Lies & Secrets
Chapter 9
Meadow
Disclaimer: Twilight is not mine, only this story's plot is.
Warning: This story contains mature themes.
BPOV
X
When I was little, growing up seemed like getting a job, a husband, a house and a dog. It looked like growing my hair out to curl it every day and wearing makeup and picking out my own clothes.
In my imagination, it never looked like this.
But, I suppose, my imagination doesn't matter now. My life is only reality from here on out; no more dreaming. It never did me any good.
Everything I do for a while after Sue's lecture is perfectly responsible. I run errands that any decent adult would do: I return the rental car, I ring up an local realtor to arrange viewings for some of the more secluded houses in the area. I visit La Push and ask Jake to keep an eye out for a car I could buy, and every night, I help Sue cook dinner so that I might become more competent than just noodles and toast one day.
I even go to the hospital and have a doctor sign an NDA before checking me over, to review whatever lasting problems I'll have from drug use. The end result is that I stopped just shy of damaging myself beyond repair and he sends me away with a million guidelines and phone numbers and diet plans to help me with recovery.
When I'm foggy from too many painkillers for a headache I didn't really have, I force myself to boot up my phone and grit my teeth, reading over some of the angry texts having been sent my way.
Angry is a mild word for them, really.
And then I do something stupid that I'll probably regret, but it's the only thing I can think to do. The only thing that I think will make me feel any better, because it's the only thing that'll change anything.
I text Aro to tell him I quit.
I tell him I quit the band, his record label, the publicity stunts.
I'm finished with LA and the people in it; I'm done with the manipulated music produced with my name on it, and the stupid things people say about me when they think I can't hear.
I'm sick of everything but I'm sick mostly of myself.
I need a fresh start and a fresh start that doesn't involve drugging myself to the high heavens to get through another album release, or another tour, or another round of interviews that go on every day of every week.
The day I send the text, I spend the whole day locked in my room, either crying or pacing a hole in the floor.
I know I'll lose everyone over this, but I don't want to go back. I don't see how I can. Because every time I go back, I pick up old habits right where they left off and I can't afford to do it anymore.
I haven't got the stamina for it anymore.
When Sue arrives home from work, she pokes her head in the door and, at the sight of me in a puddle of used tissues with a wet pillow cuddled to my chest, she sighs and shakes her head, walking in to sit next to me and pull me into a hug.
"Oh Bella," she sighs. "What's wrong, sweetheart?"
"I quit," I choke.
She's silent for a few beats, which is the only sign of shock she shows. "Do you regret it?"
"Everyone's going to hate me," I sob into the pillow and a fresh wave of tears replace the ones that have dried on my cheeks.
"Nobody will hate you, sweetheart."
"They will," I choke.
"Are you sure this is what you want, Bella?"
"I can't go back there," I answer. "I can't do it anymore."
"Okay, sweetie," she says, her voice soothingly quiet. Her hand brushes my hair from my face behind my ear and she cradles my face gently, rubbing the tears from my cheeks. "Then there's no need to cry. You don't have to go anywhere you don't want to."
"He's going to do something," I say. "He always does."
"Who, sweetheart?"
"Uncle Aro."
I shudder, remembering the last time I tried this, two years ago, from a rehab centre in Phoenix and Aro burst in the front door the next day, threatened to take me to court and sue me for all I'm worth or turn me over to the press for drug abuse if I didn't concede and return.
So I did, on the condition he wouldn't try and push me to extremes on crazy drugs nobody should take. He agreed with a nod of his head and a dismissive wave. Then he pulled me from rehab before anyone there could change my mind, and he slipped a baggie of cocaine into my bag on the drive home. "Just in case," he told me.
I could blame him for everything, but it was me who drew up the three lines and snorted them in record speed.
"He won't touch you, sweetie," Sue says calmly. "Nobody's going to make you do anything you don't want."
She sounds sure of herself, but she's never met my Uncle Aro, and she's never seen me the way I become when he's around. For which I'm glad, because it's an embarrassment beyond belief.
Besides, it's been years before he's made me do anything I didn't want to do. He's just enabled me to do the bad things, and I've done them.
It's nobody's fault but my own and I'd be stupid to think I could play victim now.
"Okay," I mewl, sniffling. "I need to change my number and call my lawyers."
"Alright, honey, I'll cook dinner tonight. You rest up here and I'll call you when it's ready." Just before she slips out of the door, she turns to smile and me and says, "It'll all be okay, Bella. I promise you'll be fine."
I don't believe her one bit.
For the rest of the evening, I continue with horrible grown up things like phoning my lawyers, and putting on a brave face at the dinner table and locking myself away from all of the nasty things I want but shouldn't have in the house.
I wait until it's dark to fall apart again.
X
X
With the new film crew in town, the paparazzi are beginning to swarm.
Even though they try not to complain, I can tell it's bothering Sue and Charlie. I insist we keep all of the blinds shut so nobody can get pictures and Sue says she misses the sunlight and Charlie keeps throwing dirty looks at the front door.
