl back into bed. She honestly had no idea how she was going to make it through the day without passing out in one of her classes.
She had gotten up ten minutes before she had to leave and stumbled her way through getting ready, deciding to just go with a simple look today. Her hair was falling down her back loosely, her make-up was light and she wore simple clothes with one of Jasper's hoodies pulled over them for comfort. She had finished getting ready just as Jasper pulled up in front of her house, a coffee that Esme had made her in one hand and a smoothie in the other. Normally, she would have eaten with her father, but with the other vampires in the area he was working overtime and had already left by the time she would have normally gotten up.
As they pulled up to the school, Maya was finally beginning to wake up as the caffeine hit her system. Jasper helped her out of his truck and together they moved over to join the rest of his family. Alice was acting the same as ever, but you didn't need to be an empath to feel the anger and tension between Rosalie and Edward as they switched from glaring to ignoring the other and back again. Emmet stood beside Rosalie with his arm around her in a gesture of comfort. Although, Maya thought he might also have it there so he could have some chance of stopping her if she launched herself at Edward.
Alice tried to lighten the mood and distract them all with a constant stream of chatter, but as Bella's truck pulled up, even she fell silent. They all watched her with varying expressions as she exited her truck and stared directly at them. Bella looked at them all with determination before focusing on Edward and began to make her way over towards them. Not stopping, she marched straight past them and into the woods.
Edward's eyes followed and he took one step to follow her before Rosalie caught his arm. "What do you think you are doing?! Carlisle told us to stay away from her!" She hissed.
"She already knows. I'm going to use this to scare her off so that she will be safe" Edward explained defensively.
"Edward that won't solve the problem. She will still know about us, which you know is against the law" Jasper said, growing more upset with his brother with each passing moment. Even with this growing threat to their safety, Edward seemed more concerned with the safety of the human than he was with his family's.
Edward once again tried to follow Bella into the woods, only to be blocked by Rosalie again. "You can't stop him" Alice told her in a dream like voice that signalled she was in a vision, "He's already there."
Rosalie gave a low growl of frustration as she unwillingly stepped aside. Edward gave a small smirk and made another move to follow Bella, only to once again be stopped, this time by Maya. She had reached out to grab his arm and pulled him around so he faced her.
"I know we can't stop you, but I will ask that you not tell her about me. It was my dad and I that decided not to tell her about me and to keep it a secret all these years. If she's going to find out it should come from us so we can explain why we did it."
Maya didn't really believe that Edward would keep his promise, but she hoped that he would. As much as she disliked Bella right now for the all the problems she was causing and how she was acting, Maya still did not want her to be hurt when she found out that her family had been lying to her all these years. Especially if it would ruin the already fragile relationship between her and their father.
Edward gave a curt nod of acceptance before yanking his arm free and disappearing into the woods. They all watched him go with a mixture of worry, frustration and anger, only looking away to head into the school when the warning bell went.
As they headed into their first class, Maya could only hope that Edward and Bella kept whatever was between them quiet and did not draw any attention to themselves. At least until the family had a chance to come to terms with the fact that their secret was out.