FAGE… The 13th.

Title: Don't Wait for Me

Written for: AgoodWITCH

Written By: LiLJiLL4286

Beta: Fran S. Flower

Banner Maker: DaniDarlingxx

Rating: M

Prompt used: He watched her walk away and felt a moment's panic.

Summary: She is finally ready to begin her life without him. He is finally ready to accept he cannot live his without her.

If you would like to see all the stories that are a part of this exchange, visit the Facebook group: Fanficaholics Anon: Where Obsession Never Sleeps, or add the C2 to get all the stories direct to your inbox.

Disclaimer: I do not own Twilight. These characters belong to SM. I just play with them in ways SM would most definitely not approve of.

Thank you to my beta, Fran, and my prereaders, DaniDarlingxx, brierlynn03, and Jgaff for walking me through this! Changes were made...countless times. And then some more times. You get the picture.

-D.W.f.M.-

There was a clock above the bed that ticked like an amplified time bomb.

Perhaps it was the silence that was amplified.

She wasn't sure.

She wasn't sure if she cared, either.

The bed creaked as she moved to try to make herself comfortable, the mattress clearly outdated, and the screws that held the headboard and bed rails together threatened to disconnect completely with just one wrong move.

She wasn't sure if it mattered, anyway.

She wasn't there for him.

Or to get any use of this bed other than sleep.

She didn't allow her mind to think that way for very long. She rose from her position and walked to the window overlooking the grounds of the motel, which admittedly were not much to look at. Her eyes scanned back and forth to take in patches of both brown and green grass as well as the swimming pool that had more cracks in its foundation than her reason for being here at all.

Taking a deep breath, she let the curtains draw to a close, sighing as she turned back around and looked once again at her surroundings.

The bed, the last thing she wished to revisit, was placed too close to the bathroom; she could almost roll off and land on the peeling linoleum tile if she wanted to. Next to the bed sat a small nightstand, brown wood warped from time or use, most likely from both, she assumed. On the nightstand was a lamp, weak in its purpose, and next to that rested a Bible she knew she would never touch.

Isabella Swan knew by now that praying had never helped her when it came to Edward Cullen.

She tried, God himself knew she tried, but it always ended the same way.

She was numb by now, after all these years of watching him and waiting for him.

"You can't wait for me," he had told her the first time he had broken her heart. "The same way that I can't wait for you."

She didn't understand what he had meant when she was sixteen, had understood it a little more when she was nineteen, and actually agreed with him when she was twenty-four.

"You'll understand when you're in college, Bella. You'll see."

And she did see.

Of course, his words played on repeat in her head for the years he was away at school. Being two years older than her had always made him wiser and omnipotent in her heart-filled eyes. Even though their families had been friends since they were kids, Edward never felt comfortable with their families knowing how they felt about each other. He feared they wouldn't understand or wouldn't think it right that Edward, older and headed off for college, would make her wait for him to come back home to her.

So that became his mission. Once he removed his lips from hers, once he was finished whispering promises in her ear as he held her against him, trying to convince her their timing was off—that their time together could come, maybe, once they were older.

Maybe then their families would understand.

Maybe when time and experience would shave away Edward's bad-boy demeanor and young, innocent Isabella would grow up and get to see how the world worked outside of their little town in Forks, Washington.

"That'll be our time, Bella," He convinced her in whispered tones and rushed minutes. He never forgot to add on five final words that she would also grow to never forget. "But don't wait for me."

Sixteen-year-old Bella nodded, not truly understanding what she was agreeing to over the sound of her heart shattering into a thousand broken pieces. But this was Edward, and he would never lie to her.

In his defense, he never did lie to her. And just like he wanted, she never waited for him.

She also never moved on.

That was a small distinction made on her part that she hoped was unrecognizable to anyone other than herself.

She simply passed her time as the years trickled by, enjoying the boyfriends that promised the world to her.

Except the only world she wanted was his.

I'm bringing someone home.

He would always send her messages like those when he was at school and coming home for a holiday. Or when he graduated college and was coming in for a weekend visit to top off a grueling week at work.

