Three Weeks
Rating: T
Description: It had been three weeks since the fight. Three weeks since I'd agreed to marry Edward. Three weeks since I'd seen Jake. [Edward/Bella fic]
Please Note: POV changes are shown by -3-.
It had been three weeks since the fight. Three weeks since I'd agreed to marry Edward. Three weeks since I'd seen Jake. And three weeks of unanswered phone calls. I'd walked out of his house that day thinking, swearing to myself, that I wouldn't call him. That I'd give him space all the while hoping he'd come around. But after 2 days, I caved.
I tried again this morning. Leaving yet another message on his machine that ended in tears. They all ended in tears. It was pathetic, and yet I couldn't stop trying.
I ran upstairs to splash water on my face. Edward was picking me up any minute. We were 'dating'. Trying to be a normal couple for 2 months before Alice started up with wedding plans. Even the thought of that was enough to send my stomach reeling. A wedding was not something I really wanted. But it was happening.
The knock on my front door acted like a magnet to my body, flying out the bathroom door bolting down the stairs as fast as I dared. I really didn't need to fall today. But when I opened the door, it was not the beautiful face of my Edward, but that of his sister I found myself looking into. Alice. Her smile lit up her face the moment I opened the door. I wish I could say I had the same reaction to her presence.
"Where's Edward?" I blurted out trying not to sound like I was panicking.
"It's nice to see you too Bella." Alice quipped as she pushed past me into the house.
"Sorry. Hi Alice. But where is Edward? He was supposed to pick me up."
"He had to... go for a run." She answered with a strange tone to her voice.
"A run? What do you mean? Is he hunting?"
"I don't think so... he was just feeling... anxious and needed to run. You know how he is, when he's feeling out of sorts, he goes for a run. He loves to run."
"There's something you aren't telling me Alice."
"Ok... He was here; he came to pick you up. He heard you on the phone."
"Oh god."
-3-
It had been three weeks since the fight. Three weeks since the day I almost lost Bella. And yet, somehow, it feels like I did lose her that day. Or maybe I'd lost her long before. The love I feel for her is beyond anything I ever imagined possible. She's hold my happiness in the palm of her hand. As unrealistic and unfair I know that is, it doesn't make it any less truthful. I never thought I'd ever find someone who could make me feel... everything, like she does. I thought that I was doomed to spend my existence alone. And then she entered my world like a hurricane and left me dazed in her wake. I would do anything for her. Anything at all. But I can't make her feel something she doesn't.
When I pulled up to her house this morning, and heard her leaving a message for Jacob. Crying, as she begged him to talk to her. As she pleaded. As she choked out "I'm sorry" over and over again through her sobs. I thought my cold dead body truly was dead. I feared my legs would give out from beneath me. My love, loved someone else. I had to get away, I had to run. I couldn't see her like this. I couldn't face her right then. I pulled my phone from my pocket and dialed my sister.
"Alice." I didn't even recognize my own voice.
"I'm on my way." She whispered. Dear, sweet Alice. She knew.
I drove my car home as quickly as possible and jumped from it as soon as I'd put the hand brake on. My feet led me into the forest and kept moving. I started running as fast as I could and didn't stop. Hoping, as futile as it may be, that the faster and the further I ran, the less it would hurt.
-3-
"Alice... Please tell me he's coming back." I could feel the air leave my body and as hard as I tried to draw air back into my lungs, nothing happened. My lungs remained deflated and lifeless inside my chest. I reached out a hand to steady myself against the wall as I felt my legs give out beneath me. But Alice was faster; she had me in her arms in one second and on the sofa in the next.
"Bella, breathe. You have to breathe."
"I'm trying." I managed to choke out as her icy hands cradled my face.
"He's coming back Bella. He's definitely coming back. I can see that much." She tried to reassure me but all I could hear was that she couldn't see any further than his eventual return. He might come back, but obviously she wasn't sure if he would stay. The world started to get hazy around the edges of my sight.
"Alice." I gasped. "Please, take me to him." I struggled to get the words out before the world went black.
