Safe
Chapter 6
xxxx
EPOV
I knew I'd never manage to cope with seeing Bella walk away, out of my life, so the minute my family shut the front door behind her, I was up the staircase, packing myself a bag. I still had seven days until I began working with my father, so there was no reason to stay.
"Where are you going?" Alice cried out as I walked out that same front door only ten minutes after my reason for living had walked out it herself.
My Mom heard Alice's voice and came out of the kitchen.
"You aren't following her, Edward? That would be silly and wrong. She stayed for you all last week against her better judgement and she left for you, you know. She knows she isn't good for you. Don't make that meaningless."
"No, Mom, I am not following her. As you have so rightly pointed out, there's no point. If she wanted me, she'd still be here but she chose him, again. I just need to get away and be by myself for a few days."
Alice followed me out to the garages and I selected a sleeping bag and groundsheet, plus a small tent. Made for two, but there was only one of me.
"You are coming back?" my sister asked anxiously. "I promised I'd look after you."
"Thanks, Sis. All I can say is, at this point in time, I have no plans to end myself and I am pretty sure that won't change. You know me; I'll be the grumpy brother who wastes his life waiting for the girl he loves to come back to him, while everyone else gets married and has kids, and he leaves it all too late."
"Take me with you," she begged.
I hesitated.
"Why not? You won't cramp my style, seeing I plan to just sleep out under the stars and do very little but think. You could be useful. Pack some casual clothes and I'll get some supplies from the kitchen. You can be chief cook and bottle washer while I get on with grieving."
Esme was so relieved to know I wasn't going off alone to curl up and die in the forest as she had feared that she packed us up far more food than the two of us could possibly eat and drink in a week, so all I added was a couple of bottles from Dad's bar.
I packed another sleeping bag and tent, thinking it would possibly be a little too weird sharing such a small space with my sister, and we were off. No destination in mind, just 'somewhere else' that would hold no memories of Bella.
We made one stop, at the hospital, then continued on our way. I wasn't ever sure how faithful Jake was to Bella and so a test was in order, to make sure what we had done had no bad consequences. She'd promised to do the same. I trust Bella with my life but sleeping with her was virtually sleeping with him and every partner he had ever had. I'd never bought the story that he'd always been faithful to her, like she thought.
When we were teens, he was always looking over the other girls, especially Jessica, whom he seemed to have some interest in, even as he stood there with his arm around an oblivious, adoring Bella. When it was just us guys in a group, he was always making crude jokes about how much he looked forward to 'ploughing' into her as soon as she turned eighteen. He had never had a romantic interlude in mind as their first time, that was for sure.
Alice added my acoustic guitar to the mix of supplies so that night when we stopped by a small creek and set up camp, I sat and strummed mindlessly while my sister attempted to light a campfire and cook a pan of sausages over the open flame.
"Grubs up," she called, serving us both.
"Sausages and beans. We are quite the cowboys," I chuckled. I opened a bottle of Carlisle's favourite single malt and swallowed some down with my meal.
Alice watched my every move like a hawk with a nanny complex.
"Are you going to be okay? I can't imagine how you feel right now."
"Pretty damned numb, actually. Confused."
"Why confused? You knew she was going to go one day soon no matter what."
"My head knew that but my stupid heart kept hoping she'd change her mind and stay," I admitted.
"Bella would never let you think that, surely."
"No, she never made me any promises apart from the one that she would leave."
"Are you sorry you slept with her?" my sister asked, looking at the flames as she burnt some s'mores . I was unsurprised she knew every detail. She and Bella had never kept secrets from one another. Bella considered my sister as part of her own 'family' so she wouldn't even consider not sharing with her, just because I happened to be Alice's brother. Not that anything mattered now.
I was never ashamed of anything we had done and I'd still do it all again if it was all I could have of her in my next life.
"Which time, Alice? The first time, when she was a virgin and so was I, before she ran back to Jacob and pretended he was her first a week later? Or this time, when she pity fucked me goodbye?"
The alcohol was loosening my tongue and anyway, I wanted people to know. Bella was partly mine and she had given me something that no amount of play acting could change. I'd loved her first. I'd been inside her before he had.
"I always suspected she had been with you before Jake. Bella never told me, but I saw the way she looked at you that day when she came home to meet up with him to let him cash her v card."
