"How do you ever know for certain that you are doing the right thing?"
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See
…
Chapter Nineteen:
EPOV
"Elizabeth Cordelia Reynolds, will you marry me?"
I thought I might have a heart attack as soon as the words left my mouth, never to be taken back and swallowed deep down in the pit of my soul. The immense silence that stretched out around us was deafening and didn't help my nerves or the tears that I feared may begin to fall at any moment.
"What?" When she finally spoke, it was just that slow one worded question. Nothing more.
"Marry me Lizzy." I wouldn't ask again, I think it would kill me to pose it in a question again.
She stared at me harshly. She sat back slightly to take all of me in, her hands remained in my grasp and I clung to them desperately hoping that they would keep me grounded to the earth. Her gaze was penetrating and garish but I didn't look away from her green blue eyes that were so similar to my own, yet vastly different, just like us.
Suddenly she stood from her spot on the bed next to me, but not willing to lose the connection of our hands, I went with her. She tried to pull them away but I couldn't seem to tell my hands to let go.
"What are you doing?"
"I'm asking you to marry me." I wasn't going to sugar coat it anymore.
"I think you are high Edward." She yanked again against my hold.
"I already told you that I am of sound mind. I am a reasonably, prudent man who is asking you to marry him." Speaking lawyer to her was the only way I knew to get into her head, which was always filled to the brim with both logic and defense.
"Why?" She yelled out at me.
I let out a deep breath, unprepared for her question. How could I explain this to her without making it seem as if she were my consolation prize to Bella? And how could I even begin to explain the real relationship that I had once had with Bella?
"It's complicated."
She began violently trying to get away from the grip I had on her hands, apparently unsatisfied and frustrated with my vague answer.
"Will you stop struggling with me and listen to what I'm saying?!" I cried out, just inches from her face.
"No, Edward, I will not." We were now just inches apart, both breathing heavily into each other face, hot air of exasperation. "You're in my hotel room, at 1 o'clock in the morning. You just ask me to marry you." She emphasized each sentence, trying to get me to hear how crazy this all was.
But I already knew that this whole trip was insane, so why not just dump some more on top of the growing mound.
"And…and you're not saying anything at all Cullen! You're just asking me to be your wife, and we've never even discussed the possibility of having a romantic relationship!"
"I know Lizzy, and I'm not letting you go until you answer me one way or the other." I spoke calmly, not wanting to fight with her.
"How am I supposed to answer a question that I didn't even know was relevant in our relationship until you barged in here looking like you just got off a crack bender?"
"Lizzy, please?" I had nothing left to give.
We both stood in the silence again, looking at each other, both parties just trying to understand how to give the other what they wanted.
"Please what Edward?" She whispered. "If you're not crazy, and your not intoxicated, then what? Do you love me?"
That question ripped me apart from the inside out. I couldn't lie to her, to my best friend who loomed in the shadows of my life, my success, my business. However, how do you tell someone you care about that you could never love them the way you love the person your heart was meant to be with?
I sighed and tried to tug her back down to the bed, knowing that I had a lot of explaining to do to the women who I had just ask to marry me.
"Please sit down and I'll explain Lizzy. Please." I wasn't passed begging for her answer at this point. I was desperate to know how to move on with my life. If it weren't with Elizabeth I would have to find something else, because I would not ask another.
I felt shitty just thinking about putting the girl with the round face and pinched pink cheeks into this situation. She deserved more than this. She deserved more than me, but I was a selfish creature by nature and she was beginning to look like the only glue that could hold me together.
We plopped down on the bed together, our hands still joined. I rubbed the tops of hers with the pad of my thumb, hoping to bring some sort of comfort.
"What are you doing here Edward?"
I sighed again, leaned in and placed my forehead against hers, so our lips were so close that either of us would just have to lean in to meet the other.
"I've been a shitty person for most of my life, but I think you already knew that." I had closed my eyes and a small smile pulled at the corner of my mouth.
"This is about Bella, isn't it?"
"Yes," I breathed out. The sound of her name made my heart thud faster against my chest.
"You loved her." It wasn't a question. Lizzy was always so observant, sometimes so much so that it got her in trouble.
I swallowed against the large lump forming in the back of my throat that I felt was making it hard to breathe. I focused on pulling in shallow breaths of her floral and earthy sent, one much different from the sweet strawberries and lilies that floated around Bella when she walked into a room.