It hurt, but it helped, so she was never blindsided by his love life.

She wasn't any better.

So am I.

She would reply hastily, her fingers flitting across the screen in a flurry of activity. She never bothered to lie to him, either – sometimes she came home alone, and she made sure to always let him know that, as well.

Good.

Good.

No matter whether they were both attached to others or flying solo, he would always find a way for them to be alone. Even if they were only fleeting minutes of childhood remembrances and naive promises, he always left her breathless with a reminder as to what she really, and would always, want.

Him.

"It's the timing," he said during a visit home after she had graduated college. His voice was cut off by her lips on his, soft, and full of life. He did nothing to stop her, like always, and let his fingers drift into her hair as they hid inside the dimly lit stairwell near the entrance to the backyard. "It's always off."

For years, there was always something he referred to when he told her it still wasn't time for them. Age. Distance. Significant others.

Bella, still not waiting for him like she promised, was starting to grow tired of the excuses. They were both adults now, with careers blossoming and possibilities looming. She wasn't the little girl he thought she was. She didn't understand why they couldn't be together the way they wanted.

"Maybe it's not," Bella had panted, their foreheads pressed against each other while they tried to catch their breaths. They had wasted enough time – why couldn't their time be now? Edward closed his eyes and shook his head, willing his heartbeat to stop echoing in his ears. Bella knew by now that the girls he brought home never stayed – but he never told her why.

If they never stayed, why did he always make her go?

The sound of his name echoed throughout the house, both of their heads turning away from each other in haste when they heard his current girl's voice. Bella's eyes closed, knowing their time was already up, and he sighed and pressed one last kiss against her forehead.

He left her with the same parting words.

"Don't wait for me."

Just when she was starting to believe him when he spoke those words, when she was old enough to see that he had, in fact, no plan to ever make her his own, she met someone.

And when she took him home to meet the family, she never allowed herself a minute alone with Edward. She realized on that trip when they were all sitting at the table on the porch as the sun went down that love wasn't supposed to be about secret kisses in the hallway, bathroom, or coat closet. Love was in the words Embry said to her all the time, no matter who was around to hear it. Love was in the way they never had to hide and how she felt when she was with him.

Most importantly, it was in the way she felt when she was without him.

When they were apart, she thought about him in mundane tasks throughout the day. She pictured his smile when he saw her, his laugh when she said things to him when she wasn't trying to be funny.

The way she could be her true, authentic self with him.

She could never be that way with Edward. She was always so afraid to lose him that she molded herself into someone he could always hold on to, and it wasn't until she met Embry that she had realized she had lost herself in the process of trying to win Edward's heart.

She never noticed it until that trip home – and the only reason she noticed at all was that she felt the weight of a pair of emerald eyes from across the room, the moment she walked through the door.

It made her feel uneasy, heavy.

Suffocated.

And this time, it was Bella who spoke those words when he cornered her in the kitchen once everyone was heading to bed. He knew she would come in to grab an extra glass of water in case she needed it overnight. And as predictable as she was her whole life, even she managed to shock herself when she left him alone by the sink.

He held her face in his hands, and she reached up to gently wrap her fingers around each of his wrists. She looked into his eyes, green burning into brown, and spoke Edward's famous words back to him.

"Don't wait for me."

But he did.

Even when she took his hands away from her face and left him standing there in the kitchen, he waited.

Wasn't he always waiting for her? Waiting for her to grow up? Waiting for her to finish school? Waiting for her to settle with a decent job?

The truth was that while there were aspects of her that he had always been waiting for, he was mostly waiting for himself.

"Not until you're serious, Edward." His father had said, shaking his head at his son. Carlisle Cullen thought of the broken hearts his son had left behind over the years. While Bella was the younger of the two, it was Edward, his oldest son, who had the most growing up to do. "Not until you promise not to hurt her."

So, while Edward tried to convince her to move on, to tell her he was no good for someone like her, too coward to use those actual words, he was the one who was doing all the waiting.

He waited for himself to change.

He didn't know how long he would have to wait to convince himself that he was good enough for her. He had a plan – damnit – but it wasn't working.