"Don't bother telling me how she looked at me. I have as much as I can handle right here, right now. I don't want to know. The past is just the past."
"It wasn't with shame or pity, if that's what you are thinking. Anyway, there's no way she pity fucked you. To start with, Bella doesn't do pity parties. I really don't think she meant to hurt you any more than she already had. I think she wanted to create some special memories for you both. Before she went back to him and began her real life."
"She has what she wanted all along, now," I sighed. "Maybe you are right. Maybe she did want to share a little of herself with me. I just can't believe she is gone. She'll be there by now, in his bed probably."
My hands clasped themselves into fists without any input from my brain, and I lay the guitar down.
More alcohol seemed like a good idea about now.
"Don't die of alcoholic poisoning or anything. I've never driven that car and I know you'd come back and haunt me if I smashed it up, trying to take your dead body home."
"Leave me here, if I die. I'll gladly let the wildlife have my remains for supper. What's anyone going to want my dead body for, anyway, at home? Esme would probably bury me in her garden, alongside the cat."
"Poor cat," Alice mumbled. "At least she had an interesting life, Edward. She got to fall in love, and almost have a family with the tomcat she adored. Sometimes things are just not meant to be. I bet she's happier wherever she is now than if she'd lived a long virginal life locked in that crate. She was a wild cat by the end. They have to be free."
"You may be right. I've never blamed you, by the way. Just so you know. That's the way things go when you shirk your responsibilities. She was mine and I turned my back on her when someone better came along."
"That's the thing I don't get. The love at first sight thing. Half the population thinks it doesn't exist, and the other half that do believe, think it's like some Heavenly sign. You know, that there will be a happy ever after, or else what's the point? I always thought it was just a way to get to the important stuff quicker. Like, without all the 'Does he love me? Do I love him?' bit where you pluck the petals off flowers and get to know one another and hope you will be compatible. It's meant to be a message. 'Here's your One, don't muck about, get married or something.' I thought it was a guarantee."
"Maybe it is if the one you fall instantly in love with loves you back and doesn't already think her soul mate is some dick she already knows."
"Yeah, he's just not that likable right? I mean, he is kind of beautiful, I will give him that, but his attitude to Bella? It sucks. I worry. You know how Dad has always warned me about 'types' to avoid? Controlling types, wife beating types? I just wonder if she would even tell anyone and seek help if he did push her around? Or if she truly is one of those women that take it, because they are so in love their brain goes into hibernation."
"I can't believe she would put up with physical abuse. He definitely controls her, as much as anyone can control Bella. I hated the way she freaked the fuck out about her hair, for God's sake. It's hair. It grows back. Anyway, she should be able to cut it any way she chooses. It's her damned hair, not his."
"She lives to make him happy."
"Yet that makes the fact she cheated on him so strange. She would never hurt him in any way. She'd take a bullet for him without thinking, yet she did the one thing most guys just could not get past. If he ever found out, he would probably leave her without even asking her why."
"Or kill her," Alice added.
"No, I don't believe that. In Jake's world, everything has to be about him, and I don't think prison sex is on his list of things to experience before he dies. He likes drama and keeping Bella down and in her place. Playing cat and mouse might amuse him, if she was the mouse. Maybe he would just hint that he knew something had happened, and leave her guessing how much he actually knew was fact, and how much was bluff. He'd enjoy baiting her."
"Charlie hates him, right?" Alice asked.
"I don't know that hate is the right word. He definitely thinks I'd be better for her than Jake is. But Charlie can't possibly think Jake would actually hurt her or he'd just shoot him. Cops can do that shit and cover their tracks. His men would swear Jake had a knife in his hand and was threatening their Chief of Police's life, and he had no choice. Even if Charlie had to put his own knife into Jacob's dead hand himself. He'd do it, Alice, if he thought for one moment that Jake would beat on Bella."
"Yeah, you are right. I think Jake is more subtle, anyway. He loves his games and punishing her by freezing her out if she annoys him, because he knows she is so starved for affection by not having a Mother when she grew up. It really hurts her when he won't kiss her."
"To my way of thinking, refusing to kiss her is punishing yourself as well. She's wonderful to kiss.
