AN: Thank you all for your patience. As some of you might have read on twitter or in your review replies, I am taking Sins of its regular schedule. No, this doesn't mean I'm not ever going to update, or that updating will happen much less frequently. I'm just struggling with churning out such long chapters, and the stress is making it even harder for me to write. I need to write at my pace-not such a regimented pace. I will still do teasers in review replies. Thank you all for your patience (again) and for sticking with me.
Opening lyrics are from "Tired of You" by the Foo Fighters and the jesus of rock music, Dave Grohl.
Much thanks go to JosieSwan and Dixie. You both know why :)
Chapter 28: Karma
Edward
I can be your liar, I can be your bearer of bad news;
Sick and uninspired by the diamonds in your fire
Burning like a flame inside of you.
Is this just desire or the truth?
I'd decided that my family and friends must think I was the biggest fucking moron on the planet—and really, considering my past behavior, I supposed that this wouldn't be much of a stretch—but since Bella had walked back into the bar, something had changed. Everyone acted as if everything was exactly the same, but I wasn't stupid. It was tangible, nearly a living breathing entity that had sprouted between us.
And despite the pseudo-ignorant attitude of those around me, I knew this supposedly mysterious entity had a name—Rosalie fucking Hale.
"So you're sure you're ready to go to the studio?" Carlisle asked the next morning, as I paced back and forth in my room. Conventional wisdom said it was a bad idea to go to sleep mad, but I hadn't been mad, necessarily—at least not at first. My frustration and annoyance and fucking helplessness had grown exponentially throughout the mostly sleepless night until this morning, leaving me a fucking bundle of sunshine and joy. Carlisle had discovered this the hard way, when I'd opened the door and nearly bit his head off.
I couldn't tell him that I'd been sure for the briefest of seconds that it hadn't been him knocking on the door, but someone else entirely.
"I want to know what she fucking told her," I snarled, completely ignoring Carlisle's question.
He sighed, rubbing his tired eyes with one hand. "Do you even want to know what Rose told her? She could say all kinds of shit, and Edward—" Carlisle's voice demanded my attention and I sulkily glanced over at him, hating that he was forcing me to remember all the times he'd told me my treatment of Rose would end up biting me in the ass. "It would all be true."
"Karma sucks," I muttered. "And it's not even like I would do that shit to Bella."
"And there's your problem," Carlisle said, so calm, so rational, so faintly amused that I wanted to smash his fucking face in. Didn't he get it? If Bella left, then I'd be on my own, alone, adrift, with no idea who the fuck I was. Bella was the only thing keeping these shifting pieces of myself glued together. Without her, I'd be worse off than before the kidnapping.
She couldn't leave. I needed her; I wanted her. So much it scared the ever loving shit out of me, but the alternative was a much worse prospect.
"I don't understand," I said testily.
"You really don't get women at all," Carlisle said with an exasperated sigh. "Don't you think Rose can see that? We all see it—and for the record, it's about damn time that you discovered that women are more than just disposable objects—but she sees it most of all. Even if she has Emmett now, that shit hurts. She probably said what she did to Bella for a couple of reasons, but I wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't a subconscious desire to scare her away."
"You're saying Rose is jealous of Bella?"
"Think about it, Edward. You treat Rosalie like shit for the entirety of your relationship with her. You meet Bella and admittedly go through a rough time with her, but all Rose sees is that you've changed and Bella's the girl that changed you."
"I haven't changed," I protested, but it was weak. I knew I'd changed... I just hated how Carlisle said it like I'd been whipped by a girl. Maybe part of it was Bella, but a lot of it had been my crazy fucker of an uncle. He'd undone years worth of knots that I'd been tangled up in, and then he'd proceeded to tie a whole new set.
I was still trying to figure out how the hell to explain this to Carlisle, when he said, "I get it. I really do. It wasn't just Bella. But that isn't what Rose sees."
"So Rose hates me now," I said with an annoyed voice. "Big deal."
"I don't think this is exactly a change of heart for her," Carlisle said, and I hated the glimmer of a smile I saw on his face. He thought this was fucking funny. I'd give him funny—when Bella left because she'd been scared off by Rose, he'd regret not doing more to stop me from going off the deep end.
"So what do I do?" I hated that I had to ask Carlisle for advice, but I had to admit that if he'd broken through the icy walls that surrounded Esme, he had to be a lot better at this than I'd thought. And god knew I was not only terrible, but I'd spent years trying to be terrible. I didn't even know where to begin.
