Part of the reason I hadn't updated this story in so long is because I got stuck as far as my plans. I'd planned a specific ending, but the story got incredibly far away from that and I didn't know where to take it. So I've backed it up to Chapter 12 and uploaded the original version. I have several versions of several chapters at this point, but this is the one that fits well with the ending and sequel I have planned, so here we are:
Chapter 12
BPOV
"Bella? Are you alright sweetheart?"
I felt relaxed. Too relaxed. And groggy.
"Drugs?" I asked. What the hell was on my face?
Dr. Denali reached out and pulled my hand away. "Let's leave the oxygen on a little longer, Bella. I think the medication hit you rather hard."
"What medicine?"
"You were having a panic attack, so we gave you some medication to calm you down. It's made your oxygen saturation a little low, so I've got some oxygen going for a little bit."
Oh. And then I remembered.
"Baby?" I whispered, horrified.
Dr. Denali patted my hand and answered in a very no-nonsense type of tone that I think she thought helped.
"Yes."
It didn't.
Immediately my chest felt heavy again, but thanks to the medication the feeling didn't last long. I still felt panicky, but without the noise and vision distortion.
"The good news, Bella" She continued, and I stared at her like she had lost her mind. "is that based on your HCG levels, there's a chance that this might not be a product of the assault."
"I'm sorry?" I felt my eyes tear up again, and in the back of my mind I cursed myself for always crying. But did she mean that it could be Edward's baby? We hadn't had sex since Christmas and we'd used a condom every time. I was certain none of them had broken either, I'd noticed Edward checking every time.
"I have a suspicion, but I'd like to do an ultrasound to verify."
Shit.
This is bad. Either way, this is so bad.
Did I dare wish that this was Edward's baby? How did I wish that on him? Oh God. What if it wasn't his baby?
What if it washis and I found out and had an ultrasound without him?
But what if I asked him to come and it wasn't his?
I didn't know what the right decision was, and I didn't dare look at Esme or ask her what she'd thought. I could do without seeing the look on her face at the fact that I was literally pregnant and didn't know by whom.
Ashamed, I buried my face in my hands and cried. "Oh God!"
"It's okay Bella." I felt Esme's hand rubbing up and down my back. "It'll be okay."
But it wasn't. It would never be okay again. Edward was going to hate me, Alice was probably going to hate me, Charlie would find out and for sure try to ship me off. Damn it! How could this have happened?
"I'll give you a moment." Dr. Denali said, and slipped out of the room.
I laid back down on the stupid crinkly paper and didn't bother to try hiding the tears anymore. Ah Hell, and I still had the ultrasound to suffer through.
In her bag, Esme's phone rang and she sighed. "That'll be Edward again. He's been calling and texting both of us for the past hour. He no doubt wonders why we aren't done yet."
"How long was I out?"
"A little over an hour and a half or so."
God, could I not be a pain in the ass for just one day?
"I'm really sorry Esme."
"God, no." She brushed a hand over my hair. No doubt my bun was insane looking by now.
"You have nothing to be sorry about, Bella. It's not like you did it on purpose. Carmen clocked your pulse at 146, you were drenched with sweat and we had to catch you when you keeled out of the bed before she decided to give you that shot."
I groaned, embarrassed still, no matter how nice she was about it.
"You've been here with me all day."
"So? I love you Bella, you're one of my children, surely you know that by now?"
She leaned in to kiss my forehead, sighing when her purse started ringing again. "Let me answer him before he has a coronary."
"Hi Edward," She held her phone out in front of her. A FaceTime call. More proof of his panic; he wanted to see for himself that everything was okay.
Edward's voice was worried. "Mom? Why are you still there? I talked to Bella 2 hours ago and now she isn't answering her phone. Can I talk to her?"
"If you promise not to have a fit, yes."
"Why would I have a fit? What's wrong? Is she okay?"
Esme sighed. "Edward she's going to be fine. I need to call your father to make sure he's home, call Bella on her phone." And then she hung up on him.