She really does love the feel of lips on her lips. We spent hours just snogging some nights when she was feeling down or lonely. No matter who she loved the most, she never refused to let me kiss her."
"Edward, you may delude yourself that the rest of the family never saw you two liplocking over the years but we did. Every chance you got, it seemed. Emm and I had a competition one year, to see who could take the most photos of kissing episodes between you two, on our phones. You were home here six weeks and I got thirty something photos. Thirty six , I think, and Emmett got even more because he would just follow you two upstairs and snap them through your bedroom doorway, or hide in your closet and wait for you to sneak her up there for a kiss."
"Do you still have them? I'd like to see them sometime. In the future, not now, obviously."
Alice shrugged.
"Maybe. I kind of thought they'd be cute to blow up and have on easels around the church if you two ever got married. To one another, of course."
"Well, that will never happen. I bet she marries him within six months. He'll push her and she'll agree, because she thinks she owes him for cheating on him."
If that happens, we will never be together again. I shuddered in horror at the possibility.
"Did Emmett ever tell you about the girl Jake used to meet after gym? He never actually saw them do much but just kiss or hold hands so I guess it could have just been a friendship, like you and Bella."
"Even if he was sleeping with this chick, and he confessed one day, Bella would justify it because she slept with me. She'd just forgive him and hope he could forgive her back."
"Maybe she would have a point," Alice replied. "Even playing fields, and all that."
Alice went to bed in her sleeping bag in her tent, and I sat by the fire and fed the flames when they died down, and let myself have one last night where I could allow the memories to flood my brain, before I had to lock them away before they killed me.
In the early hours, the chill of the night forced me into my own makeshift bed, and to my surprise, the sleeping bag smelled like Bella, and I remembered she had used it on the sunlounger as a buffer over the cold surface of the wood last night when we were stargazing.
I rolled my pillow up and hugged it to my chest, and slept, dreaming of our last night together.
I awoke in the morning covered in feathers, so I think maybe I had acted out some parts of my dream.
"You killed it," Alice said when she peered in my tent to check if I was awake yet.
"Don't worry, I killed it with love," I replied.
xxxx
Alice and I arrived back home two days before I started at the hospital. In my head, I kept a calendar and updated it daily although I had no contact with Bella herself.
My updates were brief; like "today Bella begins working at Metro."
I wanted to send her flowers, just to say 'Good Luck', but of course, I didn't.
Alice did.
We'd agreed on a clean break , like there had been any other option, so I did hunger for any snippets of news about her, and my only possible sources were my sister, who obviously stayed in touch with her best friend; and Charlie.
I often held my cellphone and typed in quick texts, usually just asking if she was okay, and wishing her luck even though her good luck was my bad luck, but I resisted sending them. Just writing then erasing them helped.
One really bad night while we were camping, Alice had imbibed with me and with her much lesser body weight, she was drunk while I was annoyingly unaffected, so I carried her into her tent and left her to sleep, while I paced the campsite and agitated.
I heard Alice's phone ping and found it where it had fallen from her pocket, on the ground outside her tent opening. I checked it wasn't Esme, whom I knew was keeping tabs on me via several texts to Alice each day.
But it wasn't Esme.
It was the same message Mom asked, mind you.
Is Edward okay?
I sat and stared at the words on the iPhone screen for a long time, in the flickering firelight.
I could answer. I could pretend to be Alice, and actually converse with my Bella, and she would never know.
What to do?
I checked the other already read messages on the phone and read a conversation they'd had days earlier.
B:How is Edward?
A: Coping. Barely. Missing you.
B: I miss him. Truly. He has been my bff for so long, now it's hard to accept we can never speak to one another again.
A: Regrets?
B: A million. I wish I could have split myself in two, and one version stayed with him.
A:How are you?
B: Physically? Cranky because it's THAT time of the month.
Girlspeak for Edward didn't knock me up. More's the pity.
A:Mentally?
B: Coping but then I have Jake. I chose Jake. I remind myself of that every day and it helps.
A:How is he treating you?
B:You know how absence supposedly makes the heart grow fonder? Well, it's true. He missed me terribly and he's treating me like a Princess.
A: Good. I'm sure Edward would want me to send you his love.