He tried to convince himself that he would learn from each relationship– but he didn't. He promised himself that the next relationship he had, he would treat the woman the way she deserved.

But he never did.

He couldn't. Each one; one woman after the next, wasn't for him. They never held his interest for long – it was crazy to think how many vapid and empty women he had seen over the years, insecurities spilling out of their mouths like air, that he had wasted his time on.

The truth was, and it took him years before he finally saw it, was that they weren't her.

There was only one Bella, one love of his life, and he unconsciously compared them all to her. He had listened to the doubts his father planted in his head and let those seeds grow into a truth so strong he had no choice but to believe it.

The night before their trip home, when their two families spent a week together every summer, Edward had shaken his head free of his father's words.

Maybe the reason he left a path of destruction in his love life was because his love was meant for one woman only. He had wasted so many years listening to a voice that wasn't his own convince him he wasn't good enough for her.

So he had entered their vacation house last summer with a plan, determined to not only tell Bella their time had come, finally but also to tell her the true reason as to why it had taken so long.

He had gotten in the way of himself.

Plain and simple.

But he had stepped to the side and was willing to walk this path with her – if she were willing.

But she had walked into the house with someone else, and he could tell with one look this wasn't just someone to pass the time with.

And when she had refused him in the kitchen, using his own words against him, he had no idea what to do.

So he waited.

She moved forward.

"There's a difference in moving forward and moving on," Alice had said to her over the phone last week. Even though Alice was Edward's younger sister, being Bella's best friend, allowed her to connect the dots years before. Bella had kept the secret close to her heart, not ready to admit she had pined for Alice's older brother for longer than she should have. She was afraid to hear from others the things she had told herself – that he was older and took advantage of her, that he was leading her on, and that nothing would ever come of it.

Bella sighed and flopped down on her bed.

"There's nothing there, Alice," Bella replied, rolling her eyes through the phone. "We just used to hook up when we were younger. That's all."

Alice didn't need to know that her brother had been Bella's first everything; her first kiss, her first lover, her first heartbreak.

Her first secret.

"Have you convinced yourself yet?" Alice could always see through her friend, especially when it came to Edward, no matter how hard Bella tried to hide it.

Alice could always see through him, too.

She wondered when both Bella and Edward would realize that.

Bella took a deep inhale to sound more sure of herself. "Yes, I have." No.

After a beat of silence, Alice moved on. "I have to go scope out a renovation in upstate New York next weekend. Kinda near you," she said. "Want to make a weekend out of it?"

"Please," Bella groaned in exasperation, perking up at the prospect of leaving the house. "I could use the distraction."

Bella had gotten into her car that morning with no intention in her mind other than a relaxing weekend with her best friend lost in the mountains upstate.

It was Bella's favorite time of year, and the fall foliage from the thundering mountains engulfed Bella and her tiny car into almost nothing. Her deep brown hair blended in perfectly against the backdrop of yellows and reds and oranges from the leaves when she had pulled over on the side of the road to take a picture. She had to capture this image, and even though the feelings of humbleness against these mountains were difficult to catch on-screen, the fresh air had rejuvenated her enough to finish the rest of the drive in peace.

That was until she opened the room to the motel and saw where they would be spending the weekend. That was what Alice did for a living – found a way to refresh and bring life back into dwindling businesses, restoring them to their true worth, and this motel was no exception.

The only exception was that the Cullen she was to spend her weekend with was not Alice.

It was Edward.

Edward had been duped to this motel under the same pretenses as Bella, both traveling too far to turn around and go home.

It was the first thing she was going to do in the morning, right after –

Her thoughts were interrupted by the door slamming open into the wall, leaving another dip in the sheetrock in its wake.

"No refunds," Edward said angrily, not bothering to look at her. "And no other motels anywhere else since we're in the middle of nowhere."

They really were in the middle of nowhere.

This little motel, if you could even call it that with its wilting tiles and molded ceilings, was almost like it was flicked across the globe, landing precariously on the side of a mountain. Almost invisible to the naked eye due to its miniscule size, Bella had almost missed it on the way in. One road, one single looping and winding road, was what bridged this town to the next, and at this point in their ascent, it would take hours to reach another place to stay.