"I love my child, but he needs to stop stressing."
And that was my fault. He was stressing over me. And now he had an especially good reason to.
My phone vibrated in Esme's purse, and she handed it to me, then stood, presumably to go call her husband.
"Do you want anything out of the vending machine sweetheart?"
"A Coke or Pepsi. Cherry, if they have it."
"Alright, I'll be back."
I answered the call as the door shut behind her, and Edward's face filled the screen. More tears leaked out. God, today sucked.
"Bella?" He gaped at me, and on the screen I saw just how horrible I looked. My hair was super fuzzy, my eyes were red, watery and swollen, and I still had on the stupid oxygen mask.
"Oh, Hell no. Hell no. No. Fuck this shit." I heard a chair scraping against the floor, and then his screen was a blur of school colors and curse words. "What the fuck happened? Fucking God damn it, I knew I shouldn't have gone to school."
He had his earbuds in and was walking out of the lunch room. I could see the stupid basketball banners hanging from the ceiling, above the view of him tugging anxiously at his hair.
"Baby, are you okay?"
"Not really."
"Tell me what happened."
"I had a panic attack in the doctor's office. She had to give me a shot, and it made my oxygen low."
"Can you tell me why you went to the doctor now? Are you sick?"
Damn it, I didn't even know what to tell him.
"Can you just come up here?"
"I'm already on my way. Jesus Christ. Is it permanent? Is it really bad?"
Pretty permanent, yes I thought derisively.
"There's some stuff the doctor still has to do. I'd rather explain it when you get here. We…" I hesitated, not knowing how much to tell him now. "We'll need to talk I guess."
He tugged on his hair again.
"Please don't," More tears, Jesus. "I'm sorry."
"Sorry for what, Baby?" He was outside now, jogging, it looked like.
"You're stressed out." And I'm about to make it worse.
"Bella, I'm not fucking stressed. Okay, right now, maybe I am, but it's because I'm worried about you. I love you, and that means I'm gonna worry." He glanced down at the screen as I was moving the mask to wipe my face. "Jesus, Baby please don't cry, this is making me fucking crazy. What floor of the hospital are you on?"
"How do you know where to go?"
"Seriously Bella? Give me a little credit. It's Forks, there's one fucking hospital, and all of the clinics are in it. Plus, I pinged your phone, just in case Mom took you to PA. I should be there in… 3 minutes."
His car door slammed and his engine kicked up.
"Do you want me to let you go so you can drive?"
"No!" He tucked his phone into it's dashboard clip. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to yell. Just… don't hang up, please."
"Okay."
I sunk further down into the pillow, pulling the sheet up to my chin and shivering. I realize this was a clinic and not a hospital room, but it sucked that there weren't any blankets.
"Cold, Baby?" Edward was driving, but every couple seconds his eyes flickered over to the screen and camera.
"A little."
He sighed, and despite his trying to reassure me earlier, he looked like Hell too, his face tense and strained. Even his knuckles were white and taught, fingers in a death grip on the steering wheel. "I'll be there in a second."
And it looked like he was already pulling up to the hospital. His steering wheel spun madly as he pulled into a spot, and then he was out of the car and jogging again.
"Where are you?" He asked me again as he passed through the main entry way to the hospital. I closed my eyes and listened to him make progress through the building. I tried to remember what floor the clinic was on, but finally had to tell him "Gynecology."
"Bella, I…" He paused as he took that in, but didn't say anything else, and I was too scared to open my eyes and look at his face. "God damn it, why is this elevator so slow?"
Finally, the robotic voice chimed "3rd floor."
"Fucking finally. Ma? What are you doing out here?"
"Talking to your father and waiting for you."
"How'd you know I was coming?"
"I know you, kid. Come on, let's go."
A lot of rustling and foot steps, and then a door opening in stereo. I barely had time to open my eyes before I was gathered up into a hug and surrounded by the smell of Edward and the cologne that I'd gotten him for Christmas. He took a deep breath and I felt some of the tension leave his arms. Behind him, Esme stepped back out into the hall to talk, and closed the door behind her.
