Out of Choices - Chapter 31
Title: Out Of Choices
Chapter 31: Disclosure (Previous Chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19.1, 19.2, 20, 21, 22.1, 22.2, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30)
Author:JCAddict/picklewinkle/Sher
Fandom: Twilight
Word Count:6,035
Rating: R/M, for sex and language
Story Summary: An angry young woman is forced to move to the town of Forks, Washington and decides that alone is the best way to be. She buries her heart under her anger and puts on a tough façade that very few people are able to break through. Can the love of a teenage vampire get through to the lost girl inside, even when his true nature is revealed? AU (alternative universe) and OOC (out of character). Bella is uber OOC. Edward, not so much.
Disclaimer: Stephenie Meyer owns Twilight and all of its characters. I'm just manipulating them like imaginary playdoh so I feel like I have some power over them **snorts**
31. Disclosure
A/N: Stephenie Meyer owns all of the characters. I'm just playing with them like play-doh. Please note the following warning.
CAUTION: THIS CHAPTER CONTAINS A VIVID ACCOUNT OF BELLA’S MOTHER’S DEATH THAT MAY BE DIFFICULT OR PAINFUL FOR SOME READERS.
I don't want to upset anyone so I don't give this warning lightly. This chapter is overwhelmingly angsty but ends with a light at the end of the tunnel, hopefully, if I've written it well enough. Again, please take the warning seriously.
I was trying to get the next chapter done as well so that I could not only give you guys a two for one but give you something that wasn't so heavy. After working today on the chapter following this one I came to realize that 'hey, it's heavy too.' I gave myself the night to finish it with the promise to deliver this chapter if I didn't get it done. Sorry, I didn't get it done, but I am determined to give all of my extra time to it because I really don't want to leave this chapter as the end of the story thus far for very long.
This chapter really gets you into Bella's mind in an almost scary and too close for comfort way. I hope it explains why she's so afraid, and that even if it isn't how you think that you can appreciate it from the character's perspective.
Again I ask for patience with review replies. I know many of you don't mind that I haven't gotten them done, and I will reply, but while the words are flowing I have chosen to write so I don't lose the inertia.
I admit to you now that I am almost afraid to post this chapter because I have no idea what sort of reviews it will get. It's all a part of the story though, so I hand it over to your capable hands.
From Bella's POV...
Stupid traitor tears. I knew I shouldn’t have echoed his ‘I love you.’ I knew it would be more than I could do and stay intact. I could deny and pretend with the best of them, but those three words were words I’d said to only a very few people in my life, and they represented something big to me. I couldn’t pretend I didn’t feel them when I said them, and with all of the things we’d said and done that afternoon I knew saying I love you would be the breach of my intentionally contained emotions. I’d barely kept my emotions in check up to that point.
I could feel something building in me all day and like an idiot I ignored it, writing off the signs along the way as jitters. It was clear that I was off my game, and obviously my hormones were outer limits. I thought the point of the picnic was to talk about sex, to throw it all out there on the table about what we were expecting and agree to go for it. I had no idea there was more to it than that for him. There wasn’t for me.
I let the tears fall as I drove, feeling the dread taking over and smothering me. Edward made it too easy to believe in hope and dream of happiness. Fate had shown me over and over again what a motherfucker it was. I just wasn’t meant to have normalcy and happiness the way the average person was. Moreover, I was meant to sample beauty and perfection so that I would never be able to forget how truly good life could be. My happiness would never be more than a bitter taste on my tongue as a reminder of what I couldn’t have.
It was my own fucking fault too. I was the one who selfishly wanted more of Edward’s love. I couldn’t just be content to kiss him and be held by him, as if it wasn’t the most glorious thing I’d ever known. I had to be selfish. I had to want more from him, want all of him, want everything he had to give. Rock the boat and you fucking capsize it. I’d already learned that lesson. Serves me right for thinking this time would be different.
I could see only two choices, tread water or drown. I could give up, push Edward away and pretend I’d never known what it was like to be loved by him. That hadn’t worked out so well for me up to this point. The other choice was to tread water, live in the present state of conditions and resist any changes, the status quo ante - the state in which before. That’s all I was trying to get Edward to do by not telling me his news, to have him let me live in the status quo. He was happy with it; he’d told me so at school. If we had a place where we were both happy then wasn’t that the best place to hang out? I was stupid and short sighted to try and push us out of it, and it may very well have been the worst decision I’d ever made.
I knew I didn’t have much time. He would have seen the tears, and while he was enough of a gentleman to give me some space to calm down, he wasn’t going to let me hide from him, even thought I’m sure he knew that I wanted to do just that. He was a good match for me in that sense, except today I couldn’t take the push and pull of that fight. I could feel my insides unravelling and I needed to let myself come apart. He couldn’t save me from this, no matter how strongly he believed that he could. This was a part of me he didn’t know.
I could feel the glimmerings of what Edward had been trying to tell me poking at my brain and I tried to block it out. I wasn’t emotionally equipped to deal with it. I wasn’t strong enough. I wasn’t enough, period. I rushed into the house, slamming the door and sliding down it, and let the tears escalate, sobs heaving from my chest, the torrent of salty water blurring my vision and fogging my thinking, slowly dragging me under.
Grief.
I heard the rhythmic ticking of the clock from the kitchen in the moments of silence between bouts of tears, keeping time with my undoing. It was the only sense I had of time passing
“Bella?” I heard his smooth voice from the other side of the door, full of concern. I heard the doorknob twist, and felt him try to push the old door open as it vibrated against my back, shivering and rippling in the frame under the duress of his strength. I heard my mind whisper ‘go away.’ I was too far gone to speak. “Bella please let me in. We need to talk.” He was using his most compelling tone, but I could hear the worry seeping from fissures in his control. He excelled at control. He hid behind his control the way I hid behind my sarcasm, just a mask to protect us from the world. “I can hear you in there, sweetheart. Please just let me in. Just let me comfort you and stop the tears.” His anguish was palpable.
“Not now Edward,” I rasped, dragging myself off the floor and away from the sound of his voice. I couldn’t let him see me like this, not until I had control of myself and could show him that I could be brave and strong like he needed me to be. I didn’t know where to look for the strength. Grief steals your strength.
