"So we come to a place of no return. Yours is the face, which makes my body burn. And here is the name that our sons will learn: Curse the beauty, curse the queen. Curse the beauty, leave me."
-"Monster", Mumford & Sons

…

Chapter Sixteen:

He stood just beyond my front door looking about as flustered as I felt.

His hair was more unruly than usual, sticking up in disorganized chaos. I could easily imagine him running his hands roughly through his hair, not caring where it ended up when he was done abusing the tresses. His cheeks were flushed with the same heat in which I assumed mine were tinted. The temperature had been slowly rising as the sun hung high in the sky and it didn't help that he seemed to be suffocating behind a suit and tie. Sweat dripped from his brow and my whole body tingled as I took in his matted roots and overheated skin.

"Edward?" I tilted my head to the side slightly, staring at the man who I had just been thinking about, writing about, staring at in my childhood drawings and more recent early morning sketch.

His eyes were wide and erratic, not able to decide on where they wanted to look first. They lingered on my eyes for the first few silent seconds in which I had opened the door, but now they were darting between my lips and my apparel. I looked down at my own body, which was on display for his wandering eyes. My light sundress, while usually loose and slightly oversized, was currently clinging to my damp skin leaving little to be imagined as to how I was clothed underneath the muslin. The bralette was hardly doing anything to keep my arousal from being concealed.

I didn't move though, didn't cover my body like I should have, or make any sort of attempt to remove myself from the situation. Instead, I just stood there, letting him stare at me and…burning.

"Edward," I called his name one more time and his eyes met mine. I could see the deep fire that turned beneath the green pools of lava there and it made me want things that I knew I could not and should not want.

"It's very hot," were the only words he spoke.

I took a deep breath, just barely tasting his scent on the tip of my tongue, and the heat pooled inside of me.

"Yes. Would you like to come in?" I found myself asking the question that I probably shouldn't have.

He stepped over the threshold and I suddenly wished that he hadn't. I felt out of control and daring, two very dangerous emotions to possess in the heat of the city while in an enclosed space with a man who looked at you as if you were a tall drink of water in a desert.

I backed up into the living room as he shut the door behind him, leaving us closed off from the outside world. Edward made his way towards me and in those few steps that he took, a tiny voice whispered inside of me, "take me".

As soon as the words were out, the spell hanging over me was broken and I turned away from his approaching figure. I moved towards the windows, shutting them one at a time to give my hands something to do and to put more distance between us.

"I think it's time I put the AC back on," I tried to laugh off the tension in the room, but I could still feel us both radiating heat like we just walked out of the center of the earth.

The self conscious feeling of being exposed finally caught up to me and I kept pulling my dress away from my skin as I moved around the room. When I finally turned around to face him again, he was still standing by the couch, slightly shadowed by the dark hallway where the sunshine never reached.

"Sit down, I'll get you something to drink. You look like you're about to melt in that suit." I forced the words and the smile that stretched weakly across my face.

He still didn't say anything but continued staring at me with that powerful gaze and longing behind his eyes. I had to dismiss myself to the kitchen before my skin completely combusted into spontaneous flames. I took my time pulling ice cubes from the freezer and filling the glass with water from the tap, hoping to compose myself before I walked back into the room and was once again placed under the scrutiny of his molten irises. Just thinking about them made my chest hurt as my lungs tried to pull in as much air as physically possible.

He hadn't sat down like I instructed, but rather he had moved over to the window closest to my bedroom, by the time I reentered the living room. He had removed his jacket, placing it over the back of the couch, and rolled his sleeves up to his elbows, allowing my eyes to linger on his muscular forearms which were dusted with just the lightest of brown hairs, enough to be distinctively masculine, yet still well groomed.

Now I was the one to be caught staring this time, as he glanced over his shoulder at my frozen form. I could tell that he had taken a moment to cool down, just as I had standing in the kitchen longer than necessary as I fetched his glass of water, which was now dripping condensation off the glass and down my arm.

"Water?" My voice creaked in the most embarrassing of ways, but I didn't think my skin could heat up any further than it already had, so I didn't bother to hide my face from view like I usually would.