"You go to her. You reassure her. You tell her how you feel." Carlisle shrugged. "Easy as that."
"You're serious, aren't you?" I asked in disbelief. "Tell her how I feel? I don't even know how the fuck I feel."
Carlisle smiled. "Well then you'd better figure it out. Now about the studio. I'm sending you some more backing musicians, you know, since Athair seems to be an excellent breeding ground for them."
"It's not my fault that nobody wants to stay," I said coldly. "They're just punks. Cheap, lazy punks who can't play their instruments."
"And I wonder why we can't get anyone to stay," Carlisle said with a sigh.
"I'll manage without them," I snapped, annoyed at how he could just assume that I could waltz up to Bella like my balls had shrunk a few sizes and confess my undying love. As if I even know what love felt like. As if I could actually feel love.
"No," Carlisle argued calmly. "You need musicians. The studio knows you're coming. Would you like me go with you?"
"I'm going alone," I snarled. "God knows I could stand to get away from you. Fucking sucking all the air out of the room."
Carlisle stood, understanding that was his cue to go. "You know where it is. Oh, and Jasper's downstairs. He's eating Esme out of the house, so maybe you should go down and find out what he wants besides pancakes."
I didn't even dignify that with an answer, because I didn't trust what would come out of my mouth next. Panic and terror had swelled at the thought of going to the studio, of having to make music again, and that situation hadn't been helped by Carlisle's advice regarding Bella. I wasn't going to be able to tell her how I felt. It was vaguely possible that I could reassure her, but even that seemed too much for me to be able to handle.
Jasper put away food like nobody I'd ever seen. I'd personally seen him demolish two plates of pancakes, and who knew how many he'd eaten while I was talking to Carlisle.
"You're in a bad mood," Jasper finally said, in between bites.
"Glad you noticed," I said sarcastically as I pushed my uneaten food around the plate. Even if I'd been hungry to begin with, Jasper's ridiculously healthy appetite would have ruined my own.
He sighed and pushed his plate away. "And here I thought we were free of surly Edward forever."
"Surly?" I glared at him.
"Or emo, angst-ridden, woe-is-me Edward. Whichever you'd prefer." Jasper grinned as if he'd just come up with the punchline of a joke.
"If I'm surly," I informed him, my voice patronizing and cutting, "it's because I'm a fucking wreck. Thank you for pointing that out, though. I appreciate it."
"Listen, I get it. You're dealing with a ton of crap," Jasper said calmly, as if I hadn't just shit all over him. "But whatever Rose said to Bella wasn't exactly . . .far from the mark, probably. You need to talk to her."
His advice eerily mirrored Carlisle's. "I can't," I said shortly. "Not the way guys normally talk to girls they . . ." To prove my point, I literally couldn't get my mouth to form the word, "like."
"Girls they like?" Jasper completed wryly. "It's not going to bite you."
"Don't be so certain," I told him with a fatalistic humor.
"For example, I'm here this morning—" Jasper began to say but I interrupted him before he could finish.
"To eat my pancakes."
"Yes," Jasper corrected with an eye roll, "I'm here this morning, eating your pancakes, to tell Alice that I'm sorry I lied, and that I like her. This is a mature, grownup way of handling it."
"You mean, snarling at everyone in sight and not being able to actually say the word, 'like' isn't a mature way of handling it?"
"Surprisingly no. Now what are you going to do?"
I hated the way that Jasper and Carlisle had seemingly merged brains and were uttering nearly the same things. It made it really hard to fight the inevitable.
"I have no fucking idea," I told him with false bravado, "but I'll come up with something."
"My suggestion is to stick with what you're good at," Jasper said seriously, as if this was really helpful advice.
What was I good at?
I couldn't impress Bella by chugging whiskey. I couldn't impress her with my mad threesome skills—because although I was pretty sure that she liked having sex with me, I thought it might be a bit soon to introduce a third party into the bedroom.
We lapsed into silence, and I actually managed to choke down a few mouthfuls of breakfast, suddenly more nervous about the prospect of seeking out Bella than going to the recording studio—which was really a feat because my stomach was in a million knots at the thought of trying to make music again. I'd had several moments during my long, sleepless night when I'd wondered if I could even do it anymore... if perhaps my time with the Red Hands had dried out my musical inspiration for good.
What was really inevitable wasn't that Bella was going to leave me, it was that I had suddenly become the musical equivalent of beef jerky.
After Alice arrived, I decided that if I was going to man up, then Jasper was going to have to do the same, so I left them alone and went in search of Bella.
