AUTHOR'S NOTE: And I'm back! Bearing a new chapter that was hopefully worth the wait. Thanks so much for the reviews, they really inspired me once I was able to get back on my computer. Okay, enough of me rambling. Here's the chapter!
Stephenie Meyer's holdin' all the cards, I'm just peekin' over her shoulder.
Chapter Ten:
One month. It had been exactly one month since the night Edward walked out of my hotel room in Valdosta. I guess the saying was true, things can always get worse.
Several members of the Cullen family tried to contact me, via the cell phone Edward had replaced without my knowledge. I'd honestly thought about disposing of it kind of like I'd gotten rid of the other one. But something was keeping me from that. It was my only tangible link to the family I was leaving behind yet again.
I hadn't even given him a chance to talk some sense into me before I was packed and in my Charger. There were still things I had left to do in Valdosta, but I couldn't ignore the weird pull I had been feeling for a few days now. Like there was somewhere else I was supposed to be, another puzzle of my life waiting desperately to be put together.
That magnetic pull brought me back to Hanover. It was difficult to be so close to the home I'd been reborn into without contacting anyone, but I had to. Alerting the others to my re-entrance into the New Hampshire landscape didn't particularly factor into the hazy set of plans forming in my mind. I knew Alice would forsee me coming home and hopefully just tell the others that I was safe. That I had to do this on my own, even though it hurt more than most of the stuff I'd experienced in the first few months of my new life. I still couldn't remember the night that had led me to the body I was forever encased in and that was one piece of my history that was keeping me at bay. If I could just remember that night, maybe it would help me move forward. This was my last resort, the one sure-fire way I could think of to help me put things behind me. The past had been tripping me up enough. It was just a little unnerving to realize that it wasn't just my past in the way.
Pushing that from my mind, I stared at the hotel room I'd managed to track down. It'd taken a lot more time than I would've liked, but it felt strangely comforting to be standing in the last room I'd been in as a coherent, conscious human. These were the expanse of four walls I'd desperately escaped to in hope of safety.
I sighed quietly and let my eyes roam over every single flat surface, crook, and shadow in the immaculately cleaned hotel room. I could smell the faint, lingering traces of bleach that had been mixed with some kind of detergent for the carpeting. Upon moving further into the room, air felt like it was clinging to my throat when the tiniest trace of human blood tickled my nostrils. The cleaning personnel had missed a spot.
As soon as I noticed the tiny speck of blood on a far corner of the low dresser set directly across from the bed, a myriad of images began to flicker through my mind. They were hazy and dimly lit, like staring at a TV slowly fading out. I couldn't get a firm grip on anything, everything was racing past before I could clearly bring things into focus. My eyes clenched shut on their own accord and I momentarily gave myself over to the memories trying to regenerate in my head.
Jason had always been an intimidating person, that wasn't something I'd been able to forget. It would be with me for as long as eternity lasted. I hadn't noticed it until it was too late, the trait always deeply buried beneath his calming demenor. More memories began to intermix with the slideshow a speck of my human blood had created. My body felt even colder than normal and every single muscle in my body seemed to stop working as I watched a younger version of myself.
I looked so happy in the murky haze of my flashback. Anyone could have noticed the mega-watt grin stretching my lips. Jason wasn't too far away in this mental reenactment, smiling patiently over my left shoulder as I looked at something that was just out of focus for my vampire eyes. I could only guess at the object that held my attention. The flashback continued on without me mentally needing to be there and eventually, which was probably only a few seconds, what my human eyes had been focused on came into view. My last good birthday.
I'd spent the entire day with Jason and his family. At the time, their home had been a place of refuge for me, I could relax and just be a normal girl. That day, I didn't have to worry about my father smacking me for saying the wrong thing, or my mother cowering in the corner in fear that she'd messed up a miniscule detail. It'd just been about celebrating the fact that I was alive and celebrating yet another birthday. The object in my hand was the most sentimental gift I'd ever been given; a framed picture that had been taken on our first date.
I couldn't believe how young I'd looked as I dragged myself back to the present. That girl was long gone, having been destroyed by circumstances beyond my control. I couldn't consciously remember the last time I'd felt the way I had on my fourteenth birthday. I'd lost track of the time when I could just be normal and carefree.
Or so I thought.
