Hi everyone. Here's a slightly shorter chapter since it's taken me forever, some of you guys kind of killed me with your reactions last chapter. I have a couple of things to throw out there:

1) If you don't like my story, please don't read it. I've asked for your trust from the beginning and I never said this was going to be an easy road. No one is forcing you to read TD, so please jump ship now if negativity is going to be what flows from your fingertips when you PM me, email me, or review. Although I respect insightful opinions, I don't respect someone who blows fire from their mouth.

2) To my readers who are on the wagon with me— THANK YOU! Especially to the very sweet Twilight Musings who put my heart back together with her kind words. I love you guys, I really do.

3) I started a new drabble-ish story (call me crazy). BALLETWARD LIVES! I'm updating once a day (well, twice daily as of right now but we're only 4 chapters in). Silver and Gold, check it out if you please.

Enough blah. No beta ever, forgive my mistakes. Enjoy!

Disclaimer: I don't own Twilight but I do own this idea, and I will cut a bitch if someone steals it.

To say that I was tense and in pain the moment I woke up on Sunday would be an understatement.

My leg hurt and I felt incredibly achy all over for some strange reason. Getting off the bed, I processed the events from the night before with weariness. Officer Kinley's blue-green eyes danced across my eyelids while I showered, his voice my steady companion while I thought about the decision that had been made on top of the hotel room bed.

I was pressing charges against Kate Walters.

Officer Kinley's tight but approving smile were my beacon. I was doing the right thing, even though I detested the drama and the headache that would follow my choice. At the end of the night, when I tucked myself in, I knew that I'd done the best thing I could do for myself and any other victim of Kate's insanity.

The bitch was crazy, simply put.

I didn't even think about Mr. Cullen the slightest bit. He wasn't the one who physically hurt me. I knew that it really wasn't his fault that Kate was crazy unless he's the one that injected her with crazy serum but I highly doubted it. From the look on her face the first time I met her, I knew there was no way her shitty attitude wasn't a product of genes and crappy parenting. Mr. Cullen's greatest mistake in the situation was apathy. I wasn't thinking about forgiving him anytime soon… or ever but that was besides the point. So, I didn't allow myself to think about him and our lacking work-relationship.

I showered and got ready for the day, limping from bathroom to bedroom to see the hotel phone flashing red with a message. Frowning, I picked up the receiver and checked the waiting message, knowing damn well that it could only be Mr. Cullen, Aro, or Officer Kinley. No one else knew what room I was in or even what hotel I'd be staying in.

"Isabella, please meet me in my room before you go downstairs," Mr. Cullen's damned velvet instructed.

I made a face, of course, and grabbed my purse to walk across the hall. Knocking once, the door flew open to reveal my bastard boss standing there knotting his tie. He gestured me forward with a flick of his hand. "Come in." He hesitated for a split second before adding, "Please."

I couldn't help but snort at his newly acquired manners. Son of a bitch. Looking down, I stepped into the room identical to mine and limped my way over to the opposite side of it, going around a cart filled with breakfast food. Pausing in front of a chair tucked into the corner, I sat in it, not really giving a flying shit that I did it without his approval.

"What's going on?" his velvet voice broke through the silence a minute later. Mr. Cullen was standing in front of his bed, straightening his tie.

Giving him the best blank stare I could muster, I shrugged. "I don't understand what you're asking me." And I didn't. When Ang would ask me what was going on, it was when you knew something was bothering me. When Emmett asked me what's going on, he met with my life in general.

"Your leg, Isabella," he gestured in my direction with a short nod. "You're still limping."

My jaw clenched on its own. "It hurts, Mr. Cullen." Like a bitch, I made sure to enunciate each word in case he didn't understand that when someone is in pain, they tend to limp. Fucking idiot.

Those green eyes narrowed in my direction, frustration creasing his forehead. "Is it bruised? From when…" he swallowed, "she kicked you."

MEN!

It was probably unfair of me to put all men into the stupid bubble that I was including Mr. Cullen in. I man as smart as he was… could be that fucking dense? Jesus Christ.

I took a deep breath to steady my soaring annoyance. "I don't think calling it a bruise is really the word I would use, sir."

He took three long steps in my direction, eating up the carpet like a starved man and in no time, he was kneeling in front of my chair with his fingers touching the hem of my pant leg. "I'm pulling up your pants to take a look," he warned but it seemed more like he was telling me that he was going to do it instead of really asking me for my permission.

