As always, Twilight belongs to S,M.
Thank you all so so much for your reviews, alerts and favourites. It means so much to me, truly.
I hope you will like this chapter? If not, I'm so sorry :( But this is where I intend to take the story. I'm so nervous to post it, as always. Feel free to let me know your thoughts.
Much love, hope you like. x
Chapter Seven
EPOV:
"Edward Cullen? He in trouble or something?" I hear my work colleague, James Newton ask, sounding all types of bewildered and curious.
I peer over at him from my place near the photocopier while he sits there, slumped and puny in his office cubical. I swallow thickly.
His gaze holds my own through the shiny disks of his dorky round-rimmed glasses. "Yeah, he is right over there." He jabs a bony index finger in my direction, and I gather the cause of his nerves at once.
There is an elderly officer of the Forks County Police Department with him.
Immediately, he turns and regards me. A flat hand to his stomach smooths down any visible wrinkles on his tight, ill-fitting uniform, as his tufted graying eyebrows narrow at me. I swallow hard, as he starts to approach me in brisk, urgent strides. Doom is impending, I know it. He'll handcuff me, lock me away from her. Still, I force myself not to look away.
Can't give off some misguided impression that I'm actually guilty of something now, could I?
Jesus, did Charlie put him up to this? My mother, even? What have I possibly done now? I never laid hands on her, no matter how much I wanted to. Well, last night I did try to steal a kiss from her near the kitchen sink. Oh, and I do have thoughts about her that might even be enough to put me in jail for pedophilia somehow, kind of. But I never-
"Edward Cullen?"
I leave the stack of paper copies my boss requested from me, and stare at him. "Yes, this is he. How may I help you?"
"Uh, can we have a word? Preferably somewhere a little quiet?" That throws me off a bit, I wasn't gonna lie. It worries me a bit, especially the miserable fucking expression he has planted on his face.
"Did something happen? Is something wrong?"
"Please," he sighs out, and rubs a finger over his eyes. "Let's head into one of the private offices."
"Ok, sure." I guide the way over to one of the vacant square offices and hold the door open for him. Once he manages to slip inside, I close the door behind me. Newton- goddamn him- is still watching eagerly at his cubical, even through the pane of glass seperating the officer and I from earshot. Nosy, nerdy bastard.
The officer stares at me for a moment silently, expression tight and stern, before seating himself down onto the rectangular table in the middle of the bare room. The room is somewhat morbidly clinical, a room I often inhabited when called in for business meetings.
He taps at the table with a hand, "Please, sit."
My mind races, as I do what he says. Oh, god. This isn't good. What has Charlie been feeding him? Sure, it was probably obvious how intense I was about his daughter, but I never tried anything funny on her. I didn't rape her, I wasn't molesting her. God, I couldn't even stomach thinking it. So why the visit?
I take a seat, while maintaining eyecontact with the officer. He takes in a deep breath, then lets it all out, very slowly. Fuck, the anticipation is killing me. "I'm afraid there has been an accident. Family members were involved."
Family members? Accident? As my mind processes in his words, I can only seem to think one thing in my head. A prayer, a panicked chant of whizzing words:
Please Bella be all right. Please Bella be all right. Please Bella not be dead.
"What kind of accident? Which family members? It's not Isab...?" I can't even find it within me to dare think it, let alone utter it out loud. This can't be about her. It just can't.
I stare him down, urging him to continue. I hold in my breath, waiting for the agonizing blow.
"I'm afraid, there was a fatal car accident at roughly twelve fifteen this morning. Your parents were involved."
Mom? My step-father? Dead?
In some perverse sense, it feels a weight has been lifted off my shoulders with the realization alone. A momentary inwards sigh of relief that all is well in the glorious land of my step-sister, Bella. But then, a moment later, that relief is rather instead turned into swirling pits of shock. Fuck, they're dead.
"I'm sorry. Their car collided with an ongoing truck, and the instance they crashed, they passed. There was not a single thing we could do. The ambulance was called, only they were declared dead on arrival. The wreckage of the car was very severe. Like I said, I'm so sorry for your loss."
The color drains from my face. A hand closes over my mouth to stifle whatever it is building up in my throat. A cry, scream? Fuck if I know.
"What about Bella?" How was I meant to tell her? How could I possibly deal with watching her mourn over their deaths? How could I possibly endure all the pain and tears the knowledge will inflict on her, once I tell her?
"What?" The officer grunts out uncertainly. I lift my eyes over at him. His face is scrunched in confusion. He clearly doesn't know who I'm talking about. Oh, the sad irony of it all.
"My... my step-sister, Bella? Has she been told?"
"Ah, no." He gives me a stiff, apologetic smile. "We haven't been able to reach her unfortunately. However, if you would prefer, we could inform her ourselves."
