*BPOV*
Not in any hurry to get back to the house to share my disgrace with Esme, Alice, and Rose, I walked at a sluggish human pace through the dense woods. If Jasper and Emmett were bothered by this, they didn't let it show.
I should've known Edward would blame himself and not me for my horrifying actions. I was mortified, of course, and devastated that I would've killed that kid if not for Edward stopping me. If he hadn't been there... I shuddered to think of it.
What must he think? What must they all think?
While I was hurt and confused that Edward had stayed behind, I was sort of glad for it, too. I didn't know how to face him after what happened. He just looked so broken. Or maybe he was looking at me like I was broken.
A heavy sadness descended over me, one that Jasper tried to counteract.
"Leave me alone, Jazz," I insisted despondently. I owed it to Jalen to at least feel the shame and remorse for what I'd done.
Jasper handed me his handkerchief to wipe the mud from my face. I was oddly touched by the gesture. It was such an old-timey, gentlemanly thing to do, a gesture not often (or ever) seen in young men from my generation.
"It was so easy for you to forgive me. Give me one good reason why you can't also forgive yourself," Jasper's golden eyes challenged me.
He had me there and he knew it. When I said nothing, he added, "The kid is fine. He doesn't even know what almost happened to him. But now you know how easy it is to slip up, and next time you'll be more careful, won't you?" Jasper asked in his soothing, honeyed drawl.
I nodded gravely.
"Good speech, bro. You sounded just like Carlisle just then," Emmett chuckled.
"I did, didn't I?" Jasper grinned.
"You know, Jasper, you're just as good at calming me down when you use your words as when you use your gift. You should try it more often," I cracked half a smile.
"And you sound just like Alice," he ruffled my hair in a very big brotherly fashion.
"Edward must be just freaking out right now," I said anxiously, looking over my shoulder, vaguely hoping to catch a glimpse of him running up behind us to catch up. It was wishful thinking.
Not that I could blame him for not being able to look at me right now. I could barely stand to keep my own company.
"I don't know if you've met our brother Edward, but he kind of does that a lot," Emmett snorted. "He'll get over it, he always does. Edward doesn't know what to do with himself if he's too happy for too long."
Jasper stopped dead in his tracks to look at his much larger, much younger brother. "That was surprisingly insightful, Emmett."
Emmett looked like he was trying to decide between taking the backhanded compliment and taking offense at the surprise that colored Jasper's admittedly condescending tone.
Just then I heard a rustling in the trees behind us and I whipped around hopefully. My face fell slightly to see that Carlisle was alone.
"Edward isn't with you?" I asked anxiously in a high, tight voice.
"No. I thought he ran off to find you," Carlisle said, looking a little surprised but unconcerned. "Not to worry, Bella. It was a difficult moment for you both. I'm sure he just needs a minute to collect himself."
"Carlisle, I am so sorry about losing control back there. There weren't even any warning signs...I just...snapped-" I rushed to apologize, to somehow explain, but he held his hands up to stop me from saying anything further.
"On the bright side," he said with a small, compassionate smile, "no real harm was done and you learned a very valuable lesson today about how easily and how quickly that can happen and how on guard we have to be."
I nodded contritely. "Did I ever!" I said bitingly.
"Next time, if you see a human about to hurt themselves, hold your breath in case blood is spilled. It's a good habit to get into. Even I still do it out of habit, even though the scent of blood doesn't get to me anymore."
Carlisle sighed as if something mildly unfortunate had happened like Charlie might have if the Mariners lost a game. Not the sound I would have expected from my vampire dad after his newest daughter just nearly committed a murder.
"You were doing so well before that happened! How very unfortunate that the very first person you should encounter would have an accident like that! I mean what are the odds?" Carlisle marveled.
I snorted. "With my luck, I'd say pretty good," I muttered, earning titters from all three of the men.
*EPOV*
Alice was sitting on the front steps when I returned. Her hair was perfectly coiffed after successfully removing the tree sap, though she still smelled faintly of rubbing alcohol.
