AN: Time for the big revelation! How will Edward take the news? Let me know if you like the chapter…
Disclaimer: Do I really have to? Is there anyone who actually believes that they're mine? Fine… I don't own them!
21 – Revelations
Bella
By seven thirty on Saturday morning, I was a nervous wreck. Naturally, I hadn't been able to sleep much, and had spent the majority of the night obsessing over the coming meeting, getting more and more anxious as the glowing minutes ticked by on my alarm clock.
When there was a knock on the door, I almost jumped out of my skin, even though I knew it was just Angela who was coming to pick Lily up for breakfast and a day at the zoo. She had willingly offered to keep Lily occupied so that I at least wouldn't have to worry about that part. Plenty of other things to worry about, though…
"You seem on edge." Angela noted as I let her into the apartment.
"I can't imagine why." I mumbled, not wanting Lily, who was in the living room, to hear. The sound of someone knocking on the door usually brought her into the hallway, and today was no expression.
"Aunty Angela!" She exclaimed, running straight into Angela's waiting arms.
"Hey there, princess." Angela gave her a kiss on the cheek and swung her up in the air. "Are you ready to spend the day at the zoo with me and your uncle Ben?"
"Penguins!" A huge smile spread on Lily's face.
"Yeah, we can look at the penguins all day if you want." Angela said, putting Lily back down on the floor.
I helped Lily put her princess backpack on, having packed some snacks and a thin jacket in it. It was a little chilly outside, and even if she had on a thick sweater, she might need the jacket later.
"There's a jacket in there if it gets colder." I told Angela, who just rolled her eyes at me.
"I know the drill. Come on, Lily-Lee, let's go. The penguins are waiting!"
"Bye, baby." I knew better than to try to get a goodbye-hug when there were penguins on the horizon – there was no way I could compete with them – so I settled for ruffling Lily's hair a little.
"Bye, mommy." Lily waved at me before opening the door.
"Bye, Bella." Angela gave me a quick hug. "It'll be alright." She mumbled in my ear.
The door closed behind them, and I was alone.
I took a quick shower and put on the clothes that I had picked out the previous night – with the intention of wanting to prevent a clothing emergency in the morning. I was done a little after eight, but decided that I might as well leave. Getting there early to get a lay of the land seemed like a good idea.
I didn't actually have a plan; I really had tried to figure out what to say and how to say it, but it had been useless. Unless some genius plan suddenly occurred to me in the car, I was just going to have to wing it.
When I got to the coffee shop, I chose a table close to the register, and sat down so I was facing it. That way he wouldn't be able to miss me when he had paid for his coffee. At least I hoped so.
And I waited.
By nine, I had finished two large mugs of coffee and was getting even more jittery than I had been before I left home. Caffeine and nerves were not a good combination – it was funny how I always remembered that when it was already too late.
Every time the little bell over the door jingled, I looked over my shoulder, and every time, it wasn't him. Most people came in, bought their coffees and left, so the place wasn't very crowded, which was a comfort. A small one, but still. I would take anything I could get at this point.
At nine fifteen, I was starting to think that he wasn't coming, and relief surged through me. At least Alice couldn't say that I hadn't tried.
But just as I was about to get up and leave, the bell jingled again. When I automatically looked over my shoulder, my breath caught in my throat and I felt the exact same tingle down my spine that I had felt the first time I had seen him, more than six years earlier.
It felt like no time at all had passed, like I was back in the high school cafeteria where our eyes had met that cold, wet January day so long ago.
I had been able to convince myself that I had moved on with my life when he wasn't around, but seeing him now made the truth much too obvious to me. I wasn't over him. I wasn't anywhere near.
He didn't notice me, his eyes focused on the counter ahead of him. I took the opportunity of studying him a little more closely.
He looked the same, but there was something a little off. At first, I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but then I realized what it was. He looked tired. He was thinner than I remembered, though that could have been a trick of my mind, and he had dark shadows under his eyes, as if he hadn't slept in days. His hair was rumbled, like he had just rolled out of bed and thrown some clothes on before heading out the door. And the eyes… they were still the same color, of course, but no longer sparklingly green. Instead, they seemed empty somehow.
When he ordered his coffee, his voice hit me, and the memories of that last day came washing over me. I had to take a couple of deep breaths to pull myself together. And then he turned around.
Surprise was evident in his eyes as he spotted me, and… did he look happy to see me, or was I imagining it? I couldn't be sure; I didn't trust my own senses at the moment.
