SM owns Twilight and its characters. I own this story. 2010.
Thank you, Scooterstale and BilliCullen.
Note: After this chapter, there is only one more regular chapter plus a short epilogue. I'll post them both at the same time.
Though My Edges May Be Rough (I'm Yours)
I stood just inside the doorway far longer than I should have.
But there in the middle of the bathroom, wearing nothing more than one of my old towels wrapped around her chest and with her hair flipped over and some ungodly loud hair dryer blowing underneath, I couldn't not stop when I walked by the open door, just like I couldn't not stare at her like the idiot that I was, all the while thanking God that I still could.
Without thinking, in some kind of reflexive habit I'd picked up over these last few weeks, my eyes quickly moved over her, from head to red-painted toe, and I catalogued all of the little signs of slow, steady improvement.
At just over five weeks past that awful weekend – exactly thirty-seven days since Bella had finally woken up in that hospital room and in the process granted me a second chance at breathing – almost all of the visible evidence of her wreck was now gone. The angry bruises that had marred her face and arms were now nothing more than memory. Almost all of the cuts had healed and vanished, too, with only the long, deeper gash at her hairline remaining. But even it was nothing more than a silvery pink line of mended flesh, a whisper of the trauma that had nearly made me lose my mind.
Of course, wounds to the surface always healed the fastest, I reminded myself. It was the deeper ones, the ones that couldn't be seen, that took the longest. And of all people, I knew that some of them – the worst – maybe never healed at all.
Which was why my stomach twisted into a tight knot as I also silently recorded all of her other tells, too, the ones that Bella refused to voice aloud. Like how she still favored her left side, like the sharp, shallow intake of breath when she lifted the hair dryer too high… anything and everything that hinted that there was still pain.
Because that was just what I did now.
Dr. Cheney's low voice floated through my head, telling me again and again that there was nothing wrong with being concerned and vigilant, that being afraid for Bella – and for myself – was expected, and that what I felt was… normal. Shaking my head, I frowned down at the squares of tile, because frankly, I wasn't so sure, and I couldn't help but think that at least in some ways, maybe I'd traded one addiction for another. Yet at the same time, when I heard Bella humming over the blare of that stupid dryer, I couldn't bring myself to really care or want to change anything about the way I felt about her.
Abruptly, there was a click, and I jerked a little when the room went quiet. Before I could even think about announcing my presence, Bella flipped her head back up, and her hand flew to her chest.
"Jesus, Edward!" she half-shrieked.
Had I not seen her wince when she backed into the counter, I'd have laughed at her wide eyes and panting breath. But I did see her, and I grimaced against the immediate, answering jerk on the knot in my gut. Fighting back a barrage of unspoken curses – the ingrained reaction I was supposed to be doing my damnedest to break – I shook my head, and with a quick intake of air that pulled my chest tight, my hands shot up in surrender, and I stepped into the bathroom. "Sorry," I said, tugging the dryer out of her hand and laying it aside. "I didn't mean to scare you."
She just rolled her eyes and laughed. "It's fine. You just startled me."
Hearing that sound – her, laughing – and the way it echoed in the small room silenced my cursing and made me smile back, and I outright grinned when I finally noticed the effects of all that blow drying. Hand on her hip and grinning back up at me in ways I'd never deserve, she looked like some kind of '80s throwback, teased and wild, with dark strands sticking out everywhere. Biting the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing, I couldn't resist trying to pat it down and tame it.
"I like this look," I managed. "Bass or guitar?"
In a poor attempt at being affronted, Bella hid behind a huff and attempted a glare. "Shut it, ginger." A brow shot up in challenge, daring me to reply.
The effect was completely lost a second later, however, because as I smoothed the last wayward wisps of hair away from her face, she flattened her palms against my stomach, making my muscles twitch when her fingers stretched out to fit the lines between them. Even through my t-shirt, warmth radiated from those two points of contact and into me, a sensation that made my eyes automatically close and made the knot in my gut finally unravel. Without even realizing it, my arms circled her narrow shoulders so that I could pull her closer, and then closer again, until those two points became one long line of heat and skin down the length of my body.
