Ok, so this may seem a little fucked up and disturbing… but it does have a happy ending.

And to my amazing reader Milalencar…. Happy Birthday bb, wish I could have thought of something a little brighter, but this was all that came to mind :(

Penname: kyla713
Creative Original or Derivative Fiction: Derivative

Rating/Warning(s): M, sensitive matters touched upon, including domestic violence and assault.

Notes:

Disclaimer: All copyrighted, trademarked items, or recognizable characters, plots, etc. mentioned herein belong to their respective owners. No copying or reproduction of this work is permitted without their express written authorization.

Prompt: Word Challenge: Smoke

Driving down the street toward my house, I was alarmed to see a long billowing pillar of smoke rising from just behind it.

Bella was in there! Shit!

I squealed into the driveway, barely taking the time to turn off the car and running into the house, calling for her. As I passed the sliding glass doors looking out into the back yard, I spotted her in front of a large pit fire in the back yard. Her back was to me, her tiny frame wrapped in my large black and white flannel jacket, staring down into the fire.

She's alright, thank God!

I slid the door open, walking outside toward her and resting my hands on her waist gently. She startled slightly at the contact, and when she looked back at me, she had tears in her eyes. She slowly relaxed and pulled my arms around her waist, leaning her head back against my chest.

"You okay?" I asked her softly, placing a gentle kiss on her cheek.

She nodded, pressing back against me more and hugging my arms around her more securely. She was shivering even with the heat of the fire in front of her.

"What are you doing?" I whispered as her fingers laced with mine.

"I'm moving on," she replied distantly and as my body stiffened against her, she clung tighter to my hand. "No, not like that. From him. I had my session with Kara today, and she said I'm doing much better, but what I needed was closure, since he was dead before I could really get it. So that's what I'm doing."

Bella had been in therapy for nearly two years now, recovering from the years of abuse by her previous boyfriend, and she'd really come a long way, considering how much she had been through. Until the morning he'd come home drunk and in her attempt to fight him off from yet another assault, she'd grabbed the nearest thing to her, which happened to be a knife.

I had never witnessed anything so heart wrenching in my life as when I arrived at her house after her frantic call that morning. Huddled in the corner like a frightened child, her beautiful face covered in cuts and bruises, her clothes ripped and tattered… and blood everywhere.

She clung to me so tightly as I lifted her off the ground to remove her from the room, and she would not let go when I tried to set her down to call the police and an ambulance. She begged me to stay with her, and I never left her side through the entire ordeal of the hospital stay and the court date. We'd been inseparable ever since.

Obviously, the intimacy of our relationship had taken time to work into, and she even had her own bedroom for the first several months of living with me. She would increasingly come into my bedroom at night and curl up beside me when she'd had a nightmare, or simply did not want to be alone. Until the panic would strike when she tried to kiss me, or I moved in a certain way that frightened her, and she would have to leave the room. Very rarely could she simply spend the night with me.

And her frustration grew to the point that she finally sought out therapy to deal with her PTSD.

Even now, two years later, things were slowly progressing to the point where we could be intimate and make love more easily. And we'd converted her old bedroom into an office for her, since we now spent every night together.

Her lips brushing lightly against my jaw snapped me back to the present and my eyes shifted to her. "So that's why you're standing out here freezing?"

She smiled slightly, nodding. "Yeah. I've just been so angry for so long, and I don't want to feel that way anymore. It's so exhausting to be that angry all the time. So Kara suggested I write a letter, get everything out. And when I was done and said everything I wanted to say to him, burn it. Let it go."

She reached into the inside pocket of the flannel she wore, pulling out a thick envelope with 'James' scrawled across it.

"Twelve pages," she stated softly, waving the envelope in front of her. "Twelve fucking pages for the five years of hell he put me through. It's time to move on."

I watched as she tossed the envelope into the flames, staring down at it with her as it shriveled and began to glow around the edges, sending a darker pillar of smoke up from it.

I hugged her tighter, gently kissing her temple as her hand ran slowly along my arm. "I'm so proud of you, baby."

She let out a breathy laugh and turned in my arms, sliding hers underneath my jacket and around my waist. "Thank you, Edward. I don't know that I would have gotten through all this without you. But we are going to have to convert my office back into a bedroom."

My brow furrowed as I pulled back slightly to look down at her, unprepared for the expression that graced her features. "Why?"

"Because it's going to have a new occupant in about eight months," she replied, raising her eyes to mine and biting her lip to restrain her growing smile.

My eyes widened and my jaw fell lax. "You're…"

She simply nodded before I could attempt to finish my statement, and I was rendered speechless. So I did all I could think to do…

I kissed her.