"Bella?" He took a step closer, sounding like he didn't really believe that it was me.
"Edward?" I tried to sound surprised, but I don't think I quite managed to pull it off. I threw in raised eyebrows and hoped it looked like I was taken aback by seeing him.
"What are you doing here?" He asked, and I held up my empty coffee mug in reply. "No, I mean in Seattle." He clarified.
"I live here."
Obvious much?
"Really? Me too."
"I figured as much." I was surprised at how calm I sounded, when my insides were really all tangled up.
"Do you come here a lot?" He took another step closer.
"It happens." It wasn't technically a lie; I had been to the coffee shop before. "You?"
"Every weekend, I live a couple of blocks that way." He pointed out the door in the direction of where I knew his apartment was.
"I see." I nodded; I already knew that, of course. "Are you in a hurry, or would you like to sit down for a minute?" For a second, I was terrified that he wouldn't stay, and my breath caught in my throat at the thought of watching him walk away.
In response to my question, he pulled out the chair opposite me and sat down, placing his coffee mug on the table. I let out a relieved sigh.
"You're out of coffee." He noted. "Do you want me to get you a refill?"
"No, thanks. I've really had all the caffeine I'm allowed for one morning." Who was this person, joking and laughing? I barely recognized myself.
He laughed with me, but it wasn't the laugh I remembered. It seemed empty, like his eyes, hollow somehow. And the smile on his lips didn't reach his eyes.
"So, what are you up to these days?" Alice had already told me, of course, but it was what one asked in a situation like this, right? I couldn't let it slip that I knew more than I should.
"Well, I studied media at NYU, and some piano at Julliard, and now I write commercial jingles during the days and play at a jazz bar a couple of nights a week."
"That sounds like fun. NYU, huh?"
"Yeah, we were in New York anyway, it just seemed easiest." He shrugged.
"New York?" Again, I failed in my attempt to sound surprised, but he didn't seem to notice.
I wasn't sure why I was pushing this; did I want to relive that day? I should really move on to the reason I was here, but when facing two evils, I instinctively chose the lesser. The pain of remembering the day he left was nothing in comparison to the pain I was afraid was coming. If he didn't… no. I wouldn't let myself go there unless – until, the pessimistic voice inside me corrected – I actually had to.
"Right, I didn't tell you where we were going." Something flashed in his eyes before he looked away, and I briefly wondered if the memory of that day hurt him as much as it hurt me, before concluding that that was physically impossible.
"How long have you lived here?" I changed the topic, and he seemed relieved.
"A little over a year, I moved here after graduation. You?"
"About four years. I went to Seattle U." I was desperately trying to figure out how to broach the topic "hey, you have a five-year-old daughter you don't know about". It wasn't exactly something you just slipped into a conversation, and I didn't want to spring it on him out of the blue. Though that might be a vain intention; I doubted that it would make a difference how I told him, he was still going to be shocked. At best.
"What did you study?" He wondered.
"Marketing."
"We're almost in the same business, then." He noted.
"I guess so. I just graduated in June, and got a good job in town, so I decided to stick around."
"That's great." He frowned. "Wait, you said that you graduated this year? How come?"
I took a deep breath and bit my lip. This was my opening. No chickening out now.
"Well, I took a year off after high school." My heart was beating so hard that I was surprised he couldn't hear it.
"Why? Did you do the backpacking thing or something?"
"No." I slowly shook my head, my eyes on the empty mug in front of me. "A little over a month after you left Forks, I found out that I was pregnant."
He was quiet for so long that I eventually had to look up to check his reaction.
"What?" He sounded absent, somehow.
I took the photo I had brought with me from my bag and slid it across the table towards him. He took it, studying it intently.
"Her name's Lily, she turned five in May."
He stared at the picture for what felt like an eternity. Then he put it down on the table.
"I have to go."
I didn't stop him as he got up from the table and left the coffee shop without looking back at me. I was frozen in place, unable to even ask him not to go. Tears formed in my eyes, and I didn't bother to wipe them away when they rolled down my cheeks.
After a while, when I had managed to get my breathing under control and regained the movement in my limbs, I picked up my phone and called Alice. I didn't know what else to do.
"Hello?"
"He left." My voice broke on the second word.
"Bella?"
"I told him, and he just left."
"What?" She instantly sounded furious. "Are you still there?"
"Yeah."
"I'll be there in five minutes."
She walked through the doors four and a half minutes later, fuming.
