Chapter 25- Honesty.

Emmett's arms wrap around me and he draws me down gently until we're stretched out on the bed with my head pillowed on his shoulder and his arm holding me tight against him. "Oh Rosa girl…" he murmurs, "My beautiful, beautiful girl…"

I breathe him in and kiss him in the little dip at the base of this throat, my heart aching because he is so very beautiful and very good, and I want him so much to be mine. For the first time since it happened, I find myself wanting to tell someone about that night. I want to tell him.

"Can I tell you about it? It's not…not nice, but…" My voice fades. What happened to me is so far from 'nice' that I don't even have words for it.

"It doesn't matter if it's not nice." Emmett strokes my hair, working his fingers through the tangles with surprising gentleness. "It's your story. I want to know all your stories…even this one."

"I started dating Royce at the beginning of my junior year," I say slowly. "He was a year older than me and one of those people who seem to have everything- he was good looking and popular, played football, got good grades, had a fancy car and all daddy's money and influence behind him…you know the type. I made varsity cheerleading and he was quarterback and so we were often at the same parties and hanging out with the same people. We flirted a lot- he wanted me, but he was a player and I wasn't interested in just being another conquest. I thought I was better than that." I pause for a minute, remembering how it was back then with all the playful flirtation that I had thought was so innocent.

"He saw it as a challenge I guess, because he didn't leave me alone. And I was flattered, and naïve and stupid… In the end I gave in and we went out and then became a couple." I sigh. "I thought I had it all. I was pretty and popular, I was a cheerleader, my grades were good, and I was dating this guy that all the other girls would have killed to go out with, but he wanted me. We went out a lot, went to all the parties together, to junior and senior prom together…from the outside it all looked perfect."

I close my eyes and bite my lip, startling slightly when Emmett lays a fingertip gently on my chin. "You don't have to talk about any of it that you don't want to," he says quietly. "I'm listening, but you don't have to do it all today."

"No, I want to." I need to talk about it. I need you to know. I gather my thoughts for a moment before I go on, my voice low. "It wasn't as perfect as it looked. Royce could be…difficult. He had an awful temper and we fought a lot, when no one else was around. He was the first person I slept with, and sex became a big point of contention. He hurt me a couple of times." I feel Emmett tense, and I laugh mirthlessly. "You must think I'm an idiot for letting it go on…I think I'm an idiot for letting it go on! But everyone always said how good we were together, he could be so charismatic and whenever he did anything to me he was always so sorry and did what he could to make it up to me. By the time I realised how bad things really were, I didn't know what to do. It wasn't so simple just to get away."

"Early in the summer I tried to break up with him," I go on carefully. "I thought it would work- he was going to be going away to college after vacation and I'd still be in Rochester for senior year. I knew we weren't good together, and I thought breaking up was the best thing to do. Royce didn't agree."

I take a deep breath. "I visited a friend the night it happened. She was at school with me but had dropped out to have a baby, so we didn't see that much of each other. I stayed late talking with her and playing with the baby, and then rather than wait for a cab I decided to talk home."

"They caught up with me only a few streets away. Royce and a few of his friends. I wasn't scared at first, he was supposed to be my boyfriend, but then he pulled me into the park and hit me and…" I shudder. "Royce went first, and then the others. I tried to fight them off and I screamed and screamed for someone to help me…but it didn't make any difference." I can feel the tears, stinging my eyes and dripping, hot and salty, down my cheeks. "It hurt so much. The rapes, and then the beating…I thought I was going to die. I nearly did. I don't remember being found in the park or being taken to the hospital, but when I got there I went straight into surgery so they could stop all the internal bleeding and try to…try to…fix what they'd done to me."

"Damn it, baby, fuck them…" Emmett holds me closer and I hear the tears frogging in his throat. "I wish I had something to say…sweet Jesus, I'm sorry you had to go through that."