"No," I tell him firmly. "I'll tell her. I'll pick her up from school. It's better this way."
"Well, all right then." His chair scrapes against the hardwood floor as he gets up from his seat. As he goes to leave, he turns and clasps me on the shoulder with a firm, sympathetic embrace. "I hope you won't mind popping down into the station to identify your loved ones, then."
"Yeah, sure. Let me just go tell my boss I'm leaving." And so, I do.
Our parents are dead. They perished in a car crash with a truck this morning, sorry.
No, that doesn't sound right. It's too cold sounding, too clinical.
Bella, I'm so sorry. Our parents... they're dead.
No, maybe a slow burn is what she needs? Take it slowly, as not to make her so hysterical.
Bella, there is something I need to talk to you about. It's regarding our parents.
Fuck. I slap myself against the forehead, and throw my head back against the headrest of my seat. How the hell are you meant to tell a seventeen year-old girl that her parent's died only just this morning, and that you'll be caring for her from now on? That you'll take over all parental duties, because that's the way it's got to be? Because I sure as hell had no fucking idea whatsoever. Nada, nothing.
After identifying the bodies for the coroner, I had it all somehow planned mechanically into my head. I'd act the way I ought to, offer Bella all the assistance I possibly can while she grieved. And yet, I had no idea how to tell her. I couldn't stand it. I couldn't stand to think how agonizingly upset this would make her once I told her the bad news.
Even sitting outside in the parking lot at her school, as the hours droned on, I didn't know how I could possibly manage it.
There was undoubtedly no questioning on whether it was them dead or not. It definitely was our parent's...
"Are you ready to see them, son?" The elderly coroner in his white coat asks quietly, gauging my reaction. Maybe he saw the look there, in my face, my eyes, that gives him the silent confirmation to go ahead and do it, get it over with, because, without further ado, he does.
With a delicate crack of his wrist, he unsheathes the bodies lying on the table from their white cloth and... there they are.
My beautiful mother, a horrid ghastly reproduction of her former self. My step-father. Bella's father, who you could tell she loved more than anything else in the waking world.
The collision was a rough and severe one, you could tell as much. My mother's once inviting face is merely a memory of how she once was, in comparision to her face now. She hardly looks like the same woman; Her hair dark and stringy, matted in blood, her chin mashed to a pulp, like a squashed fruit. Charlie looks no less unrecognizable than she does. And to think, these were the two same happy loving people, who Bella and I had breakfast at the table with in the morning, before I left for work, Bella for school...
Oh god. Dead.
A hand flies over to cover my mouth, as the vomit rises in my throat. The dawning awareness that this is reality- that our parent's are indeed dead- hits hard. My heart feels it is being crushed by a set of metal tweezers. But then, hey? At least, it's them, rather than her. The thought revives and calms me in some way.
Oh, no. Losing her prematurely...I think I might just go mad.
At three, the bells rings out and eventually the students come cascading out of the tan brick building of Forks High. They all chatter loudly amongst themselves as they pass my car, all wrapped up into their own perfect little complete worlds, while I was about to destroy her own.
The instance I spot her through the crowd, in mid-chatter animatedly with a short-haired friend, I feel like coiling over and vomiting again, like I had after identifying the bodies of our parent's. She is smiling widely at whatever her friend is telling her, and she throws her head back and laughs, her dark and shiny hair rippling across her shoulders in the light afternoon breeze.
Seeing her so happy, was reason alone to make me hate myself for what I was about to do to her. I was going to crush her spirits, make her so inconsolable she probably wouldn't ever be able to laugh or smile ever again. And that was such a pity, because I adored those smiles and melt-worthy laughs, even if it was over something I wasn't doing.
I wind down my window and stick my hand out, waving her over with a flourish of the wrist.
I can tell she's not happy to see me, to say the least. Her back immediately stiffens and her small hands tighten over the narrow straps of her pink backpack, as her jaw clenches. She stills in excited conversation with her friend, and glares ahead at me.
In another situation otherwise- less as dire, as this one- I would have simply laughed and found it hilarious, how unhappy she was to see that I was picking her up from school. I relished those moments she showed her blunt hatred in me; Instead of wounding me, it only ever seemed to amuse me, and present me some form of enjoyment, and enamour in her.
Only, I couldn't laugh. Nothing really felt all that remotely funny to me anymore.
Her friend follows her over to my side of the car. Her narrowed dark brown eyes fixate on me, as she peers down at me through the scrolled down tinted window.
"What are you doing here? Where's Charlie? Why couldn't he pick me up instead of you?"