“Bella, please don’t leave,” he begged. I struggled with walking, limping towards the stairs and fighting the pull of his voice. I didn’t want to hurt him, but I only had enough focus and energy to give to myself. There was nothing I could give to him in this moment but more upset, and that was the last thing he needed. “Bella,” he called, knocking on the door with a heavy hand. The hollow sound resonated through me and left me feeling emptier somehow. “I’m not leaving. I’ll be here outside this door for as long as it takes for you to let me in.” I wondered if he’d heard the irony in his words like I did.
I crawled up the stairs, feeling too unsteady on my feet to safely maneuver them. The crying made my body shake and I felt too tired to hold the banister firmly. I stopped at the top of the steps and finished crying. I don’t know how long I sat there. The ticking clock was out of earshot.
On some level, the crying is easier. Feeling all of the shit is horrible, but your brain isn’t trying to tell you anything. Your sensory perceptions sort of take over and focus you inward on the pain and the emotions. Once the crying finishes, your brain takes over, filling in the blanks and trying to make sense of everything you felt, what caused it and how to change it and fix things. That part is always so much worse for me. I didn’t feel ready to face the truth. I wasn’t sure I’d ever feel ready.
I pulled myself up and went to the bathroom for a shower. It was usually where I started when I fell apart. I peeled off my clothes and removed my cast and carefully maneuvered my leg over the side of the tub. I sat myself on the corner ledge and let the hot water wash over me. There was something to be said for the comfort the warmth lent, and the perception that the water could rinse away the crap and make me feel brand new. I washed my hair and shaved my legs and left in the deep conditioner extra long just to extend my time under the soothing stream. Reality was bleeding into my consciousness and I was still resisting.
It started with rationalizations. So what if we were different? It didn’t matter to me if he was cold and I was hot, if he was hard and I was soft, if he was gorgeous and I was average. I didn’t care if his eyes were green or brown or the liquid caramel tone I had come to know so well. I was every bit as pale as he was. Maybe I wasn’t as fast or as strong, but weren’t most boys faster and stronger than most girls? Wasn’t that just genetics? I could intellectualize everything he’d pointed out but a single glaring anomaly, the one contrariety that didn’t fit, the one nonconformity. If Edward’s secret was a difference between us, and I had accepted all of our differences without any difficulties, then why hide it?
Next came the hypotheses. Clearly I had proven I was extremely stubborn and self-protective when it came to letting him close to me. Had I brought this on myself by being so closed off? Is that why he couldn’t be honest with me from the beginning about his secret? In getting to know one another he had shown me other parts of himself without reservation, including his mind reading. It seemed to me that it wasn’t in his character to hide things from someone he loved, and keeping this secret was obviously weighing heavily on him. What other reasons could he have to hide something from me? We had trust and honesty in every other part of our relationship. Certainly he loved me and trusted me with his heart, so why would this one secret cause a problem?
Did he think I couldn’t handle it? And if that was the case, did he think I wouldn’t be capable of understanding or incapable of dealing with it? I certainly demonstrated an ability to overreact as well as an inability to control myself in certain situations. I’d punched Mike and hit Jessica with my crutch. Did he think I would be angry? He’d been on the receiving end of my temper but it never made him back down. He refused to accept my anger when he knew I was hiding behind it. He was patient and pushed past the bullshit excuses I offered. He knew me, he knew my heart, and he wasn’t afraid of my anger. Did that mean he thought I wasn’t capable of dealing with his secret?
What could be so horrible that I couldn’t deal with it? There was nothing obvious I could come up with that would make him see me as incapable. In fact, he knew that I was more than able to take care of myself. I’d tried to show him that I loved him, that I was loyal to him and that he was the most important person in the world to me. Had I gone too far? Had I made him think I was dependent on him for my happiness? Or was it simply that he had finally accepted that he was my whole world and it was too much for him? It couldn’t be that. He was my whole world and I was his. He needed me the way I needed him, not in some unequal or one-sided way.
What was he protecting me from?
The question stirred something deep inside me, something scary and familiar and overpowering. He was always careful with how he worded things, always sensitive about the things that might hurt me, always vigilant about safeguarding me. What kind of secret had the power to change us? What could be so huge that it might make me not want to be with him? I ran over our differences again in my head and felt the grief pulling at the edges of my consciousness and threatening to take hold. No one knew the future. No one could predict what was coming for us…but what if he could somehow? What if he knew something that would predict the outcome of us? What if the knowledge he hid made him sure of a future I couldn’t handle because of who I was? There was only one possibility that my mind had been circling around and coming back to, the one thing I couldn’t handle, losing him.
He promised me he wouldn’t leave me, a promise I always complained he could never honestly make. Staying with me was a choice that he would have to willingly make, a choice to stay with me and fight for what we had. He made the promise nevertheless. I knew how much I meant to him and that he would always choose to stay. I knew the only way he’d break that promise was if he couldn’t stay, if staying was not a choice at all. If he left, then leaving was his only option. And there was only one way that leaving would be the only option.
The tears started again, no sobs or shaking, just warm streams of tears running down my cheeks endlessly. Eventually the heat of my tears made me realize that I’d stayed in the shower too long. The water had long ago passed through tepid and cool and was downright freezing by the time I came too enough to understand that I was shivering and needed to get out.
I shut off the water and slid along the edge of the tub to the towel rack, easing myself out of the tub carefully. I used the big fluffy towel to dry off my leg first and then snapped my cast back into place before wrapping the oversized towel around my body. It didn’t stop the shivering or the tears.
I pulled the towel off my body and used it to dry my hair, slipping into my bathrobe when I finished. I jammed the towel back onto the rack, and decided to get under the covers of my bed and just give up. I felt too tired to think or fight. Two steps into my room I heard his voice call my name, soft and gentle. “Bella?” He was sitting in the rocking chair in the corner of my room, but stood up as soon as I looked in his direction.
I squinted to focus through the tears. “Edward?” I wasn’t expecting to see him in my bedroom. “How did you get in here?” I wondered. “Is Charlie home?”
“No,” he admitted quietly, walking towards me cautiously.
“Then how did you get in here?”
“The window.”
“You climbed through the window?” He was beside me now. I looked up at him with disbelief.