I paced in front of her doorway for a good five minutes, hoping that nobody would see me and hoping that miraculous inspiration would strike.
It didn't.
I was in the middle of the thirty-seventh pass by her door when it suddenly opened, and there she was in the doorway, leaning against the doorjamb, a wry, amused smile on her face.
"Are you becoming a stalker, too?" she asked lightly, as if I wasn't exactly what she'd just accused me of. As if this was some sort of joke.
But then it hit me. This was Bella, and not just any Bella, but a Bella I knew. Not the Bella of last night. Whatever had happened between us—the blow-off she'd given me when I'd tried to sit next to her in the limo, the polite but distant way she'd told me she was too tired when I'd offered to walk her to her room, the brief kiss she'd merely brushed across my cheek—had passed. Maybe I was actually going to experience something that resembled luck, and I wouldn't have to have the fucking conversation after all.
"No. Not yet, anyway," I told her cheekily, relief flooding me that I hadn't managed to fuck this up yet. Whatever Rose had said, maybe it hadn't been so bad after all.
I remembered all the things I'd done to Rose over the time we'd known each other—the cheating, the boozing, the flagrant disregard for her feelings, the complete and utter disrespect—and I realized that Bella must be crazy. There was no telling that I could actually do this. Wanting to do it and actually doing it were two different beasts, and so far, when push had come to shove, I hadn't even been able to confess that I simply liked her. I hadn't even been able to say the fucking word.
"You're up early," she said, smiling up at me with all the electric power of the sun outside. "I didn't think rock stars woke up before noon."
Rock stars. Music. Jasper's advice echoed in my head and it was suddenly and painfully obvious what I could do.
"I'm going to the recording studio today," I confessed. "To start the next Athair album. And I was wondering if you'd like to come with me."
Bella gaped at me, and it appeared that even after all the time we'd spent together, I could still surprise her.
"It would mean a lot to me," I said in a rush, knowing if I examined at the words too closely, I'd never be able to say them because of their frightening resemblance to "I like you."
Still, she just stood there, shell-shocked apparently, and I wasn't sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing. Speechless Bella hadn't been all that great for me in the past, so I was worried that I'd done what I'd feared and driven her away instead of indicating to her how much I . . .well. . .how much I wanted her with me.
"Please?" I tacked on, feeling lame and stupid and about a million shades of pussy. Edward Cullen didn't say please. He didn't beg. He didn't crawl. He didn't put a woman's needs before his own.
Until now.
"I don't know," Bella said haltingly. "I don't . . ." She took a deep breath. "I just woke up. I haven't even had breakfast yet."
"We can pick food up on the way," I said in a rush. "Anything you want."
She looked up at me, understanding dawning across her face. "You mean it; you really want me to go with you."
"I asked you for a reason," I said, annoyed that she'd think I'd ask if I didn't want her. I was Edward Cullen, and I didn't waste energy on things that weren't worthwhile.
"I don't think I should," Bella said, but she still sounded uncertain, and I placed 95% of the blame for that on me- for being an ass for nearly all of my life- and 5% on Rose for telling her about it. "I don't think it's a good idea."
"Listen, I know what you're worried about," I finally said. "Rose talked to you."
Bella looked down at her feet, and I hated Renee or whoever else it was in her past that had made her so unsure of herself. Of the effect she could have on people. On me. "She did," she said quietly.
"I've done a lot of things in my life that I'm not proud of," I admitted. I was fraying, faster and faster every second, and I needed to be with her, closer to her, with the hope that some of her calm could rub off on me.
"You forget," she said wryly, "I was your biggest fan. I've heard all the rumors, and at one point, assumed that most of them were probably somewhat factual. I came into this with my eyes wide open, Edward."
"And now you're leaving this the same way." I couldn't believe how steady my voice was; I couldn't believe how much I was disintegrating inside. Or how Bella had come to mean so much to my sanity.
She shrugged. "I was going to go into town, try to focus on my blog, maybe continue to avoid Renee. It's hard to do that here, in this paradise where you don't even have to hang your own towels up or pour your own coffee. Living like I do, it makes me hungry for what I want. I need to remember that I'm more than this."
"You do," I agreed, "but even more than that, you need to remove that wall that you've put up between yourself and the music. You said you're detached. Come to the studio and smell the blood and the sweat and the struggle. See what it's really like."
"You just want me to come with you," she said with a little smile. Her first since I'd approached her.
"I do," I said. "Rose was right—essentially I'm a selfish bastard. You calm me, you make it possible for me to put one foot in front of the other."