After a moment, Bella squeezed my middle and looked up. "Did you just get home?"
I wondered if she realized what she'd just said – if it was on purpose, if she meant it, or if it was just some fluke. Regardless, I heard it, and the last bit of the lingering melancholy that always seemed to follow my visits to Port Angeles slid away – at least for now.
"Thirty minutes ago."
"Damn it. I'm running late, aren't I?" Her nose crinkled and she looked at me with just a hint of an apologetic smile. "I didn't realize I was in for so long."
Like I really gave a fuck if she was running a few minutes behind. She was here – still – and that was all that mattered. I grabbed her hand and kissed the tips of her pruny fingers before making a show of examining them. "Just like last time, huh?" One corner of my mouth drew up. "And the time before that? And the– "
Shaking her head at me, she tsked like I was five. "At least I don't spy on you when you're naked and try scare you to death."
"I'll only admit to doing half of that on purpose." I shrugged, not really sorry for that at all. "Frequently."
Glancing away, then back again, Bella blushed, a faint pink that crept across her pale cheeks and went all the way down the length of her neck to her chest. I hadn't seen that in… weeks – months – and the unexpected appearance of it reminded me of all the things I'd been intentionally trying not to think about. Like what hid beneath that towel. Like the soft weight of her body against mine.
I shifted slightly, drawing away just enough so that maybe she wouldn't notice. Clearing my throat, looking for a distraction from what I wasn't sure how to address just yet, I reached into my pocket and pulled out her cell phone. "Almost forgot. Your sister called while you were in the shower."
With a melodramatic groan, Bella's forehead dropped to my sternum, and my shirt twisted in her fist. "Shit. What did you tell her?"
My shoulders shook because there was no way in hell that I'd ever understand the inner workings of that relationship. "I told her that you were doing fine, same as you were yesterday, and the day before that."
"Was she mad?" she mumbled, her voice muffled by my shirt.
"Nah, just annoyed that you didn't call her."
"That's not it," Bella sighed, as her fingers walked up my stomach to my chest before trailing back down again. "It's stupid really."
Alice's clipped tone and sharp, "Well, tell her to call me," filtered through my thoughts. Resting my chin on top of Bella's head, I inhaled a mouth full of fragrant, still-humid air. "I don't think she likes me," I admitted, frowning when the reflection in the mirror over the sink caught my eye.
For a long second, I stared, forcing myself to look at my own appearance for once. Better than I once was, I was still thinner than I was supposed to be – cheeks a little too gaunt, my frame a little too lean – and the pale, purplish gray rings from so many nights of piss poor sleep still circled my eyes. And those were still a little too haunted, the green a little too flat. "Not like I can really blame her," I quietly added.
Sighing again, Bella shook her head. "No, she feels guilty. Trust me." She squeezed me tighter. "It's just because I wouldn't let her come up here, and because you're the one who took care of me when I came home, not her."
Not really feeling like delving into the tangled mess of my own guilt and self-loathing, knowing that whatever good mood that had been salvaged after this morning's session would be destroyed if I did, I leaned down, lifted her hair off her neck, and pressed my lips to that oh-so-soft spot just below her ear. The skin there pebbled the second I touched her, and with a quiet, girlish sound that somehow managed to go straight south, she squirmed a little against me.
"Well, there's that." Sufficiently distracted, she tilted and turned toward me like she was giving me permission to continue, and I felt her lips spread into a smile against my face. "You want to know a secret?" she whispered. Hooking her fingers around my belt loops, Bella pulled me this time and in doing so removed that little bit of space I'd purposefully created. "Like why I didn't let her come up here when I was in the hospital?"
I paused with my mouth still on her neck. "Why?"
"I didn't want to ruin their vacation."
"Their?" I asked. The vacation part I knew.
