Hey guys! Sorry this took so long, stuff got crazy, and I kind of lost my inspiration for this story. Thanks to my awesome friends though, the plot bunnies are back. Also, thank you so much for the wonderful reviews, guys! Hope you like this!
"Hey, Bella." A husky voice caught my attention as I turned to leave the police station. I turned towards it, my breath catching in my throat. It was Dean.
"Do you want that coffee?" he asked, gazing at me with eyes full of something dark and worshipful that I couldn't name.
It took me a few tries to make my voice work. "Sure," I finally croaked, feeling impossibly conflicted; Edward would be back soon, but I couldn't leave Dean like this, with so many things unsaid.
We left our vehicles in the parking lot and walked to the coffee shop.
The coffee shop was almost empty, just a few old lumberjacks swilling the dreary remains of their coffee like thick brown mud in the bottom of their mugs.
We made our orders, and I picked a table while Dean waited for our drinks. It was taking me longer than I'd expected to get my quickly-beating heart under control. It was still pounding at my ribs like a jackhammer, every glance from Dean sending it into further into paroxysms of tortured emotion.
Dean came back with our coffees, setting mine down in front of me while he slid into his chair, his magnificent muscles bunching and writhing under his jeans.
"So," he said. His voice was impossibly low and deep, the echoes of his monosyllabic utterance reverberating in my very bones, and causing a long shiver to run up my body, tingling like the gentle caress of an electric eel. "How've you been?"
"Um, okay, I guess." My hand shook, and my coffee spilled, splashing over my hand and onto the table top like a pungent brown tsunami. "Dang it!"
"Here, let me help." Dean was at my side before I even registered his presence. He took a napkin and carefully dabbed at my hand, the touch of the paper like a downy feather against my skin. I leaned into his space, inhaling his familiar scent—leather, gun oil, the pungent musk of his manliness. My head swam, and my breathing faltered. Edward, I had to make myself remember. I love Edward.
Then he pulled back, perhaps sensing my sudden whirling cascade of hurricane emotions, and the moment was broken.
"I'm getting married," I blurted, the words crashing out of my mouth like an unstoppable avalanche. As soon as they're out, I want to take them back, want to snatch them out of the air like a mosquito on a bug zapper.
Dean reeled back, startled. "What?"
Now the words aren't so much an avalanche as something thick and slimy that's dragging its way out of my throat. "In two weeks."
"To who?" Dean is frowning, his cherry-blossom pink mouth twisted in a serpentine frown.
I don't know what to say—do I tell Dean the truth that my heart pleads to share with him, or do I keep it from him?
"Bella?" He was staring at me with the luminous viridian emerald pools of his eyes. Should I tell him the truth? I felt something for Dean that I had never experienced before—how could I lie to him? Every lie that I told him felt like it would be a dagger in my own heart.
"Dean," I said, my words slow and unwilling, like a volcano of slow-running molasses. "The truth is—"