Chapter 29 – Lies
Maybe it was immature of me, but I decided to park my truck around the corner so they wouldn't hear me pull up, and then I snuck up to the house to listen to what was going on. A part of me wanted to barge in there and ring Tanya's fucking neck, but more than anything, I just needed to know what was going on once and for all. Esme's estrangement, Edward's angry swims and his sudden nights out, and now Tanya; they were all connected and I was terrified to find out the truth, but I needed to know just the same.
As I walked closer to the house, I became even more scared as I thought about all the different scenarios. Esme had said that Edward was hiding something important, was it that he was having feelings for Tanya and too afraid to tell me? Had he been seeing her when he said he was going out with his teammates?
The thought made me sick.
If they were in there doing…things, I wasn't sure I could ever recover from seeing it. I seriously considered going back to my truck and forgetting I saw anything at all. Surely if I left and came back when I was supposed to she'd be gone and I could go back to living in denial…but there was no going back. Edward knew she was the one person I didn't want him talking to. He swore he'd stay away. How could he do that to me? How could he bring that bitch to my house, especially with our daughter there?
Now, I was pissed.
But just as I was about to storm into the house and make some heads roll, I heard the yelling…
"Edward, just calm down," the bitch said anxiously.
"The hell I will!" he shouted at her. "You have the fucking nerve to come over here with this shit? To Bella's house? What the fuck is wrong with you, seriously!"
"I knew she was going out with her friends tonight, and I just wanted to warn you about…."
"I don't need you to warn me about shit! I told you and your idiot friends last week to mind your own fucking business!"
"Edward look, Jessica has already blabbed it to everyone she knows, so I think it's time you tell her."
"I DON'T CARE WHAT YOU THINK!" he yelled angrily. "I had to have my mother in law take my daughter to her hotel room because of your dumb ass! And I swear to god, you're lucky she stopped by when she did because if she wasn't here when you came, I would have physically thrown you out."
"I only came because I didn't want you to be blindsided. The truth is coming out, there's nothing you can do about it."
There was a loud crashing noise, which sounded like something was thrown hard against the door, and then there was a moment of silence.
"For what it's worth, I'm really sorry Edward," Tanya said gently.
"Just get the hell out," Edward replied, sounding defeated.
"What are you going to do?"
"What the hell do you care?" he yelled again.
"I was horrible to you before, and you died right after that!" she cried out. "I've lived with that guilt for two years…Wishing I was nicer to you that day, that I could have told my moron friends to shut the fuck up. I swore to myself that I'd never do something like that again. That I'd be brave enough to stand up to people like Jessica and Bella who bullied others just for the fun of it."
"Don't talk about Bella like that, you have no idea who she is," Edward warned her.
"I'm glad she's changed. I really do think it's awesome that you were able to drag that out of her. But it doesn't undo the facts."
"I know what the facts are…For crying out loud, get the hell out of here and leave me the fuck alone!"
"I'm sorry," she said again before I heard light footsteps walking towards the door. Without thinking, I hid around the side of the house so I wouldn't be seen. I was probably even more confused than before, which devoured all my desires to beat her down at the moment. Whatever was going on had nothing to do with Edward having feelings for her, and for whatever reason, I didn't think she was trying to steal him from me either.
It was time to talk to Edward.
I waited until Tanya drove her stupid car away before taking a deep breath and walking back up the steps to the house. But right as I was about to open the door, a different car pulled up behind me, and honked its horn.
The headlights were shining in my eyes so I couldn't see the driver, but when the front door opened, I knew Edward saw me there.
"Shit," he said under his breath.
"What is going on?" I asked desperately.
He stared at me for a moment with a mix of emotions, before looking behind me at the car waiting.
"I have to go. Em's with your mom," he said quietly before walking past me and getting into the car.
I was so lost and confused, and suddenly I felt like whatever was going on was going to ruin everything. My entire world seemed to be crashing down and I had no idea why or how.
Tanya had mentioned something about Jessica, so I decided to call her. But she didn't answer. I figured Esme had to know what was going on, but her phone went straight to voicemail as well. So I called Renee and thankfully she picked up.
"Hi honey, how was your night?" she asked casually.
"Why do you have my daughter?" I asked in almost a panic.