“Yes.” He reached out for me, cupping my cheeks and drying my tears with his thumbs. I looked away from his gaze, embarrassed by my excessive display of emotion. I didn’t like to cry in front of anyone. He didn’t try to speak or make me talk to him. He just kissed my forehead softly and pulled me into his arms. Even the comfort of his arms didn’t soothe the tears. He held me for a few minutes before I pulled away from him, feeling weak and ashamed of my inability to control my emotions.
“Why are you here Edward?” I knew why he’d come, expected it even, but I wasn’t ready to continue our conversation.
“I couldn't leave you here by yourself, not with you so upset.”
“You can’t help me,” I whispered.
“I have to at least try. This is my fault.” His voice was tinged with guilt.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
“This thing you so desperately need me to know, is it permanent?”
“Yes.” I sighed and let myself fall back onto the bed, bringing my knees up to my chest in an effort to hold myself together. Maybe if I could shape my body into a ball I could find a way to stop the tears and keep everything inside, control my emotions and my reactions and not fall apart any further. He sat down beside me. His body language was as clear as mine as he leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and holding his head in his hands. He was frustrated and worried and feeling the stress of this whole situation like I was.
“I figured it out,” I rasped. Admitting it out loud made the emotions I was controlled by that much stronger. My crying escalated again. He reached for me, pulling me into his lap even though I tried to resist him, and held me close to his body with his arms wrapped around me until my sobs softened and dissipated.
“What did you figure out?” he asked in a hushed voice.
“You’re afraid to tell me your news because you think it’s something I can’t handle. You’re afraid it’s going to hurt me so deeply and that I won’t come back from it.” I looked up at him, seeing the worry and pain in his eyes. “I won’t,” I confirmed. His arms tightened around me and he dropped his head to my shoulder, burying his face in my hair. His silence told me I was right. “Come on,” I whispered, pulling myself out of his lap and crawling towards the pillows. I slid under the covers and held the corner of the comforter up to invite him to me. He hesitated for a moment but then moved towards me willingly, easing in next to me. I shifted on to my right side, facing the wall, tucking the covers around me tightly for comfort. Edward turned too, pulling my body to him and spooning against me. I wasn’t sure if he did it for himself or me, but I was grateful. The contact gave me enough comfort to find a small amount of courage and strength to continue.
“I drove my Mom to the doctor’s office the day she got her diagnosis,” I began softly. “She’d been having headaches and nothing seemed to be treating them. I was stunned when the doctor said ‘brain tumour.’ She was referred to an oncologist and he was hopeful, so I was too. She started chemotherapy right away and she did really well with it. Her hair thinned but she didn’t lose all of it. Her nausea wasn’t even that bad…but the fucking tumour wouldn’t shrink. The best the chemo could do was to keep it from growing.” I barely recognized my own voice as the quiet tone cracked in anger. It always did when I spoke about the tumour. “The second round of chemo was worse. She became so weak that she couldn’t get out of bed on her own. She couldn’t walk more than a few steps at a time. She never wanted to eat. She just slept, a lot. I would crawl into bed with her at night and sleep with my head on her back just so I could hear her breathing. The doctors pulled her off the chemo when the tumour started growing again. Those were the worst words I’ve ever heard, ‘there’s nothing more we can do except keep her comfortable.’ They took my hope. I believed with everything I had that she would beat that damn tumour, and in one sentence the fight was over and all hope was gone, and I had to accept what no child should ever have to accept.” His arms curled around me as I started crying again, kissing my head and nestling his cheek into my hair as he held me and tried to still my trembling body.
“I’m so sorry Bella,” he murmured softly, his tone brimming with my sorrow and pain.
“Do you know what it’s like waiting for someone to die?” I asked quietly through my tears. “To sit there and wonder if each breath will be their last? Every other sentence I spoke to her was ‘I love you.’ I was so afraid she would die without knowing how much I loved her, without understanding how important she was to me and how lucky I felt that she was my Mom. Your mind is constantly going, running over every stupid thing you’ve ever said to them, every ‘I hate you,’ and ‘you don’t understand,’ and ‘you’re mean.’ And you hate yourself for being so fucking stupid that you let the little things steal your time. You don’t get how precious and fragile life is until you’re surrounded by death, and the regret is staggering when you realize that you can’t get back the wasted opportunities and that there are things you will never get to do. It’s impossible to grasp the full impact someone has on your life until you understand that the person isn’t going to be there any longer. You don’t realize all of the dreams you wished for that included that person. Your whole life flashes before you, filled with the holes created by their absence. You know that once they are gone nothing is ever going to be the same again. There’s never any peace. You can’t hold on to anything. You lose your hope, and your dreams, and your future, and there isn’t a thing you can do to stop it. It’s all totally out of your hands.”
“You must have been so frightened.” I could hear the upset in his voice, feel it in the way his fingers gripped the side of my body and in the tension in his arms as they held me tightly. I hated hurting him but I couldn’t think of any other way to make him understand.
“I grew to hate time,” I explained angrily, using my sleeves to defiantly dry my tears. “Each day dragged on as I watched her deteriorate, and a part of me started wishing for the end so she wouldn’t have to suffer any longer, and I felt like hell for admitting that to myself. At the same time, I wanted more time. I prayed and begged anyone who would listen to make her better so she didn’t have to leave me, and then I felt like shit for being selfish and wanting to extend her suffering just so I wouldn’t have to let her go. I felt guilty for every emotion I showed in front of her. I didn’t want her to feel responsible for what I was going through. It wasn’t her fault that she got sick and I knew she was fighting with everything she had. It just wasn’t enough.”
“You get your braveness from your Mother,” he whispered.
“Near the end she was pretty out of it. The doctors wanted to give her this drug called decadron to reduce the swelling in her brain created by the tumour. There was a chance that it might make her more lucid, but there were no guarantees. Charlie explained why they wanted to give it to her - so that she might have a chance to say goodbye. A couple of days on the drug and she was like my Mom again. It was a wonder to see her smiling and hear her laughing. We told her what was happening to her and she asked for one thing - to go home. She didn’t want to be in the hospital any longer, so Charlie and I took her home. The effects of the decadron only lasted a few days but I got my Mom back for a precious moment and we were both able to say goodbye.” The tears began again, and I tried to control the emotion but I couldn’t. Instead of trying to hide it from him, I just let it take over and let him see what losing my Mom did to me. There was nothing else I could do but wait for the crying to stop.
