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Stolen Souls

Chapter 10

How do you live knowing you've lost the one you love long before you've ever had them?

If you can answer that question, you're a far better person than I.

Edward Anthony Cullen.

God, the name alone made my mouth water and thighs cream. Seriously, the man had sickening dazzling abilities. What woman wouldn't do whatever it took to keep her man—to keep thatman?

I remember the first time I saw him. It was freshman year at Loyola and it was hard not to notice Mr. Cullen. He was a junior then and so very dark. His skin was ghostly pale and the only color to his face was the bluish-black tinting under his eyes. He looked so much older then. His green eyes held no luster of life and his bonze locks were dry and dull. Clothing seemed to swallow him whole. But even in sorrow, he was ghastly breathtaking.

He stole my heart the second I saw him; okay, it was my vagina, but whatever. Did it matter, honestly, at least at first? When you were young, you were hormone-driven. And nothing was sexier than a gorgeous build, strong arms, and a jaw you just wanted to lick your way across. If men could do it, lust after women solely based on appearances, then why couldn't women? The double standard had always felt like a thorn in my perfect twenty-four inch waist.

I was a strong, confident woman who knew what she wanted and what she had to do to get it. And as if that weren't enough, I was blessed with otherworldly good looks. I'd have been a fool if I didn't put them to good use. After all, what are women if not resourceful? And I used what I had to get me where I was. A modern day succubus—but I've been compared to worse: whore, slut, bitch. Really, they lacked the fire that was needed to keep my entertainment.

If men were careless enough to be used, then I was going to ride them long and hard—and my rides were always worth the fee. It only seemed fair. That was until I met Edward Cullen. A man I would have happily laid at his feet for, but a man who didn't want me.

Now, I was a modern woman and knew that rejection existed, but it was just that I had never been rejected before. The concept was so foreign to me. In the beginning, I wouldn't have been lying if I said that all he was was a conquest, my biggest trophy to date. For me it was always about the chase, and Edward was one hell of a chase. But that was then. He was so much more than a conquest now; he was the prize. And the more I got to know him, the more I recognized I could never lose him.

He was so different compared to everyone else in my world, compared to any man I had ever been with. He made me want to be a better person, a wiser woman. It was Edward that made me realize just how superficial my world was. We were elitists with no depth and it was Edward that helped me grow into a woman with layers. A woman who didn't just rely on her beauty to obtain anything she wanted; because in the case of Edward Cullen, beauty didn't get me anywhere.

Things like who wore last year's Yves Saint Laurent to this year's golf open social didn't matter to him. As a matter of fact, even attending the annual golf open social didn't matter to Edward Cullen. In my world, something like that was blasphemous. He was a rebel . . . in the way that daddy's protégé with a trust fund could be. But he was himself, and he didn't care about what anyone else thought of him.

And if not attending the golf social was blasphemous, not caring what others thought of you, in my world, was so far past sacrilegious that the whole city was charged ten Hail Mary's.

It was our lot in life, practically our fulltime JOB, to care what others thought of us.

But what started off as a plight in lust and conquest evolved into something so much more. He became my world. I no longer cared what everybody thought. I only cared what Edward thought. I only wanted to make Edward happy, superficial world be damned.

In the beginning, he was the epitome of an asshole. We laughed about it now, because he said that back then he referred to me as a relentlessly annoying bitch. Each attempt at getting him to talk to me was shot down worse than the fat girl with glasses and brown hair by the quarterback. It was my very own dose of the brutal reality that, to Edward Cullen, something I had been riding on the coattails of wasn't important.

And so one day, I gave in; I didn't use my beauty to get what I wanted. I just laid my cards out for him to see. I went up to him while he studied in the school library.

"Okay, I'm superficial. I don't have anything going for me other than a gorgeous rack and set of lick-worthy legs. But what the hell do you expect, Marie god damn Curie?" And he laughed; it was genuine and it was music to my ears. I hadn't even seen him laugh with his friend Jasper; he was always brooding.

"Your face isn't too bad either, Tanya."

"Right, well, I didn't want to sound conceited." And he laughed even more that his green eyes actually held a bit of light in them. I gasped at how utterly beautiful happiness made him.

"I don't know how anybody could ever think that of you." There was an actual playfulness to his words.

"Nor I, Edward." And his lips curved into a delicious smirk. "May I sit?" I motioned to the empty chair at the small table he was studying at.

"I'm sorry, yes."

I scooted my chair as close to him as I could possibly get it, and after ten minutes of boring silence I asked him: "What are you doing?"

Again I was rewarded with his beautiful laughter. And it was then that I promised to make it my life's mission to make this lost boy happy; in happiness he was too beautiful to have any other way.