"Oh, I stopped by to bring them dinner but then some girl came over and Edward seemed pretty upset, so I offered to take her for a while. Is everything ok?"
"No….I don't know what's going on."
"Well, Em's sleeping, why don't I just keep her here tonight so you can have some time to figure it all out."
"Thanks," I said before hanging up.
I didn't know what to do, but I couldn't just sit around and do nothing, so I got in my truck and decided to drive around until I figured it out. I went to Esme's but she didn't answer her door, and then I found myself driving past Jessica's. I wasn't surprised to see her street jammed packed with cars, her parents were always on vacation so she was always having parties, but what I did not expect to see was Tanya's car….and the car Edward had left in.
I felt like I couldn't breathe, but then something Edward said to me on my birthday resounded in my head. "I'm going to fight for you," he had told me, and for whatever reason, that gave me the strength I needed to get out of that car and go inside. He said he was going to fight, so that meant I had to be willing to do the same. What we had was far too important to let something get between us, especially with how happy we had been lately; none of it made any sense so I would fight everyone in that party of I had to in order to get some answers.
"Hey, Bella, welcome back," Jessica said with slurred words as I walked into her house.
"Cut the bullshit. Where's Edward and what the hell do you know about him?" I said strongly.
"Whoa, you are coming at me like this," she said while waving her hand in front of her face. "You need to be coming at me like this," she said while waving her hand a little slower before falling completely over. "I'm ok," she said from the ground before giggling to herself.
"Bella, hey," Tanya said gently while walking up to me. "I'm glad you're here, can we talk?"
"I don't know, can we?" I asked her. She looked confused from my question so I explained. "I'm not exactly sure if we can talk or not, I may have to just punch your fucking lights out depending on what you say."
"Let's go outside," she said before grabbing my arm and tugging me out the door.
"You have five minutes before I just start swinging."
"Wow, I don't remember you being so…tough before," she said nervously.
"I've faced starvation, sharks, poisonous snakes, and giving birth without medical aid. I think I can handle something as pathetic as you."
"Look, I'm not interested in Edward and I'm not trying to take him from you. I've only spoken to him three times since you guys came back. The first time was at school when you walked up to us, the second time was last week, and then…tonight."
"So what happened last week?" I snapped at her, seriously having a hard time controlling my rage.
"I overheard Jessica talking about something, and I just wanted to warn him. The thing is, he seemed to already know but he got really defensive and really angry. This was obviously not something he wanted coming out."
"Just tell me what it is before I lose my patience!"
"Ok…. this isn't easy to say…"
But she didn't have a chance to say another word because suddenly two police cars pulled up with their lights flashing.
"Uh oh. My parents are going to kill me if they find out I was here. I'll call you later," Tanya said before running off towards her car.
"SHIT!" I called out in frustration.
"Bella!" I heard a familiar and very angry voice say from behind me.
"Hi dad," I said shamefaced.
"What the hell are you doing here?" he asked angrily, and I understood his anger. I was supposed to be with my friends having a good innocent night out, and there I was at a high school party with underage drinking, and from the smell of it, illegal substance abuse going on as well. It was sophomore year all over again, and he had every right to be pissed.
"I just came here to find Edward," I said pathetically. It was the truth, but it sounded really stupid.
"Get home now!" he shouted at me.
"I need backup in here!" the other officer yelled at Charlie.
"Now, Bella!" he insisted before going inside.
I needed to find Edward, but after everything I had put Charlie through in the past, I needed to do as he told me and get home. He had been supporting my family one hundred percent, so I had no choice.
I went home and cried out my frustrations. In one night everything came crashing down; not only was Edward involved in something and lying about it, but now my dad was disappointed in me as well - I was a troubled teen before the island, and I hated that Charlie was thinking that I was falling down the same path.
Not knowing what else to do, I just laid on the couch and waited for someone to come home. And when the key jiggled in the lock, I prayed it was Edward, but somehow I knew it wasn't.
"Dad, I'm really sorry. That wasn't what it looked like, I swear," I said apologetically the moment he walked into view.
"Where's Em?" he asked evenly.
"With mom at her hotel," I told him.
He nodded, and then sat down on the couch. "Well, I had to arrest Edward."
"WHAT!" I spat.