"It was big news locally," I tell him, talking faster now, wanting to get it all out. "They were arrested right away, I knew who they were of course and there was some physical evidence to back that up, although a lot of it was lost or compromised because of the immediate surgery. Royce's dad was very well known and had a lot of influence, and he hired the most expensive scum sucking lawyers he could to get Royce off."

"But surely…" Emmett's voice trails off.

I smiled bitterly. "Surely they wouldn't get off? No, but he was going to get the lightest sentence he could and ruin me in the meantime. They told the police the sex was consensual and that they didn't know who beat me up. You know, there are laws to protect underage rape victims' privacy, but it didn't make any difference. Royce's name was out there, and everyone who knew us knew it was me.

"They had pictures they took on their phones from that night that they said showed I was enjoying it and that the violence must have come later, and they sent those pictures to everyone in school. There was an anonymous blog that everyone was reading- the prom queen and the football hero and look at us now. I don't even know who was behind it, but they had a lot of other photos…mostly just stuff like me in my bikini that was totally innocent, but with all the things that they were saying it looked like something else. They found some modelling photos I'd done when I was fifteen when I won this contest- it was stupid, you couldn't see anything, but I mean technically I wasn't wearing any clothes.

"I was the victim, but everything they were saying about me and about what I had done with Royce...I hadn't done anything wrong, but it was like it was all my fault anyway. It was just horrible, and I couldn't deal with it at all. I told my dad that I wasn't ever going back to school, and I guess that's when he got together with Carlisle and Esme and thought I should come here."

"So what happened to them?" Emmett's voice is shaking.

"They plea-bargained," I say flatly. "They got some jail time and I got to skip going through the hell of a trial. I don't know if it was worth it. But nothing that the courts could have done to them would have even come close to making up for what they did to me. I might have won at trial, but it wouldn't have made any difference really…I'd already lost in all the ways that mattered." There's a long silence.

"Thank you for telling me," Emmett says hoarsely. "I didn't know it was like that. I had no idea it was that bad…" His eyes look troubled and he catches my mouth in his and kisses me with soft and questing lips before he pulls away. "I love you," he says simply. "I understand more now, about why you're the way you are, and I love you Rosalie… I don't ever want to do anything that hurts you, or that you don't want to do."

I believe him, and the fact that he doesn't want to do anything that I don't want to do makes me want to do everything with him. I become aware that we're both still naked from the waist up, and with a slow smile I move back towards Emmett and take his bottom lip in between mine. He kisses back, and soon it's all roaming hands and deep, wet kisses and muted sighs and I don't know when my body has ever felt this good.

I roll onto my back and pull Emmett with me, so that he's looming over me as he lies in between my legs. He groans as I wrap my legs around him and rub against him, and thrusts against me until we're both breathless.

"Oh damn, Rosa girl…"

I unzip his fly and slide my hands into his trousers and boxer shorts, feeling how big and hard his cock is as I wrap my hands around him. My fingers can feel the wetness on his swollen head, and his skin feels like silk as I grip him tighter. I can't move my hands much in the confined space of his clothes, but Emmett pushes up into my hands and I squeeze and rub as he gasps.

"Oh, that's good, that's so good, that's….oh Rosalie, I'm going to…"

"I want you to," I whisper, and slip one hand lower to curve around his balls so that he comes, in several pulsing bursts, and the wet, stickiness smears between us.

Emmett's heart is racing, thudding under my cheek as I rest my head on his chest. I wipe my hand carelessly across his trousers and he laughs and kisses my forehead. "Sorry about the mess." He rubs the wetness on his belly. "You want to have a bath?"

"What, together?"

"Sure." Emmett heaves himself off the bed and goes into the bathroom I share with Alice, and a moment later I hear the snap of the lock and the rush of water into the tub.

Emmett disappears into his room to throw his dirty clothes in the hamper there, and I knot my hair up on my head so that it won't get in the way in the bath. I feel oddly self-conscious about undressing casually in front of him, so I toss a scoop of foaming bath crystals in to the water and then I'm in the tub before Emmett returns. He climbs in behind me, which immediately raises the water level enough that I reach over and turn off the faucet.

