Any and ALL mistakes are mine. I added something like 1.5k to this.
Yeah I'm a little nuts with this right now LOL.
Thank you so much Satan and Ham, without you guys I'd be a bumbling mess on my floor pulling out my hair and crying.
Massive MASSIVE chapter ahead.
SM owns it.
Chapter 12
Gods and Monsters
"I see you started the family reunion without me." I step out of the shadows and into the rain, my boots slapping against the wet rocks below.
"Edward?" Isabella looks at me, but her eyes are still blank. Still lost.
It's like a punch to the gut, that look.
It tears me in two on the inside. Outside I wear a mask. Dark eyes, hard smile.
I wear it for us. As a warning. As a threat.
As protection.
"Hands off her, Charlie. I'd hate for your blood to color her face, wouldn't you?" I wink and he jumps back stumbling over his own feet. "Much better."
"You found me!" She smiles. The pain from his grip is gone, but I can still see the tears it caused.
Tears that should never have been there.
Tears he'll pay for.
"Bells, get away from him." Charlie's worn eyes never leave me as I watch rain fall on Isabella's hair, making it shine in the dim light surrounding us.
It makes her look innocent. Unmarked by me.
I hate it.
"No." She turns toward Charlie, gun in hand and he moves slowly toward his car. "Why would I do that?"
"What's wrong, Charlie? No hug for your son-in-law? Didn't you miss me?" I missed him. Sort of. I missed his way of explaining away my hunting trips.
I miss how he used to cover me, not knowing what was really happening.
"I could hug you with this, if you want." He takes a step behind the open door of his car, pulling his shotgun out and resting it on his shoulder.
All he's missing is his badge.
"Mine has more bullets." I lift the front of my shirt, and Isabella's eyes fall to my stomach, lust darkening her brown eyes. "We can sit here and compare dicks all night, but I'd rather take my wife and go home."
"I told you he'd come." She smiles at Charlie as she waves at me with the gun.
"You wanna give me that, baby?" I laugh despite the situation. Seeing her with a gun is sexy as hell. Knowing what she might do with it stirs a craving deep inside of me. One I've longed for.
One I'd like to explore with her.
"Don't you give that to him." Charlie warns her, but her face turns hard. "You give that to him and we're both dead."
"What is your problem? Leave him alone!" She points the gun at her dad and fires off a shot, hitting the window.
"Shit." I hiss and Charlie and I both duck as the glass spiders and falls to the ground. "How about you try not pissing her off?" I shake my head, wiping the gravel from my palms.
"I won't say another word about Edward." The disgust in his voice makes me laugh. "But Bella you gotta let me take you home." Charlie pleads with her, but she doesn't see her dad when she looks at him.
That blank stare she gave to me? Those sad broken eyes? They're for him as well.
"Isabella, look at me. Come here. Let me help you. Give me the gun before you hurt yourself." If she wasn't so unstable, so lost, I'd let her fire shots all night.
Right now she might very well take one at herself.
I'd die before I let that happen. He would too.
"No." Charlie glares at me as she turns away from him. "You can't help her. I won't let you."
"It's cute you think I'm asking." I take a cautious step closer to her, and so does he.
"You're hurting her, Edward. Look at her. Look at what you've put her through." He points at her sitting on the wet ground, her face white as a ghost as her lips tremble.
"Baby. Bella, come here. I need you to take my jacket. You're freezing." Just a few more feet, inches really, and I'll have her.
"Don't you take another step, or I'll put a bullet between your eyes." He threatens, and she lifts the gun to him.
I ignore him as I inch closer to her. To what's mine. To stop her.
"Baby?" I lean down and hold out one hand toward her, ignoring Charlie as he cocks his gun. "It's me, just come here. Hand me the gun. You don't want this." I do.
I want him dead. I want to bleed him dry and watch him suffer.
I can do it. I can live with myself afterwards. She can't.
Not like this.
"Edward. Don't hurt him. Please." Her features twists as she shakes her head. "Just don't hurt him."
"I'd never hurt him. He's my father too. Remember when he put your hand in mine on our wedding day? I just want you, baby." I show her my wedding ring, making her smile.
"Do you promise?" Tears spill over her lips as she asks. I want to wrap myself around her and make them stop.