"Studying, Tanya," he answered. "I didn't just come to school to waste Daddy's money because there was too much of it lying around." With a huff, I crossed my arms over my chest and stared at the table in front of me. I might have mumbled "jerk" under my breath. I could see him from my periphery watching me with that same smirk and one eyebrow raised in my direction. "If you're going to sit there, you might as well make yourself useful," Edward said after awhile of my pouting. I turned to him with a doubtful eye and he just smiled broadly. It was dazzling. "Here," he said, pushing a book my way and then a post it. "Highlight passages on meiosis."

I knew my expression must have read, "You're kidding, right? Even if I knew what the hell you were talking about, I would still have no idea where to begin." He laughed more and pulled me closer to him by the back of my chair. He leaned in towards me to show me what he meant. The strong scent of crisp linen and cologne made my heart flutter.

That was the very first time Edward Cullen ever taught me anything. And soon we shared everything—stories of our youths, our likes and dislikes, and everything in between. We compared movies, literature, but Edward's favorite was music. He could talk about music for days on end. I learned that I had an affinity to math, and found my niche in getting the elite to purchase things. I was practically born for advertising.

Or at least I thought we shared everything.

He didn't like to talk about high school, and soon enough I learned through his family about the accident that he would forever blame himself for. I learned about the devastating loss he suffered and why he was so depressed all the time. It was then that I realized Edward wasn't the type to share everything. He was the suffer-in-silence type and he didn't like to express his feelings at all. He hid things from me, little nuances of his personality before the accident, things that made him happy, as well as his pain. And after awhile, I learned to deal with the fact that this was how Edward was. He would never let anyone fully in. It hurt me so much to see someone with so much life in them let it pass them by, and that was what I taught him: how to live again. Where he helped me, I helped him.

He became my best friend, and it was so weird to have an actual friend who didn't care about last month's Vogue or calorie counting and the benefits of chewing celery. Edward knew everything about me and I knew everything about Edward that he let me have. And I was fine with that; I promised myself not to push him, that he would open up when he was ready.

And the day that I applied for an internship after I finished school was the first time that I saw pride in Edward's eyes when he looked at me.

"My little girl's all grown up and even getting a job that doesn't pay," he said that night when he picked me up and took me to dinner. His arm wrapped around my waist in an embrace was more than I had ever known. But more so than that, I was proud of myself too.

"You give me too much credit, Eddie. Daddy still pays the bills," I told him with a coquettish wink. He hated that nickname, but I found it endearing when I joked with him. And I loved more that I was the only one he let use it.

"Baby steps, Tanya, baby steps."

Somehow the years passed us by, as they do when you're having fun. Then one night after my now paying job in the advertisement world, I went to his apartment. I had called him countless times only to go straight to voicemail, and given the current situation—then—I was very worried about him.

It was his second year of med school and one of his fellow students, a Stanley woman—I didn't remember much about her except that she was rather easy—had filed a claim with the school for sexual harassment. She stated that Edward, who was their group's leader, had used his position to proposition favors from her in order to keep her good standing within the class. When the school investigated, they found the claim unfounded; but the damage was done, on both their parts. Edward lost his standing and the Stanley girl chose to drop from the school because of "irreversible emotional distress." It was this reason she would later use to sue Edward for the compensation of tuition lost as well as damages. His parents chose to settle out of court, but not before the Stanley girl took her story to the papers and Edward's name was completely slandered. Now, normally Edward wouldn't care what others thought, but it had impacted him terribly since he was intending on pursuing Obstetrics and Gynecology. Needless to say, with a very public sexual harassment suit he wouldn't be able to specialize legitimately; it was tainted for him.

Edward took all of this badly, with good reason, of course. When I arrived at his apartment, he was plastered; and plastered was probably putting it nicely for his benefit. He was worse than Britney Spears circa the Kevin Federline years. I helped him clean up vomit in places vomit really shouldn't be. Then when he passed out, I stayed with him to make sure he didn't vomit more or hurt himself. That was very important to him; it would have been unforgivable. When he woke up he was still very drunk, and he made a pass at me.

At first I didn't know how to take it. I had almost all but given up on any chance of an "us." He had become just Eddie to me. But there was that other part of me, a part that I soon discovered wasn't dormant at all, that still wanted him more than the secret, exclusive-clientele-only, unreleased Louis Vuitton line. And that first taste was better than Godiva, but equally as addicting. And, oh God, did I want more. Thankfully, so did he.

And we haven't looked back since.

