A/N: First, thank you to Thimbles for prereading this for me. This was supposed to be yesterday's chapter. As I get near the end, my updates will slow down. I don't want to rush the ending. But I do plan on finishing before the end of next week. The next update is planned for Monday.
I say it on twitter a lot, but in case you're not there: my readers are awesome!
Word Prompt: Daydream
Something True
Daydream
This Spring
Edward holds the strap of her dress in his fist as he kisses her. The feel of his hard knuckles against her collarbone contrasts with his soft lips.
She unbuttons his shirt the rest of the way. With open hands, she pushes the shirt off his shoulders. She slips the end of his belt through the loop and unbuckles it. As soon as she gets his pants unbuttoned and unzipped, and presses her hand inside against his boxers, he's lifting her.
With Bella's arms wrapped around his neck, her legs wrapped around his middle, he carries her to the bedroom. Laying her down, he holds himself over her on his hands and knees, his belt hanging open.
She curves her hands around his waist and then runs her fingers up to his chest. He kisses her lips and next to her ear, under her jaw and across her chest. Her arm.
Pushing the bottom of her dress up, he brushes his lips along her hipbone, over her stomach, and moves higher, lifting the material as he goes.
She loves his mouth on her stomach, his hands holding on to her sides, bringing her closer to him. She's already close, her back arched, but he needs her closer.
She loves this need, his and hers.
Sitting up, she unzips, and pulls the dress over her head.
"Damn, you look good when you take your clothes off." It begins with his regular deep voice and ends in a whisper.
She reaches back to unhook her bra. Strapless, it falls away easy.
He's staring and she watches his mouth because she can't look him in the eye. She hopes he can't tell how nervous she is to have his eyes on her like this, how hard her heart is pounding. But then he's touching her breasts, his fingertips caressing until she's falling backwards and stinging with tingles.
He makes it hard to think clearly.
He's kissing her neck when he says, "I love you, too," as if she told him just now and not ten minutes ago.
She laughs.
"I love that," he says.
She pushes at his pants with her hands first and then with her feet.
His pants are off, his mouth at her breast, his hands at her ribs holding tight.
"It's so fucking hard to go slow with you right now," he says against her breast, pushing his hips into her leg.
"Then don't," she says.
Before her last word is out, he's reaching for a condom.
Turning to his back, he pulls her on top of him, and in the next breath he's groaning, pushing up inside of her, and she's sliding down on him. And he's all the way inside her, in her tightening chest, in her thumping heart, in her head.
Her hair falls forward over her shoulders and he brushes it back, his fingers trailing over her skin down to her hips. She feels him grip.
Then he stops her from moving. "Sorry." He laughs low. "Just..." He turns his head and squeezes his eyes.
She kisses his cheek and across to his ear. "Can I move now?" she asks and touches her tongue to his jaw.
He nods.
She does, pressing her knees into the mattress, her chest against his, her hands at the back of his neck, in his hair. She kisses him just the way he once demonstrated she does. Light and then dark. She can't help it. She kisses him like that until she no longer can. And she moves over him faster until she no longer can.
She's feeling him in every right place.
Breathing her name, he grips her hips, not to stop her this time, but to keep her going for as long as he needs it, which isn't long.
Spent, she's face down on his chest. Her lips have strength again and she kisses his skin over and over. He brushes hair off her shoulders and pressing his hand into her back, he kisses her head. He wraps both of his arms around her so tight that she has no choice but to lie flat against him.
They wind down. Putting themselves back together. Bringing themselves back to earth, back to Forks, back to the cottage and this bed.
"Tell me again," he says, lifting her face to his.
"I love you."
His smile is big and lazy and full of hope or promise or future.
This is not a dream.
...
In the kitchen, Biter follows them around as they search for something to eat. Bella's in her dress and bare feet. Edward's in his slacks and bare feet. No shirt. Sometimes she gets caught up staring at his back, other times his chest. Her lips were just on that chest, her hands too, but it's still as if she's seeing it for the first time.
