Chapter 9: Card House Dreamer

Disclaimer: All of the plot lines and characters from Twilight are Stephenie Meyer's.


Two weeks had passed since Bella's last interaction with Edward. The only time she ever heard his voice was when Mr. Banner asked him a question in biology. Mike, at least, seemed pleased with the lack of friendly discourse between the two--it seemed as though he was worried that after Bella singing his praises for saving her life, she would pursue something further between them. She had found herself on multiple occasions wanting to scream at him that the reason she wasn't talking to Edward was the very reason she and Mike could never be together, even if she liked him as more than a friend.

Even without interacting with Edward--and even though there had hardly been any before--she couldn't make herself stop liking him. The velvet sound of his voice, the way his eyes sometimes flicked to her when he thought she wasn't looking, the ease with which he answered Mr. Banner's questions as though he'd been through it all dozens of times before... it scared her that she couldn't simply shut off her emotions, which was ordinarily something she was very skilled at.

Natalie had gotten a job at the bookstore Bella had stopped in before her first day of work. It paid decently, but not as well as she needed it to if she would have enough for college in a year and a half's time. However, she'd told Bella that if she combined another part time job with her savings, she'd only need a few loans from the bank. She still hadn't decided as to what she wanted to go to college to learn; all either of them knew was that they didn't want to turn out like some of their friends from Phoenix.

And so it happened that Bella found herself alone at seven o'clock on a school night. Normally, Natalie worked during the school day and saw her at night (she was still in the process of finding her own place to stay), but today she had been asked to fill in for a co-worker. James was playing video games, so she didn't even have the option of watching TV. Not wanting to spend the whole night sitting in front of her computer, she dialed Ash's number on her phone.

"Hello?" he asked.

"Hey Ash, it's Bella. Are you doing anything right now?"

"Just getting started on that coconut rum we bought last time, you wanna join me?"

"Sure, I'll be there in fifteen."

Bella threw off the pajamas she'd been lounging in, comfortable as they were. She picked up a pair of black leggings, a frayed jean skirt, a red cami, and a black sweater. She threw on her pendant and a pair of red flats, reapplied a bit of eyeliner, and shoved her phone in her skirt pocket.

"Hey, James," she called. He was so enraptured by the game that he didn't seem to hear her. Typical boy. "James," she repeated, sitting down next to him.

"Give me a second," he said distractedly, cutting off the head of one of his enemies before pausing the game. "What is it?"

"Can you give me a ride over to Ash's place?"

"Bella, you're the one with the car, remember?"

She rolled her eyes. "Right, but I'm not going to want to be driving myself home."

James gave a loud sigh of mock aggravation. "Jesus, Bella, you're so demanding!"

"Suck it up," she teased him, "I'll get Natalie to drive me back."

James laughed. "No problem," he said before ruffling her hair, "You're such a safe little drinker! Just let me finish this level."

Bella spent the time James needed to kill even more pixels fixing her hair from his ruffling. When he was finally satisfied, he grabbed her keys and had them quickly snatched back by his step sister.

"I just need you to come along so you can drive it back," she said, "Get in the car."

James complied bitterly, complaining about her stereo the entire way there. She told him that if it bothered him so much, he could buy her a new one, but he said he'd rather save money for buying himself a new car--"with a better stereo than yours".

"Get out of here," she told him when they arrived.

"Gee, you're welcome," he shot back, "Glad to know this favor was appreciated."

"Thanks!" she called, knocking on the door as James drove away noisily.

"Hey," Ash slurred as he opened the door and led her to the kitchen, gesturing to the open liquor cabinet, "Help yourself."

Bella searched the cluttered fridge for pineapple juice to mix with the coconut rum, throwing in some grenadine for good measure. The rum that they'd bought last week was already a quarter gone--and she was fairly certain that Ash had opened it tonight. Guess I'll definitely be needing that ride from Natalie, she thought before joining her friend in the bedroom. He was sprawled across his mattress, gazing at the TV adjacent to the bed. She kicked off her shoes and sat down next to him, sipping her drink while trying to determine what movie was playing. It was an old, black and white feature on AMC that she didn't recognize. She tried asking Ash if he knew the name of it, but he just mumbled a negative and snaked his arm around her waist. He rested his head on her shoulder and she chugged the rest of her drink and smiled. She loved drunken cuddling.

The woman with the pearl necklace was throwing a lamp at her cheating husband the second time they watched the movie when Ash pressed his lips into her collarbone. Bella tensed.

"Ash," she said warningly.

"Mmm," was his only response. He rolled over so that he was on top of her and brushed the hair out of her face. "I love you," he said before kissing her. For a moment, she relaxed into the embrace, but the stale taste of alcohol on Ash's breath brought her back to reality.

