Insert standard disclaimer. You know the drill!
A/N: Thanks for your continued readership! Thankfully this update did not take me as long as the last one. Enjoy!
Chapter 9
When Bella and Alice returned to the Cullen house, Esme was busy in the kitchen and Emmett was reading the paper in the living room. Edward and Carlisle weren't home yet.
Bella sat beside her brother on the Cullen's couch while Alice went into the kitchen with Esme. Resting her head on her big brother's rather large shoulder, Bella closed her eyes and relaxed. Emmett folded the paper up and set it on the coffee table in front of him.
"Long day, little sister?" Emmett tilted his head to rest on top of Bella's.
They weren't normally a very affectionate family, but every now and then Bella and Emmett would have a moment with each other. Edward and Alice were more affectionate with each other; the Cullens as a whole were more affectionate in general with each other and Bella used to feel jealous that her and Emmett didn't have as many moments with each other but the moments they did have together were unique enough to substitute for a multitude.
"Long enough." She answered and sat up to look at Emmett. "Let's go see Charlie. Maybe he's awake, we can have dinner with him."
Emmett's face lit up at Bella's suggestion. He didn't want to tell her that he had been pacing the house for the majority of the day, anxiously awaiting Bella and Alice's return so they could go to the hospital together. Emmett wasn't sure he wanted to see Charlie in his hospital bed without Bella. He was sure Esme would be glad to have him out of the house; he hadn't exactly been the best houseguest this afternoon.
Emmett grabbed his coat and hat from the front hallway and Bella went into the kitchen to let Alice and Esme know where they were headed.
"Are you sure you two wouldn't like to stay and eat dinner first? I don't imagine the hospital food is overly delicious." Esme looked at Bella with motherly concern in her eyes. Bella tried to be gracious in her decline but after her conversation with Alice this afternoon, she couldn't help but feel bitter towards Esme's maternal gesture. Bella knew it was ridiculous to feel anything but love for the woman, but she wasn't exactly herself today. Thankfully for Bella and Esme, Alice recognized the hesitation and spoke up quickly.
"Mom I think they just want to be with Charlie. To be together as a family."
Bella smiled warmly at her best friend and turned to leave with her brother, but Esme was too kind for her own good.
"Please just let me make you some sandwiches to take with you then. At least this way you can enjoy the food and time together." She smiled at Bella with the same motherly look in her eyes and instead of feeling bitter again Bella felt an overwhelming love for Esme.
Bella mentally shook herself; she really needed to get a good night's rest tonight and find her way back to herself tomorrow. Emmett came into the kitchen to see what was holding Bella up when Esme handed him a large picnic basket with a giant smile. He looked from Esme to Bella to Alice and back to Esme before speaking.
"Um, thank you?"
Bella giggled despite herself. "Esme doesn't want us to suffer through the hospital food. I'm sure Charlie will appreciate this, Esme. Emmett and I certainly do. Thank you." Bella hugged Esme briefly, careful not to hold on too long.
Alice promised to explain to Edward where they had gone and said she would see them later. Emmett carefully loaded the basket into the backseat of his car and he and Bella drove to the hospital.
They ran into Carlisle at the nurses' station on Charlie's floor. He was in good spirits, which gave them both hope for their father. Apparently Charlie had been awake for only a few hours and had been asking about the two of them for the better part of those hours. His partner, Detective Clearwater had just left minutes before their arrival. When Carlisle caught sight of the picnic basket Emmett was holding awkwardly at his side he smiled sadly.
"Esme didn't want you eating the food here, I see. Unfortunately, Charlie won't be able to eat anything solid for quite awhile yet. The damage to his stomach is going to need a little longer to heal before he can be back on regular food."
Bella and Emmett's faces fell as they listened to Carlisle's news. Bella kicked herself for not thinking of that while Esme packed the basket. Emmett shifted the basket from hand to hand, not sure what he should do with it while they went over to Charlie's bed.
"Don't worry, Charlie is getting everything he needs intravenously. I don't think he'll begrudge his loving children their delicious dinner." Carlisle clapped Emmett on the arm loudly and disappeared down the hallway.
Bella shrugged at her brother and started towards Charlie's bed.
"We can eat it later, Emmett."
