A/N: Freggin Mondays, man. I have a test I haven't studied for, so we'll see how that goes. Anyway. In the meantime, have some angst. I'm going to try not to post for a week, but we all know that probably won't work. STILL. It's good to have goals.
Despite the fact she had the water turned up to scalding hot, Bella couldn't stop shivering. It wasn't helping her think, but who was she kidding? There wasn't any chance of her thinking beyond three facts.
Edward Cullen was in her living room.
Her baby was alive.
Her baby wasn't a baby at all but a beautiful, blond, six-year-old girl.
Bella sat down at the bottom of the tub and drew her legs up close to her chest. She sat there, shuddering, and didn't even realize she was sobbing until her throat was gravelly with the strength of them. She wasn't processing anything-not grief or fear or rage. There was too much in her head, and her body couldn't cope.
Edward Cullen was in her living room.
Her baby was alive.
Her baby was a little girl.
Each of these facts alone would have been too difficult to process or accept. Together, her mind was a car that refused to start. She coughed, sputtered, but she'd lost any sense of coherency. These were three impossible facts to reconcile with reality, made all the more difficult because she had spent so much of her life wrapped in fantasies about all of them.
Somehow, Bella found the strength to drag herself up off the floor of the bathtub. She shut the water off and ran out of energy. She clenched her hands in fists at her side, trying to tell herself it couldn't possibly be that tiring to lift her leg over the lip of the tub. Like everything else, that thought got lost to the mantra that was chanting louder and louder in her head.
Edward Cullen was in her living room.
Her baby was alive.
Her baby was a little girl.
Bella started dragging in staccato breaths. Her head spun, and she fumbled with what little grip she had on her emotions. If she didn't find control somewhere, she was going to slip into a panic attack.
Years of therapy had taught her a variety of coping mechanisms. She knew she needed to find some tiny shred of control if she was going to bring herself back from the brink of panic. That was what this panic attack was about-the fact her life was spinning wildly out of her own hands without any input from her.
Start small. Ridiculously small. She needed something she could control without a doubt. Her oncoming panic had given her a small burst of energy, and so Bella was able to convince herself to move. She wobbled a bit as she got out the shower, but she managed to stay upright. With a little more concentration, she dried herself off and put clothes on. It took a little more effort to brush her hair with trembling hands, but she managed to get through it.
By the time she was done with that, Bella was calmer. She was by no means completely calm, but at least she was no longer afraid she'd lost her mind. This was really happening.
Bella gripped the edge of the counter, weak in the knees as this last realization settled on her shoulders with finality. Edward was really in her tiny apartment, and her baby was safe.
One step at a time, Bella moved into her room and sat on the edge of the bed, reaching for her phone. She held down speed-dial 2 and waited.
"Hey, Bells."
Bella was so relieved to hear her father's voice, she almost started crying again. For a few seconds, she didn't even try to speak. She wished it was Saturday morning so she could listen to the bustle of a busy household in the background. She wanted to hear Tyler gabbing away, Mike and Angela arguing, and Karen trying to get them to settle down. Right then, she wanted to be back in her father's house, gathered around the busy kitchen table, more than she wanted anything else in the world. She wanted to be home where she could laugh at Mikey and Angela's antics. On Saturday mornings, Tyler would be on Bella's lap, and Karen would be admonishing her for letting him stick his fingers in her food.
"Bella? Are you there?"
She whimpered and pressed a hand against her mouth, trying to find the words. "Dad?"
"What's wrong?"
She closed her eyes, wishing she was strong enough to handle this on her own. Charlie had done so much for her when he'd had no reason. When she moved out of his house, she'd sworn to herself she was done taking from him. But…
"I need you," she said in a broken whisper. She swallowed hard, her heartbeat quickening. "I...he…" How the hell did she begin to explain this. "He found my baby."
There was a long silence on the other end of the phone. Then, "I'll be there in twenty minutes."
Charlie was good at knowing when she needed him to do something-no questions asked. Knowing he was on his way did wonders to lighten her load. Steadier now, she took a deep breath and went out to face Edward again.
She'd half expected him to have disappeared. A small part of her even hoped she had-a very small part seeing as he would have taken her baby...her daughter's location with him. Still, she knew she owed this man answers, none of which would be easy. Tension rolled off of him. He didn't look at her as she came back in the room, but she heard his breath hitch. His brows were knitted, and his mouth was set in a thin line.
As overwhelmed and stupid as Bella felt right then, she may as well have been seventeen again. When she moved toward him, Edward raised his head. He didn't say a word, but his hard eyes followed her as she came to sit on the opposite end of the couch.
It occurred to Bella, as she searched for the right place to start, that a normal person, a good mother, would have one goal in mind-to get to her child. But Bella couldn't wrap her mind around that idea yet. These last six years-more if she counted from the time she knew she was pregnant-her baby had only ever been a concept. She'd had nothing, not even a sonogram, to give her baby definition.
So she started with something she could deal with, someone who had always been tangible. "You're angry," she said.
Edward scoffed and tilted his head back to stare at the ceiling, fixing his glower there. "I'm...confused." To his credit, his tone was measured. "I can't for the life of me figure out why you wouldn't tell me you were pregnant, unless you didn't know for sure it was mine."
Bella sucked in a sharp breath.
"I'm sorry," Edward said, looking at her again. "That was…" He huffed again. "Maybe that was rude, but it wouldn't exactly surprise me at this point. You were seventeen. That means you couldn't have been a student at Stanford, right?"