"I have always loved her Lizzy. I have loved her from afar and up close. I have had her in my arms and then I ruined it all." I felt the single tear push from between my close lids and fall down and over my cheek in a dramatic fashion.
"What did you do?" Her words were still only whispers. Her fingers began their own light strokes of my shanking palms.
I took a deep breath, feeling the heat radiating off her body pressed against mine, making me feel only slightly less lonely as I opened my mouth to tell her of the piles of skeletons stacked in my closet, so thick and deep it was now impossible to close the door fully.
One year. It had already been over a year since I pulled my Isabella into my arms in front of that café in Port Angeles, told her I loved her, and kissed her so fully I could still feel her warmth radiating out from my lips.
Now I watched her from the bleachers of Fork's stadium, struggling to do her mile around the track that surrounded the football field. The rest of the girls were much farther ahead, but she didn't seem to even notice the distance between them, taking her own pace to finish the last lap. She never was very athletic.
Just as she finished her fourth lap around, her eyes caught sight of me sitting there watching her, while I should have been in some stupid seventh period class that I didn't really care about.
She looked over her shoulder at the congregation of girls gathered around the gym teacher who seemed to be doing more gossiping than teaching, before making her way slowly up the steps to confront me.
"What are you doing here? Don't you have calculus?" She sounded just a tad bit self-conscious.
"So? I wanted to see you and now I'm here."
There was a little voice inside me that craved her arms wrapped around mine, feeling her small frame trapped underneath my hold. I wanted her to know that she was mine and mine alone.
She stood awkwardly a few steps away from me, her arms wrapped around her middle.
"What's wrong?" I asked, the feelings of wanting to assert my dominance over her are washed away and in their place concern blossomed.
"Nothing," she responded, pushing her untied shoelace around with her foot.
"You're lying. What is it?"
She sighed and than seemed to get a grasp on her emotions as she raised her head to meet my gaze. There was fire in her eyes and that same little voice from before growled inside, telling me to crush the determined look that lingered just behind her chocolate brown irises. The feeling was almost all consuming, something that was happening more frequently with the emotions I was feeling lately.
I took a deep breath and tried to push the zeal of the emotion down.
"Well I…" she cleared her throat and then started over, "I don't like the way you talked to me at lunch today. I think you should apologize."
"HA!" I laughed out and the thing inside me grinned wickedly at the way her face fell so suddenly.
"It's not funny Edward."
"I think you're upset about nothing Bells."
"You embarrassed me in front of the entire lunch room!" She cried out.
A snarl came from deep within me as the anger bubbled up quickly. I tried to shake it away with a few back and forth motions of my head.
"What did I say to embarrass you?"
She huffed out a breath, the crisp fall wind caused her to shiver violently even though she was wrapped in several layers of gym clothing.
"You…you basically told the entire school that I was still a-"
"A virgin?" I practically yelled, which caught the gym teacher's attention as well as that of the girls around her who all started to giggle.
Her hand came quickly towards my face, ready to slap me. Part of me wanted her to, thinking that the same statement I had practically yelled across the entire cafeteria was worth a hard smack to the jaw. However, this new growing beast inside me did not like her disrespect.
I grabbed her wrist before she could lay a finger upon my face. I squeezed at the small skin and bone between my fingers, knowing that if I wanted to, I could snap it in half without flinching. I rose from my seat on the cold metal bleachers, looming over her small figure. I took her chin in my free hand and pulled her face close to my own. Our eyes danced in violent waves looking at each other. Her deep brown eyes filled with fear and yet a fierce independence that the beast longed to snuff out, while mine were two pools of green fire that wished to reach out and lick her skin, char it and yet cherish every inch of it.
"If you have a problem with it Isabella, it is a situation that can be easily remedied." The smile that crept up my face did not feel like my own. My whole body vibrated with a strange current.
We stared at each other for a moment longer before she yanked her wrist from my fingers and I let her break the physical hold I had over her. She backed away slowly. Her eyes glazing over with unshed tears that suddenly made me feel like a complete asshole.
"You're such a jerk Edward." Her words lashed out at me much harsher than I thought they would.
"Bella," I went to reach out for her, suddenly know that what I had just done was borderline abuse.
She quickly evaded my hand and turned from me, running back down the bleachers and over to the group of girls still huddled around at the other side of the field. I watched intently as she hid behind one of the girls she like to sit in the library with long after school was over.