"Edward don't do this to her." I can hear the pain in Charlie's voice as he moves closer. "Don't lie to her."
"You shut the fuck up." I lift my eyes, casting him a dark look that stop his footsteps.
I move closer. Close enough that I can feel her breath on me. Taste it.
"PROMISE ME!" Isabella screams, making us both jump, as the gun shakes in her hand.
"You can trust me." I smile, closer to her, so close I can touch her. And I do, brushing the wet hair off her forehead. "But I need you with me."
My chest swells and my heart pounds as my fingers connect with her skin.
The feeling makes me sick. Makes me shake.
"He's lying to you. I'll be dead before you ever take his hand. You know that." Charlie screams.
"You'd make her choose?" I laugh.
"Where's the choice? You're a serial killer and she's your biggest target. Hell yes if choosing means she gets to stay alive, then I'll force the choice. You can't have her." He's too close to her.
"She's mine." I growl, the possessiveness inside me boiling over as I look at him.
"Not this time." He grabs her by the arm, lifting her off the ground and my hand is on my gun, firing a shot into his car before he can pull her away from me.
I watch as her gun falls to the ground and I kick it away.
I don't want it in her hands. I don't want it near her.
"Edward stop!"
"Let her go." He's got his gun pointed at me, and mine is pointed at Isabella.
"Daddy, don't do this." She pleads through sobs, trying to jerk away from him.
His hand drops from her arm and she falls into my chest, burying her face into my shirt.
"Was that really so hard?" I wrap my arm around her chest, digging my fingers into her skin as I force her back a few steps with me.
"You think you've won?" His voice cracks as the gun in his hand falls to his side.
"I know I have." I wink, smirking at him as I run my hands through Isabella's hair.
"Just go back home, dad." She sags against me, but I know it's not in relief. She's scared, and not for herself.
"I can't leave you with him. You know I can't." If I didn't think I'd lose her forever, I'd kill him right where he stood.
"You have to." She pleads with him and I can feel her tears as they fall against my arm.
"Bells." He's warning her and pushing me. He's losing.
"Grab the cigarettes in my pocket, baby." Her father's voice is pissing me off and I need to think.
I need a plan.
"What?" She looks up, and the lack of love that once shone bright, hurts more than I imagined it would.
I need to get that look back in her eyes.
"My cigarettes." I growl into her ear, irritated and on edge. "Grab them and light one."
"So you're treating her like garbage now, too?" He spits as he watches his daughter's hand slip into my pocket.
"Thats it, right there." I kiss the side of her neck as Charlie lifts his gun to my face.
"She doesn't need to do that." He hisses, disgusted by my actions.
If only he knew just how much she was enjoying herself. How much I don't give a shit if he sees this or not.
"My hands are full at the moment. What was I supposed to do?" I smile up at him as Isabella lights my cigarette and places it in my waiting lips.
"You are a sick bastard."
"We haven't even gotten to the foreplay yet, Charlie." I chuckle, firing a shot into the air.
Grabbing a handful of her hair, I bring it to her neck, listening as the hot metal burns into her skin. Another scar. Another way of branding her so everyone knows she belongs to me.
He moves, quick this time, trying to take her from me. I'm quicker.
"I fucking dare you to, Charlie." I cock the gun right next to his precious daughter's ear. Her screams fill the stale air that surrounds us, bouncing off the rain and smacking each of us in the face as he stares me down.
"Don't you hurt her. Not again." He lays his shotgun down and takes a step back.
I smile to myself, knowing just how angry and out of control he's feeling.
"You think this hurts her?" I let her go, pushing her down onto her knees in front of me and place the gun between her eyes. "If you ever heard the nasty, dirty things that come out of her mouth." I wipe the rain from my lips with the back of my other hand as I look down at her.
Her eyes aren't filled with tears as she looks at me. They aren't filled with hate or anger.
It's love that stares back at me. It's wrong. Tainted.
Pathetic.
"I've never met anyone so smart yet so damn stupid, you know that?" I laugh as I lean down, running my thumb across her cold cheek.
"You made me," she mouths up at me and I want so badly to smack her with the butt of the gun and kiss away the blood.
"She needs help, Edward. You aren't making her better with this. Just let me take her." I raise my eyes to him and laugh.