"We can't do this," she said, breaking away as he trailed pecks along her neck. When his hands found the zipper on her sweater, she pushed him off and sat up. "Ash."

"Why not?" he asked, suddenly angry.

Bella looked at him sadly, flashing back to when she had let go of her inhibitions with Declan. "Because I don't love you."

For a instant, hurt glimmered in her friends eyes. But afterwards, it was replaced with unmistakable, drunken fury. He threw her back down and ripped the sweater off, throwing it carelessly across the room. She tried to push him off again, but he was too strong--or she was too frail. Either way, she couldn't get him off as he removed her skirt, and she started to panic. "Ash," she said pleadingly, "Stop."

He silenced her pleas with his mouth, his hands everywhere on her body. "You know you want it," he said huskily, grabbing her ass roughly. And for a second, she wasn't in Ash's room, on Ash's bed, with Ash on top of her. She was lying terrified on her own bed in Phoenix with her mother's boyfriend on top of her, doing things Renee had told her to save for marriage, and whispering those same words in her ear.

"Not again," she moaned, "Please."

She began to hyperventilate as Ash's fingers found the top of her leggings and began to slide them down. She looked around the room frantically for something to help her escape, anything that would distract him long enough for her to run. In the corner of her eye, she spotted a lamp on the nightstand beside her and remembered the woman with the cheating husband from the movie she couldn't recognize. Hoping against hope that this would work, she swung her arm out and felt it land on the shade. She looked down to make sure Ash wasn't paying attention to her; he was, as she expected, too preoccupied with removing the tight leggings than with what the upper half of Bella's body was up to. She slid her hand down the lamp, getting a firm grip on it before swinging her arm around to bash Ash in the head, knocking him to the side. He tried to get back up, and she was blinded by the memory of the man who had stolen her innocence and gotten away with it. She lifted the lamp and swung it down again, hearing the glass break and bringing it up and down repeatedly in a frenzy. Suddenly, she smelled the vile combination of rust and salt and looked down to find Ash's cheek was bleeding from her assault. She dropped the lamp in horror, coming to her senses and bolting out the front door.

She ran until she saw the stop sign at the end of Ash's block, and then the street sign at the end of the next one, and then farther and farther, pushing her legs to go faster, as fast as they could go, until the burn in her legs would cancel out the ache in her mind...

Ash's advances had brought back memories she hadn't let herself think about for almost three years. She could almost feel Phil's hands on her chest, his sickening words in her ear, his fingers inside of her...

And now other thoughts were very near to breaking through the imaginary, yet very real, barrier she had set up in her mind, and she must not let them, she must go faster...

She was closing in on the next stop sign, she must work harder, she must go faster...

And then she was catapulting to the ground, her ankle twisted at an odd angle, and the pain was everywhere, and she did not know how long she sat there, drinking it in, relishing in a physical expression of her pain...

And then she snapped back to reality. She was sitting on the edge of a deserted highway. She had no idea what time it was, only that it was late enough for the stars to be out and no one to be on the road. She had gotten to Ash's around nine, and they'd watched the same movie twice...

Bella gave up trying to figure out how late it was and examined herself. Her hair was a mess, her makeup felt smeared, and she would bet her life that her eyes were bloodshot from the tears she hadn't even realized were streaming down her cheeks. The middle of her thighs were chafed from trying to run with her leggings still pulled halfway down. She slowly slid them back up, gasping as the fabric ran over her twisted ankle. She was now dressed in just a cami and thin leggings that her lacy white thong was easily visible through, with no shoes or sweater or any way of keeping warm in the freezing Forks weather.

"Fuck," she swore as she realized her phone was still in the pocket of her skirt, which was currently lying on the floor of Ash's bedroom. She placed her hands on the concrete, shifting her weight to them as she slowly lifted herself from the ground. She took a step with her uninjured leg, but when she brought the other one forward, pain shot through her body and she collapsed again in a heap. "FUCK!" she shouted again. She had no phone, she had barely any clothing on, she could probably make herself walk for a short while but there was no way she could make it all the way home...

She heard the roar of an engine, and moments later she saw a silver Volvo speeding down the highway. She tried to call out for it to stop, but it was going too fast and it passed her before she could open her mouth. When the car was almost a hundred feet away, it screeched to a halt. Bella watched as it did a U-turn in the middle of the street and came racing back towards her, stopping just feet away from where she was sitting. Edward Cullen threw open his door and ran over to her.

"Bella? Are you alright?"

She bit her lip. "I don't know if I can walk," she said, gesturing to her ankle. Without a word, Edward scooped her up in his arms, opened the passenger side's door, and set her down gently before returning to his side of the car.

