Chapter 28 – Bumpy road

AN: It's going to take a couple chapters before it will be revealed what exactly is going on with Edward. Please stick with me, it is going to be a bumpy road ahead.

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Bella woke to being shaken by two big hands. Nothing too bad, or rough, but she wouldn't have described it as being gentle either.

"Wake up!"

It was Edward's voice and it confused her. He sounded stressed or maybe strained would be a better word.

"What's going on?" She lifted her head, forcing her weary eyes open.

She found Edward fully dressed by her bedside. He looked... a little off; face unshaven, eyes a bit bloodshot and hair even more out of order than usual. She felt dread washing over her like an ice cold shower.

"Is something wrong?" she croaked. "Is it Tony? Or my mother… Or-…"

Edward shook his head. "It's nothing like that," he said, his tone unreadable. "You need to get up, we have to leave in about twenty minutes."

"Oh… " She pushed herself up to a sitting position, trying to make sense of it all. And then it clicked. "Oooh, your parents, breakfast… What time is it? Is Tony up yet?"

"Half past nine. Come on, hurry up. We really don't have a lot of time here," he said impatiently, taking her by the hand to usher her out of the bed. "I'll help you with your clothes.''

"What? Half past NINE? I thought-… weren't we supposed to meet up with your family for breakfast, like really early? Like hours ago?"

"There has been a change of plans. Tony is with my parents. They picked him up while you were still asleep. I'm sure they've already had breakfast by now. We'll meet up with them later, but we have a few things to take care of first, a few people to meet."

"A few people to meet? What people?" Bella asked with a frown as she scooted to the edge of the matters and carefully lowered her feet to the floor. "And why didn't you wake me sooner? We could have-…"

"Jesus, you have a lot of questions," he interrupted her, pulling her to her feet. "Come on. I'll tell you all about it when we're on our way."

"Edward, you're acting strange. What's gotten into you?" she asked, concerned, confused and even slightly annoyed. "Don't deny it. It started last night when you wouldn't meet my eyes. I'm not stupid you know."

"I know… and you're not entirely wrong. But please, be a little cooperative. I'm running on less than four hours of sleep here," he explained without really explaining anything. "We can talk later, but first, if you want to shower you need to get on it straight away. I'll get some clothes ready for you and also, maybe a sandwich and some tea to go, or would you rather have juice?" he rambled in a seemingly disjointed way.

"I'd rather have some answers," Bella protested, reluctant to admit the idea of a shower and some food seemed suddenly very attractive.

"In the car," was his only response. "We'll talk in the car."

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Bella showered in five minutes, dried off, and pulled on the pink cotton underwear, dark blue pair of paint-splattered sweat bottoms, plain t-shirt and a grey hoody that Edward had laid out for her.

She checked her phone; nothing new from Seth. She tried giving him a call while she started the painstaking process of getting her hair sorted.

A couple of signals went through before the message 'occupied' showed on the display.

Sighing, she threw her phone on the bed and turned her attention back to the mirror. Her hair seemed to have turned into a birds nest again overnight. She heard Edward puttering about in the kitchen and hoped she would have time for a proper comb through and a quick blow-dry. She didn't, of course… Halfway in, she turned from the mirror to get the hairdryer and nearly jumped out of her skin, when she noticed Edward standing beside her with the blood pressure monitor in his hand.

"Sit," he ordered, apparently not noticing or not caring about the startled glare Bella gave him. She could think of a thousand ways to tell him to get lost, but something stopped her.

"I need two seconds to finish this," she said instead, motioning to her still semi-wet hair. "Please," she added in a quiet voice, when she saw him about to argue.

His eyes flashed to hers and for the first time that morning he really met her gaze, surprise evident in his expression. He expected her to be more difficult than that, she could tell. But she wasn't going to go that route. She could be cooperative when she wanted to be… to a certain extent anyway, she told herself as she threw her hair into a hasty braid and tied it off.

"There, a beanie on top of that and I'm good to go."

"Almost good to go," Edward corrected her, before steering her towards the French armchair by the window. "Now, sit still for a minute while I do this."

She waited in silence while he finished the task at hand and wrote down the digits that were shown on the display of the BP monitor. Then came the questions.

Bella felt like screaming, but forced a calm patience into her voice when she replied, "No, Edward. I feel fine. No cramping this morning and no more Braxton hick's contractions. Yes, I realize my feet are quite swollen, but that seem to be a permanent thing these days. No back ache yet, but it's still early. You know it's usually worse at nighttime."

"Honestly, I'd let you know if there is any reason for concern," she added, as she accepted his help to get back on her feet again.

"Are you feeling dizzy?" he inquired, stopping her from side-stepping away from him

"No more than I usually do after a hot shower." She wiggled herself free from his gasp.

"What about headache?"

"Apart from the one you're giving me right now, you mean?" she countered. "I'm not the one stressing this morning, you are. Can we just get to where we need to be and take it from there?"

"Alright," he nodded grimly. "Just tell me one thing… Have you felt the little guy move at all since last night?"

