Chapter Three
When Bella failed to make an appearance at the shop the next day, Edward decided to take matters into his own hands. He'd never been a very patient man.
As soon he closed everything down, he was out the door and in his car, driving to Bella's. He wouldn't be needed at the shop tonight, at least not until much later, so he took advantage of the free time he had.
Soon he was idling in front of the little white house where the object of his desire resided. Luck seemed to be on his side when not only was there no police cruiser in the driveway, but there was also only one light on in the entire whole house - an upstairs room that he presumed belonged to Bella.
His luck prevailed when he spotted an old oak with branches reaching almost right into that window.
With a quick glance around to make sure no one was watching, he grabbed the lowest branch and hefted himself up on to it . He was lucky the Swans lived in a small house and not in an apartment complex. There was little chance of him breaking into a high-rise. He climbed up the trunk, using the base of the branches as steps and soon he was wrapped around the branch that was level with Bella's window.
She was sitting at a desk, facing away from the window, chewing on the end of a pencil and glaring at a text book. Edward craned his neck to see what she was working on, then smiled in understanding.
An Introduction to Statistics.
He didn't take the class during his short time on campus, but anyone who'd ever set foot on any campus knew of the horrors of that class. So it didn't surprise him in the slightest to see Bella agonize over her homework. It also explained why she never dropped by; no doubt she expected to be finished much earlier but ended up being held hostage by her assignment.
He studied her, watching in her every movement, learning her nervous habits and ticks. She tapped her foot in time with her pencil, as if listening to a song in her head. She worked in silence, though, which surprised Edward somewhat. He'd pegged her as the type to have some sort of background music playing.
She fidgeted a lot, too. Shifting positions every five minutes or so, she couldn't seem to ever get comfortable.
'I'm probably more comfortable in this tree than she is in that chair,' he mused to himself. Though the bark poked through his clothing, he was able to remain more or less still. He was also relatively hidden from view, thanks to the leafy branches that surrounded him. If Bella looked out the window, she would spot him easily, but from the outside world, he was all but invisible.
He couldn't decide if he was lucky or unlucky that Bella never looked up and saw him. Instead, she was working so hard and diligently that she ended up falling asleep right in her seat.
Edward frowned. If she stayed in that position all night, she'd undoubtedly wake up sore and grouchy. Without a second thought, he inched forward on his branch and nudged the window. It slid open with a slight squeak in protest, but it opened enough for him to crawl through without anything snagging.
He stood over Bella at her desk for a moment, making sure she was completely asleep, and looked over her shoulder at what she'd been working on. In the margins of her notebook paper, there were doodles of eyes and what looked like perfume bottles. Smiling to himself, he made a mental note to ask her opinion on the design of her fragrance.
Then he gently scooped her up and carried her over to her bed. She turned into him and nestled against his chest, sighing contentedly. As he laid her down, he took a deep breath, inhaling her scent. It was almost overwhelming here, where she lived and spent a lot of her time. She rolled over, shifting until she was comfortable, and stilled.
Edward decided to take advantage of his time unsupervised in Bella's room and glanced around. Above her desk hung a bulletin board covered in pictures of what he assumed were her friends. Edges overlapped, some faces were covered, but it was clear Bella had a good deal of friends who cared about her.
There were several of Charlie and a little brown-haired, wide-eyed girl that could only be Bella. These weren't framed, simply layered in with the more recent ones of her friends her own age. Most of these friends were girls, but there were a few guys sprinkled in as well.
One picture in particular caught Edward's attention. He frowned and plucked it out, wondering who this tall boy with his arms wrapped around Bella was. Bella belonged to Edward, not some stranger with a goofy face. Then his mind started to run away with him, 'What if this was her ex-boyfriend? Why would she still have a picture of him? What if they still saw each other? What if he still meant something to her? Why did they break up?'
The questions kept coming until Edward got so agitated that he ripped the head off the strange boy in the photograph and through it in the waste basket beside the desk. Left in his hand was now a picture of only Bella, as if the photographer aimed too low. Pleased with the newly cropped photo, he tucked it among the others back on the bulletin board.
He poked around the room a bit more, picking up the books she kept on her shelf, peaking in her closet, and simply taking in as much as he could. He would have been content to explore her room for hours, but the bang of the front door signaling Charlie's return cut his investigation short.