Bella tried not to look at the other patients as they made their way through the rows of beds. Charlie's bed was the very last one of the row – lucky for him he was near a window so he had something to look at besides the dreary hospital walls and privacy screens.
"Bells! Emmett!" Charlie's entire face lit up as his children came into view. "Thanks for coming kiddos. It's great to see you."
Bella gave Charlie a quick peck on the cheek and the lightest hug she could muster while Emmett shook his hand vigorously.
"How you doing, Dad?" Emmett asked as he took the empty chair at Charlie's bedside. Bella settled herself onto the foot of the bed and took off her hat.
"Could be worse kid. Little sore today, the Docs say it should be better in a few days but I can't eat for a while. They have me hooked up to this tube that's supposed to make things okay. Can't say I've been too hungry so they must know what they're doing."
Emmett laughed nervously and nonchalantly shoved the picnic basket further from Charlie's view with his foot.
"I'm glad you're feeling better Dad, you gave us all a bit of a scare you know. Maybe next time you could try not to get shot?" Bella smiled wryly and patted Charlie's feet.
Charlie chuckled and then winced. "Sure thing Bells. Maybe next time we'll have a big heart to heart with the scumbags instead."
Bella was glad to see that he was feeling well enough to joke with them. That gave her all the hope she needed that Charlie would back to his old self in no time at all. Things would be just fine for them; she wouldn't be losing her dad anytime soon, which suited her just fine.
The rest of their visit was spent with Emmett and Charlie discussing his upcoming game and subsequent starting position. Charlie didn't have much hope of being able to be at the game but he made Bella promise more than once to fill him in on every play that Emmett made. Once they ran out of football techniques and plays to discuss, Charlie grilled Bella on her first day at the paper. Bella and Emmett conveniently left out all information pertaining to James, which made Bella's first day sound much the way she would have liked for it to have happened.
"Promise me you're going to get back to work tomorrow, Bells. I'm not worth you missing out on this opportunity for. Besides, you need to get those articles published so your old dad has something worthwhile to read in this dump." Charlie's scolding was interspersed with yawns, so Bella suggested that they head home and leave Charlie to get some sleep. He was pleased to hear that they were staying with the Cullens while he was in the hospital. While Bella gave him a kiss and hug goodnight, Emmett stealthily slipped the picnic basket fully out of view of Charlie and then said his goodnight as well.
Bella and Emmett both felt in better spirits as they headed towards Emmett's car.
"He looks much better than yesterday." Bella said conversationally as they walked across the parking lot.
"He really does. We can come back tomorrow night again if you want Bella. After you get home from work? My practice will be over before then."
Bella was about to say that sounded perfect when a very loud rumble from her stomach interrupted her and made her brother stop cold in his tracks.
"Was that you little sister?"
Bella blushed and rested her hand against her stomach. "I guess I'm more hungry than I had thought. How long were we in there?"
Emmett roared with laughter before he responded. "I guess you are! You're louder than a grizzly bear. I know, let's head down the block to Gate Park and eat whatever Esme packed in here for us. I'm getting a little hungry myself."
They walked in companionable silence down the block and into the well kept Gate Park. Bella picked out a bench that faced the sidewalk so they could people watch, but was far enough into the park so as to give them some peace from the foot traffic as well.
"Geez, Esme sure is the Cat's Pyjamas, little sister! Look at this spread." Emmett's eyes were wide as he dug through the picnic basket and pulled out the various items Esme had packed for them. There were sandwiches, fruit salad, cheeses, more pastries and a bottle of lemonade for each of them along with plates, napkins and silverware.
Bella made a mental note to truly thank Esme when they returned home. She really had gone beyond and above anything Bella had expected.
As they ate they chitchatted about Charlie and work and Emmett talked incessantly about his upcoming game. Bella had grown used to that side of Emmett in high school and had grown rather adept at tuning out what she wasn't interested in while still throwing in several wisely timed 'no kidding', 'really' and 'you don't say' comments. When it seemed they had run out of things to talk about and the food was almost gone, Emmett surprised Bella by bringing up Edward.
"Are you and Edward happy, Bella?"
Bella blushed and shoved the rest of her pastry into her mouth in a feeble attempt to avoid responding. She nodded.
"I'm not entirely certain that a nod is the right way to respond to that question, Bells."