"That stupid, insensitive idiot!" I heard her mutter under her breath when she spotted me. My tears had dried, but I apparently still looked like hell, because she crouched down next to me and pulled me into a tight hug. "I'm sorry, sweetie. I honestly didn't think that he would react like this."
"It's not your fault." I mumbled, though, in a way, it was.
"Come on." She pulled me up and along with her out the door. Stopping on the sidewalk, she looked me up and down. "Can you drive?" She asked skeptically.
"I'm fine, Alice." That wasn't really true, but I could handle driving myself home.
"Then you can follow me." She headed for her car, and I realized that she still had the Mini. It was parked behind my Accord on the street a block from the coffee shop.
"Where are we going?" I wondered, not really interested, and slouched after her.
"Back to my place."
"I'm fine, Alice." I repeated. "I'm not going to do anything stupid if you leave me alone. You don't need to babysit me."
"It's not you I'm worried about." She muttered. "I need supervision, or I might track down my sorry excuse for a brother and kill him. Very slowly and extremely painfully. And though that does sound like a very good idea right now, I'm not really cut out for a life behind bars."
I couldn't prevent a small smile from spreading across my face at her words. Imagining Alice, of all people, actually hurting anyone was laughable.
"OK." I grudgingly agreed.
"Thank you."
I followed the electrically turquoise car to a brand new apartment building on Seaview Avenue, close to the Golden Gardens Park. When we entered the apartment on the top floor, I gaped at the view.
"Wow, it's beautiful." The entire wall was a panorama window overlooking the bay, a large balcony stretching along it.
"Engagement slash graduation present from mom and dad." Alice shrugged.
Jasper came out of what I assumed was the bedroom, and I realized that Alice had lied to me when she'd said that I had to come home with her to keep an eye on her. I shot her a glare, but she ignored me, and I didn't have the energy to call her on it.
"Hi Bella." Jasper gave me a big hug. "It's good to see you again."
"You too, Jasper." I returned the hug. Over his shoulder, I saw Alice leave the room.
"I need a beer, do you want one?" She called from the kitchen a moment later.
"Sure." I shrugged. I didn't need to be home until two, when Angela was bringing Lily back. And a beer sounded like a very good idea.
"Let's sit on the balcony." Alice suggested, coming back into the room. "It's not that warm, but we have blankets."
I noticed Alice giving Jasper a questioning look, and him shake his head almost imperceptibly in return. I briefly wondered what that was about, but wasn't curious enough to actually ask. Alice held the door to the balcony open for me and handed me a bottle of Corona.
It was a little chilly outside, and I gratefully accepted the blanket that Alice offered me. Jasper didn't join us, slumping down on the couch and turning the TV on instead. Alice and I sat down on a wicker couch that was placed against the panorama window and looked out over the water in silence for a moment.
"You didn't have to trick me into coming back here." I pointed out.
"Sorry." She gave me a sheepish smile. "Do you want to leave?"
"No, it's probably better this way. I would just wallow in self pity if I went home."
"And if you're going to do that, you need beer and ice cream." Alice said. At first, I thought that she was joking, but she sounded completely serious.
"I haven't actually tried that combination."
"Oh, it's great." She got up from the couch. "Chocolate Fudge Brownie or Strawberry Cheesecake?"
"Chocolate, always go with the chocolate."
She giggled and returned a minute later with a tub of Ben & Jerry and two spoons. We dug into the ice cream, and I had to admit that the combo was pretty good.
"You know I'm still here, right?" She said a moment later. "I mean, I still want to be a part of your lives no matter what happens with him." She almost spat the last word.
"I know, and of course you will be." I wanted that too.
"Not just as Miss Alice?"
"Not just as Miss Alice." I promised.
"And do you think I could tell the others? I mean, I know mom would be ecstatic."
"I guess."
It would be nice for Lily to have a bigger family than just me, Charlie and Renée. Even if the idea of another set of grandparents might be difficult to explain to her without touching on the subject of another parent.
"Thank you." Alice squeezed my hand. "I'm honored to be a part of yours and Lily's lives, and I promise to never abuse your trust again."
"It's not your fault, Alice." I repeated. I really didn't blame her.
"But I should have realized. What else is this stupid twin thing good for?" She sighed. "I really thought I knew him better than this."
"So did I."
Alice
I let Bella leave after we'd had lunch at one. She promised that she would go straight over to Angela and Ben's place and hang out with them for the rest of the day, since I kept insisting that she shouldn't be alone.
