He carries me over to a stool and sets me down. "Bella, please stop crying."
I fist the shirt on his back tighter. "I can't," I say in a hiccup that makes me start to laugh and cry at the same time.
He slightly pulls away and grabs a handful of tissues off the mirrored dresser. He hands them to me and I wipe my face.
"What's wrong?" He brushes my hair off my shoulder, showing me he cares in ways that I really need him to.
I shrug. "I don't know, everything? I just feel like... a pile of shit."
He bends down to eye level with me. "You're not a pile of shit."
We both giggle and somehow I just know I can tell him anything. That I can be me and spill my fears and he'll listen and understand.
"No, really?" he asks as he moves to stand in between my legs again.
I look down at his hands resting on my open thighs and I fiddle with the tissues in my hand. I don't know where to start.
"What if I get it?"
"The scholarship?"
I nod. "Yeah, and then I leave." The tears start to burn my eyes again. "I've never been away from my home and my parents, much less across the world. Edward, I've never been on my own before."
I reach up and use my tissue to dab away a few stray tears that have fallen.
"And what if I change my mind and I don't want to go anymore? What if I find a reason to stay?" I put the idea out there that's been on my mind for weeks.
He shakes his head. "There is nothing that should keep you here in this bum-fucked town, Bella. Nothing."
I look straight at him. He has to know, he simply has to know what would keep me here.
"Promise me Bella, that if you get offered that scholarship you won't even think twice." He squeezes my legs right above my knees and I want to break.
I don't know what to say? Should I be reckless, say what I feel, or should I be smart and say what I'm supposed to say?
Nothing is easy to confess when there's a huge bubble of emotion lodged in my throat. When I finally swallow it down, my words come out in a scratchy whisper, but at least I say what I feel, "What if I'm already thinking twice?"
"Don't you do that!" he grumbles through clenched teeth.
"Look at me." He puts his palms on my cheeks and forces my head up so we are eye to eye. "Follow your dreams, Bella. Listen to this." He points to my temple. "What is this telling you?"
I shake my head. I grab his hand and pull down until his open palm is on the skin above my heart. "This is talking louder, my heart... it knows what it wants."
"Dammit!" He jerks his hand away and they land back on my thighs. He ducks his head and shakes it back and forth. He's mumbling something that sounds an awful lot like 'wasn't supposed to happen.'
He stands upright and takes a deep breath, his shoulders square. He looks at me with resolve, like he's come to some sort of decision. I can't read him, I have no idea what he's going to say. It's frightening.
"Tell me Bella, what does your heart want?"
The answer comes so easy, it has been perched at the tip of my tongue for days. So I say it, let it go, make it known. "You."
His shoulders slump and his head falls back. "I'm no good for you, Bella. You know that. You deserve better." His voice is gentle, but his words are harsh.
I fist his shirt and pull him closer. "I'm sorry you think that way, but my heart disagrees."
He shakes his head and breathes out in a grumble. His forehead wrinkles and when he finally looks at me, his eyes are so sad.
"Bella, I'm sorry, but no matter what, I'm still leaving. In four weeks, I swear of it, I'm gone and I'm never looking back." A single tear rolls down his cheek.
I watch as it falls off the sharp corner of his face and lands on his shirt.
I wonder if that tear says it all; what I feel, what he feels, how unforgiving time is and how unlucky two people can be.
My heart already winces from the cut and burn of losing him and he isn't even mine. This beautiful boy is going to run and not even my love will hold him here.
I decide to take what I can get.
I open my fists that are still grasping his shirt and make my palms slide up his chest. His t-shirt bunches and gathers along the way.
I can't about think that he may reject me, nor can I think that he won't. Instead, I lose myself in the feel of him under my fingertips, his dips and ridges. His abs and his pecs.
My hands reach his neck and continue upward until I'm cupping his cheeks and my fingertips are grazing his hair. His skin goes from soft to rough back to soft, and always so hot to the touch, like a fever of desire. Then his hair, unruly and velvety, like wrinkled silk between my fingers.
I swipe that wet tear track off his cheek with my thumb so it will be like it never existed, as it should be.
I still want to tell him a hundred things. I want to praise him and tell him how worthy he is. I want him to know that I don't care who has been before, or what he plans to do, and that I accept him like he is now. I want him to know that he is what made this play; I couldn't have done it without him. I want to tell him that I only want what will make him happy and if that is leaving, so be it.
But I also don't want him to know how much it might kill me inside, so I find something simple and easy to say. "Will you give me just one night then? No promises." I focus my vision on my fingers as they slink back and disappear in his hair. "No guarantees, no pretenses. Just you, just me, just tonight and then we'll both move on like it never happened?"
His head falls forward so his forehead is resting on mine. His eyes are closed, but his hands are moving up and down my thighs. He's holding back.
"What if that won't be enough for me?" he whispers and I sense his walls crumbling.
I tilt my head back to kiss his forehead, my lips lingering against his skin as I speak. "It'll have to be. Please, Edward."
Suddenly all in one motion, his hands stop their constant motions and he wraps my legs around his back. His hands lift my ass off the stool and he picks me up.
I squeal and wrap my arms around his neck as he jogs us over to the door. He pushes me up flush against the cold steel and my legs fall from around him, searching for the floor.
He looks down at me. His chest is heaving. Our bodies are parallel to the other. I feel every solid inch of him covering every quivering millimeter of me. He has one hand on my hip and the other on the door knob. "Are you sure about this?"
I nod rapidly even though I'm not sure about anything.
"I don't want to hurt you and I never wanted to hurt this." Slowly and with slight pressure his hand moves from my hip, up my stomach, over my breast and stops where is my heart is flailing wildly in my chest.
I watch his eyes darken as he drinks me in like a man dying of thirst.
It's a freeing feeling to acknowledge that our souls are bare and open. No walls or boundaries. No false pretenses or unattainable expectations. Just a boy and a girl and a crazy want that can't be ignored or denied.
"Do you feel that?" I put my hand over his and push down. I want him to understand how insane my heart reacts to him. How my body melts and my mind gives up trying to comprehend and think.
I hear the click of the knob as he locks the door, it's loud and practically echoes off the walls. That clink and the sound of our breathing is the only noise around, but that's enough to fill the silence.
"Bella, please just say it. Tell me this is what you want. I-"
I don't give him time to say whatever it is he's going to say, instead I silence him with my lips on his.
Within seconds, he responds. His body relaxes against mine, his mouth opens to claim me, his tongue finds me to taste.
It's sweet heaven.
My arms circle around his back, pulling him in closer, blurring out our edges.
His hands slam up against the metal door on both sides of me and he whimpers. His knees bend trapping me in the best of ways.
Kissing him is like standing on the edge of the world. It rivals all my favorite things rolled into one. A morning blanket of new snow. A song I can't live without. The sun on my skin. The scent of the ocean and the sea mist wetting my face.
It's the kind of kiss that I could never speak about out loud.
It's the kind of kiss that rendered words to describe it meaningless and useless.
It's the kind of kiss that confirmed I'd never been so complete in my whole life.
It's the kiss that proves I hadn't really been kissed until now.
His kiss is my everything.
"Let the rain kiss you. Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops. Let the rain sing you a lullaby." ~Langston Hughes
I need to thank Rose & Missy, they make this what it is, I swear of it.