Her eyes widened in surprise at my admission, and I supposed it sounded. . .well. . .needy. I nearly choked on my thick tongue as more words tumbled out. "But it's good for you too—you need to find your connection to the music, and I think this would help you."
It was the best I could do in the situation; if she said no, it wouldn't be because I hadn't done everything I was capable of doing. No doubt Jasper or Carlisle would have added a few ballerina spins or a dozen red roses or some girly smelling candles, but it was a start.
But she didn't say no. "Alright," she said. "Give me ten minutes and I'll be ready to go."
Carlisle and I had decided on the plan for Athair's next album long before the kidnapping—in fact, he'd made the suggestion right after the train wreck that had been Aiming to Misbehave. "A whole album of traditional Irish songs," he'd pitched to me one night when we'd both had too much to drink, "but each one has a Edward Cullen sick twist. Something raunchy, something perverse. Something unexpected."
I hadn't loved the idea so much as I'd loved the concept that if this album crashed and burned like the last one had, at least I wouldn't be the one solely at fault for the mess. On Aiming to Misbehave, I'd wanted to be free of the yoke of oppression, so I'd demanded that every single creative decision on the album be mine.
Well, it turned out there was a reason I'd had handlers before, and that reason was because I needed limits, I needed people to tell me which ideas to weed out because they were terrible. Otherwise, I'd end up running full steam off a cliff, which was exactly what I'd done.
Our drive to the studio was quiet—me contemplating how I was going to turn beloved Irish songs into something edgy yet worth listening to, and Bella writing steadily on a legal pad, filling page after page with words I wished I could read.
The studio we were headed to was only half an hour away from Esme's house. It was the studio I'd done my first recordings in, a place I felt comfortable and secure, and while I hadn't used it in awhile, Carlisle had made the executive decision that I should go back. The symbolism wasn't lost on me—Carlisle clearly hoped that with the nostalgic surroundings, I'd be able to return to my old musical self.
It had been a smart gesture before the kidnapping, but now it was just a useless one. I was too altered, probably irrevocably by what I'd learned and what I'd experienced. Whatever ended up coming out of me for the next few weeks—good, bad or shiteous—wouldn't be anything like what I'd done before.
I made an unassuming entrance for a rock star, and an even more unassuming entrance for me, but crap like entourages and attention and paparazzi dogging my every movement didn't matter anymore. Still, it felt odd to walk in just Bella and I, me carrying the old guitar case that I'd found in my closet at Esme's house.
I felt Bella tense next to me as a tall, willowy woman with hair the color of a copper penny approached us in the otherwise empty lobby.
"I'm Victoria James, from your label," she said with clipped tones as she extended her hand. "I'm here to assist you with anything you'll require during your sessions."
I shook her hand, wondering that if I didn't, she'd force me to by sheer strength of will. Victoria was beautiful, but hard-edged, as if she'd filed away every soft corner that dared to exist. Her black suit was austere, and only emphasized the incandescent flame of her hair. Frankly, I thought she looked like a suit, a placeholder from the label ordered to manipulate me into delivering whatever the fuck they'd decided they wanted from me.
I hated the bitch on sight.
"And are you Carlisle?" she directed at Bella. "Edward's manager?"
I laughed humorlessly. "Carlisle? He's not here," I corrected as Bella looked up at me bewildered. "This is my friend, Bella Swan. She's with me and she's to do whatever she wants."
"Why isn't Carlisle here?" Victoria persisted, as I tried to blow by her and walk into the studio, but she followed close behind me and Bella.
"I didn't want him here," I snapped. "And I don't want you here, either." The very last thing I needed was a cold, hard-edged bitch from the label, with zero musical knowledge or taste, to tell me what to do.
Victoria, however, was clearly made of sterner stuff than the other representatives they'd sent in the past. Usually, Carlisle dealt with them, but I'd gotten adept at reducing them to sniveling, insecure blobs who crawled back to the label utter failures at what they'd been sent to do—ultimately control me and the music I made. Victoria didn't seem like she could be controlled.
"I'm afraid that you don't have much of a choice," she said, her posture ramrod straight, like it had been carved from pure steel. And that was nothing compared to the icy control in her pale blue eyes. "I know you have a history of being a rather. . .temperamental artist in the studio, and it's my job to make sure that we stay focused."
The allusion to the all-night drunken sessions, where women had been passed around between musicians like party favors, was not appreciated, and I felt Bella grow even tenser next to me, her expression wiped clean of any emotion.