It hasn't been easy. But really, if anything in life were worth it, it wouldn't come easy. Edward was by far the hardest person to live with. He had meticulous OCD tendencies which I didn't understand, considering his crazy hours at school and then work. But Edward always had to be in control of everything. The first time I stayed over and used his toothpaste and unrolled the specific number of creases to the used tube, he flipped. Not to mention the alphabetizing of EVERYTHING in his apartment, color coordinated scheme to folding all his clothes, and hanging them in the closet specifically according to the hanger's marker. But the worst was his fear of even numbers. Ridiculous things like his underwear were only bought in odd numbers, as well as what he owed, the way he organized. If I went to the store I could only buy groceries in odd numbers. If I ate fruit from the bowl and it left an even number, I would come home to Edward pulling at his hair, mumbling under his breath, and pacing around the room. Edward hated even numbers passionately; everything had to be in odd numbers—everything. I didn't know why, but through his family I learned to deal with the issue as best as I could. And the number seventeen was unforgiveable, but that one made sense.

Nevertheless, I've managed to adapt to his quirks, and when we fought, we worked through it. And he really had to change for me and I knew what that meant for him. I appreciated him—it—more than he could ever know.

Now, I knew Edward didn't love me, at least not that all-encompassing, move mountains just to be near me way. But he did love me as much as he believed he was capable of. Some men just didn't say it, some people couldn't say it, but it was evident in their actions. And never had I doubted Edward's affection for me, and he told me with his deeds, his loyalty, his trust, his support—him. And if that was all that he could give me, who was I to demand more? I was blessed to have even that. I would never push to change Edward. That was what love was, acceptance of the person for who they were, for who they truly were. And I knew that to Edward, he was trying his best.

I couldn't begin to count the times that I've been asked, "Why are you marrying someone who doesn't love you?" Everyone has asked this, has tried to tell me one way or another that I was making a mistake—Jasper, his sister . . . my sister. To them I can only answer with my own heart and say that there are varying degrees of love. Would Edward give up his job and move back to Alaska to help me if I asked it of him? In a heartbeat. Would he try everything in his power to make me happy? Yes, and he has. Who was to say what love really was? It was an emotion; you couldn't measure it. And the thing was, I knew Edward better than anyone else in his life—and that was saying a lot. And I knew, without a doubt, that he gave me all that he possibly could. It was just more complicated than anyone ever knew.

He believed his love was cursed. Long ago, he lost the most important person in his life. It still, to this very day, pained him to talk about it . . . to talk about her. She was his everything. Since birth, they were inseparable. They had the rugged end of a love-hate relationship, and the one time that their fighting escalated so severely that they were separated was the last time Edward would ever see her alive. His last words to her were, "Fine, do whatever the fuck you want. Don't come crying to me when this blows up in your face, because I won't fucking care what happened to you." It was those words that killed him, much like he believed they killed her.

She was who had stolen Edward from me, long before I'd ever had him. And this whole time I had been fighting a ghost—a ghost that I was more than willing to share Edward's heart with, but it was never that simple. Nothing with Edward ever was. And I believed that I was winning this battle, but that was until that morning, before the wedding.

Thinking back now, that was when it started.

I was losing him and it was killing me. One thing was to lose someone you've always had, but it was another thing completely to lose someone you never had. God, it was so hard because it was just that much easier for him to slip through my grips.

Maybe it was something I'd done wrong. Maybe I wasn't as supportive of his quirks as I should have been. Maybe I didn't listen to him enough, or try hard enough to get him to open up. Maybe I tried too hard. Maybe I pushed him into marriage too soon. I should have called off the wedding that morning. After he left me, I cried on the floor of our living room for hours until I got a phone call from my sister Kate. She was at the airport; Edward had forgotten to pick her up. Edward never forgot anything. Elephants envied his memory.

It didn't make sense.

When I picked up Kate, she told me that it was just pre-marriage jitters. She said that her husband, Garrett, went through something similar the night before their big day. And so I wrote it off as such, and when Edward came home that night, he assured me the same thing. He said that there was no doubt in his mind that the wedding was what he truly wanted.

And so I married the man of my dreams. But what was the perfect wedding was anything but the perfect marriage.

Our two-week honeymoon was a disaster and we had our first very real big fight. It could have been attributed to my paranoia mostly. Whenever he touched me, it was different; it was rough and so very different. Edward was never a "pound the pussy" man. It was like he had something to prove, to whom I didn't know; my vagina was all his. I thought he knew that. Then sex became like a drug to him; all he wanted to do was drill for oil and I was starting to get very raw. It was becoming painful. And that was when things turned sour, because slowly it dawned on me that, all the while, he didn't care if I got off at all. And more and more I realized he was trying to prove something. The hardest part to deal with was watching the change in him. I would wonder if he knew just how much he was starting to hurt me, not just emotionally, but physically. And I hoped that he didn't, but a part of my mind pressed on. It reminded me that if he did know that he was hurting me, then he just chose to ignore it. And it was killing me; I didn't know who he was anymore, and slowly this man who wasn't the man I married or fell in love with was starting to scare me.