She smiled, her mouth still full of pastry and shrugged.
Emmett shook his head and spread out on the bench, stretching his arms out across the back.
"I think Rosalie and I could be happy too. I think we will be, actually. Maybe in a few years we can settle into starting our own life together. It would be nice to start a family some day. I know football won't be there for me forever and that's okay… if Rose will be."
Bella nearly choked on the remainder of the pastry in her mouth. She opted to spit it out into her napkin.
"Emmett… what?" Bella couldn't articulate the hundred mile an hour thoughts that were coursing through her mind at that moment. Did her meaty brother just tell her that he was thinking about starting a family with Rosalie Hale? And did he also just admit to being okay to living without football if it was with Rosalie? "Are you feeling okay? What have you done with my real brother?"
Bella feigned looking around the park and inside their picnic basket. Emmett swatted at her hands.
"Come on Bells, don't tell me you haven't thought about the same things with a certain Cullen a million times yourself?" He looked at her seriously and she was taken aback.
Her and Emmett never had these conversations. He would throw in his obligatory big brother comments here and there but they had never been overly serious or emotional. In fact, Bella could remember only one particular conversation that even came close to this.
They had been in Chicago for exactly a week and Bella had cried herself to sleep almost every night. She didn't think Emmett or Charlie heard her quiet sobs at night, but the walls between hers and Emmett's rooms were thinner than she had considered.
That particular night, Bella was sitting on her bed with the box of letters from Renee in front of her. She had been staring at the box for longer than she wanted to admit to herself and had been crying for longer than that.
She didn't hear him come down the hallway, but she heard him open her door. The light from the hallway spilled into her darker room and she quickly threw the box onto the floor away from her door. She turned her head slowly to see her brother standing in the doorway, staring at her.
"Go away, Emmett." She tried to sound strong, but her stuffy nose and raspy throat gave her away.
He strode across the room and the bed creaked as he sat down, facing the door, away from his sister.
"She's not worth your tears, little sister."
He sounded sad. Bella wasn't used to hearing that in her brother's voice. He was always the stoic one, the tough guy, the big six. It made her turn to face his back. She stared at the stripes of his pyjamas for a long time before speaking.
"It doesn't mean I can stop them, you know."
Emmett turned and leaned his massive frame against her headboard. She stayed sitting cross-legged in the middle of her bed as she stared at him. She wiped furiously at her cheeks as the tears continued to flow.
"I loved mom just as much as you did, as you do. But the woman that left us isn't the woman who used to give us cookies and milk when we came home from school or the one who used to keep us up late to dance to records whenever dad worked late. You need to think about it that way. That Renee wouldn't want you to be sad. She'd want you to enjoy what you have. I want you to. I want you to be the Bella I knew in Washington. The one with all the friends – the one I had to threaten half of the boys over. What happened to her?"
Bella wrapped her arms around her knees and rested her chin on top.
"Her mom ran away with another man." The tears came harder now and Bella's shoulders started to shake.
Emmett sat up from the headboard and wrapped his massive arms around his little sister. Her sobs lessened and they sat that way in silence until Emmett spoke again.
"Have you opened any of them yet?"
Bella shook her head against his shoulder. "I can't. I think I need you to throw them away for me."
Emmett pulled away from her and looked her square in the eyes.
"No, Bella. One day you'll want to know what's in them. You keep them until then."
Bella looked down at the box on her floor.
"Maybe we can read them together that day."
Emmett shook his head hard and stood up from her bed.
"No Bella. Renee wrote them to you; they're only for you."
He went back to his own room, shutting her door behind him and Bella curled in on herself, staring at the box until she fell asleep.
Bella remembered eating breakfast together the next day and neither of them bringing up what had been discussed the night before. Bella had the feeling that it would never be brought up again. But Emmett had helped some part of Bella realize that she needed to enjoy their new life and the next day she said hi to a tiny dark haired girl in her history class.
"Earth to Bella!" Emmett was waving his hands in front of Bella's face. She had gotten lost in her memories and had forgotten to respond.
"Sorry, Emmett. I don't know what I want to do with the rest of my life. Of course I've thought about a family with Edward… But I don't know when that will be. Or if that will be." Bella shrugged and started tidying up their mess on the bench.