"I'm sorry I didn't see it until it was too late," her delicate features frowned regretfully. "You look like you could use a hug."
I sank down heavily on the step beside her, hanging my head. She threw an arm around my shoulder and gave me a squeeze.
"It was nobody's fault, Edward. You stopped her. That's what matters. That's all Bella will care about," Alice consoled.
"I suppose you're right. She never gets angry with me for the right things. But she should hate me for what I've done to her. I do," I moaned.
"Oh no, you don't, Edward Cullen!" Alice glared at me. "Don't even go there. It was her choice. She didn't fall and land on your teeth! And she couldn't hate you any more than you could ever hate Carlisle, so just stop it right there."
I knew it was no use arguing with the irate pixie.
"Thanks, Alice" I conceded in a gruff voice. I could always rely on her to tell it to me straight, and without the expletives my other sister would have used.
She flashed a brilliant smile. "You did a good job, by the way. Talking her down. You said all the things I would have."
One side of my mouth turned up in a small smile. "I was thinking of you then, of the times I've seen you keep Jasper together," I admitted.
Alice smiled warmly at the acknowledgment. "I'm going to get you a 'What Would Alice Do?' bumper sticker for your Aston Martin.
"You wouldn't dare," I growled with a playful gleam in my eyes. Alice well knew of my abhorrence for the trashy, value-depreciating vehicular tattoos.
She just winked at me and nudged me with her shoulder.
"Alice, can you see when they'll be back?"
"They are walking, so ten minutes, 15 seconds. You better go get that bath started. I left a fresh outfit out for her," Alice said, thinking of it hanging on the back of the ornate privacy screen off to the corner of the bedroom.
"You're the best," I wrapped my arm around her and squeezed, kissing the top of her inky-black, alcohol-scented head.
If I had a nickel for every time someone said that to me, Alice sighed inwardly
"You do! And then some!" I grinned crookedly as I slipped inside the front door, leaving her to wait on the step for her love to come home.
Inside the house, Esme and Rosalie were lounging on the couch watching some house flipping show on HGTV. I acknowledged them politely but didn't linger.
Alice must've told them what happened because neither of them seemed surprised to see me alone, and both of them were unusually focused on the screen, a dead giveaway that they didn't want me to know what they were thinking.
I didn't need to know what they were thinking, it was easy enough to guess. My sister wouldn't have an ounce of compassion for Bella, because as Alice pointed out, Bella chose this life despite the warnings and outright objection of not only Rosalie but myself as well.
Esme would be just the opposite. She was likely overflowing with compassion and empathy and motherly concern, but she knew me well enough to know that there was only one person I would want to speak with just then, so she selflessly kept her thoughts to herself.
I dashed up the stairs to our room and ran the bath, pouring a generous dollop of bubble bath under the running water.
I quickly changed out of my own muddied clothes into what Bella called my "bumming around" outfit, loose-fitting dark wash jeans, and my well-loved Ray Charles concert t-shirt that I purchased at one of his shows back in '63.
Bella had told me on more than one occasion that I "never looked hotter than when I dressed casually." So I figured it couldn't hurt.
I could hear Carlisle, Emmett, and Jasper's thoughts as they approached the house. All of their thoughts centered on getting back to their respective wives and putting this day behind us.
"Thanks for being so understanding about all this." Low and contrite, that was Bella's voice, close enough to be heard and echoed in the thoughts of her companions. "I know what to expect next time. It won't happen again," she said with utter conviction burning in her voice.
"We all have our weak moments," Carlisle said, being gracious again. He then gave Bella a little encouraging squeeze on the arm.
"I know you'll do your best. And we'll do whatever is in our power to help you stay the course," he answered with equal conviction.
I took that opportunity to burst through the front doors as they took to the front steps. Not even my dramatic appearance could have detracted Alice and Jasper from bonding together like atoms of hydrogen and oxygen.
Bella looked surprised and then relieved to see me. "Edward! You're here!"