My heart clenches at the disdain in her voice. Oh, how she loathes me so much, how she finds me downright disgusting... I don't care, though. I never did. I've come to accept her blind hatred and find it somehow an endearing way about her.
"Please just get inside the car." After a day like today, I'm too exhausted to even start arguing with her. "Something happened. I need to talk to you about it."
I can tell she is startled by the somewhat strained desperation in my voice. Her mouth pops open a bit, showing off her glistening front teeth. She recovers a second later and turns on me, hugging her friend. "Alice, I'll call you later tonight, okay?" She says softly, rubbing her friend on the back with those tiny ringed fingers.
"Okay, looking forward to it!"
"Bye," she waves, carefreely.
I watch her warily through the windshield, as she crosses over the front of my car to get into the passenger's side next to me. Quickly- in a moment of vanity- I wipe my wet eyes and run my palms over the back of my hair, smoothing it down briskly.
All is silent, once she slides in and buckles herself up.
When I crane my neck behind me, checking to see the coast is clear of all students, I shift the car into reverse, and away we go...
I can feel her eyes on me, while I indicate left out of the parking lot. To me, she was always an incredibly intelligent and perceptive young girl, if yet naive and so fresh. She was bound to be so devastated.
"Well," she starts, a tart edge to her quiet voice. "What is it?"
For a moment, I think about lying to her; No fatal car accidents, no deaths. Only, it was a weak and selfish way out of telling her. To be fair, she didn't deserve all that. No matter how much I knew inside it'll kill me to see her so depressed and upset, knee-deep in grief over the loss of her father.
Okay, here goes. Take a deep breath in for courage, Cullen. "Our parent's were involved in a car accident this morning. A while back, I was called into the coroner's to identify their bodies. It is them."
Her breathing accelerates at my quick and urgent words, until it is the only thing left hanging onto in this world. I turn to shoot a look over at her to find she is already staring at me. I didn't like the look she was giving me, quite frankly. Her eyes, they looked...empty and depthless. Her expression is bleak and drained. Shiny tears gather in her eyes, and her freckle-scattered nose starts to run. Her chin wobbles.
One of my hands are frantic and at work, patting down pockets, and feeling around. My heart aches for her.
Goddamn it. Where is a fucking handkerchief when you need one?
And then... shattering my world completely, it starts.
The hysterical sobbing. The tears.
She slumps forward in her seat, her dark long hair spreading over to cover her face. In a rush of irritation, I consider leaning over the console and brushing her hair back, so I can see and keep track of every little part of that face of hers, only it seems somehow inappropriate. Too soon, to make my feelings and intentions for her clear.
Rather instead, I tighten my hold on the steering wheel and press myself to keep on driving.
"I'm so sorry."
She buries her face into her lap, and sniffles loudly. "No," she cries weakly, cradling her face in her small feminine girly hands. "They can't be. You have to be lying!"
I wish I was lying but unfortunately, I wasn't. And there was nothing I could do about, no control. No ability to somehow reverse time...
"I wish, but I'm not." I'm panting hard. "I wish I could have the power to go back in time to prevent their death... but I just can't."
She throws me a critical, hard stare; dark hair awry, teeth resting on her quivering, tear-wet underlip. "Now what happens?" Her nose is red raw from her bawling. Clear tears trickle down the lining of her pale blotchy cheekbones and, god, she is still so beautiful to me, so young. "What happens to us?"
It takes me a moment to wonder that myself. What does happen now, without our parents around home anymore?
Ironically enough, this is what I have been hoping for the whole time, ever since she moved in with her father. A chance to get her alone, to have her all to myself without any morsel of parental control.
In the back of my mind, I was always day-dreaming about one spectacular event that would throw her into my loving, and pining arms forever. Of course, realistically I didn't want it this way where... both our parent's were dead as an outcome.
But, I'd be full of shit if I was to say, I wasn't going to take advantage of the fact our parent's wouldn't be around anymore.
Plus, the notion of just the two of us sharing the one family house together- No parent's interferring whatsoever, every single other person on earth eliminated except for me and her, her all to myself, day after day...
Convenient. How convenient.
I could definitely, definitely see this working out.
Bella- seventeen years-old, wildly beautiful to me, stuck in such a fragile, emotional state. She was bound to nurse some carnal longings for comfort and an empathetic ear, sooner or later. And, foremost, I would be first in line.
I turn to look at her. I try not to give away a single hint of the smile that is dying to just stretch over the whole of my face, and stay there permanently for the rest of the blissful lifetime I'll spend with her, alone and without parental vision. Free to do anything, say anything... without harsh judgment over the fact she is underage, and quite green.
"Well, I suppose, since you're still underage until September, I'll have to be your parent somehow. A guardian, of some sort. We'll work out living arrangements and conditions later."