Glancing back at Bella, he saw she'd kicked herself free of the blankets, but was shivering slightly. He pulled the comforter over her, took one last sniff, and pressed a gentle kiss to her forehead.
She somehow quickly became precious to him, and he vowed to himself to never ever lose her. And so, as a parting souvenir, he snatched a red top from the floor. It was clearly worn, most likely as pajamas, and it smelled just like its owner.
It was perfect. Just like his Bella.
Bella was already feeling a little bit guilty when she poured over her homework that she didn't have a chance to visit Edward, but when she woke up the next morning in her own bed to several texts from him, the guilt doubled.
'I'm counting the moments until I can see you again.'
'I can't stop thinking about you.'
'Please don't keep me waiting any longer - I'll be at the shop all day again.'
'I miss you.'
She honestly didn't know how to react. First of all, she had no recollection of getting into bed the night before, but quickly chalked it up to being so tired that she didn't remember. Then when she tried to understand the attention from Edward, her first instinct was to be extremely flattered. That he had even given her a second glance still astounded her, but that fact that he couldn't stop thinking about her blew her mind.
In fact, she was so flabbergasted that she neglected to send any sort of reply without realizing it. Instead, she agonized over the texts that Edward had sent, picking them apart, looking for any sort of hidden message. She thought there was only one possible way to interpret them, but she didn't want to be fooled by wishful thinking.
She sat for her classes, but her mind was nowhere near present. It was only when she got a call from Charlie asking her to pick up some ketchup on her way home that she snapped back into the present and pushed Edward from her mind. After all, Charlie was cooking dinner tonight, and family came first. It was a rare treat that her father cooked, given his busy schedule. Bella was usually the cook, and would put a plate for him in the fridge that he could eat whenever he made his way home. On the rare evening he was got off early, he was usually too tired to cook.
But tonight, he'd had the whole day off and was well rested. His deputy scolded him for working too hard, apparently, and forced him to take a whole day off. The recent outbreak of missing girls had taxed him, and he needed to step back from the situation and regroup.
Charlie had quite the feast in mind. He didn't have many recipes in his repertoire, but what he did know, he knew very well. It was a closely guarded secret that he could actually cook, but he was fantastic with a grill.
Unfortunately, the night had other plans. First, it started pouring rain. This was not unusual for Forks, and Charlie could still grill in a light misting, but this was an all out downpour, with lightning and all. He refused to admit defeat and stubbornly tried to use the little George Foremen Bella had given him for Christmas one year. He'd never used it before, and complained the whole time - the temperature wasn't right, there wasn't the smoked flavor that made everything taste so good, how were you supposed to feed more than one person at the same time, etc.. But with Bella's help, he made due, and the two of them produced a rather nice meal. But then, despite the quietness surrounding the case lately, As things turned out, there was another incident and Charlie sped off almost before he was finished eating. He shouted an apology and a reminder to lock the doors and windows on his way out, and Bella was left along for the night.
After cleaning up and making sure everything was in fact locked, she decided to use the unexpected time with the quiet house to read ahead for her classes. Normally, she tried to do her homework and studying at the library or on campus, because Charlie had a tendency to inadvertently distract her whenever she attempting working from home. He'd wouldn't say anything, but she could feel him. Not hovering exactly - he'd always given her her space - but he was just there.
So tonight, she made a little nest of blankets for herself on her bed, curled up, and read. The rain fell in sheets against her window, and the thunder rolled gently in the distance. Bella found her eyelids grow heavy and eventually, she let the storm lull her to sleep.
A deafeningly loud clap of thunder jerked her back into the world of the living, and she floundered in the blankets for a moment, trying to get her bearings.
It was pitch black in her room; the power must have gone out. Her house backed the forest, no doubt one of those trees was stuck and lost some branches to the power lines that threaded along the street. She fumbled around for the flashlight she kept in the nightstand drawer for occasions such as these.
'Ah hah,' she thought as she found it, and flicked it on.
And screamed.
She froze, every hair and nerve on her body standing alert in a panic. There was someone in her room.