Bella reached up and smoothed away the furrow from my brows. "Yeah, he met her down in there in Cabo. She didn't even tell me until after she got back home."
Surprised but at the same time not, I chuckled and kissed her again, this time along the delicate line of her jaw, closer to her mouth and where I really wanted to be. "That asshole."
The squirming stilled, and she looked up at me, wearing what I could only describe as an expression of quiet assessment or contemplation. A second passed, and then another, before she pursed her lips and nodded once, as if she'd found the answer to some unspoken question.
"You're really okay with that?"
A soft, "yeah," came out without any real thought or direction.
"Really?" she pressed. "I know you said that… well, back before… that you were fine with it." She hesitated. "But they seem to be, I don't know… getting more serious."
"I'm…" I started, then stopped, recalling the long conversation Jasper and I had back before Christmas and trying to decipher what exactly it was that I felt now. It was some strange blend of amusement, nostalgia, and contentment, laced with maybe a hint of bitterness. The best I could come up with was, "If he's happy, I guess… I guess I'm happy for him." Quieter, staring down at my own version of happiness, I said, "Just like I hope he's happy for me."
Not saying a word, with a kind of focused intensity that coming from anyone else would have made my insides crawl, Bella stared back up at me. There was a certain shine in her eyes, a certain set of her mouth, a certain weight to her hands on me. It was at once both familiar and new, and I blinked, struck by the intimacy of our situation. Not sexual, just… intimate.
And in an instant of startling clarity, I realized that I didn't want her to ever go back to her house, and that it wasn't because I didn't want to be alone, or because the memories always seemed to fade when she was near. It wasn't because my house sometimes still whispered in my ear and collapsed all around me, and it wasn't because of the guilt and regret and years' worth of hiding that still kept me awake at night.
No, it was because I wanted this every day. I wanted to watch her brush her teeth in the morning and I wanted to hear her grumble at me when I left the cap off the toothpaste or when I forgot to wipe off the faucet. I wanted to see her shoes scattered all over my closet floor and see her clothes take over my drawers. I wanted her dog to hang out in my back yard and sit at her feet on my porch. And God, I wanted to see her dark hair fan out across the white pillow beside mine every single night when we went to bed.
And I didn't give a fuck if that was stupid or if it made me sound like a girl. I just wanted to live the rest of my life with her all over it.
Overwhelmed, trying to ignore the heat that climbed my neck and swelled my lungs, I coughed and looked away. "Are you…" I swallowed. "You almost ready?"
When I glanced back, she was still staring at me, still watching my every move, but some of the intensity was gone, replaced by a hint of grin. "Do I look ready?"
I stepped back and eyed the way the towel had slipped down a couple of inches. "Look good to me."
Bella made a face and stuck out her tongue, but then turned serious, folding her lip beneath a row of white teeth. Her fingertips stole to my chin, and the sound of her nails gently scraping along my jaw reminded me that I had forgotten to shave again. "Are you sure you want to go… out?" Her brow wrinkled as she fumbled to find words that wouldn't hurt. "I mean, are you going to be okay with… The restaurant serves alco– "
Even without the rest of that statement, I knew exactly where her head was. I knew that in the back of her mind, she saw the shelves of gold-labeled bottles behind the bar. She saw the involuntary tremble of my hands and tap of my foot. She saw me, bloody and passed out on the kitchen floor. I knew it, not because of any specific tell or sign, but because when I let myself go there, I saw it, too. And as much as I despised admitting it, there was a not-small part of me that sometimes clawed its way to the surface and demanded the release that I could never allow myself to have again.
But that wasn't going to change any time soon, whether I hid from it or faced it head on. It was just one more demon to conquer, one more obstacle in the way of what I wanted. And right now, what I wanted was to take her out. On a date. Like any other normal couple would do.
"It'll be alright." I hoped. "Now hurry up and get dressed, okay? I'm starving."