B: Look after him for me, and Alice, when he starts at FH, please remind him he promised me he'd try. One of the 3 new nurses must be to his liking, surely? I hope.
A:We all can but hope. Gotta go, Big Brother is literally watching me type from across the campfire.
B:Be safe and I do love u both and miss you. xxxxx
A:same xxx
So, basically she had regrets but she was happy with the choice she had made. The same choice she had always made, even before we met. My entering her life had changed very little, just the occasional 'detour' off her main stairway to Heaven.
My arms literally ached. We had always been very tactile; always touching, and now I touched nobody. I hugged my own torso with my needy arms and felt like a fool. They could never hold me together. I was constantly surprised to not see my innards fall to the ground to be stomped one, because I felt so empty. My lips missed her terribly as well. I touched them a lot, with my fingertips, because they had touched her lips.
My heart was just too fucked up to mention.
I turned Ali's phone off and tossed it into her tent.
xxxx
The next morning, we returned home. I left my sister to sort out what needed washing, and what to put back in the pantry and just showered for a long time, feeling the water touch my body.
The showers Ali and I had used on the road were basic and often only had a limited amount of hot water rationed for each user.
Now I could stand under the scalding heat for as long as I wanted.
I liked this shower, my shower.
We'd only had one session of shower sex , ever.
Our last time together.
The last time I was in this shower, I was in here with Bella, and inside her body.
She had clasped her legs around my pelvis and I'd backed her up against these very tiles, and held her buttocks in my hands as I fucked her.
Strangely, most vivid was the memory of looking into her eyes and watching her as she convulsed around me as I thrust inside too hard, too wildly, needing to see pain reflected in those brown orbs as I pulsated inside her.
She gazed back and understood.
And accepted it.
And forgave me.
I kissed her in apology and made love to her gently, as I always had before.
The last time had to be like the first time, because it was closure.
All the closure I would ever get from her.
It didn't turn me on, remembering what we had done here, it just made me sad and I could almost see the ghost of us as I'd held her to my body and cried into her hair, not caring if the water hid my tears.
Fuck I cry a lot.
For someone who never cried since he was an infant, I've cried a river of tears lately.
With her, without her.
I can still smell her on my skin, as impossible as that may be.
No matter how many showers I take, I can't wash away the feel of her.
I dressed and went to visit Charlie.
I knew I looked bad but then, all I'd eaten in over a week was whatever my sister forced me to swallow down after she burned the fuck out of it over the campfire. It didn't matter, I'd lost my sense of taste. That was probably a blessing.
And I'd drunk every bottle of Dad's alcoholic beverages that I'd taken. My liver was probably in shock. Bella and I had drunk on occasion but not a lot, and I had little tolerance.
My skin was so white now I'd looked almost tanned before, by comparison.
The dark circles under my ruby red eyes would have made an Emo proud.
"Edward," Charlie said, stepping back in alarm as he opened his front door. "Come in."
"I know. I look like shit. I look like I feel."
"I'm just glad you are still breathing. I've visited your Mom every day to check all was well."
"You are the one person who knows what I'm going through."
"I do, truly. I still see the images I had in my head those first few weeks, of Renee with him, and I didn't even know what he looked like. It must be even harder for you, knowing Jake."
"Absolutely."
"I imagined this Phil The Semi-famous Baseball guy was really gorgeous so I could tell myself she fell for the pretty, but when I finally found out who he was and looked at photos of him in the sports pages, he's just ordinary. She didn't run off with him because she wanted someone better looking. Just someone better suited to her needs."
"Is there anything you would change if you could turn back time?"
"What? Like, dig a cellar and lock her in it? Nope. That's what it would have taken to make her stay."
"I just can't imagine anyone ever being able to voluntarily leave Bella."
"Renee never had a maternal bone in her body. To her, Bella was the result of a 'mistake'."
"God, I hope Bella never sees herself that way. No baby should be reduced to just being created in error."
"Renee did not want to be a Mom, obviously. It surprises me that Bella does want to have kids one day. You'd think being rejected and abandoned by your own Mother would put you off, but you know our Bella. She wants to prove she can be a good Mom, despite Renee. She will be."
"Promise me you will give me a heads up when Bella does ...conceive."
That was the least personal word I could come up with.
"It will be when His Royal Highness wants a little Prince, not before."
