Where I Stood

BPOV

I woke up this morning in almost the same position as I did last night. I had slid down Edward's body a little bit more, but his grip on my waist was still tight. Our legs were intertwined and my face was in Edward's chest and his face was in my hair. I could see my phone on the nightstand. The screen said that I had 5 texts from Jake. I turned my face in the other direction and ignored them. I lifted my chin up and placed it on Edward's chest, looking at his face. His eyes still looked a little puffy, but the dark circles underneath them were fading. I ran my fingers over his face. I felt his chest rise with an intake of breath and his eyes lightly opened.

We just lay there looking at each other. Eventually Edward moved his hands up from my waist to run them through my hair.

"You might want to call Alice." He says softly.

I give him a quizzical look. Why would he bring up Alice at a time like this?

"To tell her that you're taking the day off." Edward says like it should have been obvious to me, occupied with twirling the lightly curled ends of my hair in his fingers.

I nod my head as Edward reaches for my phone. He sees the screen and glances at me. He turns the screen towards me and I look at it. Now it says I have 6 texts from Jake. I slide my knees on either side of Edward's hips and place my hands on the side of his face. I kiss his forehead and pull back giving him my 'really Edward?' look. He smiles and pulls my face back down to him with a deep kiss. I pull back from him and he hands me the phone. I slide my legs back and rest the side of my face on his chest with Edward's arms wrapping around my waist again. I dialed Alice's cell number and it went to her answering machine. I find myself absentmindedly playing with Edward's hair as I leave a message.

"Hi Alice it's Bella. I can't come into work today so if you could pick up some of my work today I would really appreciate it. Okay bye." I hang up the phone and toss it to the floor.

I place my chin back on Edward's chest and we both just look at each other. Now we had the entire day and there was no rush. After a while Edward sits up and slides out of bed from underneath me. I had completely forgotten that we were both naked.

And God was he beautiful.

I sat up and wrapped the sheet around me. Edward grabbed my hands in the midst of wrapping myself and let the sheet fall, revealing all of me to him.

"Don't. "He says.

"Shower?" He asks, glancing down slightly at my chest.

I nod my head.

Without saying another word, Edward scooped me up in his arms and walked us into the bathroom. He set me on the countertop next to the sink and walked into the shower, turning it on and testing the water until it was the right temperature.

Damn he has a really good butt.

I jumped down from the counter and walked up behind him, still testing the water temperature, and wrapped my arms around his waist. Edward reached one of his hands down to grab one of mine and brought it up to kiss the knuckles gently. He turned around in my arms and I remembered his hand from yesterday. I take my hand out of his and grabbed his other hand that I remembered had been cut up and examined it. It looked terrible. Worse than yesterday if that's possible. I was about to scold him for not letting me fix it yesterday, but he put his finger under my chin before I could say anything and he shook his head telling me not to worry about it. Under the bathroom lights I could see his face more clearly. His cheekbone that I thought had looked bruised yesterday looked even worse now as well. I didn't remember him leaving with that bruise. I would have remembered that. Before I could think about it too much he took a hold of my hands again and walked backwards into the shower, pulling me with him.

He stopped when he reached the spray of the shower and pulled me close to his chest so that we were both underneath the water. Edward reached down to the corner of the shower and grabbed his body wash. He squirted some into hand and took a good five minutes to wash my entire body, head to toe, before I did the same to him. By the time I had finished him, we both couldn't control ourselves and Edward grabbed my face and kissed me hard. I wrapped my arms around his neck as he walked us backwards and my back hit the shower wall. Edward lifted me up so that my legs could wrap around his waist.

Just like that first night

And let's just say that we christened that shower pretty well. It was a little rougher than the night before and I think I prefer it that way.

By the time we had both calmed down and I slid down from Edward's waist, my legs were a little wobbly and I couldn't really keep my balance. Edward noticed at scooped me up in his arms, carrying me from the shower and wrapping me in a towel before setting me back on the countertop. He dried himself off, rubbing his hair with the towel before wrapping his towel around his waist and walking over to me.