He continues his search through the refrigerator and cabinets. All that food at the luncheon, but nothing here. Edward finds a can of Campbell's soup. Chicken noodle. He heats it in a saucepan on the stove, tugging Bella close, weaving their fingers together.
He ladles the soup into bowls, Bella grabs the spoons and napkins, and they eat at the table, Biter lying beneath it, his nose nearly touching Bella's bare feet.
"That guy today. Pete?
She looks up, dropping her spoon to her bowl.
"He's got it bad for you."
"Not anymore."
"He was staring at you. He asked me if I knew I was lucky and told me to treat you right. It was a threat."
"We're just friends." She picks up her spoon. "Okay?"
"Okay."
Guilt comes over Bella as the truth of her past with Pete hovers above her like a rain cloud She doesn't want to lie to Edward, but she kind of just did. She wipes her lips with her napkin. "We've been friends since fourth grade, but he was also my - my..."
"Your what?"
Bella hesitates. She likes Pete. She's always liked him, and she doesn't want Edward to hate him or be jealous of him or threatened by him.
Maybe her answer is in her pause.
"Wait. Don't tell me. I don't want to know." He looks down at his bowl and mashes the base of his palm to his forehead like he already knows. "Fuck. This subject."
"You asked."
"Yeah," he says. "Smart."
She walks to him and he pushes his chair out so she can sit on his lap. His arms circle around her. She drops her forehead to his. No more words. Just each other, touching, shared breath, communicating in silence what they can't out loud.
He raises his face to hers, parts his lips and kisses her open-mouthed. No slow pecks, no lead-up. He's taking from her. She gives to him.
And this is what love is. It's taking and giving. It's sharing. It's equal.
Edward and Bella or Bella and Edward.
It doesn't matter because this is love, and they're both first.
...
It isn't until much later, in the dark, standing on her doorstep under another hidden moon, that he takes the piece of paper from his pocket.
"This is yours." He hands it to her.
She doesn't open it.
"What is it?"
"A list."
"A list of what?"
"Work she wanted to do that is never a waste of time."
He tilts his head and then does the thing she loves most, brings his hand to her face, his thumb over her cheek. He kisses her and squeezes her in his arms, Biter sitting by their feet, waiting patiently.
"I don't want to let you go," he says, not even loosening his hold over her shoulders a little.
Not being let go feels too good. "I don't want you to."
...
Mid-week, after school, Jared drops off a cardboard box that Bella has never seen before. It's the size of a large shirt box.
"We found it under her bed," he says. He has brown skin and lines in his face that run deeper than her dad's. He looks a few years older than her dad, closer to fifty than forty-five. Bella doesn't think he ever planned to have kids, not even if he wasn't separating from his wife.
What kind of hope was Mrs. Cameron holding on to?
The box is heavier than it looks. She peers up at Jared unable to find any words.
"She talked about you all the time," he says. "Loved you like a grandkid."
"I loved her, too." She shakes her head. "I mean, I love her." She swallows a knot of tears.
"You did a lot for her. I thank you for that."
She's doesn't really know what she did for Mrs. Cameron. She did make the woman smile, she knows that much.
"I think..." He stuffs his hands in his pocket and drops his gaze to the ground. Keys jingle. "We're selling the house. If you want to come and have a look around this week, see if there's anything else you want."
Bella's not sure she can do that. Everywhere she looks she'll hope to see Mrs. Cameron. Is it the same for Jared?
She tells him she'll come on Friday.
She'll try.
Up in her room, she sits in the rocking chair and opens the box. She lets the lid fall. Inside is Bella's old artwork, cards and crafts she made with Mrs. Cameron. She'd saved it all: a paper plate clown mask, a sock puppet with gray yarn for hair and a triangle of red felt for a tongue, watercolor paintings and tissue paper flowers with pipe cleaner stems. She picks up the first tiny scarf she ever knitted and runs it through her fingers. It's the size of a doll's scarf. She wraps it around her neck anyway.