"Are you okay, Baby?"
He pulled away from me and eyed the monitor where my oxygen, pulse and blood pressure glowed red.
"I don't know."
"You look so tired. Here." He unfolded a bundle from beneath his left arm and I recognized it as the blanket he always left in the backseat of his car. He draped it on top of my sheet, tucking it around my shoulders and feet. It smelled like him. "Better?"
"God yes. Thank you. It's so cold in here."
"Probably has something to do with the fact that you're only wearing paper," He teased, kissing me on my brow. He drew back and took a look around the room, taking in, I'm sure, the uterus models and pregnancy info posters. Then he pulled me up into a sitting position and wrapped me in a hug. "Bella." He whispered into my hair, squeezing me tight. "Are you… Are you pregnant?"
I'd barely had a hold on the tears, but the dam broke again and I sobbed, holding on to his arms in a death grip and nodding my head against his chest.
"Shhhh, Bella, please. I hate it when you cry like that. It's okay. We'll be okay."
"But- B-b-but-" I hiccupped. "She doesn't know how far along I am yet."
"Baby, I don't understand the difference it makes." He pulled away a little to wipe my face around the stupid mask. "We only had sex on Christmas and the morning after."
"I didn't realize until this morning that… that I haven't- I haven't had a p-period… since I've been in Forks." I cried harder, nearly choking on my words. I could tell he didn't understand at first, but then his arms tightened around me and he whispered "Oh. Fuck."
He didn't say anything else, but he didn't stop fussing over me and touching me. If he wasn't smoothing my mess of a hair away from my face, he was rubbing my back and arms or tucking the blanket tighter around me.
EPOV
Holy Mary, Mother of Christ. Do I have grey hair? I think I have grey hair.
When Bella answered my video call crying, looking like Hell and wearing an oxygen mask, I about shit a brick. Everyone had been in line getting lunch, and I'd been too fucking paranoid to eat, so I'd been sitting at the table alone. When she answered and I laid eyes on her, I took off and didn't say a word to Alice or anyone else. Just hopped in the car and peeled out.
I'm gonna FaceTime her ass from now on, and every time she declines, I'm tracking her ass down.
Okay, maybe not, because that was stalkerish, but if it involved doctors, I was definitely doing that shit.
I knew she was pregnant. I fucking knew it as soon as I asked her if she could finally tell me why she'd gone to the doctor and all she would say was "Can you just come up here?"
Fuck me.
Shit, a baby.
Maybe not even my baby. But no, if she'd been pregnant since the end of October, she'd be 3 and a half months or 4 months so. Didn't pregnant women have big bellies by then? Wouldn't she have been puking or something? Fuck, I didn't know anything about this shit.
My mind was whirling a thousand miles a minute, but I did my damndest not to let Bella see me struggling as she finally quit making those horrible heaving sobs.
"It's okay." I told her when she quieted, hopping up on the exam bed table thing so I could hold her. "It's okay." And it was. Or it would be. We'd figure it out.
She held on to the edges of my leather coat like the thing was going to keep her from being ripped away into a vortex. "I'm sorry." She sniffled, sounding… small. I hated it immediately.
"You don't have to be sorry about a damned thing Bella. Option A… There was nothing you did and Option B… well it took two of us, didn't it? We were careful, one of the condoms must have broken and I just didn't notice."
"If I wasn't already pregnant." She whispered.
"Don't think like that. I-"
Before I could reassure her, there was a knock on the door and then a lady doctor with dark, gray streaked hair stuck her head in the room. My mother was right behind her. "Are we ready?" She asked, looking a lot more perky and less disapproving than I would have imagined a doctor with a pregnant teenager on her exam table would.
She came in and offered me her hand to shake. "You must be Edward. I'm Dr. Denali, and this is Tanya." She waved a hand to the blonde nurse in pink scrubs who was entering the room behind Mom. I tried not to look at Ma too long because I was a little nervous about what her reaction was going to be. She hadn't smacked the shit out of me when I got here, so that was something.
