A/N I'm so, so sorry for making everyone wait so long. There will be an explanation at the end of the chapter that I believe will force you all to forgive me. Enjoy : )
Chapter Two:
"Bella your appointment is here and lord is he hot." Lauren's voice was like nails on a chalkboard to Bella's already aching head. She had just barely gotten two hours of sleep before she had had to leave for work. She'd spent almost three hours in the emergency room where she found out that she had indeed been given a concussion. Not that that was surprising. James had plenty of upper body strength and he hadn't held out any when he decided to throw her into their kitchen wall. "I'm seriously jealous that you get to rub all over his beautiful, naked body!"
Lauren had resorted to squealing by this point and though she and Bella were cordial on a work basis Bella was beginning to feel a little uncomfortable with the direction the conversation had taken. She took her job seriously and she would never make a pass at somebody who she was massaging. With what she hoped was an 'Sorry, I have to get to work,' type smile she slipped out the door and made her way down the long hallway towards her room.
After knocking once and getting the permission from a man's voice, low and raspy, Bella pushed the door open. She was halfway to the massage table, barely registering the man's practically inaudible gasp, when she finally glanced up. She recognized him instantly, though she didn't know how she wouldn't've. He was the kind of man that every girl wanted. The kind of man that woman would leave their husbands for if only they had the opportunity. He was the kind of man she could never get, she reminded herself silently.
Dr. Cullen. The man she had spent part of the night with in the emergency room, the same man that had tried, completely in vain, to get her to admit that she was abused; to seek help with someone, anyone, and he was sitting on her massage table. The cream colored robe that he wore, loosely belted at the waist, gave her a lovely glimpse at his hard, chiseled chest, and she had to stop herself in her thoughts for a moment. 'I sound like Lauren now!' she thought with complete and utter disdain. It wasn't until the toe of her black, Mary-Jane flats caught the floor at an odd angle that she stopped thinking about what else the robe covered however. The only thing on her mind after that was the floor growing closer and closer to her face.
"Whoa!" Edward felt himself moving towards her on instinct and wrapping his hands around either one of her shoulders, catching her only seconds before she made impact with the floor.
"Thanks," Bella's voice was low and her breath left her in a short spurt as she tried to let her stomach…and possibly her brain, catch up with her. It fanned across Edward's face and he was strangely drawn to it. The scent of strawberries and freesias, stronger than the candles burning around the room, surrounded her and he felt him self pulling her slightly closer to her just to feel her warmth by him and to get more of her scent. She was like a drug and now that he'd gotten a little bit he couldn't help but want more.
"Are you okay?" He was happily surprised that he still had the ability to form a coherent sentence and he wasn't surprised to find that his voice was still coming from low in his throat. Just as he'd suspected before it had everything to do with her.
She nodded slightly before attempting to speak again, "You can let me go now," she told him, far too much aware of the fact that the belt of his robe had slipped a bit, showing the chiseled lines of his stomach, her eyes tracing down his body to the 'v' lines that led into his boxers.
Edward felt Bella's eyes scanning him and for a moment he thought about saying something completely out of character and most definitely arrogant about what about if he didn't want to, but instead he let go of her swiftly.
They stood there just staring at one another for a little while until Edward decided to break the awkward silence, "I've never been for a massage before. I don't exactly know how this works."
"Right, you're Alice's brother. She told me about you at her last appointment," Bella felt he cheeks color and warm with a blush and Edward smiled at it. She'd been the same way the night before when he'd treated her, blushing over the slightest things, and he found it endearing. "I'm going to leave the room for a moment so you can take off your robe and lay on the table under the sheet, but before we begin are there any problem spots I should know about?"
After his simple "No," she slipped out of the room, using the time away from him to gather herself. She needed to be professional about this. It wasn't the first time she'd massaged a good looking man, although she'd have to admit he was probably the most gorgeous man she'd ever seen in real life. She would just need to pretend she didn't know him and that he didn't look like an Abercrombie model come to life, "Um…Bella?" Edward's voice threw the door pulled her out of her thoughts, although she couldn't help but enjoy the way her name sounded when he said it. 'Stupid Bella! Stop this right this second. He's a customer and you have a boyfriend!' Her thoughts were nothing short of irate as she made her way back into the room.
Without speaking Bella rolled the sheet down his back and began his massage. She quickly found her groove, rubbing the tension out of his muscles and little by little she felt as though she was massaging any other customer. It wasn't until he moaned that she was pulled out of her thoughts, it wasn't something completely new to her but never before had it affected Bella as it was now. She suddenly felt as though her knees where going to give out underneath her, that she remembered whose muscled back she was rubbing.
And then, as though this wasn't hard enough for her, he had to choose that moment to
attempt to start a conversation, "You're really good at this Bella."
Bella had no idea how to respond. Her brain seemed to have turned to Jell-O at the sight of him. Finally, after long enough that it was sufficiently awkward, Bella said, "Well you know it is like, my job." She laughed awkwardly trying to cover just how uncomfortable she was.
He laughed too and she prayed that they could spend the last twenty-eight minutes of his massage in silence. She watched the clock, seconds ticking by slower than usual as if she had entered some type of alternate universe where she tried her hardest to tune out his moans. Finally, as she wrapped up the massage Edward pulled his head out of the hole on the table and said "Well it sure is lucky for me that you only hit your head and didn't break your arm when that boyfriend of yours pushed you last night."
