A/N: don't forget to look up "Miss Nae Malfoy" on Facebook and 'like' it! Also, those lovely reviews are a fantastic bonus.
"You could've died, Bella! Gee whiz, do you even realize the full magnitude of what you've done?" Rosa had tears in her eyes, but I knew better than to expect them to fall. That was her thing, she was so much stronger than me, she always had been. "Something told me to come check on you." Rosa held the silver plated lighter to her lips daintily before exhaling her smoke in a French manner. "I expected to find you and Edward occupying a love nest, not a ransacked dump hole with a near dead girl lying on the upstairs floor!"
"I get your point, Rosa." I finally snapped back at her before taking a long sip of water- this splitting migraines coupled with my own embarrassment was far too much to handle. "I've got the worst headache of my life and I've already vomited twice. Please, just simmer for now. We can have a row any other time."
Rosa was going to say something scathing at me from across the circle kitchen table, but Victoria Kane chimed in. "Look, I think it's best if we allow the argument to be buried. Right?" She peered over at Rosalie, obviously trying to fell her out for any signs of a struggle.
My oldest cousin was silent for what felt like a million years before her blue eyes filled with judgment and brimmed with tears found mine. "I wanna know why- no, I… I just need to know why."
My face was twisted in a rotten sneer- I was dreading looking into her eyes and realizing what I already knew of myself. I refused to let her see me weak and unsure of myself, I would gladly pretend to hate here. "Why what?" It came out scathing, just how I planned it. "Why did I snort Eddie's stash of Blow? That's what you wanna know." Rosalie's mouth popped open in such a foreign, unladylike manner and a small noise slipped right past her lips. I fully faced her and tightened my palms into fists, prepared to pummel the next thing that came my way. "I felt like it." With every word, Rosa's eyes watered and the intensity in the mid-November air was worse than even the summer.
Rosa was shell-shocked, as she should be, in her seat for a few more minutes than I felt necessary. If she was going to walk out and leave me, why hadn't she gone already? That's what people did, they left. No matter woman or man, immediate family or not, that's just what people did. I was a lost cause, damnable since puberty. We were staring each other down without making a move or speaking a word. I felt rather heard Victoria Kane move around uncomfortably, obviously not wanting to break the silence but wanting to do something about the severity. "You felt like it, Isabella?" Rosa seethed, her tears now replaced with fury.
I could smell the nicotine burning on her tongue and almost commented on it. "I didn't stutter, Rosalie." Where did that uppity voice come from? Had I sounded like that all this time and just suddenly realized it? It made me consider my life in these last few months, close to a year, but I had very little time to take my skip down memory lane. Faster than the wind could fly through the open shutters, Rosa was beside me, or above me actually; she was a tall woman, always had been, and when we wrestled around as children I was the one being pinned and tossed around.
So when Rosa shoved at me without any notice, sending my unsuspecting self to the floor, I knew just what I had to do- whether or not I even had a chance, I refused to let someone else push me around. I crawled into a run and went straight at Rosalie, both of our stilettos folding and falling from our feet as we wrestled about. She slapped at me, anywhere she could, but I was just focused on the principle; my hands went around her throat to hold onto something, but Rosalie was quicker. I wanted to cry in frustration when she slammed my shoulders back into the ground and dug her knee caps into my hips- just like always, she had the upper hand. "Look at yourself! Look at you, Bella! Don't you see what you've done?" Her voice was scratchy and cracked mid-sentence, a loss of composure I had never seen before.
She was a twenty-one year old woman with iron-wrought balls and a killer catwalk- a woman that refused to cry over boys, play with dolls, or work for anyone. That was the kind of woman that was pinning me down, breaking down right before me over me; but she was asking the impossible of me. I couldn't see who I was or what I was capable of anymore. It wasn't just the lack of Edward, but that was a deafening component- it was the lack of everything. Lack of life, lack of color, lack of luster… questions and doubts plagued my conscience as any other eighteen year old girl, but I had a mountain of responsibility on my shoulders unlike the rest.
I was the happy enough, privileged girl to a high profile police officer one day and the next I was an under aged fiancé to a lucrative criminal- he took my sadness away but with it, also my happiness. He took my virginity, my virtue, and I would never be worthy as a wife to another. What was I even worth anymore? I came into the Cullenciano situation with my head held high, knowing that I was in fact the pretty little Illinois dime piece worth a million bucks. Now, all these months later, I could never imagine having the balls to walk into the Cullenciano home as proud and pompous as I was at first. I faced down hungry wolves with a promiscuous smile; how in the world did I fall so hard from grace?
Without milling over repercussions, I gripped Rosa by her arms and shifted us so that I was above her- this was my time to be the one with the upper hand, I didn't want to be the girl that couldn't protect herself anymore. "This is my life! Not yours!" I was out of breath and struggling to keep her much larger frame from slamming me to the ground again.
"You…" she tried but failed to get her arms free, "don't get it! You're young and have everything…" Rosalie bit back.
"I have nothing!" I screamed down at her. "No money, no parents, no friends, no fiancé… I have nothing." A pain, as wide and deep as the Atlantic Ocean I used to Cruise through on family holidays, expanded in my chest- my words were calmer than the breeze flitting through the willow outside but the storm was just beneath the surface. I was going to explode, not through words but through action, quite literally. The pain, first figurative, turned physical in a second; I clutched at my chest as if I was clawing my way out of a plastic bag, but nothing helped. Rosalie and Victoria faded from my line of vision as my surroundings also started to diminish- what was happening to me? When I got high last night, my vision was blurry and psychedelic, but this was completely different.
This was a tunnel, long and dark, but I didn't feel myself moving. I didn't feel anything at all.
My cousin was shaking my shoulders quite brashly and opening her mouth in the motions of screams, but all actions were in vain. I couldn't hear or feel a thing, barely able to see; all I could control was my eyeballs and I tried to focus them on Rosalie. I tried to tell her it was my chest, that it was tightening and constricting my thoughts, breaths, and any action I could have been capable of. I wanted to tell her that I loved her more than I ever had the nerve to say, and I wanted to apologize for every stupid thing I ever did to her, every ridiculous accusation I had thrown her way. I wanted to stop time, rewind, and fix it. Fix everything- our argument, my engagement, the strained relationship with my parents… I just needed more time.
Blink.
I panicked at the prolonged period it took to open my eyes, but when I saw Victoria and Rosalie still hunched over my crumpled body, I was eternally grateful. "R…" that one letter took a million watts of energy to splutter out.
Blink. Blink.
"Bella! Bella, please- just look at me. We called the paramedics, they'll be here. Just stay with me." Rosalie was so different in that moment- she wasn't angry, outraged, bitter, pompous. She was just my cousin, the one I grew up with in diapers and dressed up like princesses as children, and she was holding me around my shoulders.
Just a day before when I was sure death was knocking on my door, feeling like the world was going to stop existing all at once scared the living shit out of me- but now, with her holding me so close to her glowing, thriving existence… I wasn't scared at all.
To Be Continued.
A/N: no excuse for the long wait… oh yeah there is! I have a delightful new family member and I can hardly drag myself away from him long enough to write this chapter!