"What are you going to do?" Jasper asked when I closed the door behind her, once again proving how well he knew me.
"I am going to pay a little visit to brother dearest." I got the spare key Edward had given me in case of emergency from the kitchen drawer where we kept it. This was most definitely an emergency.
"Slap him for me too, will you? Hard." Were Jasper's parting words.
Edward wasn't there when I let myself in. That was fine.
I could wait.
Edward
To see Bella again was a shock, to say the least.
When I walked out of her kitchen more than six years earlier, I had expected it to be the last time I would see her. Before talking to her that day, I had gone over the problem of me moving to New York again and again in my head, and I had really thought that we would be able to make it work. Sure, long-distance would be hard, but it would only be for a year. Then we would go to Seattle U together, and everything would be fine.
Her words had changed all that.
Of course I had expected her to be upset, angry, maybe even furious, that I hadn't told her about the move earlier, but I hadn't been prepared for what actually happened.
What did you think would happen? We'd do one of those long-distance relationships until one of us got sick of it? We both know those never work.
The words still stuck in my mind; it was as if they were burned in my memory. Like when you look directly at the sun, and then see a red circle when you close your eyes. Only they wouldn't go away.
She couldn't have been as devoted to our relationship as I had been if she wasn't willing to at least try? If she could give up on what we'd had together that easily, did she really care?
So I had walked away, before she had a chance to say the words that would completely destroy everything we'd had.
Every day for those first months, I dialed her number at least a dozen times. And a dozen times, I didn't call.
Because though I knew those words would give me the push I needed to move on, I desperately clung to the memories of our time together. I needed them.
And so I never called.
After college, there really was no question about where I would go. It had been her plan to go to Seattle U; I had no reason to think that she would have changed her mind. I figured that it was probably a fifty-fifty chance that she would stay in the city.
A week after graduation, I moved into my new apartment.
Because a small part of me – the part that refused to believe that she had said those words because she no longer cared the way that I did – was screaming to the rest that Seattle was the only place to go. Where else would I be likely to run into her?
Sure, I had entertained the thought of driving to Forks to see her more than once since then, but every time the thought had popped into my head, I had managed to convince myself not to. And I turned around in the street at least once a week when someone passed by that reminded me of her in some way.
She had moved on, of course she had. Even if that small, delirious part of me wasn't wrong, and there had been some other reason that she had disregarded the idea of us staying together after I moved across the country, she must have moved on with her life. It had been six years. Just because I was stuck in the past didn't mean she had to be, too. A part of me hoped that she had in fact moved on, wanted her to be happy, but it was overshadowed by the part that didn't most of the time. Deep down, I was a very selfish creature.
And then there she was, right in front of me. Looking so much like Bella that it physically hurt. At the same time, seeing her made me happier than I had been in longer than I cared to think about. Talk about conflicting emotions.
"Bella?" I took a step closer to assure my disbelieving eyes that it was really her, and not some mirage. What I really wanted to do was touch her, but I didn't think that was the greatest idea. A tiny part of my brain was telling me that it had, at last, happened; I had finally lost my mind and started hallucinating. And then she spoke.
"Edward?" She raised her eyebrows in a surprised look, but there was a tone of something else in her voice. I didn't know, or care, what that was about.
"What are you doing here?" I couldn't help but ask, and she held up a coffee mug. "No, I mean in Seattle."
"I live here." She actually lived in the same city as I did? Even though I had hoped that she was still in Seattle, I hadn't dared let myself believe that she actually was.
"Really? Me too." Redundant, idiot!
"I figured as much."
"Do you come here a lot?" Lamest question ever, but my mind hadn't fully recovered from the shock of seeing her and wasn't working on any higher levels yet.
"It happens." Why had I never run in to her before? "You?"
"Every weekend, I live a couple of blocks that way."
I pointed in the general direction of my apartment, and cursed my words. Every weekend? Sure, make her think that you're completely pathetic. Which you are, by the way.
"I see." She nodded. "Are you in a hurry, or would you like to sit down for a minute?"
I had no idea if I had any plans for the day, but it wouldn't have mattered. There was no way I was walking away from her at the moment. I pulled the chair opposite hers out and sat down, noticing that her mug was empty.
"You're out of coffee." Like she didn't already know that… "Do you want me to get you a refill?"
"No, thanks. I've really had all the caffeine I'm allowed for one morning."