"Yes, Edward. Our little princess was bouncing around just a few seconds ago. I think she has hiccups. Everything's fine. I'm fine, the baby is fine. You're the one being all spazzy and weird."

"Fair enough." He backed away. "Your breakfast is in the paper bag on the kitchen counter. Let me just get my car keys and my phone and we'll be on our way."

"You might have to help me with my boots… and my coat," she huffed, knowing full well that she really hadn't had much of a choice, but ask for help.

"Of course. Anything for you. I'll meet you by the front door," he responded with a slight nod, then his expression turned somber. "I mean it, and please Bella, keep in mind what I said last night," he added somewhat cryptically over his shoulder as he scurried away to find his keys.

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"Why can't you just tell me where we're going?"

"Stop asking so many questions and finish your sandwich!" It sounded more like a bark than anything else.

"You said we'd talk in the car," Bella reminded him with a bit of annoyance in her voice, as she checked her phone. Still nothing from Seth.

"You need to eat something first, then we'll talk." Edward shifted lanes, and gave her a quick side way glance, frowning for the umpteenth time since they started the drive. "Can you please, do as I say just this once," he sighed. "You need to get at least some sort of nourishment into your system before we do this."

'Do what?', Bella wondered to herself for the thousandth time. He was acting like he expected her to have a really bad reaction to whatever it was he was about to tell her.

"Please, Bella," he repeated.

"Fine, but your driving is making me nauseous and I can't promise it won't come straight up again," she warned, turning in her seat to reach into the paper bag sitting on the center console.

"That's why there is juice in there as well. If you'd listened to what I suggested, you could have started with the juice. That would have been enough to tie you over until we get to our first stop."

"You know I hate orange juice with pulp in it," she grumbled, stripping back more of the wrapping from the sandwich. "It's disgusting."

"No, I didn't know that," he sighed. "I thought it was grape juice you hated and juices with more than one flavor."

"And juice with pulp." She demonstratively took a bite of the sandwich in her hand. "Look, I'm eating, happy now?"

"Extremely happy," Edward replied dryly, without even as much as a glance in her direction.

In a moment of childish impatience, Bella wadded the discarded sandwich paper into a tight ball. Then as they stopped at a traffic light, she threw it at his head, ignoring the way her seat belt pressed against her bladder with every move she made.

"Mature, Swan. Real mature!" Edward shot back in his condescending tone that made Bella want to castrate him.

"I'm not sure how I'm the 'immature' one, when you're the one that's been stalling for nearly twenty minutes now," she commented with a snort. "Have you gone and done something stupid again? Is that it? You're worried I'm not going to like what you have to tell me? Am I right?"

"I'm not stalling," he scoffed. The light changed and he pressed his foot down hard, thrusting the car into motion again.

Bella held onto the ceiling handle tightly, rolling her eyes at him. "Can you at least tell me where we're going and who were meeting with? I don't think that's too much to ask."

"It's Seth, isn't it?" she added, when the only answer she got was a sigh. "Something's going on, something you didn't want to tell me last ni-…."

"You're wrong." This time his reply was almost instant. "That's not it. This has nothing to do with your colleague, or last night."

"Wha-..?" Just then, the car suddenly swerved to the side, enough so that Bella thought a tire must have blown or something. Only, Edward didn't look surprised, or concerned, at all, he mostly just looked angry.

"Wh-..What are you doing?" she yelped, and braced herself against the dashboard.

"I'm pulling over. I can't drive and have this conversation at the same time," he replied, after which he hit the breaks, bringing the car to a complete stop.

"Funny, seeing as you're the one insisting on us having this conversation in the car in the first place," Bella reminded him with a frown. She didn't understand what was going on. "Come on start talking. You still haven't given me any answers."

His hands were shaking. Why was his hands shaking?

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Answers, she wanted answers and Edward wanted nothing more than to smooth out the crease on her forehead. He almost blurted it out all out then and there in order to get it over with. How the concern for their safety had changed… why it had changed and what the plan of action looked like… But he told her none of those things.

Instead he killed the car engine and leaned back in his seat, preparing himself to deliver the speech he had practiced in his mind a hundred times over the last few hours.

It was better this way, he told himself. She'd know soon enough anyway, it was just a matter of timing. It would look and sound more authentic this way and authenticity was of utter most importance.

The details were set, the operation was already in motion. He couldn't back out now, the stakes were too high.

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"So what's happening and no more stalling," Bella demanded, as soon as the car had come to a complete halt. "WHERE exactly are we going and why are you acting so hush hush about it?"

"Alright, our first stop is this one specific hardware store," Edward said slowly, as if it pained him to say it. "We are going there to pick up two industrial fans that I have rented. It's a bit out-of-the-way, but no one else could help me on such short notice, so... "

"Fans?" Bella parroted, like she didn't know the meaning of the word. "You've rented two fans?"

"Yes, but that's only our first stop," he said. "After that, we're meeting Alice back at the house…. Then the locksmith and the guy from the security company…. and last, but not the least, the emergency plumber who's trying to save our new floor from permanent water damage."

Oh… OH… "Water damage?"

Well, that explains his crabby mood then, although it didn't explain much of anything else.