"Is he treating her okay? Does she tell you the truth or just cover for him all the time?"
"Bella tells me like it is. She isn't blind to his many faults, she just thinks they are excusable.
Some things she won't tolerate, believe it or not. She sounds happy, and she says he is being the perfect gentleman and the man she always knew he could be. Of course, he has clients to impress now and he needs them to present a unified front and be the image of a happy couple."
"It's less important why he has changed, just as long as he is caring for her, and cherishing her," I replied.
"Well, at the moment he is doing that and she is happy."
"I do want her to be happy, believe it or not," I admitted, flexing and unflexing my fingers, not looking at his face. Charlie alone would not see me as some weak, ineffectual man who couldn't keep his woman, yet let her control every thought and emotion he had.
"I fucking love her so much."
"It does get ...not easier exactly, but more comfortable to live with. Someday this will just be your life, unless you manage to do what I never did for so long, and move on. There is some truth to the theory of fucking a woman out of your head. I can't say I spare Renee a thought when I'm...intimate with some generous lady who helps me out. You owe Bella nothing. If you go let some pretty nurse practice her bedside manner on you nobody will think any less of you."
"Only me myself. The thought of being inside some other woman...it not only seems like betrayal of what we shared, it just does not appeal to me. I do worry it will always be this way. I've never had sex with anyone but Bella, so for me, sex and love go together and as I will never love anyone else..." I shrugged.
"You could try it once. You know she sleeps with Jake so if you did try any cure that involved sex with another woman, it still just makes you square with her."
"Maybe if I was a teenager I'd justify it like that, but I'm an adult and there is no reason I'd want to let some random woman take Bella's place as the last and only woman I slept with. I want to savour and remember what we shared for a while."
"Don't let it go on for over twenty years like I did, then."
"Nope, fifteen years tops," I joked.
"You might be lucky. Bella always tried to get me to date by pointing out everyone is born having seven soul mates so looking for one of the others is an option. Maybe one of the new nurses?"
"God, is everyone in this town going to push me into bed with whichever nurse they decide is 'my type'? Poor woman. Who would want anything to do with someone as fucked up as I am? I wouldn't touch me with a twenty foot pole."
"Well, it's just a thought. Look them over and chat to them; maybe one will stand out from the rest."
"I'm starting to suspect your daughter has paid off everyone here to make sure I follow through with the promise I made her, and I just said it to shut her up so I could, um, kiss her."
"Oh, right, I have something you may or may not want. Just wait a minute."
He went to his desk in the hallway and came back with a packet of photos.
"Bella's sixteenth birthday. I swear I just assumed she was alone in the backyard, after everyone left, when I took that last photo. Just to finish off the roll of film."
Pre digital images of Bella, so young and beautiful. Greeting guest, cutting her cake, dancing, talking to Rose while looking anxiously at the entrance where she hoped Jacob would appear, and finally, a photo of our very first kiss.
I don't suppose many people get to document the first time they kiss a girl, any girl, in my case.
My girl.
I tucked the photo into my pocket and handed him the happy snaps back.
"Thanks Charlie. That's one memory that's safe to treasure. I keeping building up these walls in my head to lock her away but she keeps taking the bricks down again, one at a time, and smiling at me. Like Alice said, what's the fucking point of me feeling this way if it never leads to what I want?"
"Edward, there are other times you will have feelings that go unused. I always had this longing for a son. I could see him, almost, he was so real. I never got to bring him into the world and it took a lot of years for those feelings to fade. They never got used. Lots of people want a child and never get one; once again, wasted love, wasted feelings. Or they want a baby of the opposite gender to the kids they have, and what do you do with all that love if you don't redirect it into the 'wrong-sex' gender children you do have, or the nieces and nephews your siblings produce, or the woman who actually loves you back and stays with you?
Don't waste any more of your love than you have to. Learn from me. I could be standing here with Bella's half-brother, boasting to you about his sports prowess or his fishing skills or even the pretty paintings he does. I could have had that boy, just not with Renee. I would have still loved him. I would have never felt he was second best just because his mother was."
He reddened when he realized what he had said.
"That's it exactly, Charlie. Is it ever fair to marry some girl knowing she is second best?"
"It's either that or being alone, and who knows, in time she may even become best.