He pulled his hands from the pockets of his dress pants, pushed his damp locks away from his forehead and took a few steps forward, closing the distance that kept up apart. He didn't look down at the glass as he approached me, his eyes never leaving mine. When he finally stood stalk still before me, he reached for the glass, his fingers barely touching mine as I passed his cold water into his hand, but it was enough.

All composure that I had reclaimed in the kitchen was forgotten as the sharp shock of his fingers running over mine on the cold glass ran through the length of my entire body, leaving me gawking at the tall man before me, a gasp ringing out in the air between us.

We stood there between my living room and kitchen, both of our hands lingering on the glass of water, the only thing keeping our bodies from pressing together, my muslin dress to his crisp blue dress shirt and navy tie. And I wanted it…badly.

I wished he would pull the glass away from my grasp only to throw it to the floor all while keeping his burning eyes on my pleading ones. I wished he would wrap his long, strong arms around my small waist, making me feel little and feminine in comparison to his manly physique. I was desperate to feel his warm skin sink through the thin fabric of my dress and send the slow torturous burn that sizzled behind my skin into a full-fledged fire. But more than anything else, I longed frantically to wrap my sweat dampened arms around his sweaty neck, bury my fingers into his matted locks and pull his face down to my own. I wanted him to kiss me, like it was the last kiss we would ever have, as if the world was ending and we were the only two people left on earth. I wanted it. I wanted Edward to kiss me, push his tongue into my mouth and claim me as his own.

The mere thought sent a thrill of fear and anticipation down my spine.

He wanted it too. I could see it in his open book eyes. He ached just as badly as I did. However, when the moment came that he finally pulled the glass away from my damp and chilled fingers, he stepped away from me and turned his back, walking fully into the living room and finally seating himself in the middle of my well used couch.

Our eyes fell away from one another's. I pressed my cool hand to my heated cheek while he downed his glass of water in just a few quick gulps that could be heard the whole way across the room.

"How are you feeling?"

I looked back at him, sitting on the couch suddenly looking more relaxed than I had felt all week, his head rested in his hands, his elbows on his knees. His eyes lingered on the brushes that painted my wrist in blacks and blues. I had taken the sopping wet bandage off last night and never put it back on.

I took a deep breath of the chilling air that was being pumped into the apartment through the vents and took a seat across from him in my favorite reading armchair, the one with one of those "Home Is Where The Heart Is" pillows that had been stitched by Grandma Swan.

"I'm fine."

"Bullshit."

I snapped my head up at his crass word and his harsh tone. My mouth hung open slightly as I watched his relaxed posture turn into a hard defensive pose in mere seconds.

"Why are you here Edward?" It came out sounding more like an accusation than anything else.

He huffed and ran his hands through his thick hair one more time, pulling at the ends in a why that made my own scalp hurt from just watching him. He rose from his spot on the couch and began to pace, the weight of his body causing the old hardwood to creak underneath his feet.

"Because Bella," was all he said as he moved back and forth between the couch and the coffee table that sat in the middle of the room, separating us from one another.

I rolled my eyes and pulled my bare legs up so I was sitting Indian style in the chair, leaning into the backrest, feeling sweaty, tired, confused and still a little frustrated.

"Now that's bullshit," I muttered and he stopped his determined pacing to point fiery eyes towards me.

"You passed out in the middle of Safeco Field yesterday."

"I don't need you to remind me!" I shouted at him.

He stood quiet for just a moment before responding, "You told me that ever since I came to town you can't write, you can't sleep, and you don't even know how you feel about your own goddamn fiancé anymore."

I opened my mouth to defend myself immediately, feeling the rising anxiety fill my chest again. But he put a hand up before I could utter a word, stopping me in my tracks.

"Just shut up for one fucking minute Bella and let me say this or it will eat me alive!" Now both hands were back in his tresses and I feared for his beautiful locks.

"You say all these things to me and then…then when I try and reach out to you, try to figure out what it all means for 'us'," he points a figure between both of us, "not just you, not just me, but the two of us Bella, you break down into some kinda psychotic episode."