It's not until they start following Sue around that I realise I'm being selfish by staying here. So I call to bring forward the house viewings with the realtor and pack my bags without telling them. When I offer a little bit of extra cash, they tell me someone will be with me within the hour to tour me around the options that fit my request.
It'd be funny how much a little bit of money can change everything so drastically, if it weren't so depressing.
X
I'm viewing any and all of the houses in the forestry surrounding Forks that are on sale. There aren't many – only three. All of which have fallen into varying depths of disrepair and are currently unliveable.
Which doesn't bode well for my quest to move out of Charlie's place by next week so I don't have to live under his and Sue's constant scrutiny and they don't have to live with three paparazzi vans camped at the curb at every hour of the day.
Ever since the movie crew arrived, they've been there. Waiting.
They're at the gates now. They've been following the car ever since I stepped into it.
Still, three houses are more than I thought there would be. When I lived here, the only house in the woods was the Cullen family's mansion.
The realtor is a nice girl called Bree from Port Angeles. She's young – probably younger than me – and I can tell she's new to the job because she's fumbling over her words and she's not pushing me half as hard as most estate agents would be.
I kind of like her, though. She seems nice.
As we're viewing the last house, which is more of a shell than a real building now, she clears her throat and says, "Well, this one does need quite a lot of work."
"Yeah," I say, running my hand along one of the crumbling brick walls. "How has it gotten like this?"
"I don't think the build was ever finished."
"Oh, right. And what about the others?"
"They're the same, I think. Some people say a property developer came and tried to build the town out, but didn't have enough money."
I nod my head. "Not many buyers in Forks, anyway," I say, shrugging.
"Yeah," she says. "You'd be surprised, though," she says, "a lot of people have been buying recently. It's weird. My boss reckons it's because of this movie they're shooting here now." She smirks, shaking her head.
I just nod and follow her into another bare room.
We make idle chit chat as we tour the rest of the house. Aside from the obvious fact it's unfinished, there's nothing wrong with it. But it's not going to work. I can't live with Charlie and Sue for the months and months it would take to finish this place.
Besides, it's too open. I can see the paparazzi from the porch and if I'm going to buy a house, I want it to be an impenetrable fortress for those pests.
"What do you think?" Bree asks as we step outside at the end of the tour. "Does it take your interest?"
I scrunch my nose. "I think it needs a bit too much work. I don't have that sort of waiting time."
She nods, shrugging. "That's okay. If you're willing to expand your area, I can have another look for you and we can look at them some other time."
Even though I don't want a house too far away from the town, or too deep in the woods where the bears and other scary things are, I nod my head and agree.
Earlier, when Bree arrived at the house, she knocked at the door and to avoid the glaring flashes of paparazzi cameras, I invited her in. She said it'd be easier if she drove me, and seeing as I don't have a car, I agreed with a warning that we might get into a bind if the vans follow us.
In hindsight, I should've known of course the vans were going to follow us. So, as we head back to her car, Bree ducks her head and I glare at them from behind my sunglasses.
When I first started out in LA, paparazzi meant that I made it. They were a sign I was a somebody.
Sometimes, when I remember how naïve I used to be, I wish someone had given me a smack upside the head.
As we're getting into Bree's Mercedes – an expensive car for a newbie realtor in Port Angeles, but maybe it pays better than I realise – the men start yelling their usual run of questions.
"Bella, are you moving here?"
"Bella, are you leaving Meyer?"
"Bella, are you breaking up with Laurent?"
"Bella, when are you returning to LA?"
"Bella, is it true your sister has quit the modelling industry?"
Once the door is shut, their voices are too muffled for me to understand what they're yelling at me.
"They don't leave you alone, huh?" Bree says, and it's the first time she's even acknowledged them at all.
"No," I say, only a little bit bitter. "They're always around somewhere."
"How long have they been outside of your house?"
"Since they got here," I say, turning away from the windows as we drive past them.
"Does that bother Sue and Charlie?"
I tense the second their names come out of her mouth. She didn't meet them at the house and I haven't mentioned them once. "How'd you know who they are?" I ask.
"Oh," she says, turning just a little red, "I forgot to mention. My mom's best friend with your step mother, Sue."
My mind immediately jumps to a million conclusions at once.
"Oh, who's your mom?" I ask, and I hope I don't sound as strangled to her as I do to my own ears.
"Esme Cullen," she says.
No.
This can't be real life.
"I know you knew my family, and we haven't met before, but they adopted me just a little while after you left Forks and we've just never crossed paths before."
The best I can do in the means of a response is to nod my head mutely and press my lips shut.
It's not any of my business anymore.
"Anyway, sorry for springing that on you."
I shake my head and mumble something along the lines of, "Don't be sorry," staring out of the window at the green blur and glisten of wet forestry.
The silence that ensues is nothing but awkward.
So," she says, clearing her throat, "what sort of time frame are you looking at for moving?"
We're back to safe territory – business – and the conversation stays on just the topic at hand for the rest of the drive home.