Bella felt herself freezing on the spot. She didn't know what to say or how to react to Edward's out of line comment. He knew it was out of line when he said it and yet he couldn't stop himself. It was all going back to that whole getting attached to your patients thing and he just couldn't hold back a chance at getting her to admit that she was being abused; at getting her help.
After another moment of standing in awkward silence, from Edward Cullen basically hitting the nail on the head, Bella came back to life. "You can change back into your clothes and then see your way out," and with that Bella slipped out the door and away from the doctors appraising eyes. Once she was safely inside that protection of the staff lounge she could finally breathe again. It wasn't the first time someone had questioned her about her abuse. Usually it was doctors in the Emergency Room but once…once it had been her brother.
***
Four Years Earlier
Emmett Swan was a simple man, much like his father had been when he was still alive. He was happy to working at the police station, following in his father's footsteps. He spent the evenings with his new beautiful girlfriend, seeing his sister whenever they were able to get together.
He was protective of her, he knew that, but he had his reasons for it, and now she was getting even more serious with her boyfriend, the one that he'd known was bad news from the beginning. Things had started out innocently enough with James, and Emmett trusted her judgment and tried to bond with him whenever she'd bring him around, but he couldn't seem to get past the original gut feeling he had about the guy and he began to notice signs. As a police officer he was trained to be able to spot the signs of abuse, and it scared him when little by little he started to see them in his baby sister.
He tried to bring it up once and she just brushed it off and he tried to tell himself it was true. He didn't like the idea of Bella in pain; in an abusive relationship, so he told himself that he was just jumping to conclusions, letting the fact that he didn't like the guy and the fact that he knew too much about what the signs that he could be abusing his sister get to his head.
Rosalie was visiting family and James had to work late so Bella had decided to come over to cook Emmett dinner. They chatted about Emmett's work and Emmett wondered aloud if she was still writing while she cooked, and it was nice. It was the first time in a long time that Emmett felt like he really had his little sister back.
"Bella it's been you're dream to be a writer for as long as I can remember. You can't just give something like that up over some guy!" Emmett said, exaggerating as usual.
"Gosh Emmett I'm not giving up anythi-….what?" Bella asked. She was in the middle of reaching on her tiptoes for the garlic powder which of course was on a shelf too high for her.
"WHAT THE HELL IS HE DOING TO YOU?!? I'M GOING TO KILL HIM…!" Emmett's voice boomed through the small kitchen and a shocked Bella looked around before following his gaze to a line of about four inches of flesh that she'd unintentionally exposed when she reached for the high shelf. Four inches of black and blue, incredibly bruised flesh.
"Calm down Emmett, it's not what you think! I…I just fell down the stairs! You know how I am…I'm a klutz; I was carrying the laundry and my foot got caught on the stairs."
"Bullshit Bella. I've suspected that bastard from the very beginning and now here you are all black and blue. He did this to you and I know it. I never should've listened to you that first time when I suspected all this…" Emmett slowly just trailed off, the disappointment in himself written on his face and in his voice. He'd lived the better part of his life trying to protect his baby sister and then he let this go on right in front of his eyes.
"I don't know what you're talking about Emmett," Bella tried to sound firm but there was a scared unsureness in her voice, "James would never try to hurt me! He loves me, do you hear me? He loves me."
"Bella I just want to help you. I can see what's going on, it's obvious. Why are you letting him do this to you? Why wouldn't you come to me when he started hurting you?" Bella could hear the pain seeping through his words and after growing up with their father Emmett wasn't exactly an emotions kind of guy.
"Look you're wrong okay. You don't understand."
"What's there to understand? That asshole is hurting my little sister and you're never seeing him again. Do you hear me Bella? Do you comprehend the words that I'm saying? You are never going to see that ass again. You're staying here and that's final!"
"Who the hell do you think you are telling me what I will and will not be doing? Who I can or cannot see! You don't have a clue about what's going on and don't try saying you do."
"Bells look at you!" Emmett pulled her away from the food that she was so intently cooking and she flinched away from him. "Oh…Bells I didn't mean to scare you I'm so sorry." His mind raced back to when she'd first come back to live with him and Charlie.
"Screw you Emmett. I told you I'm fine but if you don't want to believe me; if you want to think that my boyfriend is hurting me than you can do that. But I won't be around while you do." And with that Bella stormed out of her brothers house and consequently out of his life and though he would look back on that day again and again; would replay it in his mind like a bad movie that he could never get to stop, there was nothing he could do to bring her back.
A/N: At the end of October I fell down the stairs and I sprained my ankle. I may have mentioned that I was suffering from an injury in my last chapter. Well, I'd like to use this chapter to educate some readers on a condition I have called RSD. Long story short when I was suffering back in December it was really just the beginning, I was in a hospital for three months trying to reverse my condition, and I've undergone many procedures with the hopes of reversing it but I'm still suffering, unable to walk. I had a small heart problem but it's finally out of the way and there's talk of two different procedure that my surgeons are thinking of doing so at least there's hope, but my concentration is of with all the medications, and I fell into a depression while I was in the hospital. I'm happy to finally be writing again, but it may take some time between chapters. Please, please review and if you're interested look up RSD so that you can be one more person who knows about it, believe me there aren't many. So there you go, there's a little insight on Bella's past, plus some half naked Edward/Bella interaction. In the next chapter we meet our James. : )
REVIEW= HAPPY just fyi
Thank you.