A million emotions ran through my body in a split second. It left me feeling emotionally and physically exhausted, so I walked to my car, not caring that the school day wasn't over yet. I peeled out of the student parking lot with only one thought in my head as I sped home.
What had I just done?
I was practically laying in Lizzy's lap by the time I had finished telling her every last gory detail of the horror story that was my life, except I was the monster and Bella was the beautiful yet naive girl who couldn't get away from my torturous grip. Her fingers ran slowly through my crazy locks of hair, her short blunt nails working out all the knots. It reminded me of the nights I spent in my mother's lap when I was sick as a child. She would slid the red hot water bottle underneath my shirt and pull my back against her, running her fingers through my hair until I fell asleep in her arms.
"Why come back Edward? What not just try and let her and yourself find some other kind of happiness?" Everyone was starting to repeat the same sentiment over and over, but with Lizzy I found the answer tumbling over my tongue and out of my mouth.
"I'd been thinking about coming back here since the moment I left. By the time I worked up the emotional and mental strength to do it I got a letter from Alice. We never talked about her…about Bella or what happened, but there was one line in this letter, just eight words, but it crushed every hope of me ever coming home for the foreseeable future."
"What were they?"
"I ran into Bella at the store today."
A comfortable silence spread out between us, the ignorance of my long kept secret finally allowing us to see each other clearly.
"I missed weddings and…and funerals. I couldn't be there for my sister or mother, couldn't hug Emmett when he found out Rose was pregnant, I couldn't even talk to my father over the phone let alone look him in the eye, and yet I wanted to be here, I was going to be here…" I trailed off, staring out the French doors of Elizabeth's hotel room, gazing into the dark moonless sky, the rain still falling in heavy sheets.
"Then Bella came back." She finished my thought for me.
"Yeah."
"So why now?"
I couldn't help the snort that came out of my nose. She tugged at my hair and I rolled over in her lap so I was looking straight up at her smooth, pretty face and into her tired eyes. I didn't even know what time it was anymore. It seemed irrelevant now.
"You left me the memo for the meeting with Seattle Sounds. I saw the invoice for this hotel and for some strange reason I just knew that I had to come. It goes against every thing I've been fighting against for almost a decade, my doctor's advice, and even the sane part of me that told me it would never work. But I did it anyway." I shrugged and laughed one more time before continuing, with her eyes captivated on my face.
"You know I didn't even call my mom until I was halfway here? I just found out that she didn't even tell my dad I was coming, hence all the drama of the last few days." I had even told her everything that had happened up until the hours before I came and asked for her hand in marriage.
"Do you think some part of you wanted to get her back? One last desperate attempt?"
I stared up at the woman who was for all intents and purposes my only and best friend. I wonder if she could see the raw emotion that lingered in my wide, exhausted eyes.
"Yes." I said softly.
She began to run her fingers through my hair again and I closed my eyes, letting the calming strokes lull me into a half conscious state.
"What are we going to do about this Cullen?" She finally broke the quiet, her voice sounding heavy and ready for a long sleep.
I sat up from my long held spot on her lap, rearranging myself so I held one of her hands in my own again and lay down beside her on the bed. This time I pulled her body towards my own, so she could rest her head on my shoulder, our interlaced fingers lying on my chest, and with my free arm I wrapped it around her waist tugging her snug against me. She was warm and still smelled like day old flowers and spring grass moving through the wind.
"You could marry me Reynolds," I sighed.
A long pause between us made me think that she had fallen asleep, or that she still wasn't even considering my ridiculous suggestion.
"I have conditions." She finally spoke up, sounding clearer and more awake than before.
I blinked rapidly, thinking that I had fallen asleep, but when I looked down at her, her face was tilted up towards mine looking very serious and thoughtful.
"Of course," I said through a shaky breath.
"If you want me to be your wife, than you have to agree to be my husband. You can't decide six months into a marriage that you're going to go find Bella or whatever. It has to be a real life together. Do you understand the weight of that?"
"Do you?" I asked skeptical that this conversation was actually being held.
She nodded her head and than I did the same, a mutual understanding between us for the first time all night.
"What else?" I prompted.
She stared at me for a moment, gauging me, and probably my sanity, before she spoke again.
"Kiss me."
I was only slightly taken back by her request. Of all the stipulations I had been expecting from her all she wanted was fidelity and a kiss?
"Just a kiss, nothing else?" I smiled down at her, my heart pounding slowly against my ribs, each beat sounding like "traitor" in my ears.