After driving all day, neither of them were willing to hop in the car and relocate. And besides, it wasn't like they weren't civil to one other. They could be cordial, and Bella was determined to keep it light and simple but still hold her ground.

She wouldn't cave to him.

Even though his sleeves were folded to his forearms and his silver watch glistened beneath the cheap fluorescent lighting of their room, she tried to focus on the fact that he was her friend and nothing more.

It had been that way since Embry entered her life six months ago.

Six months meant nothing to Edward, who appeared pissed at his sister, but was secretly thanking her for staging this opportunity with Bella.

All he wanted to do was talk to her; tell her things he should have said years ago but was too scared to say.

"I have no idea how Alice is going to try to save this place," Bella said ruefully, running an index finger along a thick layer of dust on top of the small television. Edward chuckled next to her, reaching a finger into the same dust to draw his own rendition on how much he thought this placed sucked a big one.

Bella laughed at his drawing, noting that he would always be the same, stupid, immature kid at heart.

"She's probably not," Edward answered eventually. "Probably just found this piece of shit on a Google search or something."

"Most likely." Bella nodded, looking around one last time before stuffing her hands in the back pocket of her jeans. "You know I had no clue she was doing this, right? Any of this?"

Wiping his hands together to rid himself of the dust, Edward looked at her, nodding his head in acknowledgment.

"I know my sister," he laughed. "I know this was all her."

When they called around and found out there was only one place to order a pizza from in the town, they made do and ate it on the bed that buckled beneath their weight. It was messy, far from ideal, but having food in their stomachs helped settle their minds from a day of travel and a night of coercion.

"One bed?" Bella laughed around a mouthful of pizza. "Really, Alice?"

"How long has she known about us?" Edward asked, tossing his crust into the box on the minuscule nightstand.

"She found out for sure sometime when she and I were in college," Bella admitted, tilting her head to the side in thought. He watched the waves of her hair dip down her back, his fingertips aching to feel the silky strands the way he used to be able to. "But she suspected it for longer."

He smiled and shook his head as a memory of younger them flitted across his mind.

"We thought we were slick, huh?" Edward laughed. "Sneaking around for so long."

"Who else do you think knows?"

Edward cleared his throat.

"My father."

He watched Bella's eyes open wide in disbelief. "Really?"

How mortifying it was to know that his father was aware of how much she had embarrassingly worshipped his son.

A flash of darkness impeded his face for a moment before he tried to wipe it away. "I told him years ago. Before I went to college."

Baffled, she stood from the bed and shook her head in disbelief, trying to find the words to convey her shock. "Why do I not know about this?" She felt herself become angrier as she thought of all the time that had passed between then and now. All the times when she had stared at him in awe and wonder that she thought had gone unnoticed, only to find out that she was most likely being watched – pitied – by his own father. "Why have you never told me?"

She felt like a liar in front of his father – a man who had watched her grow up, a man she respected enough to feel like a fool for letting herself act like a lovelorn puppy dog around Edward.

"It was never the right time," Edward said softly, not looking at her and down at his hands instead.

A second later, he wasn't surprised to hear the anger in her voice.

"Oh, you and your 'time'," she scoffed, her voice hollow and level and not as loud as he had feared it would be. "How could I forget."

He didn't know if he preferred her yelling or snarky if he had to pick the lesser of the two evils that graced the fake wooden walls of this motel room. "You were too -"

"Don't say 'young,' Edward." Bella's eyes found his for the first time since this had escalated. "I'm tired of hearing those words from you."

He held his hands up in the air. "You were! You were sixteen; I was a stupid kid who didn't know a thing about relationships, let alone the fact that I was leaving to go to school across the country."

"Okay, fine." Bella could understand being young and stupid – she understood that all too well. "What about all the other times since then? Was I too young then, too?"

"No. I was just too scared to tell you."

The silence between them became so thick that the ticking of the clock on the wall was the only thing she heard.

"Scared?" Bella asked when she thought she could trust her voice again. "Since when is Edward Cullen scared?"

