Chapter 9-rewritten

"I doubt that you have done anything that would warrant such a sever punishment, Bella." Edward said while playing with my beloved pimp my ride air freshener.

"Hmmm...Raping, pillaging, plundering, acts of juvenile stupidity." I said counting them off on my fingers. "Guess you are right. Aunt Sam lives in Eastern Washington. Walla Walla to be exact."

"That is not so bad. A little sunny for my tastes," he said glibly. "do you not like your Aunt? I have never heard you mention her."

"She is ok. My cousin used to be a pain but i haven't seen either of them in years. She used to own crazy psycho cats though. They would wait for me to be at the top of the stairs then attempt to trip me on the way down. Charlie thinks they are dead by now, but i have my doubts. True evil never dies."

Chuckling, Edward pushed my hair behind my ears. I turned my head to look at him when the sound of the ferry whistle caused me to jump breaking the moment between us.

"well," I said folding my hands in my lap, "i guess you will be taking the next ferry back?"

Edward took in the sad look on my face and stroked the length of my cheek with the back of his fingers. "I said we couldn't stay in Seattle. There are plenty of other places we could go. We need to talk Bella about so many things."

The rest of the afternoon passed easily, even though we were slightly awkward around each other. I could tell that this bothered him but he never said anything. Instead we discussed trivial things, planning our pretend future trip to Seattle. Turns out that Edward had wanted to visit EMP for years and i was dying to get to Pioneer Square. I was having a hard time reminding myself that he would never keep his side of the bargain.

"Edward," I said around 4:30 after we had been driving for about a fifteen minutes, "exactly where are we going?"

"It's a surprise he said turning off I-90, "Just close your eyes and relax."

Pouting, I did as he asked. Sometime later he gently woke me before asking me to get out of the car. I watched as he walked around and opened the trunk and took out a picnic basket that I had never seen before.

"Is nothing sacred to your sister?" I muttered pulling the sweater from the top of the basket and shrugging it on, "first she steals my clothes and now she packs my car with food. Food I will probably enjoy. Stupid psychics. If she takes my air freshener, it will be war. I wonder if i can get a lo-jack for that."

Edward laughed and arched his eyebrow and laughed quietly, "She stole your clothes? Seriously?"

"Oh yeah she left it in a note, along with a list of things I shouldn't do. As if I would ever take belly dancing lessons."

"Well evidently you would have. Alice would never think of that on her own. I, for one, would love it." He said chuckling to himself, "and i promise if she takes the air freshener i will replace it."

"Not like you will be around." I muttered quietly to myself.

He stopped suddenly and threw me a dark look, dropping the picnic basket on the ground. "Where else would I be, Bella? "

"I don't know, with one of your precious distractions? Brazil maybe? Isn't that where you were before Volterra."

"I am NEVER going to leave you again."

"You say that now. Nothing horrible has happened all day. Please remember this is not a typical day in our life. But what happens when you feel I am too much of a burden or some other vamp takes a snap at me? Or you remember that you don't really love me?"

Edward glared at me. When he didn't say anything i decided to continue my tirade. "Please don't feel like you owe me or anything. It was never my intention to trap you. I saved you because it was the right thing to do, for me."

"How can you be so dense? I love you. I don't want to be away from you. I am NEVER leaving you." He growled.

"you love me? Thats just great. Today you love me again. Shall we flip a coin to decide tomorrow? Do you ever tell me the truth? First you say you love me, then you say you lied, and now suddenly youlove me again. Please for the love of god, make up your freaking mind" I sneered, trying to stop the tears that burned my eyes, "but hypothetically lets say you really do love me. How long this time? How long before you leave me broken in the woods because something else caught your eye? I am be a human but i am not your toy. I realize my feelings are inconsequential, but please do not do this to me. I wont survive you leaving me again."

I walked around him and grabbed the basket before taking off down the path. Edward was suddenly beside me, grabbing the basket back and throwing it on the ground. Roughly he took my arms and shook me. "I lied! Ok! That day in the woods I could tell that you were never going to believe me. So I lied."

"YOU LIED? I can not freaking believe you. Why would you do that? Why? Do you realize what you did to me?"

"Because you were in danger. Every minute I am in your life, you are in -"

"Danger, I get it. Did you ever consider asking me how I felt about that? Did you ever consider that I have free will? That if I didn't want to be in danger quite as often that I could have left? Or asked you to?"

"You would never have done that."

"How do you know? You never even gave me the chance. I thought about it all the time, Edward. About how much easier and natural things would have been if I had loved Jake or even Mike instead of you."

"You thought about that?"

"Yes I did! you idiot! And you know what I decided? I decided that you were worth it. I knew that there would always be the temptation of my blood, and that you probably would never change me but I stayed. Because I loved you and you were more important to me than anyone else in the world. So, silly me I took your leaving to mean that I'm not that important to you. Thanks for that, for leaving, because I would have hated wasting my life with someone who didn't love me as much as I loved them."

"You don't understand, Bella! If you had spent your birthday with humans, and gotten a paper cut the worst thing that would have happened is they wouldn't have had a band aide. Jasper almost killed you. Do you realize how close you came to dieing?"

"But he didn't because you and the rest of your family was there. Nothing happened Edward, you saved me. A fact you have conveniently forgotten. James didn't kill me because you and your family saved me."

"And what happens when I am not there? When the next vampire takes a snap at you?"

"Not to sound too Disney or whatever but its the circle of life. Your born, you grow, and then you die. Sometimes your really old and sometimes your not. But its always supposed to happen."

I realized then we were still walking along the path, "where are we going?"

Edward seemed to snap out of a daze as he looked around, "My cabin, its just up ahead. Over there is Snoqualmie Falls." he said pointing off to the right. "I thought it would be a nice place to feed the human and stay the night. Though you will probably dump all the food on my head."

"What do you mean stay the night. I told you i have to go to my aunts house. And that is a negatory on the food thing, I'm hungry. I wont waste good food on your head." I said trying to lighten the mood between us. We walked for several more minutes in silence. I could tell that Edward was attempting to process what I had told him.

His cabin was beautiful. Set in a meadow, it was a traditional log cabin style home. He was silent as he unlocked the door and pulled me inside. It was furnished much like the house in Forks, with over sized furniture and simple easy style. Edward lead me into the living room and began unloading the basked onto the coffee table.

"Is Alice trying to fatten me up?" I asked watching Edward unload the pasta, bread, and fattening cheesecake from the basket, "what flavor is that anyway?"

"Esme. And yes, have you looked in a mirror lately? You look positively anorexic. What did you loose 20 pounds while I was gone?"

"You don't get to judge me, Edward."

"I'm not. But I hope that I still have the right to be concerned. The cheese cake is your favorite, white chocolate raspberry truffle, from the Cheese Cake Factory. I ran in while you were in the mall."

I smiled at him, not surprised that he remembered, "that's where you were."

Ok sorry for the lack of updates. I have a long list of excuses and stories about that but the most important one is that there was something wrong with the original post of this chapter and i couldn't figure out what it was...the reason is that its freaking cold on the pass in mid april which is when my story is based...so no one in their right mind would have a freaking picnic in that weather...so while i was fixing that i fixed some other things...enjoy...