I take a deep breath in, feeling all the air leave my lungs again for the second time that day. I was out of my seat faster than he could blink, my knees hitting up against the coffee table in just a few seconds, the only thing keeping me from slapping him across the face.

"Don't you dare ever call me psychotic again." My words were deadpan and chillingly quiet, but it didn't seem to deter him or his words.

His own legs were right up against the table between us as soon as I was finished spitting fire in his direction. "I didn't call you psychotic Bella, I said you had a psychotic episode, which you did."

"Which in turn means that you are implying that I am psychotic!"

"It's all just words and phrases Bella! Just listen to the fucking message for once. Stop trying to hide behind your bullshit words that you can move around and make into different meanings with a few fucking commas. You looked at me yesterday and you didn't even know where you were. I reached out to help you and all I could see in those goddamn haunting eyes of yours was pure terror. You looked at me and all you saw was him."

The only sound left in the room was the rattling of the vents overhead that sent a chill over my skin. All the heat that once crawled underneath had vanished, and in it's place, ice.

"Did you see that room too? Did you see my hand reaching for you and feel the bruises I left on your hips?" He hissed the words into the air, as I remained silent.

"Yes," the single word was all I could manage. My breath came in short and rapid pants that made my chest feel like it was going to collapse in on itself at any moment.

"Do you see him now? I mean, sometimes you look at me, like when you opened the door," he pointed towards my front door and my eyes followed, liking the distraction from his intense gaze. "And all I want to do is grab you and…and."

He didn't finish his sentence, but the implication of what he was going to say left my mouth feeling dry and my hands left wanting to reach out to his balled fists that stayed steady by his side. I opened my mouth, not really sure what I would say, but he was already back on a tangent, pacing back and forth again.

"But that's fucking ridiculous, because more often than not, when my eyes meet yours there's that little bit of fear that you can't hide, just sitting there staring back at me. It screams out at me and says, 'you know what you did'!"

His pacing grew faster as his words grew in intensity. I was left speechless, a common theme when it came to Edward and my ability to form words, let along full coherent sentences.

"Do you see him right now Bella?" He had stopped his insistent movement and was now giving me one of those raw looks that left me with no where to hide. It was the second time he had asked that question.

"No," I shook my head as I said the word, hoping that he would believe me.

He held his gaze on me for another long, drawn out second before he collapsed back down onto the couch and placed his face into his open palms. He dragged them up and down across his flushed face three or four times before he looked back up at me.

I had wrapped my arms around myself, holding everything together as I usually did, my teeth sinking painfully into my bottom lip. His eyes scrutinized me from head to toe, much like the way he did when I first opened the front door, finding him flushed and gawking, a manic look in his eyes. However, now those beautiful green orbs were softer, a glint of something deep and familiar lingered there. For the briefest of moments I was sixteen and he was seventeen and none of the darkness had crept over us yet. We were just two kids who thought they knew what it meant to love something more than you ever thought possible.

The feeling weighed heavily against my chest and I found that the longer he stared at me the harder it was to drag in each and every breath. I shook my head back and forth a few times, trying to break the hold he had over me.

It's just the heat. My mind whispered to me and I grabbed onto it like it was the last thing keeping me from going insane.

I quickly bent over the coffee table to retrieve his glass, my gaze looking anywhere but at his penetrating one. I could feel the heat returning to the surface of my skin even though the air had begun to cool as the vents worked double time to compensate for the heat that I had allow to fill my small apartment.

"I'll get you more water," I stated dryly, hoping to mask the emotion growing in the back of my throat.

Just as I stood back up, his empty, yet still chilled glass in hand, his fingers wrapped around my wrist. He had moved so quickly from the couch that it only took a mere second before he was towering over my own small stature.

"Bells wait."

My head shot up to meet his deep stare, a rush of air left my chest, and the glass slipped through my fingers. It shattered into a hundred different pieces as soon as it hit the hard wooden surface of the coffee table, but the sound never reached my ears. The blood was pumping too loudly and all I could feel was Edward's skin gripping onto mine, all I could see were deep twisty forests constructed into a pair of perfect orbs sucking me in and devouring my soul.