"When it comes to you, Bella Swan." He purposely sneered her name the way she did his a moment before. "You've scared me my whole life."

Her mind couldn't grasp what he was saying, and she struggled to keep up. Scared? His whole life? Of her?

"This is absurd," Bella countered, her hands coming up to her temples so she could rub the confusion out of her head. "What does that even mean?"

Edward, still sitting on the bed, took the time to stand and slowly close the gap between them. His feet against the worn carpet joined the clock in being another overbearing sound in the room.

His voice, whispered deep into her soul, spoke to her like it always did. "You know exactly what it means."

"I don't," Bella disagreed, even though with each rise and fall of her chest, her heart betrayed her.

"You do," Edward called her out on what he knew she recognized. "You wouldn't have stayed here tonight if you didn't."

She couldn't go down this road with him again. She refused.

She had to convince him that this road, this journey they were on, was a dead end, and they needed to turn back around before they got stuck.

"He wants to marry me," Bella said defiantly with her chin in the air. "Embry."

She watched as Edward stilled.

"He told you this?"

"Yes," she answered.

She watched as his eyes searched hers, looking for any sign that she was bluffing. She let her eyes wander as well, wondering if the finality of marriage would be enough to get him to tell her the words she always wanted to hear fall from his lips.

He kept his voice steady, though the fire in his eyes spoke otherwise. "What did you tell him?"

Bella shook her head. "Nothing. He hasn't asked me yet." She rested her eyes on his own. "But he will."

"And what will you say?"

She didn't answer.

She couldn't.

"What will you say, Bella?" He asked again, and that time, when he saw the answer in her eyes before she said them out loud, he cursed and walked away. "See, this is why you scare me. One word from you, and you can just cut me down. And I've given you the fucking knife."

She wasn't sure if she understood him.

"That's not true," Bella answered, her words softening like always.

"You're avoiding the question. What will you say to him, Bella?"

Edward was across the tiny room now, and even though he could close the gap between them with four large steps, she still wrapped her arms around her chest to keep it from breaking and hurting them both.

"Yes," she answered, closing her eyes and picturing Embry. "I would say yes."

She closed her eyes in hopes her words could convince herself to believe them. She would marry Embry when he asked. She would marry him – but it wasn't the man she wanted to marry.

And she hated Edward for that.

She opened her eyes to see a look on Edward's face she couldn't quite place.

Not anger. Not sadness.

… More like a new discovery.

He slowly raised a finger at her, but she was already prepared with her chin tilted up in defiance. Being stuck in this tiny room with him threatened her resolve, but she refused to go down without a fight.

"You're marrying him because he's not me," Edward spat, stalking back over to her side of the room. The thought of losing her for good to someone else made his control start to wane. The finger he continued to point at her was angry in her face now. "That's all. Not because you love him, not because he makes you happy. Because he's not me."

His accusation made her livid, and she damn well made sure he knew it. She slapped away the finger he pointed at her so hard the sound echoed throughout the room. "You have no right to stand there and -"

"You're right! I don't!" He interrupted, his voice growing loud. He knew he had no right to have this conversation with her after years of telling her to do exactly this – move on from him.

Bella leaned forward, her face inches from his, his battered breath tickling her cheek as she stood up to him for the first time in her life.

"But it won't stop you from saying them, right?" Her eyes bore into his, but he didn't buckle under her stare. "Because you're Edward Cullen, and you've always said whatever it was you wanted to me."

She moved away from him, heading over to her bag to gather her things. The adrenaline running through her right now was enough to fuel her all the way back home.

"No, Bella. You couldn't be further from the truth."

"Then tell me." She stopped what she was doing and let her bag fall back down to the floor in an angry heap. "Tell me, right now, what it is you really want to say."

When he said nothing, his mouth opening and closing without anything coming out, she shook her head at him one final time and grabbed her bag again. She tossed it over her shoulder and headed for the door, never once looking back.

After all these years of chasing him, it felt incredible and also terrifying to leave him behind.

He watched her walk away and felt a moment's panic.