She's tearing up, but couldn't explain why. Loss? Thankfulness? Gratefulness? Maybe all of it.
At the bottom of the box, the thing giving the box its weight is a Connect Four game.
It was Bella's favorite game to play with Mrs. Cameron. It was one game Bella could win. They played at the kitchen table, Bella facing the back door, looking out at all the shades of green in the yard.
As she replaces everything in the box, save the Connect Four game, she realizes there are a few things she wants that are not included here.
The Little Lulu DVDs. And the afghan that rests over the back of Mrs. Cameron's sofa. The one that warmed Bella's shoulders while she watched movies, or drank iced tea, or knitted.
She slides the closed up box under her bed, and then she goes to the folded up paper sitting on her desk. She reads the list.
Fundraisers, Washington State charities, overseas charities, and the one that stands out the most: Offer knitting classes to the childrens' hospital.
Bella tapes the paper to her wall above her desk. She'll follow through with everything on the list. There are women who will help, some she met through knitting for newborns, some she met at the memorial.
When Edward comes for dinner on Friday, she shows him the blanket, now folded over the rocking chair, and her box of crafts. The few Little Lulu DVDs sit downstairs by the TV.
"I forgot about so much of this," she says as he picks through the box on her bed. He brings the clown mask up to his face and makes her grin. "It's all regular kids' stuff. Her house was the one place I felt like a kid." Even when she thought she was too old for some of this stuff, she enjoyed it with Mrs. Cameron.
"I want this," Edward says, pulling the elastic band of the mask over his head. He's all primary colors and simple shapes. Triangle eyes, circle nose, half-moon smile. "I'll wear it when you're mad at me."
"Then I'll pretend to be mad at you just so you'll wear it."
Edward laughs and takes off the mask. "You really missed out on being a kid, huh?" He grabs the Connect Four game. "Let's be kids."
When the dinner plates are cleared away, Edward, Bella, and her dad take turns playing the winner. They play at least seven rounds. They act like kids, the three of them, accusing another of cheating, groaning when someone sneaks four in a row, fighting over red or black and who goes first.
"Stop copying every move I make!" Bella says.
"I'm going where I want," Edward says.
Nobody wins that game and they have to start over.
Bella likes the idea of bringing her childhood back. It may not have been that long ago, but it sure feels like it.
At Edward's cottage, they drape blankets all over his room, and crawl underneath. She sits on the floor next to Biter while Edward plays piano hunched under the dark of their coverings.
She listens to his newest pieces.
They leave the blankets up for days.
They have sex under them and laugh and have staring matches until it all starts over again.
On weekends they travel with Rose and Emmett to play miniature golf and later to try go-cart racing. Bella looks at Edward smiling, thinking he's enjoying being a kid again just as much as she is.
And it's there in line for another race in late spring, returning his childlike smile, that Bella notices a lightness. She hadn't really thought of this before, but it's been a long time since she's had a secret.
The one left, the one that only Edward knows, is one she rarely thinks about. Riley hasn't crossed her mind in months.
As she said she would, Bella's mother has been keeping in touch. Bella complains to her about an auction she's helping to organize. They have enough goods donated, but she needs more donations from businesses. More services offered and tours, dinners and mini-vacations. All by June.
"And I have to study for finals."
"I can help," her mother says.
They choose a date to meet for dinner in Forks where they make up a list of possible contributors. Bella realizes how that one list of Mrs. Cameron's will spawn into several, and several more. She doesn't mind. In fact, it excites her.
"This kind of work is never a waste of time," Bella tells her mother as they make their way into the only fancy restaurant in Forks in hopes of a dinner-for-two donation.
Bella feels useful. She feels important. And nobody is making her feel that way. It's just happening, meshing with her blood.