“Shhhhhh,” he soothed quietly with his lips against my ears. “I’m right here. I’ve got you.”
“The day she died I was beside her, holding her hand. Her body was giving out - her heart rate was accelerated and her breathing was really shallow. She’d slipped into what they called a non-responsive state, sort of like a coma. Each time the nurse asked us to step out so she could check my Mom’s stats, my Mom would let go a little bit further. It was like she didn’t want us to watch her go.” I gasped involuntarily as the weight of my thoughts took hold. “And then with one last big breath she was gone.” Edward squeezed his arms around me softly, trying to comfort me and remind me he was there. “I barely remember the funeral. It all felt so surreal. I remember the smell of the flowers and the coldness of the funeral home and a sea of faces. For my Mom’s sake I was the perfect daughter, gracefully accepting everyone’s condolences even though I wanted to punch every person that told me she was in a better place. The only thing I knew was the she wasn’t there and I wanted her there and she would never be there again.”
“I know you still miss her very much,” he murmured quietly, kissing the edge of my cheek, trying to make the hurting stop.
“Grief changes you. At first I just gave up, on everything and everyone, even myself. After a few weeks Charlie forced me to go back to school. I was a zombie. I struggled every day to get out of bed and to give a shit about anything. My life didn’t make sense without her. It wasn’t fair that she was gone. It wasn’t supposed to happen like that. I wanted someone to blame…and I was so angry I couldn’t see straight. That’s when I got into trouble at school. An asshole got in my face about what a bitch I was being and I lost it. Charlie made the decision to move me here to Forks after I was suspended. He thought if I was at home with all of the memories of my Mom around me that it would help the grieving process, but I was drowning in it. Besides, Charlie put his whole life here on hold when my Mom got sick. He had a right to get back to what was normal to him since it was clear I wasn’t ever going to be normal again. I wished a million times to go back to normal, all the while knowing that the normal I wanted didn’t exist without my Mom.”
“You had to make a new normal, and that’s so difficult.” He understood what I was getting at. I rolled in his arms to face him. I needed to see his eyes to make sure he understood.
“And then I fell in love with you, and suddenly I wanted to get out of bed every day. I couldn’t wait to get back to you each morning because for the first time since losing my Mom I felt like I belonged somewhere. Something finally felt right. Because of you I started living again. Things started to matter. You mattered. You gave me my life back. Can you understand not only how much I owe you for that, but how precious what we have is to me?”
“Of course I can. I feel the same way.” We were on the same page. I could see the conviction in his eyes.
“I love you,” I whispered, staring intensely into his eyes. “I can’t lose you.” I pressed my lips to his, willing the force of my emotions at him trying to make him understand. I kept waiting for him to respond to my kiss but he was holding back. I pulled away from his lips as the tears started again. “Did I lose you already, because of what I am? Because of what I can’t handle?”
“You will never lose me,” he whispered, his tone tinged with pain. “I…” he started, but I interrupted him.
“But I’ve upset you?” I asked, pushing the tears aside with the heel of my hand.
“No,” he insisted. I could tell he was lying, just trying to reassure me. His eyes looked so lost.
“You didn’t kiss me…”
“It’s not that Bella, I…” He hesitated, looking for the right words.
“Please don’t take you love away from me because I’m a coward. I’m trying, honestly. I just need some time.” Again I pressed my lips to his, trying to figure out where he was in his head and bring him back to me. The gentle pressure of his lips was almost worse than no reaction at all, like a pity kiss. I pulled back from him, feeling foolish and gutless and tried one more time to explain myself. “I just can’t fathom taking a risk that even has the potential to take you from me.”
“I’m not going anywhere Bella,” he whispered with a new determination. He leaned into my face and kissed my lips firmly, showing me his fearlessness.
“I just need some time to find my way,” I whispered against his lips, letting them smother my words and control me, hoping he understood my struggle with the idea of losing him, and trusting him lead me in the right direction.
“I know,” he murmured, kissing me again. I could feel his hand sliding up my back, pulling my body closer to his.
“I just need some time to believe,” I pleaded, unable to keep from feeling selfish for asking for his patience. I pressed myself to his body, needing the contact like water in the desert. Even though his lips were decidedly and ardently engaged, I was still full of fear that he wouldn’t understand my broken logic.
“I will show you,” he murmured, his lips ghosting against mine as he whispered in a low tone that conveyed the confidence in his belief. When Edward wanted to be, he could be the most persuasive person I’d ever met and I needed his persuasion now, I needed a piece of the confidence that he seemed to exude so effortlessly. I kissed him back harder, driven by my fear and desperation, physically begging him for his understanding. The words weren’t enough. My affection was the only thing I had to offer. He pulled back from me to whisper assuredly, “I know we’re strong enough to withstand this.” Part of me felt like he was still fighting my truth, fighting the reality of what losing my Mom had done to me. He couldn’t believe I was strong after the weakness I’d shown tonight.
“It’s not you, it’s me. This is all me. My faith isn’t like yours. I have faith in what I can reach out in touch. I have faith in you.”
“And I have faith in you, and faith in us.” He was so sure of himself, majestic and magnificent, my polar opposite. His leaned into me again and kissed me again with eager and giving lips. His tender touch told me everything his words explained and more. He wasn’t letting me give up. He always had enough belief for both of us. I pushed my tongue out against his lips, wanting more of his assuredness. Being close to him made me want to believe in his faith and the possibility of surviving his secret. He didn’t open his mouth for me. Instead he pulled back and stared into my eyes with an overwhelming intensity. “I will make you believe in us the way I believe.”
Maybe there was a third choice. Maybe I didn’t have to drown or tread water. Maybe Edward would be my lifeguard and save me from the ocean of misery I was drowning in. There wasn’t anything I wanted more than to have faith. I echoed his words, half dare, half endeavour. “Make me believe.”
A/N: I appreciate constructive criticism, but I ask that you make it constructive. I can respect that you might not like the contents of the chapter or the turn of events. I only ask that you render your complaints in a positive way if you're able.
