Not Without A Fight
Annaleise Marie
Round Fifteen
AN: Sorry this has taken so long, especially after that cruel preview! I know, I suck, but it's very tedious to rewrite things, and to top that off, my real life has gone crazy since last Christmas. Sigh. Anyway, it's here now, and that's what's important, right?
Thank you guys so much for the amazing response to the last chapter! I'm constantly blown away by you guys.
Now, this chapter is upwards of 6,000 words. Pretty long. Get comfy. :D
/
RPOV
Oh no. Oh no. Oh no oh no oh no oh no. Shit. Goddammit no.
I couldn't even form a truly coherent thought as Emmett shook Royce's hand, both of their jaws set rigidly. My dad was asking me where I had been, why I had kept Royce waiting. Fuck, I shouldn't have put off telling my parents about this. I felt trapped. And I was. I couldn't create a scene here, with all of these people. That just wasn't accepted in the Hale household. But looking between the two of them, who were standing there nodding politely as my father went on with his introductions, I couldn't imagine leaving Emmett to go off with Royce, just for the sake of appearances.
What do I do?
I should have listened to him. I should have told them sooner. He shouldn't have to be standing here as Royce was being introduced as my boyfriend.
"Excuse me," I finally made myself say, forcing my voice to remain steady. "I'm just going to go to the bathroom."
I hurried away before anyone could answer, thanking God that there was no one in the bathroom already, locking the door behind me and sliding down it to the floor. God, what was I going to do?
/
EPOV
Royce. Royce Motherfucking King. For the last couple of months, all I could think about – when I wasn't otherwise occupied with Rosalie – was when I would meet him face-to-face, and the quick and severe punishment that I would dole out to him.
Now, I couldn't seem to force myself to function past glaring at him, and making myself nod at every few sentence that came out of Mr. Hale's mouth. Up close, Royce wasn't really that good-looking, or even that intimidating. I had built up his image in my mind to that of a large playground bully, but that wasn't the case in reality.
Royce King had a weak chin, and had – probably purposefully – developed a rather obvious underbite, as though to hide it. He was a head shorter than me, and slumped a bit. All in all, he reminded me of a slightly more human Gollum.
But I could feel a good deal of strength when he shook my hand. He was stronger than he looked.
"Rosalie and Royce have been together for… how long, son?" Mr. Hale continued, apparently not noticing the hostility wafting around him. Son. I see. Royce was pretty much considered part of the family.
"A year next March, sir," Royce said, smirking.
A year. A FUCKING YEAR. For a fucking year, he's been…
I could feel anger bubbling under my skin. I needed to get out. I couldn't make a scene here. Not now.
"If you'll excuse me, Mr. Hale, I'm not feeling well. I think I'll head home for the night. Thank you for inviting me," I said, trying to keep my tone light. I didn't wait for a reply, though, and turned towards the party, figuring I should let my mom know I was leaving early.
She seemed a little occupied, though, perched on one of the couch cushions, her head thrown back as she laughed – what I recognized as her "public laugh" – at something the apparently endlessly-funny Dr. Cullen was saying, her hand rested on his knee. I caught Edward's eye, a few feet away from them, and his gaze quite plainly said, "What the hell is going on?"
You know, if Edward Cullen said such things as "hell".
I shook my head and opted to leave without talking to her – she was clearly too busy – not wanting to prolong my stay in the house. We just lived next door, after all.
"Rosalie's in your room," I heard a girl whisper quietly and looked around quickly, finally spotting Alice's retreating back, headed for Jasper, moving easily as though nothing had transpired. But it had been her voice. I'm sure of it.
I hurried for the door, eager to talk to her, and make sure she was alright. She had fled pretty quickly when Royce arrived.
She was there, sitting cross-legged on my bed. I had to forcibly focus on something else – anything else – than the fact that she still wasn't wearing underwear, as far as I knew. I focused instead on the small-ish box in front of her, wrapped in silver paper with a matching silver bow. It was one of the startlingly uniform presents that had been piled under the Hale's Christmas tree. I had assumed they were all just for show. They reeked too much of Martha Stewart to be real.
I guess some people really do that shit.
"So," I started, watching her run her finger deliberately over the sheer ribbon, "that was…"
"Awkward?" she supplied. "Horrible? Awful? Unnecessary? Terr—"
"Yeah," I broke in, afraid that she would keep going on forever if I didn't.
"Yeah," she said. There was silence for a moment before she cleared her throat and pushed the silver package forward. "I got this for you," she said off-handedly. I smiled, sitting down opposite her on the bed and picking up the package. I wasn't sure what to do. It seemed a shame to open it after all the effort it must have taken to wrap it. Hell, someone had hidden the fucking tape. Who does that?
I ran my finger up one crease in the wrapping, carefully opening it and pulling out the gift, careful not to disturb the paper too much. I heard Rosalie stifle a laugh.
"You're not going to hurt it, you know? It's meant to be torn up," she said matter-of-factly.
"Had to be hard to wrap it this nicely, though," I said, and it seemed stupid even to me once I said it.
"Maybe. I've never really talked to the woman at the mall about it," she said, raising an eyebrow. Of course. Professional wrapping by someone who did it eighty thousand times a day. No big deal.
I pulled the object the rest of the way out, snagging and ripping the paper in the process.
It was a book. Hardcover, with a simple black-and-white cover, illustrated with what looked like Pacman. The Missing Piece, by Shel Silverstein, the cover announced. I remembered the title, faintly, in some dark corner of my mind. My dad had read it to me once when I was little. I doubted that Rosalie knew that, but it still meant a lot.
