N/A: The same disclaimer still applies.

Previously:

I was on the move again, now for different reasons and with the resolve to stop being a coward I decided to stop running from Isabella all together and finally face her. This time, when I looked at her window, I noticed that she was home –maybe she had been all along, but I had not had the strength or the resolve to face her. I breathed in, trying to inhale some courage in the process and intruded Bella's home once more. Praying that she had it in her to forgive me once again.

Memoirs of Her Scent

Ch16: Knock on Her Window, Knock on Her Door

I waited for you,

But you did not show.

I needed you.

So where did you go?

You told me to wait,

Said you would be here.

And though I have not seen you,

Are you still here?

I cry out with no reply

And I cannot feel you by my side.

So I will hold tight to what I know,

You are Gone.

Fist raised, just about to knock on Bella's door I hesitated once again, feeling nervous. It was practically laughable. Me, nervous! It was such a new, foreign, and unnatural feeling to me that I really did not know how to proceed. Yet, I was considering so many things: What was I to say to her once I faced her? Would she even listen to my excuses? How would she feel upon seeing me here, back at her door once again? It was all terrifying thoughts, facing the damage I might have left behind. I wanted to know and I did not want to know, the constant war. It was never ending!

A thought occurred to me and I chuckled low enough that Bella would not be alerted to my presence yet. Why had I not thought of doing this earlier? All I need to do was reach out, feel what she was feeling and hope that my actions, my abandonment, had not left her more broken than when I had come to her with promises that I could not hold my end to. My brow furrowed slightly as I reached out. The onslaught of emotions that I had been preparing for never came. I was perplexed, worried even.

All I was getting form Bella was an aching numbness, its likeness matched no other I had ever known or encountered in my lifetime. There was so much agony and despair in that numbness that I felt as if it was clawing and gnawing at my insides. It was the kind of agony people that suddenly found themselves without a voice would experience after trying to be heard and realizing that no matter how much they tried to scream no sound would come out –they would never be heard, so they would give up all together. This feeling, it was like being in a dark room completely cut off from your senses, disorienting.

How was it that someone so warm could feel such a cold emotion? Despite it all, I could feel and taste her sweet smelling warmth emanating from behind her practically closed-door surround me and melt away with its embrace at my cold exterior. I noticed other things too, Bella was moving just behind this door, which, now that I realized, was slightly ajar with a soft glow poring through it onto the hallway and pooling at my feet.

Without much thought as to what I was doing, I chanced a look through the small gap and my eyes immediately found Bella. She was standing with one naked foot on the floor and the other propped on her bed routinely applying some saccharine scented lotion evenly on her shaven legs, all the while wrapped in a powder-blue towel and her damp hair cascading around her shoulders dripping slightly and causing her to shudder occasionally as some of the escaping droplets disappeared into her towel with seemingly dawdling caresses.

With difficulty, I swallowed hard and took one step away from her door and turned away, like a gentleman should, giving her time to fully dress. I tried treading on gentlemanly thoughts as I paced seemingly on spot and avoided being seen by Bella through the door's gap. Being a gentleman had never been more difficult, my thoughts kept going back to what I had just witnessed in such vivid detail and so continuously that I had started to notice several things that now seemed out of place in that... gulp… thought provoking scene.

Her vacant expression being one of the many things that had felt wrong, to begin with, that I had unknowingly turned a blind eye to in this uncanny predicament I currently found myself in. Bella was numb and vacant, devoid of any emotion whatsoever. All that was left was a searing void, one that I might have helped intensify.

Suddenly, like shredded paper trying to hold back a damp, I felt Bella's walls of numbness fall and her onslaught of emotions hit me with such force that it was surprising I was still standing on my own two feet. I quickly glanced at her; she had her arms crossed around her torso as if she were willing herself to stay glued together and not succeeding. It was like trying relentlessly to glue something together with water, it would hold until it dried and fell apart instantly, futile.

