Promises are like cotton candy.
Sweet, but they dissolve easier than mist.
Bella thinks this as she and Seth sit in her truck eating the pink feathery sugar. Seth is easy to be with, never questioning her, never wanting more than she'll give, just being there—as if his whole existence is because of her. Actually, it is.
Seth knows that she can't love him, and because he can't find any wrong in her, he doesn't mind. Seth is dating girls in his class. Bella is glad that he's not taking things personally. She doesn't tell him about Jasper Hale coming to her room, though. She trusts him, but by now she's found out about how when wolves phase they share their thoughts inadvertently. And she certainly doesn't trust anyone else in the pack. Not after Alice. She winces and Seth looks at her, always attuned to any distress.
She smiles though, and says she's fine.
But she was worried. Jasper hadn't told her that he'd try to get some of his family to go to war with the wolves, but she knew that that's what he had been thinking. Bella wondered if Jasper would tell Edward what he'd seen. She hardly dares hope she'll see him again, outside of dreams.
She drives Seth to the woods where he phases and leaves her, and the she goes to work. But she doesn't make it.
He.
Is.
There.
.
.
.
In the middle of the road, standing so she can't miss him, he's there. Bella slams hard on the brake and quickly takes a deep breath before collapsing on the steering wheel. How can he do this to her still? Make her feel all the pain, heartache, torture, abandonment—as if it all happened yesterday? He opens the door to her truck and he's so close she can smell his mouthwatering scent, and for a moment she doesn't care that he left her. He saw her collapse over the steering wheel and wants to know if she's all right. Probably just chivalry, Bella thinks bitterly.
Yet another of his promises broken. He had said she'd never see him again—him or his family. Ad now he was here.
He says her name gently, the way he used to. She shakes her head and moans. Just now, it's too difficult to breathe with the hole in her torso savagely ripping itself wider.
Finally she looks up, into the smoldering topaz eyes, and her heart stutters the way it used to. He says her name again, and then he asks.
Edward wants to know if she's all right. Bella laughs, and then turns and looks him full in the eye. His face is only a few inches away, and so he gets the full force of her agony. Edward has always been perceptive, and so he realizes that the damage inside of her will take years to undo entirely. He doesn't know whether he's even the right person to pick up the pieces and patch them together.
Bella whispers two words. You promised.
Edward hasn't touched her yet, but now he tentatively puts a finger to her face and runs it down her jaw line. Bella shivers at the iciness that she hasn't felt for nearly a year, now.
She asks him why he has come, why he's broken almost every promise he's ever made. And Edward answers.
I love you, he tells her.
The words make Bella's heart beat race for a few moments of euphoria, and then she starts crying. He doesn't mean it. When he leaves again, those words will return and drive themselves into the heart of her pain and make it worse. Much worse.
At that moment, they are both thinking the same things. Will there ever be trust between us again?
This was incredibly hard to write without dialogue ... one of the ones where I was tempted to break my rule. Review please!