Only a couple of more chapters to go after this one! The next update will be fast, I promise.. either tonight or tomorrow! :)

EPOV

Chapter Fifteen

The week following the absolute disaster that happened at Bella's was terrible for me. I had to see Bella every day at the university, but we weren't speaking. Well it was more that Bella wasn't speaking to me. I had been so pissed off that she went through my phone, but after a day or so I realized that I was an idiot. Bella was wrong, but if I had come clean to her from the beginning it never would have been a problem. I had every intention of telling Bella, but I was a coward and kept putting it off.

Bella and I only spoke to each other when it was necessary, which wasn't often. Between the classes that she was teaching and the meetings and other things that I seemed to have to constantly attend, we were not around each other all that much. The few times that I would see Bella, she would avert her eyes from mine. I could tell that she was not only angry, but hurt. When I would catch her laughing with some of her coworkers, the laugh never quite reached her eyes. It killed me because I knew that I had done that to her.

I wanted to talk to her, but I just didn't know what to say. I needed to apologize, but I also really needed for her to let me explain. Maybe I didn't deserve that from her, but I still felt like a huge part of our problem was that she wasn't ever going to trust me. If we were ever to have a relationship, we had to work through our issues. And I wanted to so badly. I had only known Bella for a few weeks, but she was important to me. I needed her in my life. I just wasn't sure that she felt the same way about me.

These were the things that I was thinking about on the Saturday after our fight when I heard someone open my front door. I poked my head out of the living room and saw Rosalie standing in my foyer, her arms crossed and glaring at me. Why the hell had I ever given her and Emmett a spare key to my house?

"What are you doing here Rosalie?" I asked her, not at all in the mood for her bitchiness.

"You fucked up, Edward, and you better fix it."

I raised an eyebrow at her, but didn't say anything. Knowing Rosalie, she wasn't done just yet.

"What the hell were you thinking?! Bella told me what happened. She called me and Alice crying because she thought that you were using her to cheat on your girlfriend in Chicago! For someone so damn smart you can be such an idiot. Why didn't you tell Bella about Tanya when you told her about everything else?"

I sighed and walked back into the living room, knowing that Rose would follow me. She did and she sat on the couch opposite me, waiting for my response. I finally said "I don't know. It wasn't that I was intentionally not telling her, I just didn't know what to say. And things were going so well between us that I didn't want to even think about Tanya, let alone talk about her with Bella. The Bella went through my phone and everything just went to shit."

"It went to shit because you weren't honest with her! Now I have a hurt friend that thinks she is nothing better than a quick fuck while you are away from your girlfriend and I have a brother-in-law that's life has gone to shit because he can't figure out how to keep the best thing that has happened to him!"

"I know all of that, Rosalie. I don't need you coming to my house and telling me what the problem is. But I tried to explain to Bella that she was so much more than just that to me and she wouldn't listen. She went through my phone, read texts that are from a damn crazy person, and wouldn't let me explain! So tell me what I'm supposed to do about that, since you seem to have all the answers."

Rosalie stood up and walked into the kitchen. I heard her open and shut the refrigerator before she walked back into the living room and handed me a beer. She opened her own and took a drink from it before she spoke to me again.

"You and Bella are both so frustrating and just so damn stubborn. I don't know how I thought I was going to make it through this day trying to talk to both of you without a little alcohol. No one could handle the two of you without a little help."

"Wait, you talked to Bella today? About what happened? What did she say?"

I was not above begging Rosalie for answers. I desperately wanted to know if there was a way to fix all of this and, if so, how I should go about it.

"Edward, I did talk to her. And I told her the same thing that you told her the other day. She was wrong and she got mad mostly because she isn't willing to trust you. Now I'm going to tell you something. Bella isn't like the girls that you have dated before. She is smart and sweet and not after you for your money. She's actually a nice girl. But you are handling her the same way you handled Tanya and every girl before her. You tell her what you think she needs to know because you think that you know best. And maybe with those other girls you were right. But you can't be that way with Bella. She's your equal, Edward, and you've got to start treating her that way."

I kept replaying Rose's advice over and over after she left. Was that really what I was doing with Bella? Was I treating her the same way that I had always treated the other girls? It seemed like it, and I wasn't happy about that. Rose was right. Bella was very different than anyone else that I had dated and I didn't want to treat her the same way that I had treated them. I wanted Bella to know exactly how I felt about her. She deserved to know that I thought she was the most beautiful and most wonderful woman in the world.

With that decision made, I grabbed my keys and drove straight to Bella's house. I wasn't going to waste even another second without trying to make things right with her. When I knocked on her door I sent up a silent prayer that she wouldn't just tell me to leave. I needed her to listen to me, to hear me out.

She opened the door and didn't seem at all surprised that I was standing there. She gave me a tight smile and said "I'm guessing that Rose talked to you, too."

I nodded and she opened the door wider, signaling for me to come in. I followed her into her living room and sat down on her couch. Unfortunately it was the same couch that she had fucked me on just a week before, and my mind was immediately on how wonderful she looked riding me. I had to try and shift my legs to hide the hard on that was growing in my pants. Even in a fight I still couldn't get enough of Bella Swan.

Bella started speaking, snapping my attention back to her. "Edward, I want to apologize to you. It was wrong of me to check your text messages. I would have been pissed had the situation been reversed, and I don't blame you for being upset. So I am sorry for invading your privacy that way."

"Bella, it's okay. I wish it hadn't happened, but I was wrong, too. You were right that I hadn't told you everything, though I do promise you that Tanya and I are broken up and were broken up before I brought you back here last Friday night."

"Can you please tell me what happened?" She asked me. "I promise to listen this time."

I nodded and began to tell her about my relationship with Tanya. I explained that I didn't break up with Tanya when I moved here even though I knew the relationship was over, and that the minute I had met her I knew that I was going to fly back to Chicago and end things with Tanya. I told her that when she kissed me in my office I immediately booked an earlier flight and went to Tanya's house and broke things off with her.

"Bella, I swear to you that I never had any intention of dating both you and her. Tanya was upset about the break up and said some things that made me think that she was not going to give up easily. But since she was in Chicago and I was here, I didn't think much of it. I see now that her way of dealing with things was to pretend like they didn't happen, hence the texts that you saw. But it is over."

Bella nodded and said "I believe you, Edward. I really do. I don't think that you are lying and I'm sorry that I didn't let you explain before. But I'm still very confused about things and I just don't know what I want to do."

I moved over so that I was sitting next to Bella and I rubbed her back. "Bella, I need you to know something. I've had girlfriends and girls that I've dated. But I've never felt anything for one of those girls like what I feel for you. I think that you are amazing. You are so smart and so beautiful and I feel like a better person when I am with you."

Bella smiled and a tear fell down her cheek. I wiped it off and leaned in to place a kiss against her lips, but she moved back away from me. "Please, Edward, don't kiss me. When you kiss me I can't think about anything and I need to say this. You were right last week. A lot of my problem and why I got so angry and upset does stem from the fact that I'm not over what happened. I don't know if I can trust you. I want to trust you, I really do. But I just need some time. I need to think about things and make sure that this is something that I can do before we start a relationship. I'm so sorry."

My heart clenched in my chest at her words. There was nothing I could say to fix any of this because I knew that she needed to do this. She needed to be able to trust me and to know that she could begin a relationship with me with no issues standing in the way. But I wasn't going to lose Bella Swan. I was going to prove to her that I was the right man for her.