"Do you think I don't know that?" I ask looking at her. Its written everywhere.
"I think you enjoy it."
"Do you know what happened to the last person who tried to take her from me?" My grip tightens on the gun, and I feel like I could crush it between my fingers as I think about him trying to hide her from me.
"You can run, Edward. Go wherever you planned, just let me have my daughter." He begs and I can feel the last strand of sanity slip away.
"His name was Jasper Whitlock. Such a fucking love sick coward." I chuckle remembering the way he looked at her, begging her to go with him. "Poor man took a bullet between his eyes for it, too."
"Edward don't." Isabella grits her teeth, spitting the words out at me.
She's there, but she isn't whole. Not yet.
"Are you admitting to a crime, Edward?" Charlie ignores her, glaring at me, and I can see the hope in his eyes.
"Sure. We can say that's what's happening." I scratch the scruff on my face, my eyes locked onto Isabella's. "We both know the truth though, don't we baby girl?"
"You piece of shit, asshole." She tries to stand up, but I lift the gun, leveling it at her father and stopping her in place.
"Who called daddy to help whom? How am I piece of shit? I've done everything for you. Protected you. Cleaned up after you. Not him." I shake my head, ready to lunge at her. "Me, Isabella!" I scream, venom lacing every word.
"She won't go down for it. If that's why you won't let me have her. I won't let that happen." He'd protect her with his life, but it isn't good enough.
Not this time.
"You'd never let your little girl go down for it, even though you know she pulled the trigger. Even though you know his blood is on her hands. Did you know she did it to protect me?" I sneer, as Isabella visibly flinches.
"Just give her to me." His pleading disgusts me, and his sad eyes only make me angrier.
"You need to go now, Charlie. The little moment we were having-" I wave the gun between us. "It's over now. I'm beginning to feel a lot less generous than before."
"Edward," He starts and I toss my cigarette to the ground.
"Would you like to say goodbye to your father, Isabella?" I grab her by the hair, forcing her to look at him.
"If you think for one goddamn minute..."
"Well, now who's being hateful with their words?" I cock my head to the side, giving my father-in-law a crooked smile.
"He's right." Isabella breaks the tension between us.
"Excuse me?"
"Let her talk." Charlie's eyes are filled with tears as he watches her.
"I can't go with you. Not after what I did."
"You had no idea what kind of a monster he was." He's grasping at straws. Thin short straws.
She absolutely knew.
"You're wrong." She shakes her head at him with a sad smile.
Charlie's eyes go wide and my smile lifts. "Finally." I take my hands off her and step back to enjoy the show.
"Oh, don't look so damn smug." She turns on me, her big brown eyes black against the rain.
"He's brainwashed you," Charlie accuses, but we both heard the conviction in her when she said he was wrong.
"Daddy, I swear I didn't mean for this to happen. You have to know I hate him, but I love him."
"How? How can you love... that?" Charlie asks, baffled and confused at her.
"That has a name, you know?" I laugh at Charlie's disgust.
"I love him. I can't explain it, I just do. He's my husband. I can't abandon him. I don't want to. I thought I did. I swore I did." I can hear the smile in her voice. "You have to leave. I can't lose you, but I can't go with you."
"I can't, Bella. I just... I can't do that. You're all I have left." He takes a step toward her and she takes one back.
"Please go. You shouldn't have come looking for me. I'm so sorry." She reaches her hand back, searching for mine, and I smile at Charlie as I lace our fingers.
"Come on Dad, can't you just let us be happy?" I give him a broad smile as Isabella's nails dig into my palm.
"No."
"I'd be very careful with your words right now," I warn as my fingers steady and my heart pounds.
I know who this man is. What he represents. What killing him would mean.
I know it, and yet all I can think is fuck him.
I can fix her. He can't.
And I wonder. And I plan.
"She's my daughter, Edward. Mine. I demand you give her back to me." Anger I never knew I could feel takes over my entire body, consuming it, flowing like blood in my veins.
Burning me. Fueling me.
"I. Don't. Share." I hear the the bullet leave the chamber. I smell the gunpowder and I see the flame from the tip of the barrel.
It's the look on Charlie's face that I commit to memory. The look of utter shock and sadness as his eyes sweep from me to Isabella as the bullet enters his chest.
