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Chapter Eleven

"Do you need some ice for your hand?" I asked as we walked through the front door of my apartment. Edward glanced down at his hand and grimaced at the raw swollen skin of his knuckles.

"I can get it," he replied, already walking towards the kitchen. I nodded my head and started down the hall towards my bedroom.

"I'm just gonna go change and clean up a bit," I replied quietly, wanting nothing more than to shower and brush my teeth. I didn't want to leave him alone for too long so I opted for a change of clothes and a good scrubbing with the toothbrush before pulling my hair in a ponytail and returning to the living room. Edward was already there, a towel filled with ice resting on the back of his swollen hand.

"Are you okay?" he asked again, his eyes darting around my face. A humorless chuckle escaped my chest as I looked down at my hands, my fingers repeating that familiar, comfortable pattern, thumb to index, middle, ring, pinky, and back again.

"I should be asking you that," I retorted. "You're the one with an ice pack on your hand from punching someone in the face." I raised my eyes to meet his, my gaze steady as I dared him to argue.

"I'm fine," he answered, "and you know exactly what I mean," he said roughly, running his free hand through his hair.

"Where have you been?" I asked, wanting to change the focus from me and find out where he had been for the last ten days. He dropped his gaze immediately, his shoulders somehow stiffening as they hunched inwardly, curling around himself. I felt tension pull taut in my belly as something heavy seemed to settle around us, the air crackled, becoming more and more charged as the silence continued to stretch.

"Is there someone else?" I asked, my hands clenching into fists."Because you know, it's okay if there is," I lied, the words like acid on my tongue, "I mean we're just friends," I reiterated, as much for my benefit as his. I heard him sigh heavily then suck in a deep breath.

"I just need you to understand," he began, a hint of muted panic in his voice, "that what I'm about to tell you had nothing to do with why I'm here, with you, right now," he finished, his voice steady, strong, commanding. I felt dread begin to trickle over me, the hairs on my head tingling, itching, with a morbid sense of anticipation. I inhaled a shaky breath and nodded my head for him to continue. Band aid right?

"Fuck," he swore lowly, his breathing becoming labored, his good hand yanking harshly on his hair.

"Just spit it out already," I begged, my nerves fraying at the ends, like fragile bubbles floating in the air, moving closer and closer to the gleaming tip of a needle.

"My best friend from college," he began quietly, "lost her baby a few days ago."

I felt a wave of sadness waft of over me, unable to imagine the pain of losing a child. I didn't really understand what exactly that had to do with me though, so I told him as much.

"I guess I need to start from the beginning for this to make any sense to you," he sighed, leaning back on the couch, his head resting on the back, his eyes on the ceiling.

"I met Gianna when I was a sophomore in college. She was in a couple of my classes and she always seemed, I don't know, sort of sad, guarded," he said, almost like he was trying to figure out a puzzle. "Anyway, I was at a party one night, and you know how I told you I used to smoke a lot in college and just sit around playing on the computer, right?" he asked with a small chuckle.

I wanted to smile with him, but I felt like I was frozen into place, like this was the comic relief part of a movie drama and the metaphorical sledgehammer would be lowered any minute eradicating any sense of good feeling, making you question why you had been laughing in the first place. I nodded my head letting him know that I remembered.

"So I see her at this party, and she comes up to me and says, 'I heard you're the geek who gets geeked, I want in,' I just stared at her for a minute before I started laughing, because I think that was the most bizarre way someone had ever asked me for pot in my life," he said smiling at the memory.

"So I told her to have a seat and we smoked. And after that it just kinda became a thing that whenever we would see one another we would smoke, and then we started planning to hang out, and our friendship just developed naturally. She began opening up to me more and more as time passed, telling me about her off again on again boyfriend," he said looking at me then, a wild, nervous look in his eyes. I wanted this story to stop, that foreboding sense of dread becoming heavier and heavier, compressing my lungs, the air leaking from them on its own accord.

"He was...not a good guy," he whispered, his hands rubbing up and down his thighs. No, no, no.

"She finally had enough of his shit and left, and after a while we started dating. Things were tough at first, she was skittish, even though she had been my friend for close to a year at this point," he trailed off scooting to the the edge of the couch and moving closer to me. I pressed my back as far into the back of the chair as I could, trying to reclaim the distance he was trying to close. I squeezed my eyes shut tightly, my fists clenching and unclenching a few times to try and rope in my emotions that were threatening to tailspin out of control. I opened my eyes, looking directly into his and whatever he saw there made him slide back onto the couch and away from me.

"I loved her," he murmured, "and I just wanted to help her, but what she felt for me, was nothing compared to what she felt for him, and she finally broke things off with me and went back to him." His arms shook slightly as he lifted his hands to cradle his face. I felt my teeth begin to grind against one another, pain shooting up the side of my jaw from the strain it was taking to keep my body from exploding into a million pieces.