Renee never treated me well or tried to stick to her wedding vows. If she was truly my best choice then my life really does suck.
I do thank God I have Bella."
"Don't think I won't envy you that, Charlie. You will always have Bella."
xxx
On my first day at work, Carlisle had babbled on, giving me far too many personal details about each of the nurses as I set up my office beside his.
"Kate is your age. She has long straight hair, a great statuesque body, kind of like Rose's, and good sense of humour. She's had a long term relationship that ended eighteen months ago, so she's pretty much over him.
Heidi is also tall and blonde but petite, and has very shapely legs."
I coughed.
"I'm married, Edward, not dead. Bree is the one I debated over hiring. You'll see why. She's a lovely girl and her expertise in emergency admissions made me reluctant to not hire her just because of the way she looks."
"She's what? Plain? Ugly? Looks like Mom and you fear me developing some Mommy complex?"
"She looks like Bella."
"Great," I growled.
"Not like her twin or anything that would put you off her. She's just...if you gave a cop a description, he would arrest either Bree or Bella. Or both, because they are physically very similar. Bree has no paint in her hair, though."
"Damn, because it's the paint in Bella's hair that made me love her," I replied snarkily.
I would have preferred just throwing myself into my work, as I could have had Lorna and Betty still been here instead of these replacements, but that wasn't an option.
"Come on, just meet them. Nobody is asking you to propose."
I paused, realizing something.
"That's another thing I will never get to experience, isn't it? I'll never go down on one knee and feel my heart in my mouth as I wait in fear and anticipation for the answer. Weirdly, I've never really imagined myself waiting at the top of the aisle in some church or whatever, but I have always expected to propose."
"You still can."
I turned to face him.
"I would have expected you, of all people, to understand why that will never happen. Would there have ever been anyone else for you if Esme had turned you down or loved someone else more?"
"Bella wants you to move on. She specifically asked that you date and try to find another of your soul mates. I would have thought you would do anything she asked, if you truly loved her."
"Don't be ridiculous. It's because I truly love her that I don't want to look for anyone else. I would always be settling, and you and Mom told me to never settle but to follow my heart. You can't change the rules now."
"Your Mom and I don't want you to end up all alone. Look at how happy you are about your niece or nephew being on the way. Even Alice and your Mother are less thrilled than you are, and they are both over the moon. You want to have kids of your own, obviously. It is always more desirable to bring them into a family situation, not have them with several different women or whatever the trend is now. You need a wife and a home of your own."
"I've been thinking about the home part. You are right about that. I was wondering how you and Mom would feel if I restored another of the original buildings on your land, like we did for Mom's salon? The one right down the back next to the creek?"
"The old church?" Dad asked.
"You have no plans for it, right? It's such a beautiful structure and I want to save it before it turns into a pile of rubble like the smaller cottages have."
"You are welcome to it, of course, but will it be large enough to make into a family home? It has limited floor space, even if it has that towering roof line."
"I was planning on putting in a second story. If it had a new floor installed halfway up the walls, both levels would be about eight foot tall floor to ceiling. Of course, the upper floor would have the sloping roof line but that can look cosy with dormer windows added. The builder says the frame is actually pretty sound for it's age and it wouldn't be a complete rebuild. He can work with what there still is, and the beams are in excellent condition."
"I didn't know you had ever been down there since the first time we explored the whole properly when we moved into the house."
Bella and I had spent many hours sitting inside the church ruins when we were needing somewhere private to talk during our High School years. Jake tended to monopolize her if we met up in a group, so we had found our own place to chill out and discuss the things that were important to us alone. Hanging out around the house was never a good idea if Emmett was around, though I hadn't known he had been taking photos of us.
I knew Alice had saved every snap either of them took, plus every photo we had that Bella and I were both in, and I had handed the photo Charlie gave me over to her to fit in the album she had made. I had no doubt it was added in chronologically, no matter how much work that had created for Alice to rearrange the others and make space for it.
My sister seemed to be the only other person, apart from myself, who knew Bella was made for me, and accepted it was something to be celebrated and not just mourned over. We had shared some amazing experiences together, and even Jake could not take them away from us. The time on Esme's Island had been our Paris, and what a Paris it had been.