A chest he didn't bother covering with kevlar.
He thought he was going to win. That she would choose him.
He was wrong.
"NO!" A sob cuts through the silence that follows the shot and Isabella shoves me to ground, scrambling for the gun.
I don't bother fighting her, instead, I let her take it.
Give her the power.
I want to see how far she's willing to go. How far gone she is. If I can push her further.
If I can bring her back.
"You didn't have to shoot him!" She collapses at Charlie's side, and the darkest part of me can't resist pushing her more.
"I had to do something to shut him up. Jesus Christ, has he always talked this much?" I don't even jump when she fires a round into the air and glares at me.
"Everything you touch... everything." She sobs into her father's chest, her fists pounding on his bleeding wound, and I'm mesmerized by it. Stuck in place, watching, and seeing for the first time how truly beautiful she is.
It's almost enough to bring me to my knees.
"You didn't really think I'd leave you anyone to run to did you?" I run a hand through my wet hair, relieved he's gone.
"I thought you'd give me this one thing." She cries as lightning cracks across the sky above us.
"You knew he'd come for us eventually, and you knew I wouldn't let him take you. Don't act so naive, Isabella." I light a cigarette as her fingers tremble over his chest, blood pouring out and covering her arms.
"That's your plan? Take everything from me until I break?" She glares at me over her shoulder.
"You've been broken a long time. I was trying to bring you back." I step closer, hovering over her.
"Fuck you!" She jumps up, slapping me hard and I let her, relishing the sting of pain left behind.
"You're beautiful when you're angry." I grab her by the neck, crushing my lips to mine.
"How the hell do you think I got that way?" Her laugh is unhinged as she pushes off me. "Did you think I did this on my own?"
"I think you need to stop blaming everyone for you problems." I rub my chin, watching the anger grow in her eyes.
I hold onto that look.
"I thought we were forever, that I'd found everything the moment I laid eyes on you. That my heart was going to explode the first time you touched me. I swore we were what poets wrote about, that undying love, that need you could never fulfill no matter how many times you touched. I can never touch you enough." Her smile is watery as she traces my lips.
"Then never stop." I kiss her fingers.
"And then you touched another." My stomach drops.
"Bella." For the first time ever my voice catches and I lose my breath.
"I wish I could kill you." I don't like her calm, or the sad smile when she looks at me.
"I wish you could too, baby." And I do.
"I just wanted you to love me, Edward." A tear rolls down her cheek and I flinch when she brushes one away from my own.
"I'll never regret what I did." I tell her, because I don't. I can't regret keeping her alive.
"I know." She whispers, her eyes still lost to me. Still so far away.
"Because you love me." It's why she held on for so long. Why she waited for me. Why she accepts me.
It's why now, standing so close to her, touching her, I know I'm losing the only thing I ever really had.
Her.
"And you can't say it back." I blink at her. Frozen.
Maybe I could once. I can't now. It won't bring her back. It won't cure her.
Instead, I take her shaking hands in my own. Our eyes connect just as they did the first night we made love, and I feel it. I feel her love, her hurt, the broken girl I destroyed.
I feel the cold end of a barrel against the wet skin of my forehead.
It's there. The desire. The hate.
I gave it to her. Those feelings. The ingredients to lose herself.
To hate me.
"Shoot me." I can see her finger tremble on the trigger out of the corner of my eye. "You shoot me, Isabella or so help me-"
"So help you what? SO HELP YOU WHAT EDWARD?" She digs the barrel harder into my skin and I smile as tears roll down my face, mixing with the rain.
"I'll kill you." It was always the plan. An uncontrollable battle I would lose one day.
"Promises, promises, Edward." I hear the gun cock.
She'll shoot me. I see it in her eyes. She'll kill me and then herself. And she'll do it with a smile, exactly as I would.
I want to let her, let her take it all away.
"I told you once before I could never lose you." I close my eyes, hoping she'll pull the trigger before I can.
"What?" She blinks and I do the only thing I can to save us.
You guys have no idea how much I want to throw up right now. I'm so nervous about this chapter it's making me sick. Physically freaking ill.
Are you guys ready for the epilogue? Cause I'm not.
Nope. Not even a little bit.