"No, there's definitely a lot more that we need to talk about, but it's almost three in the morning and we have a meeting we have to be at in less than six hours, so for now I just need to know that I'm going to spend the rest of my life with a guy who can kiss me properly."
"So you'll marry me?" Part of me desperately hoped she would say 'no', the more tired part of my mind secretly longed for anything to get Bella from my mind.
"Kiss me and I'll let you know."
I pull my hand from hers and slipped it just under her chin, tilting her face up towards my own.
~ ooOoo ~
I woke to the sound of a hair drying being used in the distance. My head pounded harshly against the inside of my scull and my body felt like it weights twice its normal mass. I groaned into the pillow my face was nuzzled into, the warmth so pleasant I nearly fell completely back into my dreamless slumber. However, soon a new annoyance had ripped me from the blackness of my eyelids.
"Cullen, get up." Lizzy called my name, shoving me awake with a few violent pushes to my shoulder.
"Why?" I groaned.
"Because we need to be at Seattle Sound's offices in an hour and you are wearing sweatpants."
"Shit." I sat up rubbing my eyes and dragging my fingers through my usually tangle free hair.
Sitting there, I watched my business partner race around the room of her hotel, pulling jackets on, applying daps and swipes of makeup, and curling her hair. She was halfway through her first cup of coffee it seemed.
Did that all really happen last night?
Did I ask Lizzy to marry me?
Did I kiss her until we were both breathless and just a little too hot underneath our Columbia shirts?
Did she say yes?
"Edward," she pulled me from thoughts of proposals and kisses, "go home and get dresses. We can talk about it all later."
Driving to my parents' house and racing to my childhood bedroom to sort out an outfit through the handfuls of clothing I had scattered over the floor last night, all happened in a blur. Everything felt numb and yet it also seemed like a thousand live wires were running through my veins, sending sharp shocks to my system.
"Edward?" My mother called for me just as I bounded down the stairs and was ready to try and make it back to Seattle in record times.
"Yeah Ma?" I ducked into the kitchen and graciously accepted the coffee that she handed to me.
"Won't you sit down with us and have some breakfast?"
I looked over at the small breakfast nook, where I grew up eating smiley face pancakes and learning how to steep tea for the proper amount of time. My father sat in the wooden booth that took up the whole corner, his face looking aged, tired, and yet calm.
"Come eat something with us son." He said softly.
I moved my gaze slowly between him and my mother.
"I…I really want to dad, but I have a meeting I have to be at by nine. Can…can we grab some lunch in the city today?" I couldn't help but stutter as his cold blue eyes stared at me.
"One o'clock?" My mother chimed in.
"Yeah. I'll uh…I'll see you guys then."
~ ooOoo ~
"Edward? Did you hear what I said?" Lizzy smacked my arm.
We were seated in a long and sleek looking conference room, halfway through a heated negotiation with Seattle Sound, which would open up a business deal that could allow the company access to the entire northwestern peninsula, a huge move for my little, yet expanding company.
We were taking a short recess to discuss privately with our respective partners, but I hadn't heard a thing that Lizzy had said since the men and women in business professional wear closed the door behind them almost five minutes ago.
"What?" I asked.
I had been lost in my own mind since I woke up this morning in my lawyer's bed. My best friends bed to be more specific. My lawyer and best friend, and now fiancée's bed. But that wasn't necessarily the problem with the whole scenario that kept my mind in a constant loop of confusion and frustration. No, rather, it was the intense images of Bella that replayed in a loop, like a broke record.
What are you doing?
Lizzy's words from the night before rang out through my head.
"I don't know Lizzy," I answered her question, but it wasn't the one she had been inquiring about now, but the one she had posed last night.
When I looked at her blonde hair and blue green eyes I wanted to feel something other than panic and dismay. I wanted to feel hope for a new beginning, joy for a door closing and another opening. And while it didn't feel wrong kiss her last night, holding her close to me as she ran her fingers through my hair while I slipped my hand just barely underneath her oversized Columbia shirt, it didn't necessarily feel 'right'. And I knew why.
Elizabeth was not Bella and Bella was not Elizabeth, they were not interchangeable.
What are you doing?
"Oh god," she groaned next to me, placing her face in her open palms. "You're regretting this entire thing!" She whisper yelled.
"No." I tried to say it firmly, but it sounded more pathetic and weak to me than anything else.