"He and Newton were fighting at that party. Not just throwing punches, there was…blood everywhere. It looked like a cage fight."
"Oh my god," I said to myself. What the hell was going on? "I have to go see him," I said before getting up to grab my keys.
"Not tonight Bella," he said strongly. "I called Esme and she came and picked him up. He's in a lot of trouble. Newton is pressing charges."
"How could he press charges when they were both fighting?"
"Apparently, Edward started it. All the witness there said he just jumped him from behind."
"What? Dad, come on, you know Edward. Why would he do that? None of this makes sense."
"I tried to ask him what the hell happened, but he wouldn't talk. He wouldn't even look me in the eye. Bella, what the hell is going on?"
"I wish I knew," I said honestly.
Charlie was upset, but after explaining everything that I did know, he huffed and told me that he trusted me. It meant a lot.
I then tried calling Edward's cell, but he didn't answer, so once again, I drove over to Esme's and kept my hand pressed on the doorbell until she finally answered.
"He's not here," she said, looking like a complete mess.
"Charlie said you picked him up," I argued.
"I can't physically make him stay here," she said with a fresh round of angry tears. "I'm not blaming you for all of this but….It's your bad decisions that led us here!"
"I really don't know what you're talking about."
"You don't know a lot of things, do you?"
"What's that supposed to mean?" But she didn't answer me; she just shook her head and shut the door in my face.
I stood there for a few minutes completely dumbfounded. Why wouldn't anyone tell me what was going on? But on my way back to Charlie's house, I saw someone walking along the road. My high-beams illuminated him like an angel in the darkness, and without knowing anything about the situation, I was suddenly sure everything was going to be ok.
Whatever was going on, we'd fix it together.
I pulled over the car, and without even looking at me, Edward opened the door and climbed in.
"Did my mom call you?" he asked without any other greeting.
"No," I said softly, but then I noticed his face. He was bruised and his bottom lip was split, but his injuries weren't nearly bad enough to justify the amount of blood on his shirt. "Now tell me what's going on?"
He wet his bottom lip with his tongue, but still wouldn't look at me. "It wasn't a big deal and I didn't want to upset you," he mumbled. "But then it sort of….got out of control."
"What?"
He took a deep breath. "It started out as just gossip. Jessica told a few people that Newton had mentioned that you two…had sex on the boat."
"What?" I asked disgusted. "That's ridiculous! Why would you believe that when I told you I was a virgin?"
"I didn't believe it," he argued. "But then they started saying you were too drunk to remember…. Look, it was all just stupid gossip and I didn't listen to any of it, but…"
"But what?"
"But then they started in with the questions about Em."
"What kind of questions?"
"About her paternity. About Me," he said, taking me aback. I remembered Jessica mentioning something about that during my first day back at school, but I just thought she was being an idiot and dismissed it. I thought that would be the end of it, but the fact that Edward had listened to that crap really pissed me off.
"You were the one who said to ignore them, that it didn't matter what people said about us," I told him.
"I can take a lot of shit, Bella, really I can, but when they started to bring Em into it… I just…I can't sit back and let that go."
That was the issue all along? Seriously? It just pissed me off even more. "We both know Em is yours, so what different does it make who says what?" I asked heatedly.
He stared at me for a minute.
"Wait, you do know she's yours, right? You know this is all stupid lies. I mean, even if I had sex with someone else on that boat, which I didn't, I had like three or four periods on the island before I got pregnant."
"I know she's mine, but…"
"But?" I asked incredulously.
"I hate this fucking shit," he mumbled to himself under his breath while looking up at the ceiling. "You wanted to know why I was pissed at my mom, well, here it goes. The head doctor at the hospital is a friend of hers, and after reevaluating Em's record…he thinks she's older than a year. Her development is more like a year and a half year old."
"How could that be?" I asked confused.
"We never kept track of time, Bella. Days, weeks, months, we couldn't tell the difference."
"I had my period…three times at least."
"That's what I told my mom, but….the doctor also said that it's common during the first trimester to have some bleeding like that….You did say that your periods were much lighter than normal, right?"
"Ok, let me get this straight," I said while scrunching my brows. "First, I don't remember having sex on the boat, and now I'm mistaking periods for early pregnancy spotting?"