She had to look down from the hurt and anger sparking in his eyes. "No, I wasn't."
"Then what the hell were you doing there? Why lie about any of that? What the hell were you trying to pull?"
At that, her head snapped up and her eyes went wide. "What the hell are you accusing me of?"
He stood up, running a hand through his hair as he paced a few steps away. "I found out a week ago that I have a six-year-old daughter, so you tell me, Bella. Bella Higginbotham. Even that's changed." As he spoke, his tone got louder and more cutting. "You lied about your name, your age, what you were doing there. Seventeen! You turned me into a goddamned predator. Then, that stupid line you fed me when you left-that you were dropping out of school to travel. Find yourself. When really, you disappeared because you were pregnant with my baby. Why the hell would you do any of this?"
Bella whacked the arm of the couch. "What do you want me to tell you?" she snapped, good and pissed now. He had a right to his anger, and she knew that. But it was too much to handle that, on top of everything, he was assuming the worst of her. "You want to know how my stepfather used to kick my ass from room to room? How I had to figure out for myself which shelters would take a teenage girl for one night, one night without calling the cops or my mom just so I could get away? How sometimes I slept under bridges because that was better than being at home? Is that the kind of shit you want to hear?"
The stricken look on his face fed her anger and shame. She'd never wanted him to know these things about her, never. Yet now that she had started, it all came spilling out. "You want to know why I lied about being a student? Because I lived in my fucking head back then. I made up little fantasies and pretended they were real for a few hours at a time, because if I had to live my own life twenty-four-seven, I'd have killed myself."
Her words choked off and she covered her mouth with her hand, fury draining away into something much more painful. "You were the only one who talked to me. To me. To you, I was a person worth talking to. I wasn't some piece of shit kid or a girl you were trying to fuck. You talked to me and I fucking loved you for it."
She gasped in a breath, trying not to sob, and she was tired all over again. Her shoulders slumped, and she stared down at her lap. "There wasn't anyone else…no one I wanted, anyway."
"Bella…"
His voice was rough with emotion now, and she closed her eyes, feeling twin tears slip down her cheeks. Voices from her past and the ghost of hands on her body sent a shudder through her. "Look, I was fucked up for a long time. That means I got into some really stupid shit and did some really stupid things. You weren't the first man to touch me, okay? But you were the only one I slept with. There has never been anyone else. Not then and not...not now."
"Then why not tell me?" he asked after an age, his voice quiet again, heartbroken. "I had a right to know I was going to be a father."
Bella wrung her hands in her lap. "Tell you that you'd knocked me up midway through your junior year at an Ivy League school? I couldn't do that." She wrapped her arms around her shoulders, shivering. "My life was always a wreck. I grew up with this knowledge, this truth that I would never amount to anything. It was almost inevitable that I got pregnant. I was always going to be a fuck up. But you? You had a plan. You were always going to do great things. I couldn't be the one who destroyed that for you."
He sat down on the couch again, making a small, frustrated noise. "That doesn't make sense. My parents are well-to-do. They never would have let me drop out. Bella… we could have helped you. We would have." He sighed. "I would have."
"Would you?" She dug her fingers into her arms, trying to keep herself grounded. "Or yeah, I know you're a decent human being. You would have helped me. I don't doubt that. But would you have done it without hating me? Would you have done it if you knew I had to tell you not only am I pregnant, but I'm seventeen. I'm not some free-spirited art studies major. I tested out of school at fifteen so I could work a few hours. I'm just some stupid teenage brat who had no business coming near you brilliant, Ivy League, blue-bloods. Tell me you wouldn't have hated me for putting that on you." She shook her head and swallowed convulsively. "Tell me you don't hate me now."
He was quiet for a long time. Bella didn't move, didn't let her face show what she was feeling, but she was so hurt, taking his silence as confirmation of her long-held fears, that she was surprised she could breathe through this kind of pain.
"I don't hate you," he said, his voice quiet. "I don't think I ever could have hated you. I just wish… If you had told me then, I could have helped you. None of this…"
She didn't need him to finish. It was nothing she hadn't told herself a million times over. None of this would have happened. She wouldn't have been starving and alone on the streets of Port Angeles when she went into labor. She wouldn't have had an abruption, and she wouldn't have lost so much blood that she passed out. Her baby would have been in her arms from the moment she was born.
She. A girl. A daughter.
Bella's lower lip trembled, and her shoulders bowed under the weight of her mistakes. "I know that now," she said, her voice breaking. "But back then, my thought process was warped. I'm sorry. I wish I could take it all back. I'd give anything to do it over again."
A knock sounded on the door, and they both jumped. "Bells? I'm coming in," Charlie called from outside.
Bella rose on fawn's legs. No sooner had her father stepped inside than she was in his arms, letting him fold her into his protective embrace. She wasn't crying, though she very much wanted to. With Charlie there to support her, it only took another minute before she was calm enough to speak again.
"Sorry if I scared you, Dad. I just… don't know what to do."
"It's okay. Just tell me what's going on. Who's this?" He was staring distrustfully at Edward who looked a little green around the gills. Sure. More than likely it was awkward for him given that he'd just found out he'd had sex with an underage girl seven years before, had gotten her pregnant, and now was face to face with her father.
Bella sniffled and pulled away. "This is Edward Cullen." She took a shaky breath, still unable to believe the next words out of her mouth. "He's my...daughter's father, and he found her."
A/N: Shorty chapter is short, but a few more answers.
Anyway. Goals for this week are Nightmare, Trouble, and Fly Away Home updates. Much love to you all! Have a great week.