"Oh god," she repeated, "Do you know that I promised myself that I would never let myself kiss you?"
I turned to look at her.
"Yeah. While all my friends were walking around talking about how kissable you look all the time. I never even wanted to kiss you though. Not even once. But I was always afraid that something stupid was going to happen and we'd end up at a bar or alone one night and gravity would just take over. So, if you want to take it all back that's fine, but I'll be so pissed that I let myself kiss you."
Her sentiment about the kiss perplexed me even more. Looking at her now I knew that I could spend my whole life completely content on kissing Lizzy until the day we both died. I imagined for a second last night that there would even been a flame that could grow into a mutual love. I could see a happy marriage, a beautiful and successful partnership in our business, even a couple of small children running around my parents' backyard with blonde hair and green eyes.
A life with Lizzy would be fine. It would be happy and loving, but it wouldn't be the life that I was supposed to have. It wouldn't be the one that I longed for in that pit that I tried to bury my past in.
"I have to go."
"What?"
"I have to do something." My voice sounded eerily calm, but my heart felt like it was going to beat out of my chest any second.
"Edward, we have a contract to discuss in like seven seconds!" She grabbed onto the cuff of my jacket, but I was already too far way from her to hold it securely between her fingers.
"I'm sorry Love, but I just need to go see her."
"Edward!" She called to me just as I opened the door of the conference room.
I turned to her, my best friend looking concerned and anxious for me but not hurt or betrayed by my action despite the fact that I practically beg her to marry me last night. But that wasn't over yet. I wasn't giving up on Elizabeth, but I wasn't ready to let go of Bella either. I had to see her, if just one last time. I needed to see my first love with her heart shaped face and plump pink lips, I needed to smell the strawberries and lilies wafting off her chestnut hair and melt under the gaze of her molten chocolate eyes.
"Be careful Cullen. Don't let yourself get hurt."
I don't think that I loved my lawyer, my friend, my maybe-fiancée more than in that moment, with her looking at me as if she would do anything to help me with the pain I held inside for so long. She asked nothing of me and was even willing to give up her name and her life to make me happy.
I smiled wildly back at her.
"We're not done with that conversation Reynolds, just putting it on pause."
I ran out of the office building than, feeling like I just delivered the best one-liners in the history of cheesy romantic comedies that cinema had to offer and that I was about to run to the airport, or some shit, to sweep my love off her feet and confess my undying love to her.
It didn't happen like that though.
In my haste, I managed to catch a cab that could only get me six of the ten blocks that I needed to travel to get to the address of Bella's apartment that I had already shamelessly staked out more than once in the last week. The traffic was dense in the bustle of a typical city commute, and I eventually became fed up with it all and decided to run the rest of the way on foot. The air outside was muggy and humid from last nights rain and today's high temperatures and beating sun.
So that's how I ended up in front of Bella's apartment door, sweat dripping down my back, soaking into my shirt, and clinging to every inch of my skin. I felt like a complete mess as I finally managed to move my hand up and knock on the door in front of me. The pounds I lay to the wood sounded harsher than I meant them to be and more determined than I felt. As soon as I did it, I wanted to turn and run back down the stairs, go back to Lizzy with my tail between my legs. However, before I could even think about moving from my spot, Bella pulled open the door and stood in front of me.
She was a vision on white, in a thin fabric dress that clung to her own dewy looking skin, and rosy tinted flesh that was left plentifully uncovered and flushed. She looked warm in more than one way and almost immediately I ached for her touch.
"Edward?"
A/N:
Happy Wednesday my lovely readers. I hope this chapter brings you close to a great day or helps to brighten an otherwise bad day. This is our last chapter with Edward...for now, and I must admit that I am afraid that I will have trouble going back to telling Bella's side of their story now. I've become very attached to the emotional rollercoaster that is Edward Cullen.
This is a tangled web that is being weaved by Edward. What do you think about it? How do you feel about Lizzy? Does any of this even make any sense? I was overwhelmed by the lovely and generous reviews of shock and praise from the last chapter. Let me know how you feel about this one! Leave me a review and let me know your thoughts.
F.
P.S.
Just in case you were wondering. The beginning quote is not my usual music lyrics, but rather a book quote. I just finished reading All The Light We Cannot See, and was inspired by Anthony Doerr's beautiful story and his talented writing. His characters and story really pushed me to finish this chapter on time. I highly suggest it if you're looking for a good summer read.