Not giving a single care that she looked like a mud monster with every inch of her front caked in wet earth, except her face, which was only slightly improved, I pulled her into my arms in a fierce embrace.
She was tense at first but melted quickly into my arms.
"Not to destroy the moment or anything," Emmett interjected, doing exactly that. "But you gotta rinse her off before you take her inside. You'll fuck up the plumbing if that much mud goes down the drain. It's not like you can just call up Roto-Rooter out here," he added pragmatically.
Emmett was evidently more afraid of Rosalie's reaction than he was of mine. I opened my mouth to protest, but Bella stopped me by saying, "No problem, Em. Just point us in the direction of your garden hose," she said amicably.
Just then Rosalie stomped icily out onto the porch carrying a large object with a hose attachment. It was the pressure washer we kept to keep our new speed boats clean. She slammed it down at our feet, turned on her heel, and left.
"Thanks, Rose," Bella said softly, flinching as the door slammed behind Rosalie.
"She'll cool off," Emmett said, giving Bella a sympathetic, tight-lipped smile before slipping inside the house just behind his wife.
Alice and Jasper wandered off into the woods together, hand-in-hand, and Carlisle excused himself to go inside as well, but Bella and I were too absorbed in each other to pay anyone else much mind.
"Bella, I—" started to say, now that we were alone, but I stopped short when she detached the sprayer from the base and handed it to me.
"Would you mind spraying me off first before we talk? This is really uncomfortable," she admitted in one of those moments that I knew she'd be blushing if she still could. Not that I'd be able to see it for all the mud smeared on her face.
It would've been cute if the reason for the mud was anything other than attempted murder, something I would have taken a picture of. But I rather doubted this was a memory that Bella would want to be immortalized in a picture frame.
"It feels wrong to use this thing," I laughed once, humorlessly, tapping the nozzle of the sprayer errantly against my palm. "It would've ripped your skin right off when you were human."
"If one thing has been made abundantly clear today, it's that I'm not human anymore," she said in a soft, resigned voice.
My face twisted with anguish at the regret I heard in her voice, but respecting her wishes to talk later, I swallowed the apologies that burned like bile in the back of my throat.
Taking a few large steps away from the house, she squeezed her eyes shut and held her arms straight out from her body. "Let 'er rip."
With a loud hum, the machine powered on.
"This is so wrong," I muttered under my breath, aiming high at her chest and moving the spray methodically left to right and top to bottom over her body so that gravity would do the rest of the work.
The beads of water that bounced off her impermeable chest mostly cleaned off her face without my having to aim any higher. The mud came off in seconds, leaving her sopping wet and her clothes plastered to the gentle curves of her body.
Good lord, don't count mud monsters out of wet t-shirt contests, I thought bawdily, trying to ignore the stab of desire I felt for her.
"Your turn," Bella chirped, holding her hand out for the sprayer. When I looked down at myself I realized that after our full-body embrace a few moments ago, I was a glorified mud monster, too. I sighed and handed over the sprayer with a gentle reminder to use a light grip on the trigger.
Taking her place, I went to stand by the treeline.
"Better take your shirt off. There won't be anything left of Ray Charles if I blast him, and I know he's your favorite."
My heart tore wide open for her concern over the welfare of my favorite shirt when she should have been furious with me. My sweet Bella was back with a vengeance.
Peeling off the shirt, I tossed it aside, holding my arms away from my body the way she had. I had to be imagining the look of desire that swept fleetingly over her face before her features smoothed back over.
She rinsed me off with the same methodical efficiency and even avoided blasting me in the groin. Which was much appreciated, though, almost certainly deserved given not only the prior events of the day but also how my eyes couldn't stop roving over how ravishing she looked.
I inwardly groaned. With her wet clothes painted on her body and the pressure gun poised in her hand, she looked like a younger, more beautiful Lara Croft. And I was, after all, frozen in time as a seventeen-year-old boy.
Standing there dripping wet and a few yards apart, we stared at each other for a long beat of silence.
"What are you thinking?" I asked Bella at the same exact time as she asked me. We laughed a little awkwardly at our synchronicity.