I leaned down towards her, my breath displacing a few strands of her hair as I whispered in her ear. "Get rid of her. Please?"
I saw the shock of recognition in her eyes, and the determination. She hadn't expected me to use her to deal with Victoria, but being someone who'd watched my career for years, Bella would know how I'd feel about her. She'd understand that my creativity would be stifled with this bitch watching and listening to every note I played.
"Victoria, I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions," Bella said, and I wasn't shocked at all that Bella's tone of voice demanded obedience. Bella was a lot of things, but she'd never shirk from a challenge, and Victoria was waving the red flag right in her face.
Victoria hesitated, clearly wanting to say no, but also not wanting to displease me. She finally relented, with a swift, telling look in my direction. "Of course. Bella, you said your name was?" Victoria asked as Bella led them away to sit in a pair of comfortable chairs in the lobby. "And you're who exactly?"
I let out the breath I'd been holding, and stepped into the studio, closing the door behind me.
I'd worked with all the musicians that Carlisle had sent before—not necessarily together, and some not for many years, but I noticed a few similarities between the diverse group.
First, they were all older, experienced, more of the mentoring types, than the young hotshots who were just playing with you to collect a paycheck to fuel their own solo career dreams.
Second, not a single one had been in the studio with me during the Aiming to Misbehave disaster. Carlisle might not be present for this session, but he didn't have to be for his message to come across loud and clear: stop the rock star posturing shit, and make some real music that people might actually want to listen to.
I tuned my guitar as the men around me warmed up, the discordant cacophony leaving me edgy and nervous. Conor, the other guitarist, handed me a list. We'd worked together before—many, many years before, but he'd quit the band as I'd spiraled out of control—and I didn't know what Carlisle had said to get him to return, but he was in front of me, ready to play, and I was unbelievably glad to see him. His playing and his presence had steadied and reassured me at one time. Of course, that was before I'd discovered that whiskey and women steadied and reassured me better than just about anything else.
"Carlisle said that today, we should tackle the Black Velvet Band," Conor said, giving me a metaphorical push that was about as gentle as a bulldozer.
I looked up from my guitar into the grizzled faces around us, through the dark glass that separated the recording studio from the engineer's booth and to my surprise, saw Bella curled up in one of the chairs, scribbling away on her pad. Victoria was nowhere to be seen.
"I fucking hate that song," I said, surprising both myself and the men around me. "We're not doing it."
"What are we doing then?" one of them asked.
"We're doing something else," I said, feeling a lot less confident than I sounded. "We'll get back to that other. . .stuff later. I want to work on an original song first."
It sounded good, like I knew exactly what I was doing, like I had original material to work with, which I didn't.
And because I didn't know what else to do, I began to play the chord progression that had haunted my thoughts during my incarceration with Bella. The same melody and rhythm that I'd played on the rails of the bed; the melody I'd hummed to calm myself whenever I'd wanted to attack Jane or my uncle.
I wouldn't have shared it if I had another choice—it felt too personal, too close to that raw place inside of me that screamed of betrayal and death and destruction—but I didn't. And the thought of playing Irish music right now was even worse, so I chose the lesser of the two evils.
Conor picked it up and we wove around each other, driving the melody forward. It was starkly beautiful, but had a defiantly melancholic edge to it. I'd never written something so dark before—I wasn't exactly known for the kind of emo angst that the melody begged for.
But the best part was that it had absolutely no Irish or Gaelic influences whatsoever. Nobody said this, but then nobody had to. Athair was an Irish punk band, but what I was playing—without the artifice of accordion or fiddle or whistle—felt like just straight nihilistic rock music. And for the first time, I didn't give a shit that I wasn't playing for the one person that I'd dedicated my entire musical career to.
In the middle of the chord progression, a phrase began to form in my head, and no matter how I tried to push it away, push it down, deep, where it would never resurface, it wouldn't be dismissed. And that was how I discovered that I was writing a song.
I'd never written one this way before, and it was so unsettling that I abruptly stopped, setting my guitar down in the stand. "I'll be right back," I announced to the confused looking guys who I was pretty sure would become my band. We'd just made something magical—something beautiful out of a dark place that couldn't be beautiful if it wanted to be.
I could tell from a few of the looks I got that a few of them were convinced I was headed to the bathroom to do a few lines, or get a blowjob, but instead, I headed to the engineer's booth.
Bella was still writing, her legs folded up underneath her, creating a kind of table out of her lap that she was using to balance her pad on. She was so absorbed writing that she didn't even notice me for a moment or two. Finally, I cleared my throat and she glanced up in shock. "Edward," she said, "what's going on? Is it not going well?"