When the doctor let go of my hand, she walked around me so that Bella could see her and said "We're going to do that ultrasound now Bella, are you ready?"
Bella sighed, wiping her face once more, and nodded. Tanya snatched some tissues out of a Kleenex box on the wall and held them out for Bella, but I took them and wiped her tears away myself, trying to convey anyway that I could that I wasn't going anywhere.
"Aww, aren't you sweet?" Tanya cooed. And all of the women in the room were giving Bella and I that puppy look. I tried my best to ignore them as I got off of the table and held Bella's hand while the Doctor and nurse quickly set her up and explained what they were going to do. They put Bella's legs in the footholder things and then inserted a lubed up wand with a condom looking sleeve on it. Apparently ultrasounds from the inside were a thing.
Bella turned her face into my stomach and refused to look, but Ma and I stared like we would die if we looked away, waiting for something other than gray static to show up on the screen. Finally, I could see a black circle-like blob with something kind of but not really baby shaped in the middle.
"Oh, thank God!" My mother slumped, still looking at the screen. "What?" I asked, squeezing Bella's hand. "What is it?"
"There's no way that baby is older than a 10 weeks!" She exclaimed, looking at Dr. Denali like she might tackle her if she disagreed. "Right?"
Dr. Denali clicked on a little trackpad a couple times, and a line measured the baby from head to butt. "This little one is measuring at…" She drew out the last word, waiting for something to populate on the screen. "7 to 8 weeks, which put conception at right after Christmas."
"Thank fuck." I breathed, feeling like my knees might give out from under me. I rubbed the side of Bella's face, trying to tempt her to look at the screen. At our baby. My son or daughter. "Baby, look!" I whispered in her ear, leaning down over her.
She turned her head slowly, but said nothing, more tears streaming down her face. On the screen, the little not quite baby shape wiggled from side to side and Bella, Mom and I all gasped. Holy fuck. There really was a baby in there! I leaned over Bella again, nuzzling her hair as she gripped my arm. All I cared about was that it was my baby inside her. Everything else was cake in comparison to the alternative. We'd be okay.
Mom gasped all super dramatic as fuck, and Bella and I turned to look at the screen again, but the doctor was removing the wand. "Now Esme, don't ruin all my fun." She teased, helping Bella to lower her legs. "I'd like to do a transuterine ultrasound now." She told Bella, "The one where I press the wand against your belly. There's something I'd like you to see."
So she lowered the sheet until she could raise Bella's gown, and I eased the blanket up around her shoulders, trying to keep her warm. She squealed when the doctor exposed her soft belly and squirted blue gel onto it. "Sorry Sweetheart, a little cold." The doctor warned, a little too late and Bella gave me a long suffering look. I smirked at her, and kissed her forehead once more as the nurse rolled the screen closer to us so we could see better.
The image rolled and shifted as the doctor moved the wand over Bella's stomach, and then I saw it. "Oh God." Bella breathed, as I about swallowed my tongue. There were very clearly two black empty spaces with chibi caricature-esque baby shapes inside. Dr. Denali beamed at us. "Congratulations Mom and Dad."
"Holy shit." I choked out. "Holy shit!" and my vision darkened around the edges. Fuck, it was hot in here.
"Edward?" Mom's blurry face was suddenly peering up in front of mine as I swayed.
"Okay, big guy." The nurse shoved a chair against the back of my legs and Ma pushed me back into it. "Deep breaths," She told me firmly. I sucked in a steady breath and felt Bella's nails dig into my hand. She was propped up on her opposite elbow, watching me worriedly, tears still running down her face.
"Two babies Bella," I told her, smirking, though inside I was panicking a little. Okay, a-fucking-lot, but Jesus, twins! "Bit of an over achiever aren't you?"
She glared at me, and shook her hand from mine to flick me off. I laughed and snatched her hand back, kissing her knuckles. "I'm kidding. Can we tell what they are yet?" I asked the doctor, to get attention off of me while Ma picked up my other hand and pressing her fingers to my wrist to check my pulse.