Despite what anyone else thought, I was able to accept whatever 'scraps' she gave me and let them be enough. I had only two choices. Cherish every minute she was mine and remember those very best times to keep me going until she came to spend quality time with Charlie, or curl up and die. I had negotiated her into a part time but ongoing permanent relationship, and to me that was epic. It was only the beginning; I had much larger plans in mind over time. If she didn't want to participate, all she had to do was get Jake to marry her or knock her up, and I prayed daily neither would happen for many years yet, if at all.
Jake would only marry her if it benefited him and his business, I strongly believed. He would prefer keeping her hanging on without proper ties, just because he could. The less he offered the more compliant she was toward him.
I exchanged pleasantries with the nurses, and spoke to them all every day since, but I wasn't quite ready to fulfill my promise to date any of them. Surely I was allowed to get to know them first. I had no interest in what Heidi was clearly offering. Sex without ties.
The only kindness this Universe had showed me was letting my libido hibernate when Bella wasn't around, offering to share her body with mine. High School had been difficult , seeing back then I had no control over what she would do to make me hard no matter where and when, in public or not. Just seeing her toss her hair back was often enough. I had not been the only one with that problem. I was pretty sure Mike had only spent half his life banging Jessica because he couldn't have Bella, the girl he really wanted. She started the fire in him and Jess extinguished the flames.
She had offered to do the same for me, but it was never what I wanted and I could not see how it would be enough. My hand may have been a poor substitute but it didn't create any complications and my life had been confused enough without me using girls to stand in for Bella and nothing has changed.
I would rather wait for my two weeks than fool around having the random sex I'd planned on having as a young teen.
I have always been so glad I waited.
I know traditionally it's the girl who never forgets her first but Bella had fulfilled my dearest wish by coming on to me that night and let's face it, it had only been a matter of time before I'd tried something with her myself. I took her to New York hoping a lot of things would happen between us, and at least that one amazing night had.
It hadn't begun with a nice dinner and a bottle of special wine like I imagined, and there had been no rose petals or scented candles, but it still had been perfect.
xxxxx
Emmett's bachelor party was in full swing and as Rose had forbidden strippers, it was just us guys. I was quite buoyed up, because Bella and I had exchanged texts today, and she had initiated it. Originally we had agreed not to do that, but I was the last person about to remind her. It wasn't much but it was something and if I could keep even this small amount of contact, I would be a happier man.
My brother had plenty of friends and even the old gang from Boston was here, as well as the gym members my brother had trained over the years.
Most were safely settled down and married, though one, Joe, was already cheating on his wife of barely three years.
"Why do you do it?" Emmett asked, genuinely puzzled.
"She cheated on me first. I found out after we got married that she had herself another lover the whole time we were dating. They always planned to stop fucking around behind my back once we got engaged, like that made a difference. I just couldn't trust her once I found out. Bitch should have been honest and I never would have married her."
I drained my glass and let someone refill it.
"She was your first, too, wasn't she? So, she met him and cheated after you two were already having sex? That's cold," somebody said.
"He was an old friend and they 'couldn't help themselves'. He didn't want to marry her, just fuck her. It suited him for her to be fucking me as well, so if she got knocked up, like she did, everyone would assume the kid was mine. Instant obvious on the spot Baby Daddy. He got to break up with her because it was no longer 'right', what they had been doing, and I blindly assumed I was responsible for her condition and married her. Now I have a kid that I don't know if I fathered."
"People sure fuck up their lives," Emmett sighed, looking my way.
"Hey, Jake's not here. I thought he was your show pony," one of the local men commented.
"Jake's living in New York," Emmett replied. "He's doing well. Got himself a business partner. Did you know Same Uley? He was another of my success stories, before Jake. They have a thriving ad agency."
"He ever settle for one girl again? Fuck, I have never known anyone else who got to cash their v card at an orgy! I tell you, Jake was a wild man."
I stopped breathing.
Emmett frowned and encouraged this man to keep talking."That sounds like a suitable bachelor party story. Tell us more."
"Well, you know how in High School he had that uptight little girlfriend who wouldn't put out? Chief Swan's daughter, Bella? He went to this party one night, and she had refused to go with him because she had better things to do.