I shrugged, afraid that if I told her that it was going both incredibly different than I'd expected and incredibly well that I would jinx it. "Can I have some paper? And a pen? I need to write something down."
She frowned. "I thought you knew you'd be writing. Why don't you have your own?"
"I wasn't supposed to be doing original material," I explained. "I was going to do an album of basically covers. That was the plan anyway."
"And now?"
"No covers," I said, surprising myself again by how definite the decision sounded.
"An Athair album of new material," she said with a small smile, "you know I'd like that."
Neither of us wanted to mention the elephant in the room—that the last album of new Athair material had been a failure of epic proportions, and that she'd used her skewering of it to generate blog hits. I honestly didn't want to know what she'd said about it; I could only imagine how beautifully she'd manage to tear it down like the crap it was.
Bella ripped a few sheets of paper out of her notebook. "If you need more, you'll know where to find me," she said seriously as she handed me the paper and a pen she took out of her purse.
"I hate to ask, but where'd you send the witch?" I asked, glancing around.
"Oh, she's around," Bella said airily, "but she won't bother you. Trust me." Her expression was positively innocent, but I could tell from the mischievous gleam in her eye that she was proud of how well she'd manipulated and controlled Victoria.
"Thank you," I told her, wanting to kiss her, but at the same time, not wanting to have the musicians' assumptions proved correct. I hadn't come in here to steal a kiss from her, and I was proud that I might be able to walk away, to do this without the normal crutches that I typically used to sustain myself through periods of stress and self-doubt.
Sure, Bella's presence calmed me better than the best whiskey, but she wasn't my normal kind of drug.
She wasn't a drug at all.
Back in the studio, I scribbled down the sentence that had haunted me down.
Conor leaned over my shoulder, humming the melody that we'd worked on before I'd left. "It's . . .interesting," he finally said.
"And by interesting, you mean it's shit," I stated, suddenly afraid that he'd tell me the truth.
"No. It's different. Not like you."
"That might not be a bad thing," I admitted.
He wouldn't tell me that I was on the right track—but the single look of begrudged respect he gave me was the first I'd ever received from him. "Write some more," he barked. "I'm going to work on this opening melody some more. "
"Leave it bare," another voice called out. "Bring in the instruments slowly. Like this." I looked up to see the bass player, Ben, strumming along in a slowly building crescendo of sound. It sounded exactly like I'd felt every day in that cabin, locked up and waiting for the shit to hit the fan.
I turned back to the lyrics, and re-read the single sentence I'd scribbled down.
Keep you in the dark; you know they all pretend.
It was good, but I could do better, and I began to write, laying down slowly building words that mirrored the escalating tension the guys around me were weaving like magic.
And nothing had ever felt so fucking good. Better than whiskey sliding down my throat, oblivion beckoning, or the moment I walked into a club and the hottest woman in the entire place attached herself to my side.
The Aiming to Misbehave tracks had been written—and that was a loose term—in a haze of drugs and alcohol and ego. This song was a labor of sweat and agony, and nothing had ever felt so good. Like for the first time, I was remembering what it was to be a musician, to be a creative force of energy and determination.
Music wasn't supposed to be easy, wasn't supposed to be handed to you on a fucking silver platter; music was supposed to be 99.9% grinding torture and .1% ecstatic pleasure, and for the first time in my career, it felt as if I'd finally discovered the right ratio.
Conor, the boys, and I slaved for hours over the opening chords and the words, layering and sliding them together until we finally reached a combination that was both haunting and horrific.
As the sounds faded away, I gripped the neck of my guitar convulsively, the wood slippery under my sweaty hand, and felt the darkness of that room closing around me again. Instinctively, I looked up into the engineer's booth and found Bella up at the window, her eyes expressive, fascinated. And she was staring right at me.
"Break for the day," I said in a strangled voice. "But we're back, first thing tomorrow morning. We'll finish the song."
The guys began to pack up their instruments, and Conor walked over to me, his hand resting on my shoulder as I set the guitar into its case. My eyes still hadn't left Bella's, and even though I knew the connection should have scared the ever loving shit out of me, I craved it too much to be afraid. "You know," Conor said casually, glancing at me and at then at her, "I wondered when you would find it."
"Find what?" I asked, as Bella broke our contact and looked away. I thought he was probably talking about me finding a girl that I didn't use like a piece of trash. He'd had definite opinions on my treatment of the groupies that chased after me, and he hadn't had any problems voicing them to the young punk kid that I'd been.