I joined in on her laugh, but even I could hear that it sounded strange. It had been a while since I had laughed without forcing it. It felt nice, but odd.
"So, what are you up to these days?" She asked.
"Well, I studied media at NYU, and some piano at Julliard, and now I write commercial jingles during the days and play at a jazz bar a couple of nights a week."
"That sounds like fun. NYU, huh?"
"Yeah, we were in New York anyway, it just seemed easiest." I shrugged.
"New York?"
I realized that she didn't know that. The memory of that day hit me so hard I almost lost my breath.
"Right, I didn't tell you where we were going." I had to look away from her to avoid seeing the accusation that would be in her eyes. That should be there.
I wondered if the memory of that day still tortured her like it did me. Probably not.
"How long have you lived here?" She wondered, and I silently thanked her for changing the subject.
"A little over a year, I moved here after graduation. You?"
"About four years. I went to Seattle U."
Had we really been in the same city for more than a year? Seattle was big, but I would have thought that we'd inevitably run into each other in a bookshop or music store.
"What did you study?" I was actually curious to know what she had ended up doing, even if it was also a way to get her to talk more, stay longer. I couldn't bear the thought of her leaving yet.
"Marketing."
Funny.
"We're almost in the same business, then." Even stranger that our paths hadn't crossed before now.
"I guess so. I just graduated in June, and got a good job in town, so I decided to stick around."
"That's great." June? This June? I frowned. "Wait, you said that you graduated this year? How come?"
She was smart, dedicated to school. I couldn't imagine that she would have been held back.
"Well, I took a year off after high school."
Oh. Why would she do that? I didn't think she was the kind to go backpacking across the country, but maybe I was wrong.
"Why? Did you do the backpacking thing or something?"
"No." She shook her head and kept her eyes on the mug in front of her, so I couldn't read her expression. "A little over a month after you left Forks, I found out that I was pregnant."
I heard the words, but they didn't immediately register.
Pregnant?
"What?"
She rummaged through her bag, and then slid a photo across the table. I automatically picked it up. A little girl, maybe five years or so, was sitting on a swing, a smile on her face.
"Her name's Lily, she turned five in May."
I studied the picture more closely. She had the same color hair that I did, and even I could see the other similarities. The same nose, same cheek bones. She was even smiling the same, slightly crooked smile that I had perfected during high school. The eyes were Bella's though.
I felt overwhelmed by merely looking at her, and concentrated on the rest of the photo instead. I recognized the background as the playground in Cal Anderson Park, just a couple of blocks away. I walked through that park every time I went downtown. Had I passed through there when they had been there? Maybe only a dozen or so feet away? The thought made my head spin. I put the photo down.
"I have to go."
I got up abruptly and left the coffee shop. She didn't try to stop me.
Once I was on the sidewalk, I didn't know what to do, so I started walking without a goal, letting my feet choose the way as my mind wandered freely.
Lily.
My daughter.
My daughter.
The words didn't seem to fit together at all; I couldn't get my mind to wrap itself around the concept. It was just… mind-blowing.
It was a wonder that I didn't get run over, because the next time I became aware of my surroundings, I was outside the library. I had walked over a mile, and had no memory whatsoever of the route I had taken.
My cell phone started vibrating in my pocket, and I pulled it out. Alice. I waited until the call went to voice mail and then turned the phone off. I didn't want to deal with her at the moment.
I continued down to Pike Place Market, took a right and ended up in Elliot Bay Park, where I finally stopped. I sat down on the damp grass and stared out over the bay, not seeing what was right in front of me. Instead, the picture in front of my eyes was that of a beautiful little girl with big, brown eyes.
I sat there for I don't know how long. It was a nice day, and people passed by me continuously. College students on bikes, couples holding hands, families with kids and dogs. A hot dog vender came along after a while, and I realized that I was starving, so I bought two and quickly finished them.
I didn't think actively, only let my mind wander where it pleased. Which was why I was unaware that I had come to a decision until I actually had.
There was a little girl out there that was my daughter, my own flesh and blood, and I had already missed five years of her life – five years that I would never get back. I had no intention of missing another minute.
I got up, absentmindedly noticing that the park was almost empty – a glance at my watch told me that it was almost four in the afternoon – and went in search of a phone booth. I finally found one, and quickly flipped through the directory.
"Swan, Swan… Swan, B." There were three listings for Swan, B. and I tried the first number.
"Hello?" A male voice answered.
"Hi, I'm calling for Bella."