I don't know if he just ignored the glass shattering or if time had gone very slowly, because it felt like we stood there staring at each other for hours before he finally tilted his face down to see what remained of his water glass. My eyes never left his face, watching as he scanned the floor and the shards that littered it. I found my head tilting to the side, taking the few moments in which I wasn't underneath his gaze to try and memorize his jawline where the scruff I had just seen yesterday had been shaven away. I followed the curve of his nose that was slightly crooked at the bridge and watched intently as his thick black eyelashes gathered together when he blinked once or twice.

Too quickly that private moment was over and his face turned back up to look at me. Just as his eyes met mine again I quickly made the decision to snap the invisible cord that connected us together, tugging roughly at my ribs, and pulled my arm back from his grasp.

In the process of pulling my wrist from his fingers' tight hold, I took an instinctual step backwards and several pieces of the broken glass sunk into the soft pads of my bare feet. The searing heat of the incisions radiated up my foot taking me off guard and I cried out into the silence of the room. I lost my balance trying to step away from the pain but with my body no longer tethered to Edward, I began to fall.

I closed my eyes and waited for the pain to come. And it did.

When I opened my eyes I was on my hardwood floor. My hands took brunt of the fall, which wouldn't have been to much consequence had the layer of sharp shattered glass not have been there to slice through my hands in exactly the same manor that they had my feet a short moment before. And if my bruised wristed has not already suffered a slight sprain yesterday. The acute bolts of pain that shot up from my wrist could be felt the whole way up to my elbow.

"Bella!" Edward crouched over my crumpled form on the ground.

I didn't acknowledge him as I sat up just enough so I could pull my hands from the ground, wincing as I took the pressure off my sprained wrist. I quickly noticed where a small pool of my own blood was staring to gather. Four small shards were stuck in my left hand and a rather large one had sunk into the skin between my thumb and pointer finger on my right. The blood trickled around the clear glass and dripped down my hand in a slow cascade, finding its final resting place on my thin white dress. The blood quickly stained the muslin in brilliant shades of scarlet. I stared wordlessly down at my hands. Silent tears finally began to roll down my face as the shock of the fall faded away, leaving nothing but the feeling of the fire that licked at my inflamed appendages.

"Ah!" I gasped as Edward tried to grab my right hand, pulling it closer to him so he could take in the extent of my injuries. But even the slight jostle had a sharp seeded sting raging up my arms. I yanked it back from his hold, cradling the bloody flesh to my chest.

"Let me see it," He begged, his eyes pleading with mine, his hands held up in front of me asking for permission.

I shook my head giving him a silent 'no'.

He reached out for my wrists anyways and ceased them from their hiding place against my now bloody chest. His fingers were gentle but I still shouted at him as he pried my fingers away from the palm in order to see where exactly the blood was coming from. His right hand pressed into the bruises of my injured wrist. I shouted into his face.

"Stop it!"

Just as the words left my mouth, the apartment door slammed shut and both Edward and I turn to see my fiancé, red faced and furious, standing just beyond the end of the hallway. Even the shadows that lingered in the darkness of the space couldn't shroud his ire as he stared at the scene before him. His soon to be wife was sitting on the floor, smears of blood surrounding her on the hard wood, her thin white dress clinging to her body as her hands stained the fabric in large red splotches. All while her ex-fiancé was crouched over her, her final words of protest to his touch still ringing through the air.

I had determined a long time ago that Michael was a creature of flight. In that desperate final moments where a decision that would change your life had to be made, flight or fight, he would always be like the birds in the sky. It was just in his nature. He was raised by parents who denied that conflict ever existed, despite the fact that the Newton's come from a long line of lawyers. They were a picture perfect family built on loose threads and shattered glass. It didn't take me long to figure that out and for months after such a realization, I spend my time waiting for the day that all my skeletons would come bursting out of the overflowing closet that was my life and trigger his bird like tendencies. But the first year of our relationship came and went and for some reason I stopped worrying. I remember the day distinctly in my mind when I looked at him as he was nose deep in a law book as thick as my neck and realized that we were like two puzzle pieces that fit together perfectly. He was a creature of flight and so was I.