Mr. Cullen pulled up the material slowly, careful not to touch my skin until he folded it in sections over my knee. His large hand rounded over my heel, extending my leg out very slowly while keeping his eyes on the bright yellow color that highlighted my skin in ugly splashes. For a brief second, I thought about kicking him in the face or at least in the chest so he could fall back but decided that the pain I'd feel moving my leg like that, wasn't worth it.

"Isabella," he grumbled. He was shaking his bronze head of hair like pendulum and I think I even heard him suck in a breath. "Why didn't you tell me?"

I didn't say anything in response. What could I have said? Because I hate your guts? Okay, well maybe that was an exaggeration. I hated Lauren and my ex. I really just detested Mr. Cullen and his presence.

"I thought—," he sighed, still looking me over. "I thought it was just a sore muscle or maybe a bruise. Forgive me," his voice dropped in pitch and for once, even though I wouldn't accept his miserable words, I could hear the apology in his tone. It sounded like an apology that rarely ever left his full mouth. This was a man who never seeked acceptance from anyone.

My heart started hammering in my chest but I didn't say anything in response.

He sat there a minute longer before gently rolling down the stretchy material of my black slacks. The heel of his palms went up to grind into his eye sockets. "I'm taking you to the doctor," he said before mumbling long steams of words under his breath, too low for me to hear.

I thought for a millisecond whether to argue with him about going to the doctor or not. The emergency room visit a few nights back had already told me that I didn't have anything broken but there was no way in hell I wanted to live with this pain for an undetermined amount of time. Fuck. That. Pushing myself off the armrests of the chair, I stood up on shaky feet.

"I can take a cab."

He turned to look at me sharply, giving me a look that rivaled my moms when I talked back to her the one and only time in my life. It was a look that could melt the surface of concrete. "Absolutely not. You're my responsibility—"

I couldn't help but snort loudly, shaking my head. "With all due respect, don't tell me things that you think I want to hear, Mr. Cullen. I'd hate to see how you treat a dog if you consider me a responsibility." The words flew out of my mouth faster than I could think. Or, in this case, I didn't think. I knew I'd cross the line but there was no going back.

The beast in front of me let out a shudder of a breath before nodding in what looked like defeat. "I'm driving you to the doctor," he insisted simply.

Hours later, after a lengthy wait in urgent care and a visit to the pharmacy, I'd been diagnosed with a muscle contusion and loaded up with prescription Tylenol, since Vicodin and I were sworn enemies. They offered me crutches but I took the walking cane instead to help with the first week of pain, which the doctor claimed would be the worst.

Mr. Cullen was strangely silent the entire time, even when he handed me a breakfast taco he bought at the facility while we waited for me to be seen. He paid for my medical bills before I even made it out. I chalked up his kind gestures with a few things. He was probably genuinely remorseful that he'd stood by and done nothing, and then was enough of a jerk to let me walk around the day before. He might have also been worried that I was going to try to take legal action against him, which I would never do. Or possibly even worse for a career-driven man like himself, get him into trouble with the company.

But Mr. Cullen didn't know me. He hadn't taken the time to find out that I was not a vengeful person by nature. I'd never do any of those things. I was going to try and leave him— that would be my revenge and liberation. He was a great worker and I wouldn't tarnish his image because I wasn't raised like that. I was a good person regardless of what he thought.

"We're leaving tomorrow morning, promptly at 8," was the one and only sentence he spoke to me on the way back to the hotel. I nodded my acceptance, not caring in the least bit that there was still a ton of things to do at the warehouse. He could deal with that himself.

We made it back to the hotel in a slow crawl of steps and I slipped into my hotel room early that afternoon. The medicine made me sleepy and I soon found myself passed out for a couple of hours here and there. At some point, there was a soft knock on the door followed by an accented voice, "Room service."

I got warily and peered out through the peephole. Letting the attendant in, he sat a large plate of a sandwich, chips, fruit, and a glass or orange juice onto the bed. "I didn't order anything," I told him with a sleepy voice.

The young man shrugged and looked at a small receipt in his hand. "We verified the account, ma'am. The order is for your room."

I tipped him and tried to think before picking up the sandwich.

It was my favorite, roast beef.

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