Hello, everyone. Before you start reading, please read this:

There are a lot of very mature themes in this chapter so please read at your own discretion. I'll put a summary below if you don't want to read this chapter, but want to continue with the story.

Trigger Warning: Sexual assault, abuse, smoking and and mentions of drinking.

EPOV

Ever since the accident a month ago, things had been perfect with Bella and we'd never been closer. There was seldom a waking moment that I wasn't with her. I grabbed my keys and wallet off of my nightstand and got ready to go sneak into Bella's room.

"Hey, Edward," Alice called me as I passed her room.

"What's up?"

"Can you close the door? I need to talk to you."

I nodded, softly closing the door and sitting on her desk chair. "Shoot."

"We're pretty close, right?"

"We're twins, Alice. How much closer can we get?"

"Very funny," she rolled her eyes. But the she got this serious expression that I wasn't sure I liked. It looked unnatural on Alice's normally jovial face. "You'd tell me if you were in trouble, right? If something happened and you wouldn't tell anyone else. You'd tell me?"

"Am I in trouble?" I asked, kind of panicked. I couldn't think of anything I'd done wrong, but Alice seemed to know everything that happened in this town. I was still under supervision, literally the smallest infraction could get me into a lot of trouble.

"I don't know, are you?"

I sighed, not wanting to deal with anymore of Alice's cryptic questions. "What the hell are you talking about, Alice?"

"Look, don't get mad, but," she sighed. "There's a lot of rumors going around...about Bella. I know you guys have been hanging out a lot and..." she trailed off, not quite meeting my eyes.

"Can you just spit it out, Alice?"

"Is she- did you- Is she pregnant, Edward?"

I almost choked on my own spit. My eyes went wild and I shot up from the chair I just occupied. "What? Where did you even- No! It's not true, Alice! Where did you even hear that?"

"Just from people, Edward. She's gained some weight, she dressing differently, someone heard her throwing up in the girl's bathroom a few weeks ago," Alice shrugged shyly.

"And that means she's," I yelled and then lowered my voice after remembering we were still at home and my mom could hear us. "And that means she pregnant, Alice?"

"Are you sure, Edward? You two haven't...?"

"Jesus, no! Not that it's any of your business but no, Alice." And I walked out of the room before anything else could be said.

But it was too late.

The seeds of doubt were planted.

Alice was right, the signs were all there. Those first few weeks Bella was almost always drinking Ginger Ale, I had heard her throw up multiple times- not that I ever told Bella I'd heard her, but we'd never... We'd made out. More than a few times, but that was it. Why was I even entertaining this? There was no way it was true.

No way.

None at all.

Except that it could.

It could be completely true.

And it would explain a lot.

And I knew there was only one way to find out.

"I'll be back," I called to my mom. I didn't wait for her to respond before I hopped into my car and drove to Bella's house. My heart pounded and my palms were all sweaty as I drove to her house. So many question ran through my head as I thought about everything that Alice had said.

BPOV

The second Edward climbed through my window, I knew something wasn't right. I'd told him about how to sneak into my room as long as he parked the car where Charlie wouldn't see it. There was a piece of wooden lattice that was by my window. All we did was scoot it over a little. It was a testament to how much I trusted Edward, I never let anyone into my room. Especially guys, the mere thought freaked me out. When he started sneaking in, I'd kept the door slightly open- kind of a moot point in not getting caught, but it was a step in the right direction. After a while, I was able to have to door closed when Edward was here. Because he was here all the time now, we'd never been closer. Which meant it was getting harder to hide things from him. I was pretty sure he heard me throw up once or twice when I ate something that the baby didn't like. If he noticed that I'd gained weight, he'd never said anything. But I was dressing very differently now. Nothing fit, and none of my old clothes hid the bump well enough.

I knew how to read people pretty well, but it was even easier to read Edward. The worry and doubt were all over his face. He'd climbed into my window many times before, but this time I felt that distantly familiar sense of dread build up in the pit of my stomach.

"E, are you okay?" I asked as he sat on my desk chair instead of my bed. I didn't mind him sitting on my bed. It'd taken time, but each day Edward proved to me that I could trust him. Which was even more rare than love. Probably more important to me than love. I'd even accidentally given him a nickname, it was simple but telling of our relationship.

"Why do never talk about Phoenix?" He asked, his head hung low and his eyes didn't quite meet mine.

"I've told you about Phoenix."

"No, not really," he shook his head. His voice was low and almost..stern. "What about your friends?"

I didn't like to think about them. About what they were doing right now. How they were doing right now. My phone had been taken away from me, and I'd been given a new one when I arrived in Forks. My mom had never liked my friends. She thought it was the reason that I had taken a turn for the worst. I hadn't even heard from my mother since I'd been here. I shrugged, trying to play it like I was calm and collected. "I don't know. My phone got taken away, I haven't heard from them since I'd been here."

"Yeah, but what did you do with them?"

I was confused. I didn't like this line of questioning or where it was going, but after all of these months of lying, Edward deserved some honesty out of me. "I've told you most of the good stories. Partying, getting high or drunk- depending on where we were. There were very few things we wouldn't do for fun. We just...lived."

His silence was deafening.

