The Twilight Twenty-Five
thetwilight25[dot]com
Prompt: #7 - Cottage
Pen Name: loss4words
Pairing/Main Character(s):
Rating: M for violent theme
Photo prompts can be viewed here:
thetwilight25[dot]com/round-six/prompts
Prompt 7: Cottage
She walked around the tiny space, and although there was a fire glowing along the far wall, the place felt cold. She walked along the wall, taking small glimpses of the few framed photographs he had chosen to decorate with. She fingered the dust on the shelf, dragging her long index finger through it and making a trail - until she reached the last photograph.
A little whimper escaped her throat as she took stock of what she was looking at.
She whirled around and was immediately frozen in place by Edward's piercing eyes.
"Come home, Bella?"
His voice was strangled, and he looked as though he was becoming translucent.
Had he been in the small room when she entered? She was sure he wasn't. He must have come in quietly, and being so absorbed in what she was witnessing, she hadn't noticed.
His tall build leaned against the door frame, appearing to be holding him up. Maybe it was. His eyes looked vacant, and the thought made her throat tighten up. She suddenly felt like she could vomit.
Edward fell apart in front of her, sliding to the floor of the cottage and making small, strangled sobs. Bella was locked in place but for a moment. She couldn't not go to him - this man that she had loved her entire life. She would tell him everything, tell him that the time they were apart was the worst of her life, that when she didn't share the same air from the same room as him, it was hard for her to breathe.
She ran to him, taking only a mere second with the sparse furniture and so-small room. She knelt on the floor and placed a hand on his shoulder. A strangled, painful noise came from him, which made Bella simply burn with pain in the center of her chest.
"Please. Please look at me," she begged him, trying to pry his head from between his knees.
He shook it, back and forth. "I can't. I'm bad, Bella. So bad for you."
"No, Edward. Not bad. Not even close. You are the most important thing to me. Please, Edward. Look at me!" Her request came out as a demand, but Edward noticed the pleading tone that was hidden beneath the slight anger.
Finally, he raised his head, though slowly. Without really even taking a moment to look at her, he moved over and collapsed into her lap, planting his face toward her abdomen. His body shook with both sadness, and relief. The thoughts inside of his head ate through him. How could he be good for her? How could he know that he wouldn't lose control again, because the last time it happened, she witnessed him do something horrific. He couldn't forgive himself, so how could she? He knew she couldn't, which was why he'd run, to protect her, and to shield himself from the fact that she could never look at him the same way again. Not after that.
Bella felt like her heart was ripping to shreds. This man, this amazing man that she had always loved, was nothing but a shell now. Where once had been a young, happy kid that had grown into a lanky, awkward teenager, and then an incredibly handsome man, was now but a hallow mirror image. He was sorely underweight, he looked as though he hadn't slept in weeks, and probably hadn't, and well, he stunk.
She shooshed him and feathered his now-long hair back away from his face as he continued to sob, although softer now, into her tummy.
She hated that it had come to this. She had tried her hardest those six months ago for him to see that it wasn't his fault. He was trying to protect her, did protect her, but what started as a small mugging by a kid in a bad part of Chicago, quickly turned deadly.
The boy couldn't have been more than thirteen years old, and it was obvious that he was already strung out on his drug of choice, but Edward had tried to reason with him. He had even convinced him to go have a good meal with them, but the boy turned furious and pulled out a gun. From then it was chaos, and a shot was fired from the ground where the man and boy-child scuffled. Then, silence.
When the boy died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital that Edward worked at, their life - the good life that they'd had up until that point, simply stopped. Edward put on a facade, but when he couldn't complete a simple appendectomy, he crumbled. Crumbled, then ran away.
Bella knew where he'd gone of course. They'd bought the little cottage when Edward first took the position at the hospital, and they found out that it wasn't safe for Bella to have children. They'd decided that they were content without children, and if they changed their mind later, they could adopt.
But Bella couldn't talk him into coming home. After a while, he disconnected his phone, and when she began to take the long, eight hour drives to the cottage to see him, he began disappearing into the forest, for sometimes days at a time.
It had been three and a half months since she'd last driven to the cottage. The winters were harsh and she knew that it wasn't safe for her to drive, so she'd had to wait until spring had arrived.
She finally returned, was finally able to, and instead of hiding from her, he showed her exactly what she thought she'd see. He was a mess. But she was going to fix it. He had to see, that he was protecting her. Them.
She was beginning to get stiff as she sat on the floor, and her tailbone was pushed down hard on the concrete floor with Edward's added weight in her lap.
She wiggled a little, trying to move so she'd gain feeling back in her toes. Edward suddenly noticed that something was off. Something about the feel of Bella was different. He knew that he himself was jagged, and that he'd lost weight, but she couldn't feel quite that plush to him simply because he'd lost a bit of weight.
With his head still in her lap, he began to take stock of her. He started at her feet, checking her over to make sure that she was as he'd left her. Her legs curled under her and to the side as she sat so close to him, under him, on the floor. Her ankles were still chicken leg skinny, but her calves looked maybe just a little larger. As his eyes swept higher, he saw that her thighs were also just a little larger, but not by much. But then he saw it. He saw her.
Edward abruptly sat up, throwing his back against the opposite door jamb of Bella, staring not at her face, but at her round tummy. She couldn't be. They couldn't.
He mentally counted back the months. He knew she would never cheat on him. But how?
"I was pregnant at the time of the accident, but didn't know. When they took us all to the hospital, they wanted to check me out because I had blood on me. I threw up a couple of times but told them it was nerves, because I thought it was, but they did a pregnancy test anyway. And I was going to tell you, but you were never home, and when you were, you locked yourself away from me."
He wanted to know how far, but he couldn't articulate the words. He finally looked up at her face then. Her glorious, face, a face that made him feel like he was finally home. There was an unmistakable twinkle in here eye.
"I'm eight months along, and it's a little boy."
Edward was off his butt and on his feet in an instant. He scooped her up off the floor and walked them over to the small, faded couch in front of the fireplace, and plopped them down on the couch. He held his wife, his soul mate, and their unborn child, and finally, cried with happiness.