"There's no Bella here, you've got the wrong number."
I didn't have a chance to apologize before he hung up.
The second number went straight to an answering machine that informed me that Bradley Swan was not in at the moment, but to leave a message and he would get back to me. The third number had been disconnected.
How was I supposed to find her if she wasn't listed?
I slumped against the wall, running a hand over my face. Then I realized how stupid I had been and flipped to the same page of the directory again. She wouldn't be listed as Bella, of course.
"Swan, I." I mumbled to myself as I ran a finger down the page. There were two of those, but I got lucky on the first one.
"Hi, you've reached Bella."
"And Lily!"
"We're not in right now, but leave a message, and we'll get back to you."
"Bye!"
I didn't leave a message, but ripped the page with their number and address from the directory and stuffed it into my back pocket.
Realizing that I was five miles from home, I caught a cab on Elliot Avenue and was at my apartment in ten minutes.
"Edward." I heard Alice's sharp voice from the living room when I closed the door behind me.
"I knew I would regret giving you a key." I muttered as I entered the kitchen and found her glaring at me from the couch in the adjoining living room.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?" She looked absolutely furious, her eyes throwing daggers at me.
"I was just about to throw an intruder from my home, actually." I glared back at her. "How about you?"
I was definitely not in the mood for this.
"That's not what I'm talking about."
"Then would you please tell me what you are talking about, because I sure as hell don't have a clue." I took a jug of orange juice from the fridge and poured some into a glass, downing it in one big gulp.
"I'm talking about what you did this morning. I'm talking about Bella."
I froze as I realized that she knew.
"You know?" I slowly turned to face her.
"Of course I know!" She had a livid expression on her face. I hadn't seen her this angry since… well, ever. "Did you think it was a coincidence, that she just happened to be in the same coffee shop that you go to every Saturday for breakfast?"
"You know." I repeated. I put the glass down on the counter, because I was afraid I'd crush it in my hand if I didn't. "How the hell could you not tell me?"
"I only found out three days ago! Bella promised that she would talk to you, and I thought you should hear it from her. I would have told you if she had refused." Her expression changed from pure fury to disgust. "Now I'm starting to regret pushing her to do this. How could you?"
"This is none of your business, Alice." I said through gritted teeth.
"Like hell it isn't!" She got up from the couch and for a moment I thought that she was going to hit me. She didn't, though, but stopped an inch from me and looked as menacing as she could. She was surprisingly good at it, considering she didn't even reach me to the shoulders.
"Just stay out of it, Alice." I warned. She did hit me then, slapped me across the face.
"And watch you ruin everything? I swear, if you break that little girl's heart, I will never speak to you again! You hear me? Never!"
I touched my left cheek, which stung a little. Then her words registered.
"Wait, you've met her?"
"Of course I have, she's in my class."
"She's… what?" I was not following her.
"She's in my new first grade class that started this Wednesday." Alice clarified. I could hear in her voice that the anger was wearing off.
"But she's five." I tried to connect the dots, but didn't quite succeed.
"I know." Alice shrugged. "Her best friend is a year older, and the pre-school teachers thought it would be better if they could start first grade together, so Bella had her start school a year early. She's very mature for her age."
"What's she like?" I asked, eager to know this stranger that was my daughter.
Alice glared at me again.
"Why do you care?"
"How can you say that? Of course I care."
"You sure have a funny way of showing it." She muttered. I realized that she was talking about Bella and the coffee shop.
"I was shocked, I couldn't think straight!" I tried to explain.
"And why the hell didn't you tell Bella that we were moving to New York? Do you have any idea of the hell she must have gone through?" Her quick change of subject threw me for a moment before I realized what she was talking about.
I didn't want to think about that day. Alice must have realized that she had hit a sore spot, because she quickly continued, without waiting for an answer
"So now what?"
That was the big question, wasn't it? I pondered it for a moment.
"I want to see her, know her. Be a part of her life, in any way possible. I couldn't stand not to, now that I know that she's out there, you know." The idea was unbearable; I felt a lump forming in my throat at just thinking about it.
Alice surprised me by wrapping her arms around my waist. I hugged her back.
"Thank you for not being the jerk I was afraid I was wrong thinking that you weren't."
"Could you take that in English?"
"Never mind." She pulled away. "You have some serious sucking up to do."
AN: I hope this further insight into Edward's mind answers the questions I know some of you have as to why he hasn't contacted Bella in the last six years.