I laid in the bed that the Cullens had so generously provided, then refused to let me give back, as I listened to the storm that was Hurricane Edward rage a floor below me. I knew vampires had the ability to be incredibly quiet, I'd witnessed it more than enough times, however I hadn't thought that they could be too much louder than an irate human.
But of course, I was wrong. Vampires excel at everything they try, and really, being loud isn't all that difficult to begin with.
Not that I could make out anything that anyone was saying down there, because in addition to being incredibly loud, they were also speaking incredibly quickly. I could sometimes make out the tenor of the voice that was used and place it with the correct family member, Esme was easiest because after her there was always a brief period of blissful quiet. I could only assume that she reminded them of the fact that there was a human upstairs who needed rest, and who was not actually hearing impaired.
I hadn't gotten much of a chance to respond to Edward after he came into the room, as he was quickly and forcibly removed by Emmett who had appeared at the door a moment after Edward made his presence known. Alice had stayed only long enough to inform me that I shouldn't worry, and that they would take care of everything. That had been hours ago, and the fighting had been going on since she flitted out of my room.
Every few minutes I would hear the distinct sound of something being smashed, which was generally somewhat quickly followed by a smacking noise, that I assumed was Esme smacking someone upside the head.
I heard a tinkling shattering noise, and a high pitched squeal followed by several smacks in rapid succession.
"Temper, temper," I muttered darkly to myself, clearly having forgotten that the supernatural creatures below me would be able to hear my every heartbeat, let alone any words I may say.
Suddenly all the noise below me came to an abrupt halt. I mentally uttered a curse at my own stupidity. In the time I'd spent with the Cullens recently I'd come to observe some things about the vampire mind. Their brains were very clearly able to focus on multiple tasks, like how Esme could make me breakfast, look over plans for a renovation she was working on, and check in on the phone with Carlisle all at the same time without missing a beat. With this ability, I'm sure that almost every Cullen was monitoring my breathing to some extent, and had to know that I was awake in some part of their mind, but as long as I was being quiet, they were able to put that aside for the moment. From the instant I opened my mouth and began forming words I gave myself away.
There was a knock at my door, and Rosalie entered without waiting for me to let her in.
"What's up Doc?" I asked, not moving from my position on the bed. She grimaced and walked over to me and sat down next to me.
"How much of that did you hear?"
"I heard pretty much all of it, I understood almost none of it. You all talk pretty damn fast for the living dead." Apparently snarky, smart ass Bella was back in full force tonight.
"So you don't have any idea what's going on down there?"
"Nope. Care to enlighten me?"
She looked away for a moment, "How much do you want to know Bella?"
My first instinct was to tell her to spill everything to me, I was sick and tired of being the odd woman out, the last one to know everything. The entire time I'd known the Cullens whenever anything came up that may or may not be considered a family matter, I either put all the pieces together first, or I was the last one they told, and in general only because they absolutely had to. I'd always hated that.
But just as I was about to tell her to spill her guts a thought occurred to me. Did I really want to know? Did I really want to hear everything Edward said about me? Everything Edward was told about me? What was said downstairs had the potential to finally break me completely. What if he demanded I leave?
"How much do you think I need to know?" I asked.
Rosalie looked me dead in the eye, "Ultimately I think you need to know everything, perhaps a better question would be how much you're ready to know. The answer is not much."
And just like that my anger flared up again, "How can you tell me I'm not ready to know what went on down there? I'm not a child Rosalie, I'm an adult, and I think I can decide when I'm ready to hear about something that concerns me."
The sound that came out of Rose next sounded suspiciously like a snort, but it was somehow melodic, and prettier than my laugh. "Bella, I'm your therapist, and I'm telling you you're not ready. You may not be a child, but until recently you thought you were a teenager. Not to mention the fact that you're moods are still all over the place because you haven't been out of the institution long enough for the drugs to work their way out of your system yet. If I were to tell you everything right now, I don't know how you'd react because the chemicals in your brain are all completely out of wack. I can always tell you in a couple of weeks when you're stabilized, I can't make you forget once I've told you what was said."
My anger began to dissipate as she spoke, and by the time she was done, I was ready to cry. Perhaps there was something to this mood swing situation after all.
"Just tell me if I need to pack a bag or not."
"Of course not, and if I didn't know how messed up in the head you were right now, I'd be insulted you even asked. This abandonment thing you've got going on is something we're really going to have to get into a lot more. We may even have to double the length of our sessions."
"Awesome," a toddler would have been able to recognize my sarcasm.
Rose shook her head. "Get some sleep. When we have our session tomorrow, there's some stuff I want to go over with you. And some of it may be a little draining."
I rolled over and groaned into my pillow.
A/N: Oh hey there⦠please don't kill me for the ridiculously long time I took to post this. I have no excuses, except that real life gets in the way.
So this was a bit of a filler chapter, and that's the bad news. The good news is that I'm posting this and getting started on the next chapter, so hopefully it won't take 10 months.