"There's no if about you and Edward, Bells. I think you two have the sort of thing that's been written in the stars for longer than you know."
Bella would have choked again if she had been eating. Instead she simply stared at the man she used to know as her big brother.
"What's gotten into you, Emmett? Are you sure you're feeling okay?"
He chortled and tried to mess her hair with his massive hands. She ducked out of the way.
"Fit as a fiddle. I've just been thinking about stuff a lot lately, I guess. Can't a guy think about more than football and girls anymore?"
Bella laughed dryly. "They can, but you don't."
"I have many layers." Emmett said sitting up straighter and pulling on his jacket lapels.
Bella resisted the urge to scoff at his comment. Maybe things with Charlie had done something to change Emmett. Maybe they were just both really tired. She was about to suggest they head back to the Cullens when Emmett saw his teammate Peter and jogged across the park to stop him on the sidewalk.
"I'll just be a minute, Bells!" He called over his shoulder.
Bella sighed and crossed her arms. Emmett and football conversations were never under a minute.
\\&/
By the time Edward made it home from the paper, Esme and Alice were just sitting down to dinner. He had been looking forward to seeing Bella all day and was more than disappointed when Alice told him that she and Emmett had gone to see Charlie. He understood their need to go of course, but he wished he had been able to see her before they went.
Alice and Esme talked to each other during dinner, but Edward was mostly silent. He was pretty exhausted from his long day and little sleep the night before. His day at the paper had been pretty uneventful and James had surprisingly behaved himself the entire time. Marcus was happy to finally receive a draft of James' recent article and commended Edward on his creative placement of James' desk. Edward was happy to see that James hadn't harassed any of the women on the newsroom floor today either. Maybe he was finally putting an end to the awful ways of James.
Esme had made pie for dessert and Alice asked him to sit with her on the porch while they ate it. It wasn't an abnormal request, they often spent time together on the porch talking or sitting in silence. Alice was his favourite person to spend time with. Well, possibly the second person nowadays.
Once they had settled on the porch swing and had a soothing rhythm down, Alice debated whether or not to talk to her brother about Bella. Edward decided for her.
"So what did you and Bella do this afternoon?" Edward asked after swallowing a mouthful of apple pie.
"We went shopping downtown."
"Did you find anything you liked? Oh wait, it's you. Did Bella find anything she liked?" Edward popped another forkful of pie into his mouth and smiled through it at his sister.
Alice rolled her eyes as she finished her own forkful of pie. Then she set the fork and plate down on her lap and looked at Edward seriously. He halted his fork midway between his plate and mouth when he caught her look.
"What's wrong, Alice?"
"Edward, I think we should talk about Bella. About you and Bella."
Edward let his fork fall back to his plate. What was there to talk about? He loved Bella. End of story.
"What about us?" He asked, absolutely certain Alice was going somewhere specific with this conversation
"Are you serious about Bella? I know you love her and you'll never intentionally hurt her… but do you think you two will-"
Edward raised his hand to cut off the rest of Alice's question.
"Alice you already know all the answers to these questions. Tell me the actual reason you're asking me."
Alice smiled at her brother. He knew her too well. They knew each other too well.
"Bella told me something today about Renee, but it's not my story to tell you Edward. She needs to be the one to tell you when she's ready. But I can tell you that Renee didn't pass away like we had assumed." Alice wished she could tell Edward the entire story so he could understand Bella better, so he could reassure her about them. But Bella needed to confide in Edward herself and Alice couldn't take that step for her.
Edward was understandably confused.
"She didn't pass away? But the way Emmett always acted whenever Bella started to talk about her… What happened to her then? And why is Bella's mother the reason you're asking me questions you already know the answers to?"
It took him a few moments, but he pieced enough together eventually. Alice resumed eating her pie while Edward thought beside her.
"Something happened between Charlie and Renee that makes Bella apprehensive about the two of us." Edward stared out at their lawn as he processed his revelation.
Alice smiled at the shadows.
\\&/
Bella had grown more than restless waiting for Emmett to finish his conversation with Peter. It had been at least thirty minutes since they had started talking. Bella had been picking at the last of the fruit salad to pass the time while she sat on the park bench. Emmett had periodically mimed 'one minute' in her direction while he talked, but it had been too many minutes. Bella was ready to go home.