Chapter 31: Disclosure (Previous Chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19.1, 19.2, 20, 21, 22.1, 22.2, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30)
Author:JCAddict/picklewinkle/Sher
Fandom: Twilight
Word Count:6,035
Rating: R/M, for sex and language
Story Summary: An angry young woman is forced to move to the town of Forks, Washington and decides that alone is the best way to be. She buries her heart under her anger and puts on a tough façade that very few people are able to break through. Can the love of a teenage vampire get through to the lost girl inside, even when his true nature is revealed? AU (alternative universe) and OOC (out of character). Bella is uber OOC. Edward, not so much.
Disclaimer: Stephenie Meyer owns Twilight and all of its characters. I'm just manipulating them like imaginary playdoh so I feel like I have some power over them **snorts**
31. Disclosure
A/N: Stephenie Meyer owns all of the characters. I'm just playing with them like play-doh. Please note the following warning.
CAUTION: THIS CHAPTER CONTAINS A VIVID ACCOUNT OF BELLA’S MOTHER’S DEATH THAT MAY BE DIFFICULT OR PAINFUL FOR SOME READERS.
I don't want to upset anyone so I don't give this warning lightly. This chapter is overwhelmingly angsty but ends with a light at the end of the tunnel, hopefully, if I've written it well enough. Again, please take the warning seriously.
I was trying to get the next chapter done as well so that I could not only give you guys a two for one but give you something that wasn't so heavy. After working today on the chapter following this one I came to realize that 'hey, it's heavy too.' I gave myself the night to finish it with the promise to deliver this chapter if I didn't get it done. Sorry, I didn't get it done, but I am determined to give all of my extra time to it because I really don't want to leave this chapter as the end of the story thus far for very long.
This chapter really gets you into Bella's mind in an almost scary and too close for comfort way. I hope it explains why she's so afraid, and that even if it isn't how you think that you can appreciate it from the character's perspective.
Again I ask for patience with review replies. I know many of you don't mind that I haven't gotten them done, and I will reply, but while the words are flowing I have chosen to write so I don't lose the inertia.
I admit to you now that I am almost afraid to post this chapter because I have no idea what sort of reviews it will get. It's all a part of the story though, so I hand it over to your capable hands.
From Bella's POV...
Stupid traitor tears. I knew I shouldn’t have echoed his ‘I love you.’ I knew it would be more than I could do and stay intact. I could deny and pretend with the best of them, but those three words were words I’d said to only a very few people in my life, and they represented something big to me. I couldn’t pretend I didn’t feel them when I said them, and with all of the things we’d said and done that afternoon I knew saying I love you would be the breach of my intentionally contained emotions. I’d barely kept my emotions in check up to that point.
I could feel something building in me all day and like an idiot I ignored it, writing off the signs along the way as jitters. It was clear that I was off my game, and obviously my hormones were outer limits. I thought the point of the picnic was to talk about sex, to throw it all out there on the table about what we were expecting and agree to go for it. I had no idea there was more to it than that for him. There wasn’t for me.
I let the tears fall as I drove, feeling the dread taking over and smothering me. Edward made it too easy to believe in hope and dream of happiness. Fate had shown me over and over again what a motherfucker it was. I just wasn’t meant to have normalcy and happiness the way the average person was. Moreover, I was meant to sample beauty and perfection so that I would never be able to forget how truly good life could be. My happiness would never be more than a bitter taste on my tongue as a reminder of what I couldn’t have.
It was my own fucking fault too. I was the one who selfishly wanted more of Edward’s love. I couldn’t just be content to kiss him and be held by him, as if it wasn’t the most glorious thing I’d ever known. I had to be selfish. I had to want more from him, want all of him, want everything he had to give. Rock the boat and you fucking capsize it. I’d already learned that lesson. Serves me right for thinking this time would be different.
I could see only two choices, tread water or drown. I could give up, push Edward away and pretend I’d never known what it was like to be loved by him. That hadn’t worked out so well for me up to this point. The other choice was to tread water, live in the present state of conditions and resist any changes, the status quo ante - the state in which before. That’s all I was trying to get Edward to do by not telling me his news, to have him let me live in the status quo. He was happy with it; he’d told me so at school. If we had a place where we were both happy then wasn’t that the best place to hang out? I was stupid and short sighted to try and push us out of it, and it may very well have been the worst decision I’d ever made.
I knew I didn’t have much time. He would have seen the tears, and while he was enough of a gentleman to give me some space to calm down, he wasn’t going to let me hide from him, even thought I’m sure he knew that I wanted to do just that. He was a good match for me in that sense, except today I couldn’t take the push and pull of that fight. I could feel my insides unravelling and I needed to let myself come apart. He couldn’t save me from this, no matter how strongly he believed that he could. This was a part of me he didn’t know.
I could feel the glimmerings of what Edward had been trying to tell me poking at my brain and I tried to block it out. I wasn’t emotionally equipped to deal with it. I wasn’t strong enough. I wasn’t enough, period. I rushed into the house, slamming the door and sliding down it, and let the tears escalate, sobs heaving from my chest, the torrent of salty water blurring my vision and fogging my thinking, slowly dragging me under.
Grief.
I heard the rhythmic ticking of the clock from the kitchen in the moments of silence between bouts of tears, keeping time with my undoing. It was the only sense I had of time passing
“Bella?” I heard his smooth voice from the other side of the door, full of concern. I heard the doorknob twist, and felt him try to push the old door open as it vibrated against my back, shivering and rippling in the frame under the duress of his strength. I heard my mind whisper ‘go away.’ I was too far gone to speak. “Bella please let me in. We need to talk.” He was using his most compelling tone, but I could hear the worry seeping from fissures in his control. He excelled at control. He hid behind his control the way I hid behind my sarcasm, just a mask to protect us from the world. “I can hear you in there, sweetheart. Please just let me in. Just let me comfort you and stop the tears.” His anguish was palpable.
“Not now Edward,” I rasped, dragging myself off the floor and away from the sound of his voice. I couldn’t let him see me like this, not until I had control of myself and could show him that I could be brave and strong like he needed me to be. I didn’t know where to look for the strength. Grief steals your strength.
