Blown away by your response to this little Drabble. Most of you have figured out Bella's hesitance to marry the man at the altar. Hopefully this chapter will add to your curiosity!
Thanks to my beta Fran and Dani and Ariel for catching my mistakes. Enjoy!
Rosalie has succeeded in dragging me out of the room. She knows my reluctance; she can see it in my eyes and hear it in my shaky breaths. Unwilling to admit what she sees; she chalks it up to fastening my corset too tightly and turns me around to see if she can make any last-minute adjustments to the stringed laces she thinks might be too tight.
It's just another stall tactic.
She knows.
She knows I shouldn't marry him.
She knows the war I've raged behind closed doors. She knows I'm just a puppet in his games.
My sister, Rosalie, is too scared to help me.
She knows what he's capable of.
Even before he started alienating me from family and friends, she saw it.
"You two are too intense," she had said one night around a table full of drinks and empty of worries. "Co-dependent."
I had blown her off, dismissed her with a smile, and stared longingly at him from across the pool. He was in the shallow end in an intense volleyball game, blending in like the family man he was.
The image he had perfected to show on the outside to make families like mine fall for his charade.
Now, Rose says nothing, just tugs on a string so tightly it makes me suck in an involuntary breath and hold on to the wall, so the pull from my sister doesn't bring me to the ground.
It's enough, though. This simple gesture, the way she takes her time, tells me so much more than actual words. The silence is deafening in this dark hallway, the gray clouds outside casting shadows all over a wedding that should never happen.
This is the longest Rosalie and I have spent together in two years. I'm surprised she's even allowed back here at all, to be honest. Years ago, he saw the bond between us. He saw that the word sisters didn't come close to the bond Rosalie and I had. He saw it and hated it. He wanted, needed, to be the only person I had a relationship with.
He saw it. She saw it. Me? I was clueless. I was too in love, too blind to see the red flags, and even then, there was a good chance I would have walked right over them even if I hadn't been blinded by everything about him.
"Ready?" Rose pats the tiny bow she's tied at the end of the corset, tucking the strings back into hiding the way the seamstress had shown me at my last fitting. Turning back to face me, she sighs and scans my face and body for anything else out of place. Her voice asks one question, but her eyes ask different ones entirely.
Why, Bella? How did you let it get this far? I don't know how to help you anymore. He'll kill us both if he thinks I have something to do with your escape.
Sighing, I peer through the window and see the small gathering facing the altar.
I see him.
Sighing with anticipation and looking toward the closed door in front of me, I turn back to my sister with defeat on my face.
Don't make me do this. Help me, Rosalie.
Instead, I answer her question out loud. "Yes."
Bella's made a decision...or has she? See you tomorrow to find out!