Just as she got up to go and let her brother have a piece of her mind, she noticed a group of three or four men cutting across the park in her direction. They were loud and boisterous and Bella guessed they were all drunk. She started to move quicker towards her brother lest the drunken men walk past her bench, but in her haste and in typical Bella fashion, she stumbled over a small shrub and fell onto the grass. The men had clearly seen her trip because they started laughing loudly and she could tell they were headed even closer to her. She scrambled to stand up and wipe her skirt off. She had snagged her stockings and her skirt was covered was in grass stains. Annoyed at herself, Emmett, and the drunken men she huffed loudly.
"Well if it isn't my favourite reporter. Take a little spill there, did you baby?" James swaggered over to Bella with his three friends staggering along behind him.
Bella smiled sardonically at her luck. James misread her smile completely as was part of his charm.
"Happy to see me, baby? Not as happy as I am to see you. I missed you at work today. Did ya get my flowers okay? I didn't figure Cullen for the romantic type so I'm sure mine were the only ones." James leaned in closer to Bella as he spoke and his cronies snickered loudly.
Bella held her breath as he moved closer, James reeked of booze and stale cigarette smoke.
"It's Miss Swan. And I did not appreciate your gift. They're in the trash, where you belong." Bella hissed at him and straightened herself as tall as she could in order to look as menacing as she possible while she spoke. She didn't think she had ever met anyone she disliked as much as James. Satisfied with her scathing comment, Bella turned to run towards Emmett and her sanctuary from James.
James grabbed onto the top portion of her arm, hard.
"Where do you think you're going, baby? Our night is only just beginning." He pulled her in close to him, gripping both of her upper arms too hard.
"Ow!" Bella yelled, furious. "Let me go you big jerk!" She kicked him in the shin as hard as she could, but that only caused him to grip her arms tighter. Bella was certain she would have bruises already. She was starting to get frightened too: obviously he wasn't going to let go anytime soon. Where was Emmett? Surely he could see them!
"Are you going to scream for me next, baby?" James laughed again and his cronies laughed along with him. Bella hated all of them.
"Please James, you're hurting me. Just let me go!" She tried pleading with him since violence only seemed to spur him on. Bella realized that James really was sick and couldn't fathom what reasons Marcus had for keeping him at the paper with other human beings.
"What the hell is this! You let her go right now, buddy." Emmett had finally noticed Bella's predicament and had run over with his friend Peter in tow. They were easily twice the size of James and each one of his friends. And they were both angry.
But James didn't loosen his grip on Bella. She felt tears start to prick at her eyes as the pressure on her arms increased.
"What's this, baby? Going around behind Cullen's back are you? Maybe you're more my type of woman that I thought! It's okay boys, you can have her back when I'm finished with her." James' choir laughed again and he flashed Emmett and Peter a sickening smile.
Emmett's face was almost purple as he wrenched Bella out of James' grip. He pushed her gently into Peter and popped James square in the nose. James' hands flew up to cover his face and stop the blood from pouring down his chin and Emmett socked him right in the stomach causing him to drop to the ground completely. James' cronies liked causing trouble more than being in the middle of it and they all took off running in the opposite direction.
Emmett turned back to Bella who was standing behind Peter's protective stance, hands balled into fists at her sides and tears silently streaming down her cheeks. Her hat was askew and her hair had become disheveled. Add that to the damage caused to her clothes from her earlier fall and she looked liked she had been in the fight herself. Emmett's heart broke to see her like that.
"What happened? Who is this creep, Bella?" Emmett and Peter both looked at Bella while Emmett tried to fix her hat and wipe her tears from her cheeks.
"He's James, Emmett. From the paper."
Emmett bristled. "The one who sent the flowers?"
Bella nodded and pushed away Emmett's hands. She straightened her own hat and smoothed her hair down the best she could. She hated feeling so helpless. She would have loved to be the one to send James down to the ground like that. But as long as someone did it, she felt mildly satisfied.
Emmett turned back to the huddled mass on the grass that he now knew as James.
"So you're the creep that's been bothering my sister? Well that ends now, you hear me? You don't touch her or even look at her anymore or you're going to see me again real soon. And next time I'll break a little more than just your nose." Emmett leaned down so he was right beside James on the ground.