"Not yet, buuuuuut." She moved the wand around again, looking at other shadowy shit that I couldn't make out. "From what I'm seeing, they're Monochorionic/Diamniotic, meaning there are two sacs, but one placenta. This indicates that there was one egg that split, so they'll be identical. Either two boys or two girls."
She put the wand back to Bella's belly and pointed out the fluttering heartbeats, and then the machine whirred as she printed pictures off. Then she took a towel and wiped all the goo off of her, and gently removed the oxygen mask. When numbers on the vital signs monitor didn't really change, she reached down and shut the oxygen off completely.
After she, Tanya and Mom left the room and I helped Bella get re-dressed, they came back in and asked Bella a bunch of questions about our sex life, nonexistent since Christmas, thank you very much, and her eating habits, and told her she had to try really hard not to take her anxiety medication unless she needed it, because too much of it wasn't good for the baby. Babies.
She also gave us a list of shit Bella couldn't eat and told us that she would make Bella a follow up appointment for the 12-week mark, so she could keep an eye on her weight gain and babies' progress, because apparently the face that both babies shared a placenta, there was a risk of Twin-to-Twin Transfusion Syndrome, where one baby could get all of the nutrients while the other got little to none, and while Bella and I stared, horrified, she just moved right along in her little speech.
"Oh, wait." Dr. Denali stopped her diatribe to eye us critically. "Now, I know the both of you are young, and if you don't feel like you can handle a baby right now, let alone two, I have to let you know that you have options."
Oh fuck, please don't suggest that. I willed her to shut up. I prayed she would shut the fuck up, but she didn't.
"You can of course, keep both babies. You can carry them to term and adopt them out to a family who can care for them-
"We can care for them." I snapped, frustrated and pissed. The woman raised a placating hand at me. "I'm just letting you know your options. I'm not going to sugar coat it, Bella, with you being young and having a pregnancy with multiples, there's a good chance that this won't be a smooth pregnancy. TTTS isn't the only concern with multiples."
Oh my God, shut the fuck up. Shut the fuck up, PLEASE shut the fuck up.
"The last option of course, is-"
"Can you give us a minute to talk?" I cut in, not wanting to hear her casually suggest we abort the babies whose heartbeats we just watched flicker on the screen. Ma smiled at me, like she approved, and everyone excused themselves.
"Bella." I said when the door shut behind my Mom. She'd pulled away from me, and was sitting on the bed with her arms wrapped around herself. "Baby, please. I… What do you want to do?"
Please don't say you want to get rid of them. Please.
"Maybe we…" She paused, and I held my breath, there being a very real possibility that I might throw up right now. "I know what I think the smart option would be. I'm not even 18, and I'm screwed up. Edward, I'm really screwed up. I never wanted to pass that on to any kids… and ruin them."
My heart squeezed and I screwed my eyes shut. I would fight her on this. I would beg, plead, whatever I had to do to change her mind. The thought of giving away a child… giving away twins like my birth parents did to me and Alice… Whether they thought they were doing the best for us or not, look at where we'd ended up before we got to Carlisle and Esme: as drug mules. I opened my mouth to list all of the reasons I knew we could do this, but she spoke first. "But… but I can't. They moved, Edward. They're two tiny people. We saw their hearts beating. I'm having them." She added in a whisper. "And keeping them."
"Thank Christ. Oh, holy fuck!" I gathered her into a vise of a hug, and she held me just as tightly, knees squeezing around my hips. "We can do this. We can totally do this. I'll help you, I swear." I rambled, face hot with tears that dripped onto her neck. "Nobody will ever love these babies more than us, and I'll get you whatever the fuck you need, I promise you. I'll go on food runs in the middle of the night, I'll rub your feet, I'll be the best father ever, Baby, I swear to God. I'll change every single shitty diaper without complaint. Okay, minimal complaint, but I'll fucking do it. I can find a gas mask on Amazon probably."