"Your voice," he said, with a final clap on my shoulder, before he turned to pack up his own guitar. "You found your voice."
Conor's words resonated with me as I climbed into the limo with Bella for the drive back to Esme's house. Honestly, I didn't know what the fuck he was talking about. If anything, I'd always had an incredibly strong musical voice. Athair had made one kind of music for its entire existence, each song clearly sounding like it belonged to our catalog. I wondered if Bella, since she was such an Athair fan, and also hopelessly opinionated about just about everything, might have some idea what he'd been talking about.
"So how did it go?" she asked as the door closed behind us and the limo pulled out of the driveway.
Though she'd been pointedly writing in her notebook for almost the entire session, I had a fairly good idea that she'd been watching me surreptitiously and knew exactly how it had gone. She just wanted me to tell her, and I was as surprised as anyone that I actually wanted to.
"It went pretty well, actually," I admitted.
"You didn't think it would?" she asked, raising an eyebrow.
"I don't know," I shrugged, not wanting to tell her all about my doubts as a musician after the kidnapping. "It's hard to say how any given recording session will go."
"But you didn't record anything," she said.
"Not yet, no. I'm . ..well. . ." I corrected, "we're working on a new song. An original song."
"We're?"
I wondered if Bella would catch that; being the Athair fan that she was, she'd be aware that the only consistent member of the band over the years had been me. The other members had rotated through at a fairly rapid clip, and I'd been the exclusive songwriter. Nobody had ever been allowed to contribute or collaborate.
"They're helping," I said more than a little defensively, suddenly afraid that I'd divulged too much, and that she'd pounce on my sudden weakness.
But was it really a weakness? I wasn't sure anymore. Everything that I'd once believed about men and women and fear and domination had undertaken a rather abrupt shift the moment I'd met Bella Swan.
"Good," she said with a teasing smile. "I was hoping they might. You're not an island, you know. Even Edward Cullen needs some help sometimes."
What she didn't seem to realize was that every moment I spent with her, she was helping me. Helping me overcome that man I'd been—helping me to shed the dirty, noxious skin of the boozing womanizer. And without even thinking through the implications of what I was doing, I reached for her, pulling her into my arms, wrapping myself around her as if I could keep her like this forever.
Bella tensed for a second, and I wasn't sure if it was because she was surprised by my actions or if she didn't want me touching her, but then her muscles relaxed, and she settled into my embrace. I didn't remember the first time I'd held a woman just because I wanted to feel the reassuring press of her body against mine. Usually, the only time I touched a female was because I wanted something from them—something that involved tits and ass and pussy. But Bella was more than just the sum of those parts, she was incalculably valuable, and it wasn't just because of those physical features.
"I thought you were angry," I admitted, my voice low and quiet, as if I was afraid she'd actually hear me and know how much I'd hated the thought that she was upset with me.
She turned, her eyes locking onto mine, and placed a hand on my shoulder. "This isn't easy for me," she murmured.
It wouldn't be; I kept expecting her to discover that the price to give me this chance would be more than she wanted to pay.
"I can't promise you anything," I said, and to my horror, I felt my throat grow tight at the hope in her eyes. I hated the thought of breaking her, of destroying what we'd created, but I knew myself better than that. I would do it—it was probably only a matter of time.
"I know." Her lips were so close to mine, and I really wanted to kiss her, to use the only means I had to reassure her that I would try, but it didn't seem like enough—a novel experience for a man who had always used physicality to express anything he'd ever wanted to say to a woman.
But it must have been enough, because she kissed me, tangling her fingers in my hair and pulling me closer towards her.
I'd been terrified of myself around her for almost the entirety of knowing Bella—terrified that I would destroy her ,and the final chance at redemption for myself—but as she pushed me back against the leather seats, her mouth slanting hard and determined against mine, I wondered if I shouldn't be more scared of her.
She'd dismissed Victoria so easily, stood up against Jane and Aro, been willing to make a sacrifice that I hadn't even been willing to contemplate. Her periods of fear and weakness only seemed to emphasize her inherent strength.
Her hands slid up underneath the hem of my shirt, and my heartbeat stuttered in time with her fingers as they undid the buckle of my belt.
"What are you doing?" I asked stupidly, reminding myself of all the naïvely flirtatious groupies who hadn't understood or hadn't wanted to understand what I was always after.
Bella gave me a look—the one I liked to call her "what the fuck, Edward?" look—and I explained sheepishly, "I know what you're doing. I want to know what you're doing."