James looked up at Emmett through his bloody hands and winked at him. Emmett's face contorted in rage and he balled his fist up to punch him again when James sat up and put both his hand out in front of him, palms up.
"Okay, okay. I'll leave Miss Swan alone. Relax there, big six. I didn't know she came equipped with a cavalry." James pulled out a handkerchief and set it against his clearly broken and very bloody nose.
Emmett let his fist fall back down to his side and stood up.
"You just make sure you remember it, buddy. If I hear about anything happening again you'll be seeing me soon."
Emmett picked up their picnic basket from the bench and then grabbed Bella's hand.
"Thanks Peter, sorry about this. I guess you never know what kind of riff-raff you're going to run into in the park at night." Emmett smiled at his teammate.
"No problem, pal. You let me know if you need a hand taking care of this one again, okay? And you take care Bella. Don't let this creep ruin the rest of your night." Peter smiled warmly at Bella but she could only nod her thanks. Her arms hurt and she felt awful. She couldn't wait to get home.
Emmett towed her the rest of the walk to the car, never letting go of her hand for a minute. Once they were in his car and on their way back to the Cullen house, Bella thanked her brother.
"It's all part of the big brother service. Don't mention it." Emmett quipped and smiled at Bella, but she could tell he was a little more concerned than he was saying. Of all the luck, of course she would have to get tangled up with someone like James.
"Maybe we shouldn't mention it to Edward, Emmett." Bella looked down at her hands, she had scrapes on the palms of her hands from her trip in the park too. She looked almost as bad as she felt.
"Maybe you'd better let him know, Bells. That's not the sort of thing you want to keep from someone like Edward." Emmett's tone of voice told Bella that if she didn't tell Edward, Emmett certainly would, but whether it was because he was worried about her or because he wanted to brag about how he wailed on James, Bella wasn't entirely sure. Boys, she thought.
When they pulled into the Cullen's driveway, they could see Alice and Edward sitting on the porch swing, remnants of desert lining the porch railing in front of them. They both stood up and moved to the stairs when they saw the car pull up. Alice stayed on the porch while Edward hurried down the stairs towards the car and Bella. Bella sucked in a huge lungful of air as Emmett helped her out of the car. She could tell from Emmett's face that she looked awful; of course she would have to explain what happened to Edward.
Edward halted a few feet away from them and slowly took in Bella's appearance. Her hair was still disheveled- though her hat was straight- and she had grass stains all over the front of her long skirt. The tear marks down her cheeks were clearly visible and even if they hadn't been, her red eyes gave away the fact that she had been recently crying.
"Bella!" Edward said, closing the gap between them quickly. "Bella, love. What happened to you?"
Alice had descended the porch stairs now and was standing next to Emmett on the lawn; they were all staring at Bella intently. Bella frowned at all the attention.
"I tripped in the park, there was a shrub I didn't see, it was dark." Bella looked down at herself as she spoke, trying to smooth out her skirt. Edward took both of her hands into his and turned them over so he could look at her palms. He kissed each one gently and then cupped her cheek with one hand. He looked at her so lovingly she forgot everything that had happened and smiled widely. This was what she needed to fix her strange day – Edward. She leaned into his palm and closed her eyes.
Emmett cleared his throat expectantly. Bella's eyes snapped open and she was forced back into reality.
"And then we ran into James."
Edward whipped around to look at Emmett.
"What!"
Emmett held up his free hand.
"Don't worry, I took good care of that scumbag. He won't be bothering Bells again." He smiled a little smugly.
"What do you mean you ran into him, Bella? What happened?" Alice was staring at her friend in horror.
Bella retold what had happened, Emmett looked furious when she relayed James' comments before he had appeared and Edward looked murderous the entire time. Bella didn't specify how much James' grip had hurt her arms; it would only make things worse.
"Oh, Bella!" Alice cried when she had finished and pulled her friend in for a hug. "Let's go inside. You can get into your pyjamas and I'll make us all some cocoa."
Bella gripped her friend around the waist and went inside. Edward and Emmett followed suit behind them, muttering to each other about James and what else they'd like to do to him. Edward was jealous that Emmett had been able to punch James first and Emmett was proud of Edward's decision to move James' desk.