She half laughed half sobbed "I love you, you Dork. Even if you wear a gas mask to change our babies' diapers."
Our babies. God that was fucking scary. But we had done this, had made them, and whether it was an accident or not, I would do everything in my power to do right by them and Bella too. I'd bust my ass to make sure she never for a second felt like we couldn't do this.
"I love you, too, Bella. I love you, too."
A knock on the door and then Ma stuck her head in. "We doing okay?"
"We're okay." Bella said, drawing away from me to grab the tissue my mother held out for us.
Finally, when the doctor came back in, Bella told her that she didn't want to hear about any more options. The doctor gave her some more paperwork and wanted to make sure Bella could walk alright after the apparently large dose of medication she'd been given, and she managed, but with me more or less holding her up. So she was officially discharged, and with the blanket wrapped around her shoulders like a shawl, we headed out.
Bella stiffened, when a couple of the ladies in the waiting room gave her scandalized looks as I helped her walk out, but Mom glared at them all until they minded their own damn business. When we made it out to the parking lot, Mom snatched my keys from my hand. "Dad and I will come back and get your car. You almost passed out earlier, you're done driving for the day."
Feeling obnoxiously drained, I didn't argue, just got into the backseat of Dad's giant SUV with Bella who was wiped out, and fell asleep as soon as we backed out of the parking space.
When we got home, Mom told us to go upstairs and relax while she talked to Dad and took care of dinner. Though she looked just as drained as I felt so it'd probably be take out tonight. Once I carried Bella up to her room Lola went apeshit. At 4 months old, she'd doubled in size, and was now close to 50lbs from the 14 she'd been when I'd first given her to Bella. She was still clearly a puppy, but she'd lost all of her chub. I set Bella on the Bed and Lola hopped right up and climbed her big ass in Bella's lap, planting her front paws on her shoulders and trying to lick her face.
"Down girl." I grabbed her leash from the door handle. "Let's go outside."
She launched herself at me, and damn if she didn't knock me back a couple steps. I got her leash on her latest collar, since she'd outgrown her harness, but as strong as she was getting and as excited as she got going outside, she was going to need another harness, or she'd either choke herself or pull Bella all over the place. Plus this damn collar looked ready to snap. Bella liked the pretty ones, but they weren't sturdy enough. Lola was going to get huge, and though she was trained pretty well, if she saw a squirrel or rabbit or something when we went camping this summer and took off, she'd snap right through these vinyl and rhinestones shits, and I didn't want her to get shot if some idiot was out hunting and thought she was a bear. I'd find something good that she could grow into.
Fuck. Camping. Don't know if that was happening now. Bella would be, what… 6 or 7 months? That probably wasn't happening. I'd have to pick something different for our birthday trip. Alice would be happy, at least.
"Get into bed, Baby." I kissed her on the cheek and leaned both arms onto the bed beside her hips, caging her in. "Do you need me to grab your pajamas?"
"Can I just have your shirt?" She fingered the Superman t-shirt I was wearing over my Henley.
Fuck yes, you can sleep in my shirt. I took my coat and sweater off and pulled the t-shirt over my head. I kinda wanted to help her put it on, but it had been a hard day, so I'd behave. I put it in her lap, and settled for kissing the shit out of her.
"Be right back." I broke away from her when Lola butted me in the back of my knee with a yip. "Her highness would like to go outside now."
When we got back inside, Lola charged up the stairs like a whole herd of buffalo, and I shit you not, she stood up on her back feet and put her paws on the door handle, pushed it down and shoved the fucking door open.
Jesus.
I heard the bed springs bounce, and sure enough, when I got in there, Lola was in the bed, cuddling up against Bella's back, and resting her head in the curve of her hip.
Bella was in my shirt and sweatpants, lying on her side on top of the covers. Shaking my head at the spoiled beastie, I grabbed Bella's smaller weighted blanket from the back of her desk chair and crawled into bed with her, tucking it around us both. Immediately, Bella tangled her legs with mine and scooted forward until she was pressed against me from head to toe, laughing when Lola whined and shuffled closer, so she could put her head back on her side.