"Exactly what you think I'm doing doing," she said impudently, and I decided it would be a really good time to stop arguing.
Even if I hadn't decided that it was verging on insane for arguing with a beautiful woman who wanted to screw me senseless in the back of a limo, her tongue in my mouth and her hand on my cock would have shut me up.
My head tipped back on the leather seat, and Bella took advantage by jerking my pants down and climbing right on top of me. "Eager, are we?" I asked, my breathing coming in unmanly pants as she pushed her own jeans down and without any preamble, slid me inside of her.
She didn't respond verbally, but her erratic breaths told me everything I needed to hear as she rode me fast and furious, pushing me over the edge as her teeth latched onto my t-shirt clad shoulder.
Slumping against me, she wrapped her arms around my neck, and I felt that same tightness in my throat at the simple gesture. Technically, I was still inside of her, and that was the most physically intimate connection that you could have, but I thought that maybe the hug meant more.
She started to move off of me, but I gripped her waist, holding her down. "Don't go," I whispered into the damp, sweaty tangles of her hair.
"I'm not leaving," she said, trying to wiggle out of my grasp. "I just. . .we're going to be there soon."
I didn't even need her to explain what she was trying to say—because I got it. While she was alright with us doing this in private, with the dark glass partition up, with nobody the wiser, she didn't want anyone to know what we were doing. I released my hold on her with a pessimistic sigh, and wondered if I would ever stop regretting acting like a total asshole for so many years.
If it meant that Bella was going to be ashamed of me forever, then probably, yes—I'd never stop regretting it.
I watched as she tidied her clothes, pulling her jeans back up, brushing through her matted hair with her fingers. Face flushed and eyes bright, she was ridiculously beautiful, and I wondered why for all those years, I'd been addicted to superficial, fake blond, fake boobed, overly tanned groupies. Jasper, I couldn't help but think, had been right all this time.
"You didn't tell me about Victoria," I said as we pulled into the drive. "I was really looking forward to hearing about how you told her off."
Bella laughed. "Let me guess, because me and a beautiful woman getting in a fight turns you on. Don't you think you've had enough of that in the last half an hour?"
"Absolutely not," I told her seriously. "Don't tease me now. That's just not nice."
"Actually," Bella said, "I was just really, really honest with her. No oil wrestling or hair pulling or spanking or anything."
"I have to admire your restraint."
"Uh huh," Bella said, rolling her eyes. "Because that's such a characteristic of mine."
"Well, I genuinely admire the restraint you just showed."
"Oh, I'm sure you did," she said with a chuckle. "A lot."
"When you say you were honest, what exactly does that mean?" I asked her, wondering for half a second if Bella had said anything that I wouldn't want her to say.
But of course this was Bella, and she wouldn't. "Oh, I just told her that if she didn't leave you alone, you'd insist on releasing a deluxe version of Aiming to Misbehave," she said impudently.
"Reduced to a punchline," I sighed, "but at least it's an effective one."
"Very effective," Bella said with a smile as she leaned her head on my shoulder. "But really, you should be thanking me, she was awful. Not, you know, Jane awful," she said, her voice dropping, "but close enough."
"I think I already thanked you," I said, fishing my phone out of my pocket as it vibrated with an incoming text message.
"No, that was me thanking you," Bella clarified with a mischievous glance.
The text was from Jasper and apparently he was bailing on our evening of MLB 2010 and pizza to take Alice out for a romantic date. What a pussy.
"Well," I said, "good news. Jasper's going to stand me up, which means that I have a whole evening to thank you. How's that sound?" I asked her, placing a trail of kisses down the column of her neck. "Acceptable?"
"Yes," she sighed as my lips slid over her collarbone. "I suppose I could deal with that. But only as long as you actually feed me this time. My breakfast that was supposedly going to be whatever I wanted never materialized." Bella pulled away and gave me what could have been an accusatory glance if she hadn't been beaming.
"Fine. Dinner, and a whole evening of me thanking you. How's that sound?"
"Perfect," Bella said.
I was just going to have to pretend that what I'd suggested wasn't the pussified romantic evening that Jasper was spending with Alice. That what I was about to share with Bella wasn't a date.
Because Edward Cullen didn't date.
Until now.
AN: Progress! Woo hoo, go Edward! So did anyone guess which song it is that Edward's writing? Everyone who guesses correctly gets an extra long teaser!
As for the next chapter, I honestly have no idea what it's called yet. . .sorry. I'm also not sure when it will be up next, though I'm hoping in a week or two :)
