Oh With all that I've done wrong
I must have done something right
To deserve a hug every morning
And butterfly kisses at night
Butterfly Kisses – Bob Carlisle
I heard him walk in the room behind me. It wasn't even as though I was cheating, using my power. I knew it was him from his scent, the way his feet made thumping heavy sound when he walked, and the way he was quiet right up until his entry.
Regardless of theses factors, my head was to full of my own thoughts to even think about listening to somebody else's.
Not today.
"Son?" Charlie's voice was low and urgent.
I couldn't look up form where I was sitting in my old bedroom, gazing out over the forest as the commotion continued downstairs. I couldn't moving my hands from where they were gripping and un gripping the arms around the chair, and I couldn't breathe.
Exhaling and inhaling was to much, it was all just becoming to much...
"Edward?" Charlie's voice was sharper now, as though he genuinely believed something was seriously wrong.
Which it was, something was very wrong, depending whose eyes you were looking through.
Even though Charlie knew only the bare bones of what we were and how we lived, he knew that me and his daughter were losing something very special today, and that his daughter, was coping with ti far better than I was.
"She's getting married today." I whispered, and my voice was so quiet I was amazed Charlie heard.
He sighed and I saw him nod in the reflection of the window, his hands deep in his pockets, "Ah."
My father in law walked to sit beside me on the black sofa that I had turned, or rather spun around earlier in a fit of anger and sadness, so it now stared out of the glass wall.
I swallowed, "How did you do it?"
It was a moment before Charlie either thought of his answer, or found it in him to say it, "I don't know."
""You dealt with it better than I'm dealing with it." I mumbled, I sounded so pathetic, but didn't have it in me to care.
"You aren't losing her you know." Charlie whispered but my answer was already on my lips, shooting down his words in flames, those words had been spoken so many times by so many people, in effect they had lost all meaning.
"I am though." I tried not to snap. I failed, but my voice fell to be quieter, "I'm losing her to him."
There was silence after that, and Charlie, for all his want to comfort me, didn't know what to do.
"I wish I'd had more time." I was speaking my thoughts quietly now, staring at my hands, whether Charlie was listening or not, whether he cared, he stayed with me.
"Oh yeh?" He asked.
I nodded, "I wish she'd been my little girl for longer, that she had needed me even the slightest amount of how I needed her... as much as I still do... need her." I whispered.
Charlie sees were on me as I spoke, but I couldn't meet his gaze, the energy to do so died within me.
"I wish that..." I trailed off and let out a sob of a laugh, "I wish, as twisted as it may be, that he dint make her happy... that this isn't what she wants and that she'll come running up those stars to tell me that she can't go through with it." I breathed.
I looked at Charlie with sad eyes, full of tears that would never fall, "In my head it's so sick, the want for her to come running in my arms, to sob and beg me to make it stop, to ask me to tell Jacob that she doesn't love him..."
It fell quiet and I sighed and whispered what I wanted most, "I wish this day wasn't happening. I wish it would never come, that its just something that's impossible, something that can't happen."
I swallowed and took a deep breath, rubbing my face with my hand and looking down, feeling pathetic and old.
Charlie nodded slowly, "But you want her to be happy?"
I glanced up to see him looking at me with sad eyes, like he was remembering something.
There was no 'like', he was remembering something, a day that and changed both our lives.
The day he and given Bella to me.
"Does it ever get any easier?" I whispered.
Charlie shook his head and sighed, "No... No it doesn't."
It was silent until he spoke again.
"You just learn to live with it." He said quietly and I glanced to see that he was too staring out of the glass wall.
"You learn to live with the fact that she made the right choice, and when you see her so... so happy." He swallowed back his own tears, and I knew now, that he was referring to his own daughter, my Bella, not my... soon to be Jacobs Renesmee.
"You know that the choice, however hard it was to see her chose him... the choice wasn't really yours to make." He whispered, "As much as you want to be the only man she ever loves you know deep down that even if you were, that it wouldn't be enough, and that if you were, you'd be failing as a father, in bringing her happiness, and really, when it comes down to it... that's all you want for her, is to be happy."