“Bella, please don’t leave,” he begged. I struggled with walking, limping towards the stairs and fighting the pull of his voice. I didn’t want to hurt him, but I only had enough focus and energy to give to myself. There was nothing I could give to him in this moment but more upset, and that was the last thing he needed. “Bella,” he called, knocking on the door with a heavy hand. The hollow sound resonated through me and left me feeling emptier somehow. “I’m not leaving. I’ll be here outside this door for as long as it takes for you to let me in.” I wondered if he’d heard the irony in his words like I did.
I crawled up the stairs, feeling too unsteady on my feet to safely maneuver them. The crying made my body shake and I felt too tired to hold the banister firmly. I stopped at the top of the steps and finished crying. I don’t know how long I sat there. The ticking clock was out of earshot.
On some level, the crying is easier. Feeling all of the shit is horrible, but your brain isn’t trying to tell you anything. Your sensory perceptions sort of take over and focus you inward on the pain and the emotions. Once the crying finishes, your brain takes over, filling in the blanks and trying to make sense of everything you felt, what caused it and how to change it and fix things. That part is always so much worse for me. I didn’t feel ready to face the truth. I wasn’t sure I’d ever feel ready.
I pulled myself up and went to the bathroom for a shower. It was usually where I started when I fell apart. I peeled off my clothes and removed my cast and carefully maneuvered my leg over the side of the tub. I sat myself on the corner ledge and let the hot water wash over me. There was something to be said for the comfort the warmth lent, and the perception that the water could rinse away the crap and make me feel brand new. I washed my hair and shaved my legs and left in the deep conditioner extra long just to extend my time under the soothing stream. Reality was bleeding into my consciousness and I was still resisting.
It started with rationalizations. So what if we were different? It didn’t matter to me if he was cold and I was hot, if he was hard and I was soft, if he was gorgeous and I was average. I didn’t care if his eyes were green or brown or the liquid caramel tone I had come to know so well. I was every bit as pale as he was. Maybe I wasn’t as fast or as strong, but weren’t most boys faster and stronger than most girls? Wasn’t that just genetics? I could intellectualize everything he’d pointed out but a single glaring anomaly, the one contrariety that didn’t fit, the one nonconformity. If Edward’s secret was a difference between us, and I had accepted all of our differences without any difficulties, then why hide it?
Next came the hypotheses. Clearly I had proven I was extremely stubborn and self-protective when it came to letting him close to me. Had I brought this on myself by being so closed off? Is that why he couldn’t be honest with me from the beginning about his secret? In getting to know one another he had shown me other parts of himself without reservation, including his mind reading. It seemed to me that it wasn’t in his character to hide things from someone he loved, and keeping this secret was obviously weighing heavily on him. What other reasons could he have to hide something from me? We had trust and honesty in every other part of our relationship. Certainly he loved me and trusted me with his heart, so why would this one secret cause a problem?
Did he think I couldn’t handle it? And if that was the case, did he think I wouldn’t be capable of understanding or incapable of dealing with it? I certainly demonstrated an ability to overreact as well as an inability to control myself in certain situations. I’d punched Mike and hit Jessica with my crutch. Did he think I would be angry? He’d been on the receiving end of my temper but it never made him back down. He refused to accept my anger when he knew I was hiding behind it. He was patient and pushed past the bullshit excuses I offered. He knew me, he knew my heart, and he wasn’t afraid of my anger. Did that mean he thought I wasn’t capable of dealing with his secret?
What could be so horrible that I couldn’t deal with it? There was nothing obvious I could come up with that would make him see me as incapable. In fact, he knew that I was more than able to take care of myself. I’d tried to show him that I loved him, that I was loyal to him and that he was the most important person in the world to me. Had I gone too far? Had I made him think I was dependent on him for my happiness? Or was it simply that he had finally accepted that he was my whole world and it was too much for him? It couldn’t be that. He was my whole world and I was his. He needed me the way I needed him, not in some unequal or one-sided way.
What was he protecting me from?
The question stirred something deep inside me, something scary and familiar and overpowering. He was always careful with how he worded things, always sensitive about the things that might hurt me, always vigilant about safeguarding me. What kind of secret had the power to change us? What could be so huge that it might make me not want to be with him? I ran over our differences again in my head and felt the grief pulling at the edges of my consciousness and threatening to take hold. No one knew the future. No one could predict what was coming for us…but what if he could somehow? What if he knew something that would predict the outcome of us? What if the knowledge he hid made him sure of a future I couldn’t handle because of who I was? There was only one possibility that my mind had been circling around and coming back to, the one thing I couldn’t handle, losing him.
He promised me he wouldn’t leave me, a promise I always complained he could never honestly make. Staying with me was a choice that he would have to willingly make, a choice to stay with me and fight for what we had. He made the promise nevertheless. I knew how much I meant to him and that he would always choose to stay. I knew the only way he’d break that promise was if he couldn’t stay, if staying was not a choice at all. If he left, then leaving was his only option. And there was only one way that leaving would be the only option.
The tears started again, no sobs or shaking, just warm streams of tears running down my cheeks endlessly. Eventually the heat of my tears made me realize that I’d stayed in the shower too long. The water had long ago passed through tepid and cool and was downright freezing by the time I came too enough to understand that I was shivering and needed to get out.
I shut off the water and slid along the edge of the tub to the towel rack, easing myself out of the tub carefully. I used the big fluffy towel to dry off my leg first and then snapped my cast back into place before wrapping the oversized towel around my body. It didn’t stop the shivering or the tears.
I pulled the towel off my body and used it to dry my hair, slipping into my bathrobe when I finished. I jammed the towel back onto the rack, and decided to get under the covers of my bed and just give up. I felt too tired to think or fight. Two steps into my room I heard his voice call my name, soft and gentle. “Bella?” He was sitting in the rocking chair in the corner of my room, but stood up as soon as I looked in his direction.
I squinted to focus through the tears. “Edward?” I wasn’t expecting to see him in my bedroom. “How did you get in here?” I wondered. “Is Charlie home?”
“No,” he admitted quietly, walking towards me cautiously.
“Then how did you get in here?”
“The window.”
“You climbed through the window?” He was beside me now. I looked up at him with disbelief.