"Edward, did another pipe burst again? I thought the plumber said that he replaced ALL the pipes, the last time this happened. Wasn't that what the horrendously expensive bill we received last week was all about? "

"That was upstairs. He replaced all the pipes and joints upstairs," Edward explained in a tired-sounding voice. "And please, this is NOT the same plumber. I'm not paying that incompetent dabbler another dime."

"So, there's been a leak downstairs, then?"

"You can say that, yeah. I woke to a phone call from Al at six thirty in the morning, telling me there was water up to the threshold of the door opening. She went by the house to pick up some stuff that she left behind on purpose last night."

"Left behind on purpose?" Bella questioned his choice of words. "And what was she doing there so early? I mean, I know she still has the spare key, but… "

He must have heard the confusion in her voice, because he looked down at the hands in his lap and explained. "I guess she never got the opportunity to collect her things in the kitchen last night; some plates, a cake cutter and stuff like that. She decided to make a pit stop there on her way out to have breakfast with mom and dad. She was supposed to be at work at nine, so luckily for us she was up bright and early. "

"Oh…I see." Bella noticed he was back to not meeting her eyes again. Why was that? She narrowed her eyes. Was he deliberately omitting something?

"How bad is it?" she asked, referring tot he water leak.

He shut his eyes, as if calming himself before he answered. "The entire kitchen was flooded when Alice got there, another hour or two and it would have been an even bigger disaster."

"Oh, no," Bella mumbled, a feeling of despair settling over her like a heavy blanket. Because, why did it have to be the kitchen? They could get by with only one functioning bathroom, or without water upstairs, or without the utility room, but a flooded kitchen…? With the electrical wiring only half-finished in there, a flooded kitchen floor was bad news. The worst really, there would be delays now, no doubt.

"Was it the boiler?" she asked, remembering, suddenly, the rewiring that Jasper and his friend, Bruce, the electrician, had done when installing it the day before. Clearly, they should have had a plumber there to check it over too before putting it to use.

"No, not the boiler," was Edward's shocking reply. Or, actually, that wasn't the shocking part. The shocking part was what came next. "It was the cold water tap underneath the kitchen sink."

"The cold water tap?" she gasped, feeling like the world tilted slightly and the air was knocked out of her lungs. A bit of an extreme reaction perhaps, but that was only because she knew what came next.

"Yeah, the one YOU used, when you put Tony's soiled clothes in water."

"Hey, I specifically asked you to help me fill that bucket and you told me I could go ahead and use the tap under the sink," she said to her defense, hating how her voice slightly quivered.

"Damn it, Bella!" He hit the steering wheel with his fist. "I said you could use it, if you promised to turn it off properly afterwards."

"I did turn it off afterwards."

"No, you didn't"

"Yeah, I did. I know I did," she repeated, as if saying it again would suddenly make everything clear to him.

"Well, this morning when Alice walked in there, it was spewing out water all over the floor so I'd say something definitely went wrong there."

"Are you saying it's my fault?"

"I'm saying you're the only one that was in there using that tap. Everyone else used the upstairs bathroom for water, like we had decided beforehand, as we closed off the kitchen due to the fact that there is still exposed wiring in there."

"I turned it off. I swear I did," Bella insisted, feeling hot tears prick her eyes. "Your mother was right by my side when I did it. You can ask her, she'll tell you she saw me turn it off."

"I'll ask her when I see her, but it really doesn't matter. The damage is already done," he snapped, but then his tone smoothed out a bit, "Fact of the matter, there was a leak and seeing as the hardwood floor had not been sealed yet, we have a bit of a problem on our hands, hence the need for an emergency plumber and these industrial fans, we're about to pick up."

"But it does matter!" Bella all but shouted at him, her heart thumping hard against her chest. "Why don't you believe me?! After everything we've been through… I don't-… I can't-… "

"Calm down, Bella. Remember to breathe." He unbuckled his seat belt and gripped her flailing arms. "Listen, I'm not saying it's all your fault. I should have noticed the leak when we were closing up to go home and I didn't. This will be costly, I'm sure. It will cost us a tidy sum, but perhaps more importantly, it will cost plenty of time. Time we don't have."

"Great, that makes me feel much better." She fixed him with an angry glare. "We had the entire house full of people and no one noticed any water on the floor. You know why?! Because the tap wasn't open when we left the house. Maybe it broke during the night, or something? Did you think of that?"

"It didn't break, it was wide open."

"No," she shook her head, ready to argue, but he spoke firmly. "The tap was open, lets just leave it at that. Now, do you want to get out of the car and stretch your legs?"

The change of subject was so abrupt that it took a moment of spluttering for her to catch up. Once she did she told him, "Stretch my legs?! Why the f*ck would I want that?!"

"To get some fresh air, to calm down a bit. You're not thinking rationally, right now."

"No! You're the one not thinking rationally," she spat back. "You know what Edward? Just, shut the f*ck up and drive so we can get those fans and save your precious hardwood floor."

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AN: Uh-uh…Did shit just hit the fan? … I'll tip toe away before you yell at me for making Edward act like a total jerk. There is more to this than what is being admitted to.