Then I caught the salted taste of her tears tracking a path down her smooth skin and onto her marred and bruised arm as she hasten to cast them and her deterioration away, feeling ashamed of her self and yet, somehow, still not caring or lacking the want to care.

She had completely given up. Letting her sadness engulf me, I realized that she had become a walking, breathing, and speaking presence that would always remain being such, a presence of pretense, going through the motions, with no room to filter all of the things that constantly shifted and changed around her. What a poignant perplexity. Unless I got moving and did something drastic and altering about it, which I would, even if it was for selfish reasons, say, self-satisfaction.

It was the least I could do, I reasoned, and my purpose turned to resolve. I would fight Bella to win her a chance at reopening her eyes to the world around her. True, it would be a world devoid of many things she once new and loved, but a new awareness nonetheless. She just could not continue to stagger on through her life like this, not if I could help it. Her existence was so fleeting after all…

Again, surprisingly so, it occurred to me that this might as well had been one of the hardest things I have ever faced. I contemplated that, probably, going into the battle field might have required less pondering and warring over which path of action to take. How ironic.

I took a purposeful step toward her door, took a deep breath, held it, and swallowed through cotton –okay, not cotton it just felt that way. Were could I have found the cotton anyway, and more curiously so, why would I swallow it? Really… okay, so I'm stalling I get it, I'm moving on now… okay, NOW.

As quickly as I could I mentally and emotionally prepared myself –and reassured myself that she was,in fact, fully clothed– before a quick wrap of my knuckles resonated on Bella's door. It echoed so loudly in my ears that I flinched. Bella froze for a moment on the other side before setting herself into motion.

As soon as the door flew open to a Bella with such a ready smile and Charlie's name so readily on her lips, I regretted the shock or disappointment that she would encounter once she realized it was I. And that was the musing of best case scenarios, let me tell you.

"Char– Dad I thought– " I swallowed again as Bella's words fell short on her lips as she looked at me and realized that, well, lets face it, I was not Charlie. I was contemplating just closing my eyes and waiting for the screaming and onslaught of emotions to make a decent vampire out of me or break me, truly tempting. Only I have never been known to be a coward and, lets face it, silence was the only thing deafening me at the moment. I stared directly into Bella's enormous eyes as she blinked in quick succession. She frowned, I continued to stare, only now I tried for a timid smile that felt more like a guilty grimace and just as I was about to say something realization, followed quickly by shock, disbelief, out rage –I cringed at that one–, and confusion sprinkled with some fragile hope seemed to dawn on her much too quickly and then, shaking visibly, she slammed her bedroom door in my face. I blinked, trying to process what had happened. Words failed me.

I was… taken aback. Shocked. My fist clenched and unclenched as a tremor passed through me. For a moment I was at a loss, not knowing what to do or how to approach her best. I did not want to scare her. Shaking my head and trying not too think too much into this unavoidable setback I focused on Bella, behind her door she was on the move.

She was backtracking, stumbling clumsily as she tried on unsteady feet to run away from me in such confined space. I almost chuckled at the erratic sound of her heart pumping its maddening hypnotizing allure, thinking darkly how this was the most inappropriate time for her to act like prey and trigger the predator in me. With much effort I pushed instinct to the back of my mind were it continued to nag and went for the doorknob and turned it, the door opened soundlessly.

My eyes made quick work of assessing the scene and found Bella nowhere in sight. Her discarded damp towel from earlier remained on the floor, near the foot of her bed, was the only thing that was out of place in Bella's otherwise orderly room. Inhaling I moved forward as I followed her scent, my head quickly turning to the sound of Bella's heart, still pounding healthily –if missing a few beats– to my immediate right just beyond her closed closet door. I moved closet to her hiding place and I could feel her tremble travel from head to toe as she whimpered like a wounded animal, shuffling in place. I sent passive, unthreatening waves her way, trying to soothe her nerves.

"Stop, don't–" she croaked, begged. The sound of her voice stopped me on my tracks, it sounded like she had not used her voice in a while. I ignored her plead and opened the fragile closet door careful not to startle her and there I found her, on the floor, hugging her knees desperately to her chest with one hand while the other, clutched at her heart. She looked like she might crumble into pieces.

