A/N: Hearts for your reactions. Ask away, I love to talk about this man and answer questions.
Chapter 16 - Twenty-Seven
"So how long has it been?" Bella asks. She sits on a crate. She just came today and brought no chair but her determination and Tupperware. She's antsy. All weekend she turned his names in her head and couldn't stop thinking of him here alone.
Silence. He's fiddling with a battery doing … something. She can't tell what exactly. He does seem to know what he's doing. Split wires here and there, he twists and turns them.
"Where did you get that? Is it from a boat?"
She looks at him. She waits. The speckles over his jaw is probably her favorite look so far. Hell, all of him is intriguing.
She changes the subject. "So, those home security systems are pretty damn tech fancy. How do you get around them?" she asks.
She chuckles a little, thinking. She lounges back against a tree. "This guy around here was red in the face. You should've seen him. He's the one with the big house up north. I'm sure you've—" she pauses to look at him.
She clears her throat.
"Anyway, he's neurotic. He bought this state of the art system. It covers all of the house. A slight whisper and it would set it off. Just, anything you can think of. Then, he comes to the town meeting, and he's complaining about his missing sugar bowl." Bella snorts remembering, her shoulders get going, wiggling her tank top.
She sobers and stares at the ground in thought. "How did you break into that?"
Edward takes a breath. "I didn't. He forgot to activate it. The doors were unlocked. I installed it correctly before I left."
Bella folds in half to snort in her hands. She breaks into laughter.
This campsite has never seen emotion like this. This here, is for solitaire. Edward glances at her. He watches the motions of carefree silliness. He bites on his lip to keep from blushing.
He made her laugh.
He knows who she refers to, that owner. He has a big house and has no idea what he's doing with it. He usually takes out the SIM cards and the systems shut down, or he messes with the wiring. It's simple, really. He knows. He used to install them at his first job. Then he'd turn them back on before leaving. Clean.
Bella slowly finds composure. When she's wiping at tears from her eyes, she sits back to bask in the fact that he answered.
They settle into this silence again, but it's eased a bit. They both feel it.
"Cullen," she calls softly. "How long?"
He finishes with the new loaded battery, ready to be hooked to the radio for news and worldly updates he's still curious about. It'll keep him occupied until he needs a new one. He picks it up to move it elsewhere.
"I can't remember much anymore," he murmurs.
Bella tries not to breathe so she won't ruin the atmosphere. A portal has opened. She walks swiftly through it. Her lips part. "Well, then let's think back," she says swallowing thickly. "When did you get here?"
He's quiet for a moment. He's wiping the grease off the battery with a cloth, a ripped T-shirt, but he's thinking. He looks up from over the rims of his glasses to the trees and says, "I was twenty. It's Summer now. So, I guess I'm twenty-seven."
Seven years. Bella is speechless.
It gets quiet after that. She watches him as he settles with that thought. Solitude for seven whole years. And he's loved every second of it. This is his camp. No one has claimed it, but him.
Lord of the woods.
Bella dares not to interrupt this trance he seems to slip into, so she slips away. The next day she sits on the same crate and settles into the same routine of budging him open like a tightly twisted jar of goodness. It takes time. Hours. But the result is wonderous.
"Why?" she asks this time. That's the first word she says since she arrived at eight a.m. All morning she watched him wash his clothes. A bright blue detergent bottle leaned on a rock standing out against the wooded backdrop. He crouched to scrub over a flat bolder forged just for this purpose. His purpose. Everything is just as it should be for him.
He pulls on sweat from his forehead with his sleeve once a clothespin clamps on a shoulder seam. His forearms exposed around a plaid button up. She's never seen Dad lift a laundry hamper, let alone wash clothes like the olden days when there were no washing machines, and grandmothers sang hymns while scrubbing at a river somewhere.
It … amazes, attracts.
If she's here, she might as well help. She grabs a T-shirt and socks.
He grunts a bit like he's getting ready to speak, and she gets ready to be stricken by his response she craves.
"Well, you like it here." He begins answering the why. "Summer comes, you pack your little, purple things with the idea of escape from routine. Maybe you'd even say something romantic like, escape from the world, or to be in nature."
Bella smiles at the pinned shirt in her hands. She tugs at it to keep from looking at him with red cheeks.
"I guess I thought the same back then," he continues. "I wanted nothing, in all sense. I got lost in these woods, and I didn't care. So I kept going."
Bella purses her lips. "But … don't you get lonely, bored out here?"
"No," he simply says. It's not rude or ominous. It's honest. No additives or flourishes, nothing like the food he hides and eats. Silk and intellect come from that mouth that consumes those necessities.
She's … amazed, so very attracted.
Her heart still beats loudly in bed that night remembering. Suddenly, she finds herself doubting all things around her. The things everyone takes for granted. The things we think make us happy. This pit in her stomach. A new need blossoms there to fill it; what is it like to have a satisfied life? Many go a whole lifetime and never find it; happiness.
He has. He tried to keep it to himself, but there's one thing a hermit can't seek and find in complete and utter solitude. You always need help. His conflict is food. She bets if it wasn't a necessity, he'd never leave that clearing.
Sam was right; some people shouldn't be bothered. And she feels terrible. She should grant this man's wish, but now she can't let go. She's torn.
Every morning she goes back to his, and her dismay. She wants to document every answer to her questions to then look them up one day.
"Do you have a family?"
"Like a mother and father?"
Bella nods. He nods after.
"Do they know where you are?"
"No." He says this plainly.
"They might have looked for you," Bella says with a tilt to her head. His reaction doesn't change.
He shrugs. "Maybe my brothers did."
Brothers. More for her to document.
"Would they be … heartbroken, miss you?"
His mouth turns down into a quick frown like he's not sure. "Maybe. But we all kept to ourselves a lot. We all knew we'd live life separate, move away. My family wasn't ever the kind that keeps close. We find our interests and aim for that." Then he pauses to think. "Maybe my mother would be if she's still alive."
Bella is awed. To think that there are people out there he knows, yet he doesn't strive to be with them or let them know he's well. His need to be alone is ad nauseam.
It's exceedingly hot today. They sit like this by his tent to think on the answers. Maybe she'll leave for the day and hop into the lake to cool down.
"It's hot today. We have a very big lake out there," Bella says.
His lips quirk. "You're insinuating I don't partake?"
Bella shrugs this time.
"You're just not awake," he continues. "You're in your warm bed, in your purple heaven while I enjoy a cool lake at night."
She smiles. "Oh, really? Doesn't it get … creepy? Dark water sounds numbing."
"If you ask me, visitors have it all wrong. At night you see the stars, and if you're lucky, the northern lights appear."
She hides a flustered grin. He swims at night. What she wouldn't give to see that.
The next day she asks about his psyche. What really happens in that brain? "Did you ever talk to yourself out loud?" He actually looks at her. His brows knit. Bella bites on her lip. Too forward?
"You mean like a hermit would?" He looks over the trees, rolling his eyes. "That's ridiculous."
"Not even write any thoughts down? Ever?" She adds.
"You're just trying to question my sanity. Normal human behaviors, right?" Bella's shoulders cave a little as she grows a bit pink. "People write because they want an audience, to connect with. It's reaching out."
And that's what he doesn't want or need. Bella remains silent. She wouldn't know how to live if someone wasn't listening.
….