When she'd turned on the pale light, it illuminated the silhouette that stood just beside her bed, just out of reach. From her brief, panicked glimpse, all she could see was a man's build, and the eerie gleam of the light refracting off his eyes.
'I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die,' she chanted madly in her head, 'They're going to add my name to that list and I'm gonna die and no one's gonna know whatever happened to me-'
"Bella…"
'Oh crap he knows my name oh crap I'm gonna die oh crap oh shit oh crap-"
"Bella, it's me"
'Wait a second, I know that voice…' Bella's frenzy started to calm down and she hesitantly flipped the flashlight back on and stared into the darkness..
Edward's face stared back at her.
Bella shrieked again out of pure shock, "Edward! What the hell are you doing in my room, in the middle of the night, in the middle of a thunderstorm?"
He had the sense to look guilty, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to frighten you like that. I just heard that there was another girl gone missing, and I started to worry. Before I knew it, I was in front of your house."
A clap of thunder shook the frame of the house and Bella wrapped herself more tightly into her nest.
"That doesn't tell me how you got in here. Everything was locked." She peered up at him, then added, "And please sit down or something. You hovering like that is creeping me out. Pull my desk chair over."
He complied and sat close enough that his knees brushed the edge of her bed. "I did try to knock and ring the bell. The storm must have been too loud, or you were too deep in sleep. Either way, when you didn't answer, I got even more anxious." He glanced at her window and Bella noticed for the first time that it was slightly ajar.
"You climbed in my window?' she asked, incredulous. "But it was locked, too!"
"I, um, might have picked it."
"What?"
"The kind of lock you have, it's actually really easy to open. I had the same on my windows growing up. I learned pretty early on how to unlock them from the outside when I needed to sneak back in. I can teach you." He looked repentant, though a little confused. "I am really sorry I frightened you. I didn't want you to be alone tonight."
"As much as I think I appreciate that, you shouldn't have sneaked into my room."
"I don't know, I thought it was very Romeo of me," a boyish grin curled his lips.
"Oh?"
"Scaling the walls to see his lady, facing great peril and possible death in doing so? Some girls would think it very romantic."
"You did not face possible death."
"I'm pretty sure if I lost my grip and fell, I'd be fairly mortally wounded. Or if the chief police shot me in the process, that'd be pretty deadly, too."
Bella was no match for his teasing grin and cracked a smile of her own. "My dad wouldn't have shot you. Not to kill anyway. He'd aim for the foot so you couldn't get away, but he'd still have you where he wanted you."
"That's… really not at all reassuring."
"That's what you get for scaring the crap out of me."
"Fair enough."
"And then what happened?" Bella's friend Angela asked, concerned. Bella relayed the story to her two friends, Angela and Jessica, at lunch in the student union the next day.
Bella shrugged, "Not much. He just hung around until the power came back on."
"Seriously, that's all we're gonna get? 'Not much'? Come on, Bella, you know we live vicariously through you," Jessica prodded.
"Seriously. We just sat in my room and talked. He looked through my pictures and stuff and asked me about them. I asked him similar questions. Really, nothing exciting."
Jessica wasn't fooled. "If there was nothing exciting, you wouldn't be blushing right about now."
Bella's hands flew to her face, and sure enough, her cheeks were heated in a tell-tale blush. "Fine. He might have sat in my bed and there might have been physical contact." Jessica's face lit up and Bella was quick to add, "But none of what you're thinking, I'm sure. It was very tame."
Jessica's face fell a little, but was still pleased with her information. Angela on the other hand, looked troubled. "You let him hang around after that? If a guy snuck into my room without my knowing about it, I'd have castrated him."
The other two laughed at the mental picture of sweet little Angela attempting to castrate any intruder. "I still think it's sweet," Jessica sighed, once their laughter had subsided. "All that effort he put into seeing you? That's totally romantic."
"Yeah, the jury is still out on that one. Pity I like him so much, or I probably would've followed Angela's advice. Plus, he is way too good looking. For me to mess up anything that pretty would have to be some kind of crime against nature."
Giggles broke out again, and then Jessica changed the subject to grill Angela about the date she'd gone on over the weekend and Bella's adventure was in the past.
Again, thanks to my betas, Anechka86 and Adair7. Any remaining errors are my own. Thank you for reading!