“Yes.” He reached out for me, cupping my cheeks and drying my tears with his thumbs. I looked away from his gaze, embarrassed by my excessive display of emotion. I didn’t like to cry in front of anyone. He didn’t try to speak or make me talk to him. He just kissed my forehead softly and pulled me into his arms. Even the comfort of his arms didn’t soothe the tears. He held me for a few minutes before I pulled away from him, feeling weak and ashamed of my inability to control my emotions.
“Why are you here Edward?” I knew why he’d come, expected it even, but I wasn’t ready to continue our conversation.
“I couldn't leave you here by yourself, not with you so upset.”
“You can’t help me,” I whispered.
“I have to at least try. This is my fault.” His voice was tinged with guilt.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
“This thing you so desperately need me to know, is it permanent?”
“Yes.” I sighed and let myself fall back onto the bed, bringing my knees up to my chest in an effort to hold myself together. Maybe if I could shape my body into a ball I could find a way to stop the tears and keep everything inside, control my emotions and my reactions and not fall apart any further. He sat down beside me. His body language was as clear as mine as he leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and holding his head in his hands. He was frustrated and worried and feeling the stress of this whole situation like I was.
“I figured it out,” I rasped. Admitting it out loud made the emotions I was controlled by that much stronger. My crying escalated again. He reached for me, pulling me into his lap even though I tried to resist him, and held me close to his body with his arms wrapped around me until my sobs softened and dissipated.
“What did you figure out?” he asked in a hushed voice.
“You’re afraid to tell me your news because you think it’s something I can’t handle. You’re afraid it’s going to hurt me so deeply and that I won’t come back from it.” I looked up at him, seeing the worry and pain in his eyes. “I won’t,” I confirmed. His arms tightened around me and he dropped his head to my shoulder, burying his face in my hair. His silence told me I was right. “Come on,” I whispered, pulling myself out of his lap and crawling towards the pillows. I slid under the covers and held the corner of the comforter up to invite him to me. He hesitated for a moment but then moved towards me willingly, easing in next to me. I shifted on to my right side, facing the wall, tucking the covers around me tightly for comfort. Edward turned too, pulling my body to him and spooning against me. I wasn’t sure if he did it for himself or me, but I was grateful. The contact gave me enough comfort to find a small amount of courage and strength to continue.
“I drove my Mom to the doctor’s office the day she got her diagnosis,” I began softly. “She’d been having headaches and nothing seemed to be treating them. I was stunned when the doctor said ‘brain tumour.’ She was referred to an oncologist and he was hopeful, so I was too. She started chemotherapy right away and she did really well with it. Her hair thinned but she didn’t lose all of it. Her nausea wasn’t even that bad…but the fucking tumour wouldn’t shrink. The best the chemo could do was to keep it from growing.” I barely recognized my own voice as the quiet tone cracked in anger. It always did when I spoke about the tumour. “The second round of chemo was worse. She became so weak that she couldn’t get out of bed on her own. She couldn’t walk more than a few steps at a time. She never wanted to eat. She just slept, a lot. I would crawl into bed with her at night and sleep with my head on her back just so I could hear her breathing. The doctors pulled her off the chemo when the tumour started growing again. Those were the worst words I’ve ever heard, ‘there’s nothing more we can do except keep her comfortable.’ They took my hope. I believed with everything I had that she would beat that damn tumour, and in one sentence the fight was over and all hope was gone, and I had to accept what no child should ever have to accept.” His arms curled around me as I started crying again, kissing my head and nestling his cheek into my hair as he held me and tried to still my trembling body.
“I’m so sorry Bella,” he murmured softly, his tone brimming with my sorrow and pain.
“Do you know what it’s like waiting for someone to die?” I asked quietly through my tears. “To sit there and wonder if each breath will be their last? Every other sentence I spoke to her was ‘I love you.’ I was so afraid she would die without knowing how much I loved her, without understanding how important she was to me and how lucky I felt that she was my Mom. Your mind is constantly going, running over every stupid thing you’ve ever said to them, every ‘I hate you,’ and ‘you don’t understand,’ and ‘you’re mean.’ And you hate yourself for being so fucking stupid that you let the little things steal your time. You don’t get how precious and fragile life is until you’re surrounded by death, and the regret is staggering when you realize that you can’t get back the wasted opportunities and that there are things you will never get to do. It’s impossible to grasp the full impact someone has on your life until you understand that the person isn’t going to be there any longer. You don’t realize all of the dreams you wished for that included that person. Your whole life flashes before you, filled with the holes created by their absence. You know that once they are gone nothing is ever going to be the same again. There’s never any peace. You can’t hold on to anything. You lose your hope, and your dreams, and your future, and there isn’t a thing you can do to stop it. It’s all totally out of your hands.”
“You must have been so frightened.” I could hear the upset in his voice, feel it in the way his fingers gripped the side of my body and in the tension in his arms as they held me tightly. I hated hurting him but I couldn’t think of any other way to make him understand.
“I grew to hate time,” I explained angrily, using my sleeves to defiantly dry my tears. “Each day dragged on as I watched her deteriorate, and a part of me started wishing for the end so she wouldn’t have to suffer any longer, and I felt like hell for admitting that to myself. At the same time, I wanted more time. I prayed and begged anyone who would listen to make her better so she didn’t have to leave me, and then I felt like shit for being selfish and wanting to extend her suffering just so I wouldn’t have to let her go. I felt guilty for every emotion I showed in front of her. I didn’t want her to feel responsible for what I was going through. It wasn’t her fault that she got sick and I knew she was fighting with everything she had. It just wasn’t enough.”
“You get your braveness from your Mother,” he whispered.
“Near the end she was pretty out of it. The doctors wanted to give her this drug called decadron to reduce the swelling in her brain created by the tumour. There was a chance that it might make her more lucid, but there were no guarantees. Charlie explained why they wanted to give it to her - so that she might have a chance to say goodbye. A couple of days on the drug and she was like my Mom again. It was a wonder to see her smiling and hear her laughing. We told her what was happening to her and she asked for one thing - to go home. She didn’t want to be in the hospital any longer, so Charlie and I took her home. The effects of the decadron only lasted a few days but I got my Mom back for a precious moment and we were both able to say goodbye.” The tears began again, and I tried to control the emotion but I couldn’t. Instead of trying to hide it from him, I just let it take over and let him see what losing my Mom did to me. There was nothing else I could do but wait for the crying to stop.