He gets very pissed off and comes alone to the party and gets a little drunk. Now Jessica...raise your glasses if you experienced the delights of Jessica Stanley, boys!"
A dozen men raised their drinks and toasted Jessica.
"Jessica has just discovered not only does she love sex but she likes multiple partner sex, get my drift, so she starts up this orgy at the party, and she and her posse decide they want to 'sacrifice a virgin'. Jake puts his hand up and the girls take him into the bedroom."
"That doesn't mean he had sex with all three," Emmett pointed out.
"He certainly claimed to have done so."
"Guys that age would say anything," Emmett replied. "How come we never heard this story before?"
"Jessica warned everyone there that they had better not tell tales to Bella or anyone else, or someone would step in a stop her parties from happening. Nobody wanted to risk that."
"I heard Jake's girlfriend was fooling about with some guy anyway," Paul added.
Silence descended on the group.
"Who?" Emmett asked.
The guy shrugs.
"I don't know if it's true, and sorry man, if it isn't, but Jake always suspected his Bella was fucking your brother here, Edward."
"In High School?" Emmett questioned.
The man shrugged.
"After that party, Jake started keeping tabs on Bella so he could meet up with Jessica and Lauren and the other girls who liked what he liked. They always used condoms, Jess insisted on that, so nothing could spoil their fun, but I hope Bella got herself tested regularly, all the same, if she was sleeping with Jake."
I'd had myself tested and was clear but if Jake was still living this lifestyle, Bella would always be at risk. I hope he at least had the sense to always use protection.
"What made Jake think there was something going on between her and Edward, because I know for a fact they were both virgins when they left here for college," my brother stated.
"She was missing on many nights when she was suppose to be home in bed. He followed her once and he said she met up with Edward at this very pool room. After dark. I mean, I guess they could have just been taking a midnight swim together but she left her swimmers outside on the lounger and so..."
He shrugged again and drank his beer.
"I was teaching her to swim, actually," I stated. "She couldn't swim and she didn't want my brother to know that. I bought her a decent bikini, she hated the one piece Charlie bought for her. He's managed to add one and one and come up with three. I never touched her in High School."
Paul opened another beer.
" He said there had been a lot of times when he couldn't find her, even in the daytime and Charlie just said she was with you guys. Don't sweat over it, Edward. He had girlfriends at SeattleU, I know that for a fact. He tried dating my sister until I went to have a quiet chat with him and set him straight.
He tried the old 'we are having an open relationship while so far apart in college' line but I saw him and Bella in the breaks. I guess he hadn't counted on me coming home to visit my parents like a good little son. I saw them together every time and they looked pretty much joined at the hip to me."
Wow, if only we had known that piece of information at the time. If we'd spent those four years sleeping together, I am sure I'd be her eight months and he the four by the time we had graduated.
The dark haired man who had spoken first joined in again.
"Once he told me this insane story about Bella coming back in break from college and faking that he was her first when he knew she'd been with Edward for years. He had to play along and pretend he didn't know how to fuck, so that must have been one crazy night."
"Edward and Bella were just friends," Emmett said. "Anyway, if he believed she was screwing my brother, why did he stay with her?."
"Why not? It suited him very much. He said it opened the door for him to keep sexing anyone he wanted and if she caught him, what could she say? He could just point out she was a cheating cow from the start. She drove him to it. He liked that situation and he was very confident she would never choose Edward anyway, because she didn't love him. She lurves Jake and wants to marry him and have his babies. And he can 'work late' whenever he chooses and she will accept it because she feels guilty."
I stood up and walked away. There was truth, mixed in with the lies, after all. But Jake knew?
My biggest fear is if Charlie gets drunk at their wedding and informs Jake like he longs to, Jake will attempt to hold onto his pride by telling him how he began his own sex life a lot sooner and in a much wilder fashion than Bella did, and she will be shattered.
I should never have told Charlie; I do regret sincerely what I said to him that day.
But all this stuff about Jake and other women was shocking. I'd always suspected he had slept with someone else, but never imagined he had screwed around on this scale. I was glad she slept with me first, even moreso now. She became a woman with a man who truly cherished her in a bed filled with love and she would never have gotten that from him.
I will do everything in my power to ensure he never marries her, even if it means asking Emmett to tell her everything that had been said here tonight.