Seeing his face now, red and tense, looking as if he could explode at any minute, I found myself expecting the same thing that I did all those years ago when I was so busy trying to restrain the splintering door of my life from flying open. I expected him to realize that it was all too much and finally follow his instincts, to find the nearest exit and blot out the door. A small part of me wished he would.

So when he dropped the brown paper bags, which I hadn't even notice were in his hands, sending the potent scent of Chinese food wafting into the air as a container of fried rice spilled out of the bag and onto the hardwood, and quickly closed the distance between himself and Edward with just a few long strides there was no time to do anything but watch the scene unfold before me like a bad soap opera. In my mind my fiancé should have taken one look at the two of us, the situation we had gotten ourselves into, and bolted straight out of the door yelling back at Edward as he let, 'you can keep her'.

But instead, this was what happened.

Before Edward could even get a word out, Mike's fist was already connecting with the side of his face. He fell backwards into my coffee table, which gave way at the sudden abnormal distribution of weight and collapsed into pieces on the floor. I quickly tried getting up off the ground, forgetting all about the little piece of glass that were lodged into my hands and feet which were still bleeding out onto the floor around me.

"Mike," I meant to yell out to him, but as soon as I attempted to hold all my weight on my injured feet all the air came whooshing out of me and I was left to only whisper his name through the sudden rush of pain.

"Bella!" My fiancé's attention came back to me, his eyes brimming with fear and concern, which washed over the fury that once existed there.

Just as I began to fall again, the pain too much for me to remain on my feet, his arms were wrapping around my shoulders and under my knees, whisking my off the ground like a knight would his princess. Except there was too much blood on the floor for this to be a fairytale.

"What the hell did you do to her?" Mike screamed back at Edward who was now pulling himself from the wreckage of my coffee table.

"Stop it! He didn't do anything," I finally found my voice, clinging to neck of Mike's t-shirt, making him look at me and not back at Edward.

"What would you call this then Bella?" He sat me down on top of my kitchen table, pushing the stack of newspapers there onto the floor to make room.

"Not his-ouch!" I yelled out as he grabbed my hand much like Edward had just minutes before.

At the sound of my outburst his eyes met mine, a sea of blue meeting red rimmed molten chocolate pools. His tense face softened as he took in my tear swollen eyes, my flushed red cheeks, and the smears of blood that my hands had left on my chest where I had had them cradled. A fat tear that had been welling up this whole time fell from my left eye and slid slowly down my face. Michael caught it just as it met my chin, brushing it away with the pad of his thumb. He brought both hands to my face, engulfing it between the two, brushing away the wetness from underneath my eyes. He stared at me for just a moment more before leaning in slowly and pressing a light kiss to my sweaty forehead.

"Stay here."

Although they weren't the same words he spoke to me before he left the apartment this afternoon, the message was just the same, holding a different meaning than they would outwardly appear with just a sting of command. But this time I quickly nodded my head, taking the command and holding it close to my heart.

He moved into the kitchen, staying in the peripheral of my vision, and revealed Edward standing just in front of the table he ruined, something that I would be mad about later when I wasn't in the same room with my fiancé and ex fiancé, bleeding as I sat on my kitchen table.

I pulled my bloody hands back to my chest out of instinct and winced as the glass brushed my skin. He watched every movement I made.

"Are you okay?"

"No thanks to you." Mike came out from behind the wall that separated the kitchen and the living room, a damp washcloth in his hands, balling up around the wet material which caused small drops of water to drip around his knuckles and onto the floor.

"You know I didn't do this, it was an accident. Give it a rest man." Edward looked tired and annoyed, running his fingers through his messy hair as he spoke.

"Yeah, and I'm sure the night you wrapped your hands around her neck was an accident too."