We don't turn the light on, and in the dim half-light spilling in through my open door the hot water and steam and bubbles and Emmett's hands rubbing slow circles on my back with a face washer is almost stupefying in its relaxation. I sigh and surrender to him when he draws me closer to sit between his legs and half float as I loll backwards against his chest.

He continues to stroke the face washer over me, down my arms and across my neck and breasts and stomach, down in between my legs. He drops the cloth then and his fingers take over, touching me, exploring the shape and feel of me with no pressure or demands, waiting until I open my legs to him and invite his hands further in.

I've never been touched like this. Not this slow, sweet caressing touch by someone who wants to discover me, who is watching and listening for every one of my reactions and is doing this only for me to feel the pleasure of it. Never by someone who whispers in my ear how beautiful and perfect and desirable I am and how much he loves me. Never by a man who puts his own pride aside and asks me if it's good, who wants me to tell him what I like and what he can do to make it better for me. So I try and find words, and Emmett listens to them and takes in all the unspoken things too. All the whimpers and sighs and tiny noises of pleasure that grow until I drop my head back on his shoulder and close my eyes and come, my body shuddering with the bliss that he's given to me and my fist clamped to my mouth to stop me from crying out.

"I love you Rosalie," Emmett murmurs, his lips in the damp coils of my hair. I love his generous spirit, that he can offer me his love with such open trust even when I can't say the words back to him.

My heart aches, and in the barest breath of a whisper I find myself telling him the last secret, the one that hurts most and makes me know that what happened to me has irrevocably changed every aspect of my life. "I can't have babies anymore."

Emmett's arms tighten around me. "Because of what they did? But you can…I didn't hurt…" his voice trails away.

I think I know what he's asking, and with my eyes closed I answer him. "I can have sex. The way you touched me then was fine, the surgeons fixed everything there. But when it happened…I was pregnant. About sixteen weeks. That's what really made me decide to break it off with Royce- I couldn't raise a baby with someone like that. I guess he decided I wasn't going to raise a baby without him either…he beat me badly enough that I miscarried the baby, and because of how violent it was and just my own shitty luck, I haemorrhaged and they took out my uterus. It was a one in a million thing, it hardly ever happens like that, but…it happened to me."

"I'm sorry." Emmett's hands don't stop their slow, gentle caress of my body. "I guess you wanted that then."

"Yeah." I laugh a little, without humour in it. "I didn't go around saying it or anything. I certainly didn't mean to get pregnant in high school. I was going to go to college and all that first but I always knew I wanted babies. Always. I wanted what I didn't have- a regular family where the mom wasn't sick and the dad didn't work all the time. It doesn't seem like that much to ask for, you know? But now I can't have it."

Emmett doesn't say anything then. After all, what is there to say? But he holds me close and plants tiny kisses on my closed eyelids, and when I open them and look at him he tells me again that he loves me and that I am perfect just as I am, and in in the face of his honest blue eyes all I can do is believe that he means it.

A/N…Aww, my girl. And Emmett…bless. So lovely to finally write them having some fun together, lol.

I just wanted to explain that I added in a pregnancy for Rosalie because I've always felt that vampire Rosalie's inability to have a baby and be a mother is really key to her personality, and so I somehow needed her attack to leave her infertile. Chances of a rape making you definitely unable to get pregnant is…really, incredibly rare. Getting beaten severely enough to miscarry a baby and that leading to haemorrhaging and emergency hysterectomy is slightly more probable. And if that wasn't the most distasteful and depressing avenue of research I've had to do, I don't know what else would beat it!

Thanks SO MUCH to everyone reading and leaving me reviews…I love reading them and getting that feedback! I was a bit ambivalent about writing all human, but I'm completely sold on it now- I love my Rosalie girl being human and finding herself and her own strength in all this struggle.