-3-
I ran as fast as I could before I found myself in the meadow. Our meadow. I stood in the centre staring at the flowers in bloom at my feet. It was so beautiful here... more beautiful because of the memories I had here. My favorite place in the world... as long as Bella was with me. But it wouldn't hold the same wonder anymore. In my memories she loved me. Completely and exclusively. That love had changed. I wasn't enough for her. I probably never had been. I knew all along that I had been selfish. Trying so hard to keep her love, to have her love. It wasn't supposed to be for me. Cold, dead creatures didn't get to have the beautiful, lively girl love them in return. It wasn't my destiny. I'd been trying to defy nature, and nature was fighting back with vengeance. This was a war I could not win. A strength I cannot match. Even a speed I can't keep up with.
I allowed my legs to give out beneath me and dropped to the ground staring at the sun dancing across my skin and the colors it threw off. Beautiful she'd once called it. It may be, but it wasn't alive and it never would be. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. It couldn't be. I inhaled again.
Of course, I should have known. Alice was heading this way, and she had Bella with her.
-3-
I came to somewhere in the woods on Alice's back as she weaved through the trees with a grace I could only dream of. I looked around trying to figure out where we were heading but everything looked the same... a giant green and brown blur.
"Hold on Bella. We're almost there. I found Edward. You'll be with him soon." Alice's voice sang through and my breath hitched as everything came rushing back to me. Why I was here and why I had been passed out on my soon to be sister in law's back.
"Where is he?" My voice was rough and I tried to clear the haze from it.
"A meadow. Your meadow."
I should have felt hope that when upset and anxious he went there, but my fear only kicked up a notch. Afraid he was going to say goodbye. Afraid he went to our place to make peace and eventually walk away.
When we broke through the trees and the meadow was stretched before me, Alice gently placed me down on my feet and held my arms to ensure I was steady. I was as steady as I was ever going to be. I saw Edward sitting in the middle of the meadow, his head snapped up and looked at Alice intently before he was suddenly in front of me, his hands on my shoulders and then my face as he cupped my cheeks in his hands and stared into my eyes.
"Are you alright?" He asked with a worry in his eyes. I could only assume that he'd seen in Alice's mind my little turn back at the house and nodded slowly as I lost myself in his eyes, his presence already alleviating some of my fear. I turned to thank Alice for bringing me here but she was gone and I was in the middle of the meadow with Edward.
"Why did you leave?" I asked with a whimper. He dropped his hands from my waist, when they'd ended up there I don't know, and lowered his head.
"I had a very disturbing realization and had to get away for a while."
-3-
"Realization?" She asked as she looked up at me with confusion and fear.
"I can't make you love me Bella. I can't make you stop loving Jacob and it was incredibly selfish and cruel to ask you to, to expect you to choose me when you so clearly wanted to choose him." I couldn't look at her as I spoke. Couldn't bear to see her eyes as she acknowledged the truth.
"No. No you can't do this. You can't decide who I love and who I should choose, you did that already and that didn't go so well for either of this, so you just get this idea of leaving the hell out of your head." Bella yelled as she tried to hit my arm without hurting herself. I took her hands in mine before she could do any real damage to herself.
"I won't leave if you ask me to stay, but please don't do that and make me watch you have a life with him that I always wanted to have with you. Please don't do that to me. I know how much you want to punish me, but please don't be cruel. I beg you." I finally raised my eyes to her and fought the urge to gather her in my arms and whisper that everything was going to be ok. Her eyes, her beautiful eyes were full of fear. I never wanted that.
-3-
He was standing before me, in our meadow, breaking my heart all over again while I watched his break in return. But this time I wouldn't let him leave me. "I don't want you to leave. I don't want to punish you. I did, you're right; I did want to punish you. I wanted you to feel the pain I felt while you were gone. But I don't want to do that anymore. I understand now. I understand that you were hurting too. I understand and I just want to take it away. I don't want either of us to hurt anymore."
I choked out before the sob wracked my body. His arms were instantly around me, cradling me against his body as I wrapped myself around him, burying my face in his chest.
"Then let me go Bella. Please don't make me watch that." His voice sounded strained and I raised my head to look at him. I knew, looking into his eyes, if he could have cried, he would have been crying right then. I reached up and cupped his face in my hands. I looked him dead in the eye.
"I don't want him. I want you." I said firmly. "You're right. I do love him. But I've told you before... not as much as I love you... I don't love him the way I love you. I never did. It's always been you Edward. You're the only one for me. I want to be with you forever. The thought, the idea of you being gone for even a moment kills me. I want to spend every moment of forever with you, like you promised."