“Shhhhhh,” he soothed quietly with his lips against my ears. “I’m right here. I’ve got you.”
“The day she died I was beside her, holding her hand. Her body was giving out - her heart rate was accelerated and her breathing was really shallow. She’d slipped into what they called a non-responsive state, sort of like a coma. Each time the nurse asked us to step out so she could check my Mom’s stats, my Mom would let go a little bit further. It was like she didn’t want us to watch her go.” I gasped involuntarily as the weight of my thoughts took hold. “And then with one last big breath she was gone.” Edward squeezed his arms around me softly, trying to comfort me and remind me he was there. “I barely remember the funeral. It all felt so surreal. I remember the smell of the flowers and the coldness of the funeral home and a sea of faces. For my Mom’s sake I was the perfect daughter, gracefully accepting everyone’s condolences even though I wanted to punch every person that told me she was in a better place. The only thing I knew was the she wasn’t there and I wanted her there and she would never be there again.”
“I know you still miss her very much,” he murmured quietly, kissing the edge of my cheek, trying to make the hurting stop.
“Grief changes you. At first I just gave up, on everything and everyone, even myself. After a few weeks Charlie forced me to go back to school. I was a zombie. I struggled every day to get out of bed and to give a shit about anything. My life didn’t make sense without her. It wasn’t fair that she was gone. It wasn’t supposed to happen like that. I wanted someone to blame…and I was so angry I couldn’t see straight. That’s when I got into trouble at school. An asshole got in my face about what a bitch I was being and I lost it. Charlie made the decision to move me here to Forks after I was suspended. He thought if I was at home with all of the memories of my Mom around me that it would help the grieving process, but I was drowning in it. Besides, Charlie put his whole life here on hold when my Mom got sick. He had a right to get back to what was normal to him since it was clear I wasn’t ever going to be normal again. I wished a million times to go back to normal, all the while knowing that the normal I wanted didn’t exist without my Mom.”
“You had to make a new normal, and that’s so difficult.” He understood what I was getting at. I rolled in his arms to face him. I needed to see his eyes to make sure he understood.
“And then I fell in love with you, and suddenly I wanted to get out of bed every day. I couldn’t wait to get back to you each morning because for the first time since losing my Mom I felt like I belonged somewhere. Something finally felt right. Because of you I started living again. Things started to matter. You mattered. You gave me my life back. Can you understand not only how much I owe you for that, but how precious what we have is to me?”
“Of course I can. I feel the same way.” We were on the same page. I could see the conviction in his eyes.
“I love you,” I whispered, staring intensely into his eyes. “I can’t lose you.” I pressed my lips to his, willing the force of my emotions at him trying to make him understand. I kept waiting for him to respond to my kiss but he was holding back. I pulled away from his lips as the tears started again. “Did I lose you already, because of what I am? Because of what I can’t handle?”
“You will never lose me,” he whispered, his tone tinged with pain. “I…” he started, but I interrupted him.
“But I’ve upset you?” I asked, pushing the tears aside with the heel of my hand.
“No,” he insisted. I could tell he was lying, just trying to reassure me. His eyes looked so lost.
“You didn’t kiss me…”
“It’s not that Bella, I…” He hesitated, looking for the right words.
“Please don’t take you love away from me because I’m a coward. I’m trying, honestly. I just need some time.” Again I pressed my lips to his, trying to figure out where he was in his head and bring him back to me. The gentle pressure of his lips was almost worse than no reaction at all, like a pity kiss. I pulled back from him, feeling foolish and gutless and tried one more time to explain myself. “I just can’t fathom taking a risk that even has the potential to take you from me.”
“I’m not going anywhere Bella,” he whispered with a new determination. He leaned into my face and kissed my lips firmly, showing me his fearlessness.
“I just need some time to find my way,” I whispered against his lips, letting them smother my words and control me, hoping he understood my struggle with the idea of losing him, and trusting him lead me in the right direction.
“I know,” he murmured, kissing me again. I could feel his hand sliding up my back, pulling my body closer to his.
“I just need some time to believe,” I pleaded, unable to keep from feeling selfish for asking for his patience. I pressed myself to his body, needing the contact like water in the desert. Even though his lips were decidedly and ardently engaged, I was still full of fear that he wouldn’t understand my broken logic.
“I will show you,” he murmured, his lips ghosting against mine as he whispered in a low tone that conveyed the confidence in his belief. When Edward wanted to be, he could be the most persuasive person I’d ever met and I needed his persuasion now, I needed a piece of the confidence that he seemed to exude so effortlessly. I kissed him back harder, driven by my fear and desperation, physically begging him for his understanding. The words weren’t enough. My affection was the only thing I had to offer. He pulled back from me to whisper assuredly, “I know we’re strong enough to withstand this.” Part of me felt like he was still fighting my truth, fighting the reality of what losing my Mom had done to me. He couldn’t believe I was strong after the weakness I’d shown tonight.
“It’s not you, it’s me. This is all me. My faith isn’t like yours. I have faith in what I can reach out in touch. I have faith in you.”
“And I have faith in you, and faith in us.” He was so sure of himself, majestic and magnificent, my polar opposite. His leaned into me again and kissed me again with eager and giving lips. His tender touch told me everything his words explained and more. He wasn’t letting me give up. He always had enough belief for both of us. I pushed my tongue out against his lips, wanting more of his assuredness. Being close to him made me want to believe in his faith and the possibility of surviving his secret. He didn’t open his mouth for me. Instead he pulled back and stared into my eyes with an overwhelming intensity. “I will make you believe in us the way I believe.”
Maybe there was a third choice. Maybe I didn’t have to drown or tread water. Maybe Edward would be my lifeguard and save me from the ocean of misery I was drowning in. There wasn’t anything I wanted more than to have faith. I echoed his words, half dare, half endeavour. “Make me believe.”
A/N: I appreciate constructive criticism, but I ask that you make it constructive. I can respect that you might not like the contents of the chapter or the turn of events. I only ask that you render your complaints in a positive way if you're able.