I sighed, finally feeling the tension rolling out of me now that I was back home with my girl in my arms. We still had to talk. Lord, we had to talk about a lot of shit, but it could wait.
The sun was setting outside when we were jolted awake by the sound of people yelling downstairs. Of course a couple hour's peace in this place would be too much to ask. Groggily, we both got up to see what the fuss was about, and I wondered if Ma had spilled the beans to Alice and Emmett and one of them reacted badly. Why they would, I don't know. It was my kid, not theirs.
Kids, plural. I kept forgetting there was more than one. Hopefully that wasn't indicative of the kind of parent I'd be, forgetting a kid everywhere we went.
We made it to the kitchen and, lo and behold, Rosalie is in the middle of the shit storm. Kind of. Emmett, who was in his nursing school scrubs, was being pinned into the corner by Dad and Charlie, who was in uniform while he yelled at Rosalie in a way I'd never heard my brother talk to or about any female before.
Rosalie was on the other side of the kitchen table, with my mom holding on to her arm to keep her away from Emmett. Dad saw us enter the kitchen and called over Emmett's yelling: "You really don't need to be here for this right now. Perhaps go down into the basement with Alice and Bree."
He nodded his head meaningfully towards Charlie, and something in his tone had me reaching for Bella's hand so we could leave, but Emmett took advantage of Dad's distraction and twisted out of his grip, slipped past Charlie and barreled down on Rosalie. Mom let go of Rose to haul Bella back out of the way and I stepped in the way to block Emmett so he wouldn't hit any of the girls.
Jesus Christ, it felt like trying to catch a falling piano. Since I'd started working out in the year I'd deliberately flunked, Emmett and I were more or less the same size, but he was pissed and he hit like a bull.
I knocked one of his feet out from under him and tackled him down to the floor. Charlie made to rush over but I waved him off, Emmett wasn't easily getting up with more than 200 pounds sitting on his chest. As soon as I pinned him, all the fight went out of him, and he stared up at me with a look of pitiful and angry resignation on his face. "I want her out of here." He barked. "I want that bitch-"
"Bro, chill." I cut in, not letting him up, though he was laying prone.
"Fuck that." Emmett snarled, face red. "Do have any idea what I found her doing? She was poking holes in my condoms!"
A/N: I'm sorry my updating has gotten sporadic. I'm getting better about feeling like writing since my Grandmother passed, but I can't seem to nail anything down, plus work has gotten ridiculous and I've been working between 100 to 130 hours a pay period.
As far as the story, I would like to remind you all that it's told from Edward and Bella's POV, respectively. They are *teenagers*, inexperienced, except for each other, and scared. They're going to jump to conclusions and be scared about things they may not fully understand. Just because something is or isn't possible, doesn't mean that Bella or Edward know that, and the narrative is following what they know.
I've been receiving a lot of guest comments from people correcting things they feel I've gotten wrong, or saying that if I write 'x, y, or z' they won't read my story anymore. While I appreciate that that is your right, I ask people to wait and see where the story is going before they make assumptions about what they think that I'm going to write. Someone told me that they quit reading chapters ago because Edward had a tattoo and he's underage… if they had continued on with the story, they would have seen that Edward is, in fact 18 because he deliberately held himself back a grade because his twin missed a year of school due to her health, and he wanted them to graduate tother.
But even if he hadn't been 18, some of these plot points are things that I had in mind before this story became a tangible thing. Sometimes teenagers have tattoos, sometimes teenagers get pregnant. If that causes me to lose readers, am I sorry? No. Unfortunately adult situations happen to children and teenagers more than we would like, and this story is just the way that I've chosen to write it. Just wait and see what happens first. I'm happier with this chapter though, because this chapter contains several things that I'd designed the story after, and removing them left me floundering and changed the entire rest of the tale.
Thanks for reading~