Edward kissed my forehead and picked me up off the counter again and carried me back into the bedroom. He set me on the edge of the bed and walked over to the closet. He grabbed a pair of boxer shorts and a t-shirt and walked back over to me. He pulled his t-shirt over my head before dropping his towel and pulling his boxers on.

"Edward do you think you can get me some underwear?" I ask him, leaning my hands back on the bed and pointing to the top drawer of the dresser where I kept all of my undergarments.

He smiled and walked over to the drawer, pulling it open. It takes him about .5 seconds to find what he's looking for. He pulls out the blue lace thong that he had commented on the second day I stayed here. He tosses them to me and I stand up and have just enough time to pull them on before me knees go weak again.

Edward chuckled softly before picking me up again. I sighed and buried my head into the crook of his neck.

"I bet you're feeling pretty good about yourself right now." I mumble into his skin. I don't think I had ever really realized how soft Edward's skin is. Especially after a shower when it's so warm and smells fresh and a little minty.

We got to the kitchen and Edward kissed my head, placing me on the island and starting to make breakfast. I slowly dropped onto my side, lying with the side of my head on the cold tile of the island.

He is really is so beautiful

I think I like the curves in his back the best. As I am contemplating the greatness of Edward's back as compared to his backside, the house phone rings. I turn myself onto my back and reach for the phone on the end of the island.

"Hello?" I ask, now staring at Edward's butt.

"Bella, its Jake I…."

I hung up the phone, still staring at Edward. He's mixing yogurt and granola in two small glasses. It's kinda fancy looking and as I'm trying to think of the occasion, the phone rings again.

"Hello?"

"You should at least talk to your stupid boyfriend about…" Jake spits out quickly into the phone.

I consider hanging up, but decide to let him finish his thought process this time.

"…Coming out of fucking nowhere and beating people up! I'm telling you he has an anger problem! One punch is fucking enough! Bella? Are you there?" Jake is talking frantically into the phone now.

I laugh to myself about what Jake had just told me. Edward beat him up last night at some point when he was gone.

It brings my thought process back to Edward leaving. I don't want to think about it but I know I'll have to soon. And talk about it. I have to ask Edward no matter how much it might hurt me.

I turn my head to look at Edward again and am startled to find his face directly above mine.

"What's so funny love?" He asks with a smirk on his face before he starts kissing down my neck. I chuckle softly again, looking at the bruise on his cheekbone.

I guess Jake put up some sort of a fight.

"I think it's for you." I say with a small smile.

Edward takes the phone from me, but moves down my body to my stomach and slowly lifts up my shirt and leaves soft kisses across my stomach.

"Hello?" Edward mumbles into the phone.

"Hello? Who's this? Edward?" I can hear Jake screaming into the phone from where I'm laying.

"Jake, I thought we talked about this." Edward says calmly, kissing his way up my stomach to just below my breasts as I ran my fingers through his hair.

Jake starts to yell something into the phone but I can't tell what it is because I am too focused on Edward's mouth on me.

"Look Jake," Edward interrupts,

"I'd love to stay and chat but I'm a little busy right now." Edward muffles into the phone before hanging up and tossing the phone onto the counter.

I grab his head and pull it up so that his chin is resting on my stomach. I decide that I should start out slow.

"So you wanna tell me about this bruise?" I ask, pointing to his cheekbone.

"You sound like you already have the right idea."

"Maybe I do, maybe I don't. Either way I want you to tell me."

"I may have had an encounter with Jake last night." He mumbles, turning face back into my stomach.

"Ooh a sexual encounter?" I ask sarcastically.

"No love, don't you remember that was with you." Edward says, looking back up at me with a smile and rolling his eyes. "Although it was a physical encounter."

"Edward come on" I whine, putting my hands firmly on his face, forcing him to look at me. I just wanted him to cut to the chase.

"Well last night I left just to walk around a bit and clear my head. After everything Jake said and all. I just needed to think. I made it all the way to Central Park and realized that walking around in the air just wasn't doing to for me. Plus there were some scary people." Edward says, trying to lighten the mood.

"Not funny." I say seriously. It still hurts to think about how he left and everything.

"Sorry love. Well as I said walking around just wasn't doing it for me, so I found a bar and got a drink."