Up until this moment I had kept my eyes fixated on the ground, not wanted to see the pissing contest that was happening before me. However, Mike's words had my head snapping up to look at him.

Shots had been fired, the preverbal gauntlet had been thrown down, and shit had just hit the fan so hard we were covered in the aftermath of his statement. The room remained quiet, not even the usual sounds of traffic below reached into my city apartment.

Mike was calm and steady as he held Edward's gaze from across the room. His jaw was tense and his hands remained clenched at his sides. It was a fighting stance not one that suggested he was ready to run. Edward on the other hand looked like what I imagine a stick of dynamite looks like just before it's about to explode. The spark moving slowly but surely towards the very point of no return. His hands were also stuck to his sides, clenched so tightly together that I could see his knuckles turning white from where I sat across the room. The tension in his jaw made it obvious that he had his teeth gritted together, enamel grinding against each other. In his eyes I found inflamed wrath and deep black pain so vehemently stretched out into the air that it made something ache from within my chest as the emotions slammed into me like a freight train.

"I think you should get the fuck out of my fiancé's apartment." Mike said calmly and clearly as if he was asking for Edward to pass the goddamn potatoes instead of telling him to fuck off.

After just a moment of silence so thick you could reach out and taste it, Edward spoke. "I'm not going anywhere until Bella tells me so."

Both of their eyes came back to me, the broken, bleeding girl who's head moved back and forth quickly between the only two men she had ever loved. It all felt just a bit like she was watching a cruel game of tennis, her heart replacing the fuzzy green ball that they smacked between each other.

"Are you kidding me right now?" I'm not sure if the words were supposed to actually come out of my mouth or if I had thought they had stayed in my head, but either way they fell from my lips with such disgust and disdain that it had both of them looking sheepish. "I'm sitting on the kitchen table, bleeding, and you too want me to judge this pissing contest you're having?" It was just as ridiculous as it sounded. "You have got to be fucking kidding me right now."

"Bella-", Mike began but I quickly cut him off.

"No, neither of you get to talk right now." I gave them both a look that was enough to have them both trying to avoid my direct line of vision. "Edward go sit down on the couch and try not to break any more of my furniture."

He opened his mouth to say something but quickly decided against it and did as he was told, taking a seat on my closest piece of mismatched living room furniture.

"You're letting him stay? Are you fucking serious Bella?"

"No, I'm not letting him stay. He's just going to sit there until I get someone here to figure this all out, because I don't know if you've notice Mike but I'm bleeding," I shook my hands in his general direction for emphasis, "I just got out of the hospital yesterday because apparently I'm psychotic," I glared at Edward this time, but he already his head hung towards the floor. By the way his shoulder tensed up however, I knew he understood my reference. "And I have a wedding to be at in two days!" I was exasperated and out of breath by the time I was done with my rant.

Just when I thought the whole room was going to implode from the tension, the moment passed. I took in several deep breaths and Mike finally approached me with his dripping washcloth. He asked for my hand politely and I placed it in his own as gently as I could.

"Ah!" I gasped as he whipped the cold cloth against my inflamed flesh, doing his best to work around the small shards of glass still protruding from my hand. I could feel the droplets of blood dripping from my feet as they dangled from the table.

"I'm sorry. It was warm when I first wrung it out."

I gritted my teeth as he continued to make slow daps and swipes. I could only bare it for a minute more before I finally tried to pull my hand from his.

"Stop! Please, it hurts too much with the glass still in." He released his hold on my hand reluctantly and I pressed them back to my chest.

"What do you want me to do?" Mike asked, sounding concerned as he took in the paleness of my skin and noticed the small trembling that had started in my hands.

"Please call Carlisle," I took a deep breath, catching only the overwhelming scent of salt and iron that filled the room.

I closed my eyes and leaned forward, resting my head on Michael's t-shirt clad chest.

A/N:

Well that was something...I hope you enjoyed a little bit of everything from this chapter. I've been loving your reviews, they keep me young.

I have a lot of ideas in the process for other works, but I don't want to start anything until I finish Seven Years.

Keep reading and reviewing,

F.