When we arrive back at the house, she says goodbye and I say thanks and then I leave. The paparazzi are waiting for me as always, and I ignore them on my way to the house, as always.
I unlock the door, enter the house and then walk right through it, out the back door and to the end of the backyard that backs out onto the forestry.
Charlie always told me to never go into the forest alone.
And I always ignored him. Not that he'd know that.
So, I trudge into the forest and maybe it's seeing Bree, knowing that she'll tell them about me later, or knowing that both Cullen brothers will be back in town, or knowing my friends in LA will hate me and that Aro might arrive at any time, but I just need to get away.
I just need to hide.
And there's only one hiding spot in the world that's ever actually worked for me, so it's the only place I know to go.
Or maybe that's a lie and I'm just tempting fate, just trying to put myself in a position where I see him again.
Whatever the case, I find my way to the meadow like I'd just been here yesterday. It's prettier than I remembered it. It's recovering from winter, and flowers are beginning to sprout. The log I've sat on a million times is still laying over in the far corner and I'm sure if I went and looked, it would have the same things carved into it. But I don't go to look.
The only thing that's different is the grass has grown over in the patches it used to wear because we sat on it so much, there's no picnic blanket and Edward's not here, waiting for me.
The thought of his name has a surge of memories trying to unearth themselves, and I quickly fumble, trying to think of something to drown them out. If I had my phone, I'd play music, but it's still buried in the drawer of my bedside cabinet.
So, I improvise and as much as it makes me feel awkward, I hum out the starting tune to an old ABBA song I'll never forget the words to. It's one of my happiest memories that doesn't have him in it. It has his mother instead.
On one of the many occasions that we had dinner with the Cullen family over my seventeenth summer, I had helped Esme cooking the food and when an ABBA song had come on the radio, she'd grabbed my hand and danced like a fool with me around the kitchen. It was so out of character for her usually so composed self that I think I'll never forget it.
Without the words, it's the same tune over and over, so I stretch myself just a little further, stepping out onto the woman and swaying my hips as I walk with what should be the beat. I start whispering the words, and let them get gradually louder.
Then, just like that, I'm singing again.
That song shifts into another old song, this one that reminds me of my mother when she played it on the day she drove us away from Forks for good. It's not such a happy memory, but it's something that isn't him.
And even my worst memories hurt less than thinking of the ones he gave me.
I wander the outskirts of the meadow and when I reach the bench, I step onto the rotting wood and treat it like it's the biggest stage I've ever performed on, like the little flower stems crowding the floor are the best audience I've ever had.
There's a feeling blooming in my chest.
One that's so close to happy I think I'm almost there.
I spend so long performing to nobody that it's getting dark before I know it. The sun set bathes the meadow in a gorgeous red, and I remember the old saying that means there might be nice weather tomorrow, but I won't hold my breath for it. Good weather is not something I expect of Forks.
I'd worry, but I know my way home from here like the back of my hand.
Eventually, my voice starts to squeak and scratch and turns dry, so I stop singing and take a seat on the log, running my hand over the wood blindly until my fingers find the carving.
A heart, two sets of initials inside.
BMS
EAC
The scar on my finger from the cut I gave myself trying to carve it is a testament to my efforts. I remember how he'd held my finger in his hand, rushed me to his car to drive me to his father's office in the hospital. I remember how he held my good hand as the stitches went in, and I remember how he'd driven me home.
And I remember how the next day, when I met him in the meadow, he'd finished the carving for me.
All of a sudden, my happiness melts to sorrow and my eyes prick with tears.
His memories don't hurt because he was mean, or because he was bad. They don't hurt because he meant me harm, or because he traumatised me.
They hurt because I miss him.
I really, really miss him.
X
X
It's dark before my eyes are dry. It seemed like a good idea to wait here until I was all cried out, but that took longer than anticipated. I don't want to worry Charlie and Sue. Plus, there's something creepy about the woods at this time of night alone. Something scary.
I stand and I'm about to leave when I hear a twig snap, and not from beneath my own feet.
My heart explodes in my chest and I bit my lip, hold my breathe, snap my neck searching around for the source of it.
Do we have bears in Forks?
What about mountain lions?
Maybe it's a bunny.
Maybe it's a wolf.
My thoughts come to a halt when I hear another twig snap, then another, and then I watch as a dark silhouette tumbles into the meadow.
A person.
Only one other person knows their way to this meadow in the dark and I've spent the past hour tracing his initials through my tears.
Edward Anthony Cullen.
X
A/N: Did you miss me?
Sorry, sorry, and sorry again for the fact I keep disappearing. I promise I've been writing this, but I've just written this reunion a million different ways until I got to this one. Anyway, I'm already started on the next chapters and I should be posting that sometime next week-ish. Hopefully.
Anyway, I've said it before, but I understand anyone who just can't deal with this inconsistency on my part, and I'll miss you, but you don't have to read. To everyone that wants to stick with me, thank-you. I hope I don't disappoint.
Anyway, please let me know your thoughts. Bella's finally got her voice back, huh?
- Laylz.