I raise my eyebrows at him.

"It was only a few drinks love, nothing too strong just a gin and tonic." Edward assures me.

I'm glad to be reassured that he wasn't intoxicated when we had sex for the first time.

"I thought all through those drinks and finally decided to come back. I was almost home when I saw Jake a few blocks away. Now I had seen him there when I left but I assumed that he was just taking a long time to leave and quite frankly too many things were going through my head to really care at that time.

"So when I still saw him there, naturally I was kinda pissed. I could see that he was obviously trying to decide whether to come back to the apartment or not. Then he saw me walking towards him and some words were exchanged between us…"

"What kind of words?" I interrupt sternly.

"Nothing that should be repeated in front a lady."

"Who said I was a lady?"

"I did. Now anyways, words were exchanged and I couldn't help myself and pushed him and then he pushed back and then we kinda got in a fist fight."

"Kinda? You kinda got in a fist fight? What does that even mean?" I ask, a little loudly.

"Alight fine it wasn't kinda, it just was a fist fight. Naturally with my superior boxing skills I ended up on top…"

"Naturally, naturally."

"And then I laid down some rules that I expected him to follow if he didn't want me to find him and kill him. One of those was calling here again."

"Do I get to hear the others?"

"Nope. It won't matter anyway because I expect them not to be broken. I have to say he did put up a good fight at the beginning though."

"I can see that…" I say rather quietly running my finger over a new bruise I found under his chin. "You know you should really ice these." I say.

"Don't worry about it. I've had worse." He whispers, trying to get me off my Nursing path.

Once he came home on spring break with tons of bruises from a fight he conveniently forgot to mention to me on the phone and I wouldn't stop trying to take care of the cuts and bruises for his entire break. He says he doesn't like when I get like that, but I don't think he would have minded as much if I put on that nurse uniform that Alice wanted me to wear.

It was then that I realized that he skipped over the most important parts of the story; why he left.

"Why did you leave" I ask quietly.

"Bella I really don't think that…."

"No." I say rather forcefully. "I want to know." I say much quieter.

I wait as Edward takes a deep breath before answering.

"I couldn't help but think that there was some truth in what Jake was saying. I mean he couldn't have pulled all that from out of his ass or anything. There must have been some truth to it. I just needed to think. I wasn't sure if I was good for you. I certainly don't want to ruin your relationship with your parents or anything of that sort. I want to give you everything you could ever need or wish for. I needed to think and to make sure that it was realistic. That I could give you all that. I wasn't sure if I was enough. After what Jake said it seemed that all I could give you was me. Maybe Jake could give you more than I could.

Edward takes another breath and briefly pinches the bridge of his nose before continuing.

"In the end I realized that even if I can't give you everything, I am far too selfish to let you leave." He says, placing the side of his face on my stomach, still looking up at me. "I like to tell myself that if you ever wanted to leave that I would let you leave without a fight. I don't think I could though, realistically."

I smile and run my hands though his hair.

"Edward you are everything. I don't need anything else. We could be living in a box in Central Park and I wouldn't give a shit. And it's a very good thing that you won't let me leave, because if I ever left you, I would be out of my mind and you would need to cure my insanity."

"You could just go to a hospital."

"Nope. You are the only cure." I say, trying to get him out of his serious, slightly grumpy zone that I accidently dragged him into by making tell me why he left.

He smiles and hands me one of the glasses with a spoon before hopping up onto the counter and placing my head on his lap.

Maybe in the end we really should be thanking Jake. In our entire relationship he has pushed us to every limit that we needed. He pushed us to finally get together as a couple, and he pushed us to the most primal and basic of connections. But it was just the connection that we needed.

So let me know what you think. I have two questions I would like to know your opinion on;

1. Would you like an Edward point of view next or should I keep going with Bella?

2. I was planning some fluff for the next chapter and then some more angst, but I'm kind of feeling that it's too soon. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

So I'm kinda stuck on where to take this story right now. PS whatever you say in reviews I will most likely take your advise and do. If I only get one review, then your ideas are what I will do! Thanks all!

Where I Stood- Missy Higgins