"Honestly?" I laughed once, a nervous sound. "I'm having a hard time remembering all of the things I desperately need to say to you when you're standing in front of me looking so utterly irresistible." Now I was the one who would be blushing if I could.
*BPOV*
He looked so vulnerable when he admitted that, standing there dripping wet, bare-chested, and wringing his hands together like he didn't know what else to do with them.
My mouth dropped open in surprise. I mean, don't get me wrong, I was thinking the same exact thing. But it was the very last thing I expected him to say after I had behaved so abominably.
Irresistible was just about the last word I would have used to describe myself. Even with the filth washed away, there was no erasing the stain of what I'd (almost) done.
I blinked in shock. "How can you even concentrate on that? You aren't...repulsed by me?" Well, that made one of us.
He made a disapproving face. "You still don't see yourself very clearly, do you?" After a short pause, he asked, " Are you...you aren't repulsed by me?"
I looked at him like he'd grown a third eyeball. "Why in the world would I be repulsed by you?" I asked, completely flummoxed.
"Because I allowed you to become a monster like me just so that I'd never have to lose you. And now you know exactly how despicable of me that was."
I was so beside myself that he could say that to me that I blasted him with the pressure washer again.
Thoroughly caught off guard, he spluttered in surprise and held his hands up uselessly to try and shield himself from the powerful beam of water.
My hand loosened on the trigger so I could shout at him. "How dare you take the blame for something that I've wanted from the beginning?!" I shrieked.
Then quieter and deadly serious, "The only thing I regret is what I did today, do you hear me?" I blasted him again with the water for good measure.
In the blink of an eye, he closed the distance between us and slipped the sprayer out of my hand.
"I hear you," he answered in a low, rough voice, shutting off the machine. "Now, will you please allow me to take you up to our room where we can discuss this, like adults," he emphasized with narrowed eyes and a hint of a grin, "from the hot bath that is waiting for you upstairs." He gestured with an open palm to the mansion behind me.
"You meant waiting for us, right? You look like you could use one, too." I bit back a smile, still kinda pissed that no matter how profoundly I screwed up, he couldn't ever seem to let me take responsibility for my actions.
"If you'd prefer," he said formally, but I could see how much this pleased him.
To avoid stoking Rosalie's ire by tracking our wet selves through her house, Edward quickly retrieved his beloved Ray Charles shirt and then took me around to the backside of the house for a more discrete entry through the window.
I was immediately drawn to the humid warmth of the bathroom. The steaming tub piled up with bubbles looked like bliss. I couldn't get out of my sodden clothes fast enough. While I undressed, Edward let some of the water out of the tub, making room for two.
Moments later I was sinking into the soothing, steaming water with Edward right behind me. I settled down between his legs, resting my head on his shoulder.
Turning my head so that my cheek pressed against his collarbone, I nuzzled my nose into his throat.
"Before one more thing is said," I prefaced in a low, earnest voice, "Thank you. For stopping me. I know that couldn't have been easy for you."
Edward's arms wrapped tightly around my middle, holding me against his chest. He then exhaled loudly with relief. "You put up one hell of a fight!," he said, with a hard-edged laugh.
His arms loosened around me and then I felt his hands gliding gently over my shoulders. "I'm sorry that I must've hurt you," he murmured. "I never want to do that."
"You only did what was necessary. And besides, I barely felt it over the...the thirst," I shuddered saying the last word, afraid of the power it wielded over me.
That wasn't exactly true.
According to Newton's third law of physics, every action has an equal and opposite reaction. So if I was trying to buck Edward off me with several times the power of a rodeo bull, and he was using at least the same amount of force to contain me, and my body was caught in between those opposing forces ...there was no way I was not going to feel that.
But I wasn't about to let him torture himself over it either, not when the ends more than justified the means.
"So how did you beat us back to the house when you stayed behind?" I changed topics.
"Bella, you walked back. I could have taken a short nap waiting for you to get back here. I almost did," he teased, then went on to explain in a quieter, more serious voice.