I continued talking, just to fill in the tense silence. I rubbed my clammy hands up and down my leggings. "One time we were with a bunch of seniors and some older guys. We were all having a good time until one of my friends and her boyfriend thought it would be a great idea to steal a cop car that was parked in front of his house. I didn't like the idea from the jump but I went along with it. Long story short, we ended the night by running away from the cops."

He seemed uninterested in my story, which was more that weird for Edward. The way he intently listened to my stories like it was the most interesting thing he ever heard was one of my favorite things about him. "Did you have a boyfriend?"

My jaw dropped. I recoiled from where I was sitting like the question had physically hurt me. "No! Why would you even ask me that?"

Maybe I was paranoid.

Or maybe it was the pregnancy hormones.

But it all became abundantly clear why he was asking me this.

He knew.

"Edward, why don't you ask what you came here to ask?" His eyes finally met mine and I could see the storm of emotion in his brilliant green eyes. My stomach twisted and sank because there was not a doubt in my mind that he knew. He remained silent, but his eyes bored into mine. I felt so vulnerable, like he could see the depths of my soul. I could only hope he liked what he saw. "Who told you, Edward?

"Alice."

I flinched. If Alice knew how many other people knew? "And who told, Alice?"

He shrugged. "Some kids at school, I guess."

I nodded slowly, trying to will my tears not to fall. "So that's it then? You've got your answer. Feel free to tell whoever you'd like."

"That's not fair," he spoke sharply.

"Life's not fair."

"Why didn't you tell me?" He sounded so hurt, so dejected. All that wasted time, I guess. Loving a person who wasn't as good as you thought they were.

"What did you want me to say, Edward? Tell me what could I have possibly told you to make you not run the second I told you."

"How about the fact that you had a boyfriend in Phoenix? That would've been a good start."

"I already told you that I didn't," I snapped.

"The evidence proves otherwise, Bella." I squeezed my eyes and tried not to be hurt by Edward's words. He didn't know. He didn't know how badly those words hurt me. How untrue they were. I wanted to tell him that he was the only person I'd ever loved. There'd been no one else. I curled my shaky hand into fists and stood up from the bed. The anger was coming in waves, big massive tidal waves. The kind that drowned you the second that you stopped fighting.

"You don't know what you're talking about, Edward," I whispered through gritted teeth.

"Maybe that because you don't tell me anything, Bella! You're so fucking committed to not letting anyone in that there's no way I could know!"

"You want me to tell you?" I asked, my voice quiet and dead serious. Tears pooling at my waterline. Everything was imploding now. I knew it had been masochistic involving myself and now the pain was here. All of it all at once.

A stabbing feeling tore through my chest, slow and painful.

I knew things would turn out this way. I'd known it from the start. I'd been fooling myself into believing that he wouldn't run the second I told him. I knew the harsh reality that others didn't. People, when left to their own whims and wants, will always hurt you. You can't trust someone's best intentions because the second you aren't what they wanted, they leave. They wound. They chew you up and spit you out.

I figured if this was all going to blow up anyway, I may as well do what I do best- blow it all up. "Want me to tell you, what? That the man my mother married is a complete monster? That he'd come into my room whenever Renee was gone and he felt like getting off." A tear that was stuck on my eyelash fell onto my cheek. "That if I didn't leave the house early enough or fast enough and he caught me I knew what I was in for? Or that I cried and screamed, kicked every night but I was never strong enough to fight him off. That sometimes I can still hear him grunting, moaning on top of me while I tried not to cry because of how much it hurt. It didn't really matter how much it hurt because he didn't like it when I cried."

"Or did you want to see? Would that make it easier for you, Edward?" I pulled one side of my waistband down, revealing the nasty cigarette burn on my hip. "Here's a good one- but don't worry there's plenty more where that came from. But this-this was when my mother made him quit smoking. Said that second-hand smoke was bad for me," I chuckled bitterly. "I caught him in a bad mood and he decided he needed to teach me a lesson." I finally stopped, figuring that he'd had enough. Edward looked shell shocked, stunned with an indecipherable expression. "Is that what you wanted me to tell you, Edward?"

I flung my bedroom door open when he remained silent. It wasn't fair. It wasn't right to drop this on him when it would take any normal person weeks to process all of that. I'd had years and I still couldn't, but my heart was broken and like I told Edward, life isn't fair. "I fucking knew it. You can leave now."

And he did.

He actually left.

And I was the idiot crying on my bed with a broken heart.

Summary for the chapter:

Alice tells Edward that she notices some changes in Bella that are causing some rumors to speculate. Pregnancy rumors.

Edward starts piecing together some of Bella's behavior, and deduces that it could be true.

He confronts her with the assumption that she lied to him about having a boyfriend back in Arizona. They dance around the topic for a minute, but with the line of questioning Bella guesses that he knows about the pregnancy.

Edward tells her about the rumors, and tells her she should have been honest about having a boyfriend back home (she didn't). She tries to tell him this, but he says that there is evidence to the contrary.

Bella feeling hormonal, emotional, and generally angry that Edward doesn't believe her goes into graphic detail about the abuse, both sexual and physical, that she endured. Edward is stunned at this, again he thought she lied to him, so this completely blindsides him.

Bella flings her door open and tells him that she knew all along that he'd run the second he found out. In her words, "I fucking knew it." And then she tells him that he can leave.

And then Edward leaves.

I hope you guys enjoyed this one. Probably one of the hardest chapters I've had to write, so I hope you guys liked it. Please let me know what you guys think!