Then during the second week, when my vagina went on strike because I couldn't take it anymore—the worry, doubt, and even fear—he was never around. I would spend all day without him . . . on our damn honeymoon. And this was when I blew up, accusing him of only wanting me for sex, that he probably never cared about me at all. And I asked him what he was trying to prove. And I might have insinuated that he was "in the closet." In my anger, it was the only thing that made sense; what else could he possibly have to prove? We fought so badly that I threw things at him and he said he regretted marrying me.

This was the first time he had ever said that to me; never had I known Edward to be anything but a gentleman. One would think with how many fights we've had since then, I would have gotten used to the crushing blow of those words, but I haven't. Each time they hurt worse, and I think it was because I was starting to believe them.

I didn't understand what happened to us. We were so happy before, or as happy as I had ever seen Edward; granted it was never easy, but we worked at it. Marriage was the logical next step. But it was as if it ruined everything. I didn't know what to do and I couldn't get through to him. Even on our good days, he would only talk about how his day at work went. I got more of a response from him when he was angry. He wouldn't talk to me; he stopped touching me, but that was because I wouldn't let him. I refused to be his toy for some unknown demonstration of something he needed reassurance in.

And with each day it only got worse.

I couldn't believe I had become this woman—a woman who let her husband treat her like anything less than a goddess. But more than that, a woman who felt she couldn't tell her friends what was going on; a woman who wasn't happy anymore; a woman who was honestly beginning to fear her husband in every sense. And when that reality hit me, I knew I needed to do something. I had to—for him, for us . . . for me.

"I'm thinking maybe we should go to marriage counseling, but he refuses," I said softly between tears and broken hopes.

"Honey, he refused the first time too," Esme said as she wrapped her other arm around me in an embrace. She had to lift out of her chair to reach me and I loved her even more for the gesture. Her warmth was comforting.

After two months of this, I couldn't take it anymore, and I knew I had to talk to someone about it. My aunt Carmen was the closest woman I had as a mother, but even then I couldn't come to her with this. I felt like a failure. It wasn't even three months in and my marriage was a wreck. Edward's mother had always been so loving and understanding. She also dealt with Edward's intense emotions for longer than I had. I was hoping that she could provide some sort of insight or invaluable advice. She agreed to meet me for lunch, and now here I sat weeping in a napkin while the wait staff looked on pitifully.

"Edward's never been the type to deny he has a problem, but he's always been sure to believe that he's the only one who can fix it. He doesn't know how to ask for help when he needs it. Trust me, dear, both Carlisle and myself tried everything in the beginning. Medication, counseling, holistic healing, even martial arts as recommended to help him have a way to expel his anger and pain. Nothing worked and he refused all of it," Esme said tenderly, her hand combing through my hair soothingly.

"Then how did you and Carlisle get through it the first time? Because I knew it was hard before, but I can't explain it Esme . . . this time it's so much worse."

"Very, very slowly dear. It was a terrible loss for all of us, and Carlisle and I both went to counseling to help in understanding coping and what to do for Edward. We learned to give him time, that he would come around on his own, when he was ready. And to reassure him that we loved him, didn't blame him, and were there for him regardless. And eventually Edward came around. Eventually he will again." Esme let go of me and lifted my face gently with her hand under my chin. Her soft toffee eyes were like warm caramel and everything I needed at that moment.

"Thank you, Esme," I whispered to her as I wiped at my tear-streaked face.

"Of course, dear, and know that both Carlisle and I are here for you with whatever you need. It helped us when we went to counseling; maybe it would help you to seek out counseling on your own. And Jasper knows Edward better than any; if anyone could help you get a better picture, I'm sure he could."

And there it was, I could see it in her eyes. Although she wouldn't say the words, I could see the sympathetic worry. Her tone acknowledged the fear I tried to hide. In nonspecific words, she told me to get help for myself, to bring back that strong woman I was—and only then could I get help for him. Something had to be done; Edward couldn't keep denying help.

I nodded solemnly. It made sense, and I would do everything within my means to make my marriage work. I had to; if not for me, then for that smiling boy I fell in love with. He was in there somewhere and I would get him back. And that promise I made to myself years ago rung in my mind: to make it my life's mission to make him happy.

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