"Once I took a moment to compose myself after the shock of what happened, I rushed back here because I made a promise to my wife to draw her a hot bath after a bad day, and that's what this was. And it wasn't even that bad. It was just almost bad."
Raising a dubious eyebrow halfway to my hairline, I turned my head to glare at him over my shoulder. "Well, I suppose that depends on your perspective. I'm pretty sure I tried that 'almost bad' line on you once before."
Edward blanched at the reminder of my disastrous 18th birthday.
"Sorry," I tacked on, trying to take some of the sting off. "Jasper flipped it around on me like that earlier and I'm pretty sure I made that same face, but it's hard to say under all that mud." The corner of my mouth curled up into a wry smirk.
I returned to facing forward, relaxing in his arms.
"What did Jasper say?" he asked, his fingers starting to massage my scalp as he worked some shampoo into a lather, making me purr at the sensation.
Badly impersonating Jasper's silky southern drawl, I quoted, "It was so easy for you to forgive me. Give me one good reason why you can't forgive yourself."
Edward chuckled behind me. "He's right, you know."
"If he's right, then so am I, and it depends on your perspective!" I stubbornly growled. "It was easy to forgive Jasper when I had been in Jalen's place. But now that I'm in Jasper's…" I sighed. Not so easy.
"Well, as someone who stopped almost bad from being very bad on both occasions...and as someone who has both killed and almost killed, I can tell you from experience that forever is a long time to hate yourself.
"Take it from me...The sooner you learn to make peace with what you are and the mistakes you'll make, the better off you'll be. Look at Emmett."
"But since I know you would never do anything just with your own good in mind, look at it this way...You'll make Jasper's life a lot easier if I'm the only miserable, self-loathing one in the family." I couldn't see Edward's face, but I could hear the smile in his voice.
"I didn't think you were all that miserable anymore," I teased a little brattily.
I was suddenly deluged with water as Edward wrung out a natural sea sponge over my head, rinsing the shampoo suds away, an act of small revenge for my blasting him with the pressure washer earlier. He chuckled with amusement as I spluttered.
"You make me happier than I ever thought possible. You know that" he gently chided, his velvety voice was soft, earnest, and brimming with love.
"But the self-loathing sort of sneaks up on me. Especially watching you struggle, knowing that without me, you never would've known that pain."
"Without you, I never would've known love or joy or belonging, either," I argued softly. He pressed his lips to the silvery crescent-shaped scar beneath my ear.
"I'll make you a deal-" Edward proposed.
"Uh oh. Watch out! Here comes another one of Edward Cullen's famous deals," I snickered and was retaliated against with another spongeful of water being wrung out over my head. Even though I was fairly certain my hair had already been sufficiently rinsed.
"Are you going to let me finish?" Edward asked with a note of impatience.
"Alright, what's the deal?" I humored him.
"If you can try and find as much compassion for yourself as you found for Jasper, then I will try to do the same."
I turned to look at him again with a questioning look. "And stop blaming yourself every time I feel the slightest twinge of discontentment in this life? Because it's clearly not all sparkles and superpowers, which I well knew before I signed up for this," I reminded him pointedly.
"I will make an appreciable effort not to do that," he agreed. "Is it a deal?"
"Ok," I agreed with a nod, then we sealed it with a kiss.
As our lips melded together, harmony restored, I felt Edward's arousal stiffen against my lower back.
I pressed back against him, making him moan. "Doesn't take much, does it?" I giggled.
"Sorry," Edward said a bit sheepishly. "It's like he knows the makeup sex is coming," he grinned.
"I see. Well...Edward Junior is forgetting one thing," I said a bit coyly.
"And what's that?" Edward asked with a puzzled expression.
"Conditioner," I smirked, pressing a bottle of Paul Mitchell into his hand.
*A/N* Sorry for the wait on this update. I struggled a bit with the direction of this chapter but am ultimately happy with how it turned out. Thanks so much for your patience and, as always, for reading and reviewing. Can't wait to hear what you think!