"I don't know how to say it," Edward's voice ripped through the heated room. His words shook with the emotion he always tried to hide. Bella felt his desperate hand reach for her own and firmly pull her back, so her body was flush with his. "But I can't let you walk out of here without hearing me try."

She didn't trust her voice, so she said nothing, her emotions threatening to answer for her instead. Her tears matched his own, green pools of water flooding his eyes before flowing down his cheeks in one silent streak.

"I was afraid," Edward started, unable to look anywhere but at her. "I loved you too much to lose you. So I kept you here," he paused, stepping away from her to show the distance he had always placed between them, "so I wouldn't poison you."

She knew him since she was seven and his family moved in next door to her house. She knew his words, his meanings, his ticks, his fears. And as she stared at him, his face screaming of vulnerability, she knew he had listened to someone else instead of listening to himself.

"Who told you that?" She whispered, fighting against the distance he had put between them.

"Does it matter?"

Bella shook her head. Nothing would change from this moment on because everything had already changed the minute he walked into this motel, into this room. "No."

From the moment she decided to stay with him this afternoon.

"You can be mad at Alice all you want," He said with a shake of his head. "But I'm not. I was going to tell you all of this, I swear, the next time I saw you because I realized something. Something that I already knew."

"And what's that?"

He finally let the walls he had put up for so long fall down between them.

"That I am good enough for you."

Bella's bags fell onto the floor as she crumbled – her resolve, her sanity, her strength all torn to shreds as she collapsed into his arms. And as always, he caught her and enveloped her against him, determined this time to never, ever let her go.

This stupid boy. She wondered when he would realize that good for her or not; she was always his.

"You've always been," she reassured him right before she crashed her lips to his, giving in to her own protests she had worked so hard to maintain.

This was how it was for them – how it always was and how it would always be. Not knowing how to move on from each other, nearly destroying each other in the process, but the way they clung to each other as they stumbled blindly through discarded clothing towards the bed convinced her that she would never, ever be able to say Edward Cullen was a man of her past.

She could never leave him behind.

The bed, the same bed she swore to herself she would ignore when she had arrived there before Edward had, creaked angrily under their weight as they rolled on it, the sounds doing nothing to stop their night together.

She had memorized his lips years ago, the way they always claimed her bottom lip first, then glided to the top. She couldn't get enough – his lips, his mouth, his tongue – she wanted, needed it all with a fervor she had tried to deny for so long.

She ran her hands down his back, pressing him more firmly into her when his tongue found those hidden spots that he had only discovered once before, back when they were kids. Their sounds echoed throughout the dilapidated room, but they didn't care.

"You can't marry him," his voice sounded strangled as he pushed himself inside of her and back out again. She whimpered at the loss, but it wasn't for long; he entered her again so strongly that the headboard buckled beneath them.

How could she? She couldn't answer him now. He was relentless as his body reminded her with each touch that they belonged together.

She panted, her fingers tangled in his hair, "God, Edward, I'm – "

"Don't wait for me," He interrupted. "I'm right behind you."

And he was, Bella realizing as his tremors rattled the bed beneath them, that he always had been.

The next morning, when the sun came through the torn blinds on the lone window in their room, she was already slipping her shoes on to walk into the light of day.

She was different now, a person she never thought she could ever be.

Her phone, alight with messages from Embry, served as a reminder of the promise she had made to him.

…To herself.

Promises she had broken with Edward.

Promises she wanted to keep breaking, despite how much she knew she shouldn't.

She never was able to resist him.

Looking over her shoulder at Edward's sleeping form, she spied the note she left him on the pillow. It was simple, short and sweet, perfect for the night they had spent together and for the years they had spent dancing around one another. I'll be back.

Bella let out a sigh before opening the door, leaving the room as her phone vibrated again in her pocket. Embry. She looked down at the phone ringing in the palm of her hand, answering at the last moment before he hung up again.

With one last look over her shoulder at Edward in their bed, wrapped in messy sheets to his waist, her heart shattered at what she was going to do.

She had no choice.

It was always Edward. It would always be him.

Into the phone, she told Embry four words she knew would destroy him.

"Don't wait for me."