"Where are you taking me?" she asked as he started the engine.

"The emergency room."

"No."

"Bella, you have to get your ankle looked at."

"I'm not going to any hospitals."

"Bella--"

"Edward, I will jump out of this car."

"And stay stranded in the middle of the road without even being able to walk home?"

Bella wrapped her arms around her stomach and rested her head on the glove compartment. "Please."

Edward growled. "Fine. I'll take you to Carlisle."

"Fine," she whispered.

They drove in silence for a few minutes, Edward never releasing his ironclad grip on the steering wheel and Bella never lifting her head from the glove compartment. She felt his hand lift her chin so she was looking at him.

"Bella," he said, "Who did this to you?"

She ran her hands through her hair and leaned back against the seat, then started laughing hysterically. Edward was looking at her like she was deranged. "What on earth is funny about this situation?" he asked.

"You warned me about him, and I didn't listen to you," she answered, her voice cracking at the end of her sentence.

Edward pinched the bridge of his nose. "What happened?"

"We were watching old movies..." she began, "He'd had a lot more to drink than I did. And he started kissing me, and told me he loved me, and I told him I didn't love him back, and he got really angry and wouldn't let me up..."

Edward took a deep breath, appearing to be trying to calm himself. "How did you get away?"

"I beat him with a lamp."

Edward's lips quirked slightly at that statement. Bella looked out the window at the fields they were speeding past, a traitorous tear sliding unintentionally down her cheek.

"Are you alright?" Edward asked softly. She wiped her face quickly and nodded.

"Bella--"

"I don't want to talk about it."

The last few minutes passed in silence, and then they were pulling into what was apparently the Cullens' lawn. Under any other circumstances, Bella would have been stunned by the magnificence of the house before her, but after everything that had happened tonight, she hardly noticed it. Edward wrapped his arm around her waist, letting her lean her weight on him as they made their way to the door.

"Won't your family be asleep?" she asked.

"No."

Alice opened the door the moment they reached it. "Go get Carlisle," she told Edward, placing Bella's arm around her shoulders and leading her to a couch in the middle of the room. "I'll be right back," she promised, and sure enough, she returned a few seconds later with a pair of shorts and a new sweater. Bella accepted them graciously, covering her freezing body with the soft material. She disappeared again, re-emerging with a glass of ice water that she handed to Bella while propping the injured leg on the coffee table in front of the couch. Alice seemed to sense that Bella didn't want to talk, so instead she sat beside her, stroking her hair until Carlisle and Edward descended the stairs.

"If this were under better circumstances, I'd say it's good to see you again, Bella," said Carlisle as he walked over and examined her ankle, "but it seems that you have a knack for getting yourself injured."

"And a knack for being rescued by Edward," she murmured.

Carlise smiled. "That, too. It doesn't look bad at all; you'll just need to ice it for a while before I can set it, and then ice it again. As long as you stay off of it for a while, you should be fine."

"So I'm not gonna need crutches or anything?"

"No," laughed the doctor, "but it might be best if you stayed here for the night. Is that alright with you?"

"That's fine," said Bella, suddenly realizing just how tired she was, "Can I borrow someone's phone? I need to call Charlie and Michelle."

Alice promptly handed her a cell phone she'd produced from her back pocket. "Thanks," she muttered. James answered the phone when she dialed the house number.

"Hello?"

"James, it's Bella."

"Should I tell Natalie to pick you up?"

"No, are Charlie and Michelle asleep?"

"Yeah, why?" That was fine. They were used to going to bed before she or James got home.

"Can you let them know I won't be there in the morning? You can drive my car to school."

"Are you staying over at Ash's?"

Bella winced. "No. I ended up seeing Edward, and I hurt my ankle, so he took me back to his house to see Carlisle."

"Edward Cullen?"

"Yeah, don't ask. Just tell them that Carlisle wanted me to stay the night until I was okay to use my ankle."

"Alright, Bella. Try not to injure yourself again before I see you tomorrow."

"Thanks, James. Bye."

"Bye."

Carlisle had gotten her a bag of ice while she had been on the phone, and Edward had disappeared altogether. She pressed the bag to her injury, letting the freezing ice sooth her burning ankle. Alice repositioned them so that Bella was lying down with her head resting in Alice's lap. As she felt her consciousness slowly slip away, she whispered, "Tell Edward I said thank you..."


Author's Note:

Three chapters in three days, people. And this is a long one, too! I am on a fuckin' roll! (And yes, wingedspirit, I do curse a lot. xD)

Thanks a million for your reviews, guys. Keep 'em coming!

goldenrose37--Bella has done hard drugs before (when she was in Phoenix), but in the time she's spent in Forks she's only drank and smoked weed.