I did not speak as I moved cautiously in her direction, my gaze softening, trying to show her that I did not pose her any harm whatsoever. She tried scooting away from me but there was no more room to squirm away, she had reached the corner of the wall. Noting this, in a more desperate attempt, she buried her face between her knees and covered her ears with her arms around her, letting her hair cascade about so as to cover her face completely from my view.

Now that I was before her I wondered if I would dare touch her, scoop her into my arms, and steal her away from all her pain. The only problem with that was that I was to blame for some of that pain. Defeated, knowing not what to do, I dropped to my knees before her. She did not stir, only managed to collect herself more tightly and held still, stubbornness pouring out of her in tidal waves.

"Bella," I said, quietly, even so, she flinched. It sounded like begging to my ears. I sighed. "Please." No matter what approach I tried I was unsuccessful at gaining her attention, she just remained tightly wrapped in her human shell, unrelenting. For a while I sat next to her, making sure not to touch her, my head lightly and continuously banged against the wall I had propped myself on, trying to think.

Sighing I stood up, tired of this nonsense. It was taking us nowhere! Bella stiffened and I scooped her up, dragging her by force out of her self-made shelf. For a moment she flailed around without a sound before giving up with an indignant huff. The all-present stubbornness rearing its head full force, really, it took all of me not to throw her unceremoniously onto the bed.

"Bella, you are going to listen to me, weathered you want to or not. Soon, you'll have no choice but to listen to me." I proclaimed conversationally, though thoroughly irritated. Bella, who had been avoiding looking at me no matter how many ways I tried catching her eyes before I had given up, looked at me then and glared. That was an improvement.

I felt encouraged… but now, well, she was kind of just, glaring at me. I gulped and looked away; this was way different than I had pictured our little reunion going. Not that I had expected much, but I had not expected this either. That was when I gave up, with a sigh I sank to the floor and rested my elbows on my knees, deciding to glare at the floor I began to mutter under my breath about blood and the complicated anatomy that were women –specially the one before me.

Several stretched out moments passed like this before a change in the atmosphere happened and suddenly Bella's fingers were buried in my blond, windswept tresses and I looked up slowly. Should I or could I hope that she would once and for all allow me to have my say? My breath caught as I looked at her, I had been expecting her to have a caved in look about her, maybe throw in some silent tears. There was none of that. She was just looking at me, really looking at me, her eyes looking through the shattered windows of my eyes trying to find the soul that might just be lingering around within reach. It was the kind of gaze that felt too intense, too accusatory.

Suddenly I felt so vulnerable that I tried looking away. However, before I could, Bella stood and thinking that she was about to leave I froze and tried to remember how to make some sound come out of my mouth and speak. Two warm fingers halted my attempts, silently hushing me, while Bella took it upon herself to deliberately place herself in the gap between my knees and held me. I was dumbstruck.

She was consoling me. The person I had wronged was actually hugging me to her and comforting me. I should be the one doing the comforting my mind shouted at me; I did not deserve this kindness, much less hers. And yet, I could not bring myself to rip myself away from Bella as she held my rigid body to her warm one. For some time I fought it, hoping she would get the hint and give up, realizing it was a bad idea, no such luck. She held onto me until I caved and my body filled with the calm that oozed from every one of her pores enveloped me and I began to feel my defenses falling.

It did not take long before my body began shaking with silent, tearless sobs. I was perplexed as to the source of this development. Why was I crying? I tried searching through Bella's numbness and kindness into my feelings for the cause and found that these were Bella's and my own sorrows manifested. The combination of the two being too much for me to hold back any longer had leaked out in this manner.

Long after my sobs had subsided, neither of us spoke for a while and when the silence had finally been broken it had not been to the sound of my voice.

"Liar," Bella pronounced quietly, twisting my dead heart and stomping on it as she ripped my guts out for all that I was worth.

A/N: If you liked it, please review and I'll come through.