Charlie had tears in his own eyes by the time his voice trailed off. My own eyes stung with the tears I couldn't shed, and my body felt like it was dead, not so much that though... I could feel the part of my heart that was exclusively hers, exclusively Renesmee's... it was dying.
Because soon that part wouldn't be mine, it would be Jacobs, because she wouldn't be mine, she wouldn't be my little girl...
If I was honest with myself though, she hadn't been that in a long time.
I glanced back down at my hands, and the words were out before I could stop them, "I wish I'd been a better father."
Charlie's hand was suddenly on my shoulder, giving it a gentle squeeze, "that's just the nerves talking..."
I was about to set him straight when he was speaking, "Let me guess, you feel like you're going to vomit even though you know it's impossible, your comparing this day to our won wedding, how it is similar and different, you want it to be prefect for her but at the same time you want it to be a disaster so the event won't happen... you wish it wasn't him out there, waiting for her."
The last sentence made my yes snap up and Charlie smiled sadly.
"I regret thinking it now but... for a while I always thought she'd be Jacobs." He whispered.
The remaining walks of my world threatened to come crashing down around me, "you and me both."
Charlie smiled a different smile though, "But she's yours." He said firmly, as though he were sating a fact.
"Bella is always going to be yours." He repeated, "And Renesmee will be to... Today is the beginning for her, and in many ways it feels like the end for you but... it's not the final chapter... it's just the start of a new one."
His poignant words hung in the air just as softer footsteps walked slowly down the hall. I turned to look over my shoulder as a scent I would know anywhere filled the room, second only to her mothers, the power of it made my eyes go slightly hazy.
I stood slowly, feeling old and weak as I gazed upon her beauty.
Her hair was pulled back into a high yet formal ponytail, her curls hung past her shoulders, and a veil hung in her hair. The dress skimmed over her body making her just... perfect.
The words were in my brain before I couldn't stop them, Jacob was lucky.
I growled mentally, yes Jacob was lucky, lucky that I wasn't killing him just to get this circus cancelled.
"Do I look pretty daddy?" Her voice like wind chimes snapped my train of thought in two.
I slowly walked around the couch, her eyes, her mother's eyes following my every shaking step.
My fingers brush a curl off of her face, and a smile eliminated my own features for the first time in days, weeks even.
She had called me daddy, and that was symbolic enough.
She still knew who I was, still knew my title, she hadn't forgotten me...
I wasn't going to be the spare part, the understudy, I was her father, and as much as she would belong to Jacob... that was something he could never be.
"You look beautiful." I whispered and her eyes filled up.
I beamed as she threw her arms round my neck, bouquet and all, and pressed herself into my embrace.
I swallowed and pressed my face into her hair, being carful not to ruin it, this day couldn't get any worse in my opinion, but for so many, it would be ruined fi I hurt her hair.
She took a step backwards and I pulled a black box shakily from my pocket.
"Dad..." She gasped as I popped the lid.
She reached and ran two fingers over each of the blue stones. I swallowed back more empty tears, she looked so much like her mother.
AS I slid the sapphire pins into her air she smiled and held her arm out as the music started.
I could hear him, downstairs already nervous.
Then I found myself thinking the one thing I thought I never would...
The only reason you have to be nervous Jacob Black is if you hurt my little girl, I know you won't, but if you do...
Right then it hit me... and Charlie's words rang true as we walked down the hall towards the stairs.
This wasn't the final chapter; it was the beginning of a new one.
My eyes met my wife's in the front row, the only person who wasn't looking at Renesmee.
Bella smiled and opened her mouth to silently mouth the words at me, 'Well done'.
I smiled slightly, Charlie was right.
Every single person in the room, would be a character carried forwards onto the next page of our lives tapestry.
A new chapter would begin, and I would star in it, with my wife, my family, my daughter... and now my son.