I do not own Twilight.
Edward is refusing to look at me again and I rub my hands over my face, knowing this is going nowhere very quickly.
"Look," I say quietly, "It wasn't some spur-of-the-moment decision, okay? I didn't want to break up, Edward—believe me. I tried my hardest to make us work towards the end. I tried to be mindful of who I talked to and why I talked to them, and what I said to them. I tried to…submit to what you needed, but it became too much. Do you know how hard it is to try to keep friends that you can't talk to?"
"I never said you couldn't talk to people," Edward says through his teeth. He's still staring at the table. "I never asked you to give up friendships."
"Not explicitly, no," I agree. "But anyone I talked to caused an argument. If you saw me with another guy, if another guy even looked at me, you assumed the worst. You didn't trust me, and that was nerve-wracking."
"I trusted you," he says quickly, looking over at me and I think I've hit a nerve. "It was them I didn't trust."
I sigh and run my fingers through my hair, pushing it over my shoulder. "Then you didn't trust me to tell them I had a boyfriend," I resolve. "So, you didn't trust me."
He opens his mouth to say something, to refute, but I know I have him cornered.
"I trusted you," is all his says, his voice quiet.
"You were jealous," I snap.
He doesn't answer.
"And controlling," I add. "And possessive."
My tone's lost its anger as I speak because he's looking at me with those eyes he always looks at me with; the ones that he saves for groveling. For when he begs me for forgiveness.
"I never meant to be," he says quietly, sadly. "There was just something about you that made me want to possess you. I felt like I needed to control you."
"But why?" I ask, slightly beside myself. "Why did you feel that way? Did you not think I loved you enough? Did you think you didn't mean as much to mean as I meant you?" I let out a breath, but it's slightly choked with tears. "I'm trying to understand, Edward."
He closes his eyes and presses his fingers to his temples and jaw, massaging them as though this conversation alone is making him ill.
"You were the one good thing in my life," he explains after a few seconds of silence, of me watching him try to piece his world together. "I didn't know how else to keep you."
I look up at the tiled ceiling, hoping that this small movement will keep the tears at bay, but it doesn't work.
He stills after a moment and looks at me. I can see his tongue darting out slowly, wetting his bottom lip.
"That night…that party," he starts and though he pauses to collect his thoughts I already know which party he's talking about, which night he's talking about.
"I don't even think he meant it," he says. "I could see it in his eyes as soon as he said it. It was a reaction to what I said to Alice, to how I hurt Alice, and I think he wanted to hurt me in turn."
My stomach drops because I know I should tell him that Alice never actually said what he thinks she did. But if I tell him that, I have to tell him the reason why I told him she didn't want to stay friends. I have to tell him about the contrasting list that my mom made me write, and I really don't want to do that.
Edward lets out a short laugh. There's no amusement to it, though, and the sound pains me.
"He didn't expect me to react so quickly. I don't think he expected me to hit him, but the truth is, I wanted to hurt him as badly as he had hurt me, all because I believed what he said with every fiber in my body. There was no doubt in my mind that I was ruining your life—I knew I was ruining your life. I knew you weren't happy, I knew I worried you. I knew I wasn't being fair with the way I was treating you, with the way I was constantly on you…I was so afraid that if I didn't put myself into every aspect of your life, that you'd become bored with me, or us, or fuck…" he trails off, the curse hanging in the air between us angrily, filled with endless sorrow and passion.
"I would never have become bored with you, Edward," I say and I think the tenderness in my voice shocks us both. His eyes snap to mine, uncertain and I know he's bearing his soul on the line for me, right here, right now. I don't think I've ever heard him describe his feelings like this. He's so used to bottling everything up.
Maybe in some way this is working for him. Maybe he's learning he can't keep everything inside.
"I was going to break up with you that night," he says suddenly and my stomach sinks at the thought. I hadn't even known. There had never been a single sign, and I feel sick with this information.
"I was going to go home, sleep on it, and tell you the next morning that we shouldn't be together, that you'd be better off without me, but you told me to stay and I did. You let me hold you that night even though I had no right and then, in the morning, you woke up and looked at me." He shakes his head slightly, lost in the memory and I want to get lost with him.
"You smiled at me—you fucking smiled," he says, "and it was like you were telling me everything would be okay. We would be okay, and I could taste it on your lips when I kissed you in the morning. I could taste your resolve, the fact that you were going to stick by me even if I was wrong and I had never in my life felt that way before."
He blinks up at me and he almost looks surprised to see me watching, listening. It's like he had forgotten where he was, so lost in the memory of high school.
"That was the moment that I realized I needed to do everything I could to keep you. I couldn't let you go. I knew that if you left, I'd have nothing." He smiles, but it's sad, regretful, wounded. "Anyone that had even the slightest potential to persuade you away from me became the enemy."
I bite down on my bottom lip hard. So hard, I'm afraid I'll draw blood, but at least it would be some sort of counterbalance to the bleeding pain in my chest.
Edward's face relaxes, almost like he's made peace with his own words. Like he knows where his faults lie, and now it's time for me to find my own.
"Instead of securing you, I pushed you away," he says.