The realization hit me so much harder than I thought it would, probably because I wasn't expecting it. I wasn't expecting to be able to make an easy connection between my human life and my new, vampiric existance. Jason's comforting embrace had dissolved into an intimdiating grip that could crush me if so desired. I'd felt the same way when Edward hugged me for the very first time. Only, after nearly seven months in his world, that had yet to wan. I still got the same feeling every single time he held me in his arms. But it extended beyond that with the boyish vampire that had helped piece some of me back together. All he had to do was look at me now and I felt whole. I could let go of all the baggage that had accompanied me into this new world and just be myself. Be the girl I'd lost when I became a mother and wife.
I'd sacrificed so much over the short span of my life. I'd quit school for Jason, I pushed aside all of the foolish hopes and dreams I'd kept to myself while the world around me grew darker and more dangerous. I'd held such high hopes for my life, the life I wanted when I was finally able to escape the scenery my parents had pulled me into. I could now remember it all so clearly and vividly. I'd wanted to be a dancer, eventually owning my own dance studio so that I could teach children the escape I'd found very early on in life. That was the only thing my parents had given me, and Jason allowed me to keep it when our relationship grew serious.
I had to sit down on the edge of the neatly-made bed when a new, more vivid memory assaulted me. Edward had caught me countless times, listening to music and dancing around my bedroom. I hadn't known, at the time, where all the percise movements of my feet had come from. All indicitive of my time spent in countless dance classes over the years. Even though my memory had lost the complicated twists and turns, my feet hadn't been able to forget.
My body seemed to remember every single thing that I could not.
My body was now remembering much more than complicated dance steps I'd been taught by a woman of forty aging gracefully. A familiar tightening began to build up in my lower abdomen and an assault of crisp images replaced what I'd been trying so hard to regain. I could still feel his scent in my nose, his smooth skin gliding effortlessly against mine as our bodies picked up a rhythm that couldn't be created any other way. He'd done so much more than just give my body the release I didn't think it was capable of. Even though he pieced some of my broken heart and soul back together, he'd done one thing that I could not escape now.
He'd broken my defenses down so much so that I was now physically aching for him. Edward had ignited yet another foreign emotion in my long-ago numbed body.
Shaking my head, I frowned at the wall in front of me and looked over at the microscopic spot of blood. The reason I was here. The insane, hairbrained excuse I'd concocted to justify leaving Valdosta without giving him any warning. My last night as a human.
If I let him, Edward Cullen could very well distract me from the one thing that tiny, angry voice in the back of my head wanted most.
The memories began to trickle in yet again and I could at least remember the beginning of my last fight with Jason North. I'd been foolish enough to call the one friend I thought I could count on. I'd given her my whereabouts under the delusion that she would keep it safey tucked inside her own mind. She knew what had been going on with Jason, she was the only person in my life encouraging me to take my daughter and leave him. We both knew it was going to take an act of God for me to escape with our child, but she'd been that source of strength. Then she went and betrayed me in the worst of ways.
Looking back on that night now, I still wasn't sure if I'd told her everything that had happened during my journey from Valdosta to Hanover. I couldn't recall if, during my last conversation with her, I'd let her know that my daughter was no longer alive. One moment of uncontrollable rage at the hands of her father and she'd become lost to me forever. Much like the girl that had been broken in this very room.
The same anger and defiance I felt that night rushed back to me, crashing into me like two rocks in a horrific landslide. I'd been so ready to stand up to Jason, losing my daughter serving as the final piece of the backbone I'd worked so hard to create against my husband. But that first slap, the back of his hand connecting with my jaw as I opened the door, unsuspectingly, destroyed every single thing I'd worked so hard to build.
I winced as the images came into sharper focus, the individual pockets of my infalliable mind working together to reclaim what was in my past. Jason didn't waste any time once he had me on the floor. His rage engulfed the entire space and I had felt like I was choking on it, pinned beneath him as his fist connected over and over with my jaw. The muscles in my side flexed on their own will as I recounted being dragged to my feet then sent hurling into the dresser that was still in front of me. When my head bounced violently off the table to the right of the bed as I slid over the mattress, I lost the train of connecting images. The most significant trauma that Jason had inflicted were moments of my life that I would never be able to reclaim. I'd never know what he did to me once I was knocked unconscious and crumpled to the floor.
All I knew for sure were the words he whispered into my ear as I faded away that last time. Words that would now accompany these images to haunt me for the rest of my days.
You're not worth my time anymore. I don't want you anymore so that means no one else is ever going to have you again.
If he only knew how dangerously wrong he'd been the night he left me for dead.