"I know it's stupid… but there's more." He took another deep breath. "My cousin Rose graduated the same year Newton did, and apparently when the boat came back without us, Newton was really freaked out. He told some people that you had just had sex before it happened, and he was worried your body would wash up and authorities would find his DNA all inside you and think he had something to do with you falling overboard. Rose caught wind of it and mentioned something about that to my mom, so that combined with the conflict in Em's age, she tried convincing me that I should just get a paternity test to settle it…So I got pissed. I told her that I didn't need a stupid paternity test, and I haven't spoken to her since…"
I felt my stomach drop.
"Why didn't you tell me any of this was happening?" I whispered, unable to speak any louder.
"Because it was all bullshit and I didn't want you stressing about nothing, you had enough to worry about. I thought I could handle it on my own, I thought it would die down and eventually go away, but when Tanya told me last week that she had heard about it, I knew it was getting way bigger than I thought. And then tonight she stopped by and told me that she heard Mike saying he was actually going to formally request a paternity test, and I lost it."
I was speechless. I knew the social gossip of a small town was bad, but I never thought it could be that painfully destructive. Those people and their lies were like a pack of wild hyenas –circling their prey and looking for weaknesses. How could anyone be so cruel as to try to rip a family apart?
But the most troubling part of the whole thing is Mike's claims. Why would he request a paternity test if he knew we never had sex? Why would he tell people that we had unprotected sex right after the boat returned without us? Rose was a lot of things, but she wouldn't lie about something like that, especially when she knew it would hurt her cousin. Could it have happened the way Mike said? I thought about what he said to me that day at the pool – "Just so we're on the same page, you fell off the boat yourself, right?"
Oh god, no.
"Em looks just like you," I said in a rush, trying to grab onto anything that would prove that it wasn't even slightly possible.
"I know," Edward said soothingly. "I'm not worried about the results of the test, it's just….You don't know what it's like, you never had anyone question if she was yours."
"I do know what that's like, they did that to me in Mexico," I told him.
His jaw locked, and then he looked down for a few moments before finally looking back up at me.
"I just couldn't let Newton go through with the request….So I went to find him. I don't know what I was planning to do once I got to him, but then I heard him laughing at that party and I lost control of myself. Every swim practice he had that same smug laugh whenever he made me do something, and I couldn't take it anymore."
"So…all the times you said you were going out with the swim team?"
"I never went out with the swim team," he admitted. "I was trying to get to the bottom of everything and fix it before it got out of hand…Emmett has been driving me wherever I needed to go."
"So, you lied," I said absently. Him lying was nothing compared to everything else that was going on, but for whatever reason, that was the only thing I could grasp at the moment.
"I didn't want you to know about any of it," he said again. "I thought I could protect you…It's my job to protect you."
"None of it would have mattered if you knew without a doubt that she was yours," I said quietly. "We would have just done what we have been doing – ignoring them and refusing to allow anything to come between us. But instead, you chose to lie and sneak around when we swore to each other we'd never lie. So be honest with me now. Are you having doubts? Because we can go get the paternity test done right away if you are."
"I don't want a paternity test because it doesn't matter either way. If it is all true, it wouldn't change anything," he said slowly. "I delivered her, I was the first person to hold her, and I took care of her for those horrible hours after she was born when I wasn't sure you were going to wake up again… We raised her for a year on that island together, and there is nothing in the world that would change how I feel about her."
"If it doesn't matter to you either way, then let's just take the test to end the public speculation."
"No," he snapped. "Let's just say that in the point zero one percent chance that Em isn't… I'm not going to let anyone come in here and try to tell me that I don't have a right to her. She's mine. You're both mine, and I refuse to share either of you with anyone. I don't have a plan B, Bella. You and Em, you're my entire life. Everything I do, every minute of the day, I'm thinking about ways to keep us together, to plan for our future together. If I lost you…" he let his sentence trail off.
"You would never lose us," I assured him softly while reaching my arms around him. "I don't know why any of this is happening, but I know in my heart that it's all bullshit. Em is yours… in every sense of the word. But if you don't want to take the test then I understand that too. I wish you would have told me what was going on, but now it's my turn to handle it."
"What? Bella, what are you going to do?"
I bit my bottom lip. "I'm not sure yet, but I swear to you, I will fix it and find out why Mike is lying."