Once Bella had changed into her nightgown and robe, she joined everyone in the kitchen for cocoa and cookies. Everyone had changed in their pyjamas too and they all sat around the kitchen table reminiscing about high school stories and embarrassing moments. Most of the embarrassing moments were Bella related since she was the clumsiest of the group. But she laughed along with the rest of them at herself, she was feeling in better spirits and had almost completely forgotten about her horrible evening when she knocked the rest of her mug of cocoa into her lap.
"Shoot!" She cried and she stood up quickly and tried to dab at the mess with a napkin. Everyone was too busy laughing to help her out right away.
"It's not a day that ends in 'y' if it doesn't have Bella falling or spilling something." Emmett joked as he started to sop up the spill on the table.
Edward passed Bella his napkin to help her soak up the cocoa on her robe, but there was no point, it was soaked. Bella sighed as she stopped dabbing.
Alice giggled across the table. "I can lend you one of mine, Bella. Just take it off. I'll be right back." Alice disappeared from the kitchen to fetch Bella a new robe.
Bella untied the belt and slipped her robe off, revealing her sleeveless nightgown. Emmett and Edward stopped cleaning up the table as soon as Bella sat back down without her robe. They both stared at her with open mouths.
"What?" She asked, looking from one face to the other. "Did I do something else?"
Alice returned to the kitchen with a dark blue robe in her arms. She stopped in the middle of the kitchen and adopted the same look on her face as Emmett and Edward. Bella was getting angry, why wouldn't they tell her what they were looking at? Then she remembered that her gown was sleeveless…
"Bella, your arms!" Alice was horrified.
Edward and Emmett's looks had changed from shock to rage. Bella slowly looked down at one arm and then the other. Only just starting to appear were perfectly defined bruises in the shape of eight long fingers and two thick thumbs. Bella ripped the robe out of Alice's arms and shrugged into it quickly. She wasn't ashamed of the bruises, they weren't her fault – she just hoped that covering them would help everyone else relax.
"Isabella Marie Swan! How could you not have told us how hard he was holding on to you?" Emmett flopped back into his chair, the mess on the table completely forgotten.
Bella did not appreciate his accusatory tone.
"Oh dry up, Emmett." Bella sank down further in her chair and desperately resisted the urge to pout. She glanced sideways at Edward – he still looked as though he may commit murder at any moment. Alice had chosen to busy herself cleaning up their evening snack.
Bella began to feel uneasy that Edward hadn't spoken yet. She turned to face him completely.
"Edward?"
He shook his head curtly at her as if to tell her he couldn't talk about it right then. That was enough for Bella.
"Oh both of you can go dry up! This creep bothers me and both of you act like I've done something wrong by not being more detailed about the park!"
"Bella, we're just worried about you. It's not right what he did to you." Alice tried to soothe Bella's anger, but the fact that she was siding with Edward and Emmett only made Bella angrier.
"It's not my fault James is crazy! And this happened to me not to you two!" Bella shouted and pointed at Emmett and Edward respectively. "Maybe you should be more interested in whether or not I'm okay and less in how angry you both are." She looked at Edward expectantly.
"Bella," Edward ground out his words from between fiercely clenched teeth. "I can't have this lunatic laying his hands on you. I simply won't."
Bella felt as though she would implode. Sure James was a little off and he certainly had been out of line every single time she had seen him but the way Emmett and Edward were reacting was making her more angry than James had in the past two days combined. She opened her mouth and then closed it twice before she finally found the words she needed to make them all understand how angry she was with all of them.
"Forget you guys."
It wasn't as eloquent as she would have liked, but she was fairly confident it drove her point home. She stormed up the stairs and retrieved all of her belongings from Edward's room and struggled with them into the unfinished guest room. It was unorganized and still awaiting another coat of paint, but it would suit her fine for now. She slammed the door, fully aware it made her seem childish and dropped her things onto the floor. The bed was pushed into the corner, crookedly and draped in sheets to protect it from the paint. She ripped off the coverings and climbed under the comforter quickly. She stewed about Emmett, Edward and Alice's reactions until she finally drifted off into a restless and dream-filled sleep. Bella hoped that she would be hearing apologies at breakfast from all three of them.