~.~.~
Wide awake and on my back, I stared at the pale silver light that shined through the open blinds, casting the dark room in a subtle glow. At somewhere well past midnight, it was just light enough that I could barely make out the shape of the fan blades over the bed. Beside me, close enough that I could feel the heat from her body and draped across a spare pillow to cushion her ribs, Bella was little more than a dark silhouette.
The house was quiet at this time of night – too quiet, really – with only the occasional creak or groan of the walls to cut through the silence. It was that time of night when though I was still, my brain never seemed to want to stop moving – when all the thoughts I'd consciously avoided and pushed away during the day came roaring back until I could think of nothing else.
Like what the hell was I going to do about my dad.
Like whether or not I thought I could stomach him being in the same room with Dr. Cheney and me, never mind him hearing me talk about all the shit that had ripped the family apart.
If my therapist was insane for even suggesting it.
Like what was coming up a month from now.
And how the fuck I'd ever make it through that whole day, sober.
How I had to.
Whether or not the little white pill I took every morning at breakfast was doing anything at all.
It was an endless parade of questions, none of which had an easy answer, and all of which made my mouth dry out and my skull start pounding. Folding my arms behind my head, I closed my eyes and tried to match my breathing to Bella's.
"You're grieving, you're depressed, and you're a recovering alcoholic," Dr. Cheney had said, plainly, pulling no punches when I'd broken down in his chair last Friday morning. "Those things don't just go away overnight. It's going to take several weeks – likely months – for all of this," he waved back and forth between us, "to start making a difference. It's a slow, gradual progression, not an instant change." He had paused then, waiting for me to look up from the floor. "But Edward, things will get better. One day, you'll wake up in the morning and you'll realize it. You'll see all the tiny steps that you've made and didn't even notice along the way."
I sighed into the dark, wanting so much for that day to be now.
"Hey," Bella murmured, moving her hand to my chest. When I didn't answer, she shifted closer, moving the pillow out of the way so that she could curl up against my side. Careful of her ribs and the still healing incisions, I gathered her closer. "What's wrong?" she asked, running her palm up and down my chest.
My throat bobbed when I swallowed. "Sorry, I didn't mean to wake you."
"What is it? Why are you still up?"
I looked down my chest even though it was too dark in the room to see her face. Like always, my first inclination, the product of so many years of hiding, was to lie and say that nothing was wrong at all, that everything was fine, that I was fine. Before I could find any words to say, however, she said, "Never mind," and pressed her lips to my bare skin to disguise the disappointment. "You don't have to tell me if you don't want to."
I stroked her hair, weaving my fingers through the silky strands. "Tomorrow, okay?," I managed, not wanting her to hear the pitch of anxiety that would bubble through if I let it. "Ask me tomorrow," I repeated. "I don't really want to think about it right now. But it's not bad, okay? Just… the normal shit."
With a nod I felt more than saw, her lips brushed across my chest again, lingering, warm, and so very soft, and then she laid her cheek over my heart as if to listen.
It was hers anyway. "I love you," I whispered.
Instead of answering, Bella craned her neck up to meet my lips, and the moment we touched, it was like I was melting into her. This was different from all the other quick kisses. This lasted longer. It was stronger. There was something else lurking beneath, a coiled spring that was just on the verge of releasing. It made me hard.
Maybe it was just because I couldn't see her, or maybe it was because she was half-naked and laying on top of me, or maybe it was because I could feel the supple roundness of her breasts, but her mouth was so warm and so wet, and when her tongue slid between my lips, asking for more than I really thought she was physically ready to give, my entire body flared to life and all the spiraling thoughts that had kept me awake ceased to exist.
There was only us, and I wanted to touch her everywhere. I wanted to lay her back and put my mouth between her thighs. I wanted to hear her curse and whisper my name in the dark. I wanted to lose myself inside of her and never find my way out.
Drunk on sensation and heat and just wanting, it took me a second to realize that she was climbing up to straddle me. "Bella, we can't," I made myself say, damning my hips to keep them down on the mattress when all they wanted to do was thrust against damp heat. "You're not supposed to–"
"Shh," she shushed, taking my mouth again, ignoring my pathetic excuse of a protest. "I'm fine."