-3-
I looked into her eyes, I didn't dare hope that what I was seeing was real and not some vivid fantasy my vampiric mind had conjured up. I raised my hand to cover hers against my cheek.
"I love you so much Bella." I whispered.
"I know... I love you too. So much Edward. I can't ever tell you how much."
I nodded. I knew she loved me, but I feared she didn't love me as much as she loved Jacob. I may be 109 years old, but I am still a man. A man terrified of losing his whole world.
"And Jacob?"
"I haven't been fair to you about that. I used him to make you jealous, to hurt you. I didn't realize that was what I was doing. Please believe me. I didn't realize." I nodded, I did know that. She visibly relaxed at that. "It wasn't fair on him, and it really wasn't fair on you. I've behaved so terribly. I love Jake. He's one of my best friends. He was there when I needed him. He picked me up. And for that I will always be indebted to him. But I'm not in love with him Edward. He and I were meant to be family, not lovers. A brother or a cousin maybe. But never..." She trailed off and shook her head. "I never wanted him, not even for a second, the way I want you. The way I need you."
Bella wrapped her arms around my neck and pulled her body flush up against mine. I had to close my eyes at the feel of her warm body pressed so intimately against mine. I wrapped my arms around her waist and lay my forehead against her shoulder. She turned her face towards me and I felt the warmth of her breath against my ear.
"It's your hands I want on me. Your lips. Your body I want around me, above me, inside me." She whispered into my ear as her hands tangled in my hair and I gasped. My body responded to her words and the images they conjured up. My arms tightened around her and pulled her tighter against me. "You. Only you Edward. No one else, ever baby." Hearing her call me baby felt better than I ever thought it could or would. "I'm yours. I belong to you." I pulled back and pressed my lips against hers in a fierce kiss.
-3-
My body responded to his kiss the way it always did. The fire raging through me, draining the air from my lungs and making me lightheaded. All too soon his lips were gone and his forehead rested against mine. I looked into his eyes and saw that there was still pain there, something was still troubling him, and I would do anything to take it away. To make it better. I hated causing him pain. I only now can fully understand how hard it was for him last year. To stand there and cause me pain when all he wanted was to give me the world. He tortured himself in order to try and do right by me. And all I've done is punish him for it. I let my pain taint the way I saw him, whether I realized it or not, that's what I did and now I'd have to work to get his trust back.
"Say you believe me baby. Please." I watched his lips quirk slightly at the use of the term of endearment and made a mental note to remember to call him that more often, he clearly liked it.
"I believe you. I do. But..." He trailed off and my body stiffened. "But you still don't want to marry me." It wasn't a question; he felt he knew the answer. But despite all my protestations I wasn't even sure if that statement was true.
"It's not that I don't want to marry you, it's just that everything I've ever known of marriage is that it ends. That it causes pain and breaks hearts. It ruins lives. It frightens me. I don't want anything to happen to us and I'm terrified that if we get married we'll fall victim to the same fate as my parents. As illogical as I know it is. I can't seem to shake the fear." I took his face between my hands again and forced him to look into my eyes. "But I know one thing. When I stand at the end of that aisle, and see you at the other end waiting for me..." My voice broke slightly and I had to pause. "I know that all of the fear is going to disappear. And all I'll see is you. My legs won't be able to carry me to you fast enough. Because there is no greater honor in this world or any other than being your wife." The tears I had been trying to hold back finally fell. Edward's fingers were there to catch them immediately and he rested his forehead against mine.
-3-
"Its right, you and I. We were meant to be together forever. And no irrational fear is going to stop me from marrying my prince. I may be afraid of marriage, but there has never been a second where I didn't want to be your wife."
I couldn't stop myself from kissing her. It was all I'd ever wanted to hear her say. That she loved me, and she wanted to be my wife. It was my heaven. If I could have, I would have cried right along with her.
"I love you so much Bella." I whispered against her lips before moving us to sit on the ground. I pulled her into my lap, wrapping my body around hers.
"I love you. I love you. I love you." So whispered over and over as she placed kisses all around my neck and any skin she could reach. Her arms holding me tight to her. "Please don't ever leave me. You're meant to be my husband, and spend forever with me. Don't back out on me now." She whispered into my ear.
I pulled back and looked into her eyes. "Never." I answered softly. I smiled softly at her, before my lips were on hers in a gentle kiss. A promise for the future.
"Where else am I gonna go?"
The End..