"But things were different when she went back to him this time, he was more...forceful with her," he stressed, looking at me, utter defeat etched into his features. "I noticed that she started wearing long sleeved shirts all the time, even when the weather was warm, her makeup a little heavier, her sunglasses always near. We still hung out, but things were so different, she was so withdrawn. Being around her wasn't hard because I didn't miss her the way someone should miss a person that they were in love with, I was mostly just sad because my friend was obviously going through something that I couldn't help her with. It made me realize that while I knew I definitely loved her, I wasn't in love with her. I was just young and stupid and allowed platonic love and lust and loneliness to mix together and disguise itself from what it really was." Edward pushed himself up from the couch, pacing the length of my living room, back and forth, back and forth, and all I could think was that I was nothing more than a second chance for him, a chance to try to succeed with me where he had failed with her. I would rather he have fucked me, spit in my face, and called me a whore than to treat me like I was some fucking charity case. My anger began to bubble to the surface as he began speaking again, his words rushed and agitated.

"She just wouldn't listen, I tried to tell her over and over again that she deserved so much better, that there was someone out there for her who would appreciate her for who she was and treat her with the respect that she deserved. But again and again she would leave and go back, each time a little bit more of her light fading until I just couldn't take it anymore. I couldn't stand by and watch her continue to destroy herself," he said forcefully, like he was defending some choice he made.

"So after graduation, I left, and I wished her a nice life. And I haven't seen nor heard from her again until about three months ago, when she called to tell me that she was pregnant," he said, his face twisted with disgust. "I tried to act happy for her when we met for lunch a few days later, but the dark shadows that lingered around her eyes and the long sleeved shirt she was wearing in the summer heat let me know that things hadn't changed at all." He walked over in front of me, sitting on the edge of the coffee table, his knee brushing against mine causing me to jump. He clasped his hands in front of him, his forearms resting on him knees.

"She called me a week ago," he whispered, "and she was crying, said she was in the hospital, and that she had lost her baby," he choked, pain radiating from him. "I didn't know what had happened, only that she was begging for help and I just couldn't tell her no, she was my best friend..." he trailed off.

"Where is she now?" I asked quietly, feeling my heart break for his friend.

"She's with her parents. I don't know if she will stay with them, but for now she's safe. I just don't get why she would do that, why any woman would choose that," he said lowly, almost like he was speaking to himself. But I heard him, and it sent me flying out of my chair to my feet.

"Don't you dare do that," I shouted, my body vibrating with rage. "You have no idea, no fucking clue, what it's like to be in that kind of situation. To love someone so much and have them begging you to stay while completely crushing your spirit at the same time. To love someone and watch them slowly destroy themselves everyday and have them tell you that you are the reason that they go on, that you are the only reason they continue to live," I finished, gasping for air.

"But I do know Bella," he said fiercely, "I watched my best friend go through that everyday for years."

"So is that what this is then?" I asked angrily, waving my hand in between the two of us wildly. "Am I your shot at redemption, a fucking do over?" I spat, hurt and anger making my entire body shake.

"What?" he snapped, jumping to his feet and crossing the room quickly until he was inches from me.

"No," he said sharply, his eyes boring into mine. "I didn't know anything about you that first night we hung out except that I felt something different with you, something more," he stressed reaching out to grab my hand. "And then everything went to shit, and I was so fucking pissed at you, but that feeling, that fucking pull wouldn't let me walk away," he said roughly as I forcefully yanked my hand from his.

"And then you figured out I was just as fucked up as your friend," I laughed humorlessly, "and it was your chance to try and sweep in and save the fucking day," I said, shaking my head.

"That's how you knew," I breathed, "that next morning when you asked what guy fucked me over, it was because you had seen it before." My eyes stung with tears as I backed away from him, feeling a wave of dizziness overcome me. God, I was so fucking stupid. This guy didn't want me, he wanted to fix me. He wanted to make up for what he couldn't do for his friend.

"No, Bella, no, come on," he plead shaking his head, his eyes wide. "I didn't know before, when it mattered, I didn't know. The only reason I'm even telling you all of this is because I don't want you to find out later and think I lied to you or hid something from you," he reasoned. And yeah, it sounded reasonable, but the fact is, inside of me something was screaming, like flames were kissing my insides in a painful searing kiss and I couldn't hear anymore.

"Get out," I whispered, so quietly that had I not seen his body stiffen I would have thought he hadn't heard me.

"Bella-"

"Please, Edward, please," I begged, feeling vulnerable and exposed. "I struggle every fucking day of my life trying not to feel like a worthless piece of shit. Don't make me a charity case, don't make me your second chance at being the hero." I implored taking a deep breath, "Don't make me your do over." I said, lowering my head.

"You're not," he said defiantly. "I don't know what you are, but why I am here has nothing to do with pity, or redemption, or any other negative emotion you can come up with. I'm here because I feel," he said, putting his hand to his chest, "because I think it's where I'm supposed to be."

"I just need time, okay? I need to think and process and just...I need time," I said wearily.

"I'm not giving up," he said confidently. I gave him a sad smile, having heard those exact words so many times over the last few years, and led him to the door.

"We'll see," I said, closing the door behind him. I leaned my forehead against it for a moment after it clicked shut, my hands splayed out on either side of me head, before rolling my body off the door and falling into bed, feeling more alone tonight than I had in a long, long time.


A/N

So, yeah. I can't imagine that anyone would feel any different than Bella given her history and frame of mind. Even though WE get that he didn't know in the beginning, you can see how that would sting for her. Thank to Meg and Oh Werd for catching all my mistakes and giving very good suggestions to make this chapter better. Jules thanks for pre reading and always telling me I'm lovely. I think you're lovely too.