My eyes rolled back in my head as she shifted her weight. "Bella–"
"We'll go slow."
"You don't have to do this because of–" I muttered, and then stopped when she rocked her hips a little harder. Incapable of letting her go, I ran my hands underneath my old shirt, up the silky skin of her back, and then around to her breasts. Her nipples were hard and ready, and she gasped against me when I rolled them between my fingers. And then she gasped louder when I stripped off her shirt so that I could feel everything, her skin against mine, all of her at once.
"I'm not… it's not just for you," Bella breathed, as she lifted off me just enough to pull her underwear off before reaching for mine. "Please don't say no."
"Wait," I whispered, even though I wanted her to do anything but.
"It's–" she started, frustrated, but then trailed off when, less than graceful, I crawled up the bed until I was sitting up with my back against the headboard. I blindly reached in the dark for her hand to pull her back on top of me.
"Come here. Get on me."
I groaned like a goddamned teenager when I felt her weight again, and once I was settled between her thighs, holding her hips to keep them from moving, I kissed her again and again, long and slow, dragging my lips up and down her neck before finally moving back to her breasts. When my mouth closed around a hard nipple and sucked, her back arched, pushing more of her into my mouth, and with a soft moan that made my dick fucking beg to thrust, she fisted the hair at my nape.
"Slow," I panted against her skin. "You have to set the pace. If it hurts–" I stopped abruptly, squeezing my eyes shut when slick, wet heat surrounded me. "Oh, Christ."
Breathing low and ragged, we were still for a short forever, long enough for me to reclaim some sense of reason, check my grip on her waist, and pull my knees up behind her. Reaching up, framing her face between my palms and threading my fingers deep into her hair, I pulled Bella's mouth to mine and slid my tongue against hers in time to the slow rocking of her hips, trying to make her understand exactly what she did to me, what she meant, how I didn't ever again want to know what it was to not have her. How I loved her so much I couldn't breathe sometimes.
"You can move, Edward," she whispered against my lips, tugging my head back so that she could suck on my neck. The scrape of her teeth almost killed me. "I won't break. Touch me."
"I want to feel you come," I whispered back, dropping my hand down between us where I could circle my thumb over her clit. "I want you to feel good."
"More." It came out as a shaky command, and when I gave it, moving my fingers faster, pressing firmer, her nails bit into the tops of my shoulders with a breathless, "Oh, fuck," that made me damned near lose my mind.
God only knew how long we stayed like that – touching, kissing, holding back from doing anything more than slow, slick thrusts and gentle rocking – while I coaxed her to orgasm. As much as I ached to finish, as much as I wanted to bury myself inside her and let everything go, I could have made love to her like that for hours, no rushing, just reveling in both soft warmth and tight friction and the fact that when we were like this, everything was right in the world. When Bella finally came, jerking and exhaling my name, it felt like the damned earth moved, and the only coherent thought that crossed my mind before it blanked when I followed her was that I needed to punch myself for not turning on the light so that I could see her.
Damp from sweat and slumped on top of me, Bella's forehead rested against mine, slowly shaking back and forth. "I love you, too," she murmured, gently touching her lips to mine one last time. I could feel her smiling before she added, "And by the way, we can do this again tomorrow. Dinner optional."
Hugging her too tightly, I laughed hard, because in an abrupt moment of recognition, never mind all the shit that constantly plagued my mind, at least for now, in this single moment, as I sat here with her in the dark, exhausted, a little sore, and trying to catch my breath, I realized that I'd never felt so good in all my life.
.
.
.
A/N: For those keeping track, the date is Tuesday, April 26, 2011. If it's not clear, the event roughly a month from now that Edward is dreading above is the 5 year anniversary of Maria's death (June 2).
Chapter title: Lyrics from I'm Yours,by The Script.