"It's lame, I know," she muttered, looking at the book instead of me. I smiled.
"It's great," I said honestly. "I got something for you too," I added, suddenly remembering the small box in my desk drawer. I hopped off of the bed to retrieve it. I handed it to her, feeling that there should be more ceremony in this moment, but well, that couldn't be helped.
She took the box from me and stared at it, biting her lip. I was suddenly embarrassed about the clumsy wrapping job, but hell, you try wrapping a box that small with these hands. I should've thought about the wrapping kiosk in the mall. Should've, could've, didn't.
"Aren't you going to open it?" I asked. She slowly raised her eyes.
"You got me something great, didn't you," she accused.
"Maybe," I said, taking a seat on the bed once more. "I won't know for sure until you open it."
"You did. You got me something great, and I couldn't think of anything but 'The Missing Piece'," she sighed. I couldn't decide whether I should laugh at that or not. She tore off the paper to reveal the simple black box, and got that look that all girls probably get when they realize they're being given jewelry, although it was quickly hidden as she shot a look of suspicion at me before cracking open the box.
"It's a poesy ring," I said, leaning back against the headboard and folding my hands behind my head as she took it out of the box, staring at it as it caught the dim light of my bedside lamp. "Kind of like a promise ring, I guess."
"What's it say?" she asked, rotating it between her fingers and squinting at the words. I couldn't decide if I really wanted to tell her. On the one hand, she had given me that book, which I guess could be like the literary equivalent of "you complete me", but at the same time, I wasn't sure that I was ready for her to know exactly how I felt. Her gift was a lot more cryptic than mine, and I could possibly be taking it the wrong way.
"That's the thing," I said softly and her eyes flicked up to mine as she raised an eyebrow questioningly. "I want you to promise me that you won't try to find out what it says. At least, not yet."
"Why?" she asked, slipping the ring onto her finger. She picked the left one.
"Just promise me," I insisted. She seemed to debate it for a moment before nodding.
"Don't promise rings usually come in a set?" she asked. I nodded. "Did this one?"
I removed my right hand from behind my head and held it up to show her the matching ring. She smiled and nodded appreciatively.
"Looks good."
"Oh yeah, I feel really manly," I laughed. "Charles Atlas, watch out."
Rosalie laughed before crawling up the bed to me, straddling my thighs and bracing her hands on my shoulders to keep her balance before leaning in to kiss me.
/
The next morning we woke up late. The sun was already high in the sky, sending light bounding off of the snow outside straight into our fucking eyes.
Fuck you, nature. Just… fuck you.
I clapped my hand over my eyes for a minute, trying to wake up fully. Beside me, I felt Rosalie stir.
"Coffee," she groaned. I laughed and sat up.
"Let's go." I wasn't going to argue with coffee. Actually, next to a cigarette, it sounded like the most wonderful thing in the world at the moment.
Rosalie followed me down the stairs and hoisted herself up onto the kitchen counter. In that skirt, I was reminded of Thanksgiving, and that skirt, and it's really too fucking early in the morning for this.
But now Rosalie's eyes were locked over my shoulder, wide and surprised, and someone cleared their throat behind me.
Crap. Mom. She had been working so often I completely forgot she would be here. Rosalie slid down off of the counter, her eyes now downcast as she smoothed her hair, suddenly seeming very self-concious.
"I'm just going to... go..." she said quietly, slipping past me and hurrying from the kitchen. After a moment the front door opened and closed and Mom finally seemed to find her words. Or maybe she had just been waiting for Rosalie to leave.
"Emmett Dale McCarty," she started slowly. Oh fuck, the full name. The full name never meant anything good. "What... You... I just don't even know how to start with this."
I gave her a moment. I know my mom and she would eventually find a good starting point without my help.
"She has a boyfriend," she finally said. Well. Okay. Didn't expect that to be the starting point, but okay.
"That's..." I paused, trying to find the right way to explain it. "It's complicated, Mom." Even I could hear how unimpressive of an answer that was.
"Either she has a boyfriend or she doesn't, Emmett! How complicated could that possibly be?" she yelled, staring at me disbelievingly. I couldn't really blame her. From the outside, this looked pretty damned bad and hell, I was raised by a woman. She knew that I knew better than that. I wasn't supposed to have the 'normal' guy mentality.
And I didn't. But I couldn't figure out how to explain that without dragging out the whole torrid story.
"She's not really with him," I said. "She just doesn't want to tell her parents that they broke up because they're the ones who want her to date him and... that's where it starts getting complicated." There. Okay. Simple, vague, but still an explanation. Or so I thought. But Mom just gave me this almost pitying look.
"Oh, come on, you don't really believe that, do you?" she asked.
"Wait, what?" I asked, wondering just how this turn in the conversation had come about.
"You know, guys aren't the only ones who lie when they cheat on someone," she said and it clicked. She was saying that Rosalie was lying to me. Dear God, was I going to have to drag out the whole story?
"There's more to it than that," I said. "It's not my place to talk about it, but I know that's not how it is."
"And then to have her here," Mom continued, thankfully moving on to the next subject. "You're too young to be having girls spending the night in your room, especially without me knowing about it."
"I'm eighteen," I pointed out and she shook her head.
"Barely, Emmett. And you're still in high school, and still living at home. Until that changes, you're not an adult who can make these decisions!"
"What decisions? You don't even know that we're doing anything!" I objected. Which, okay, yeah, we were, but she didn't know that and hell, I was being safe. It's not like I was a thirteen year old who was incapable of handling my shit.
"You expect me to believe that two teenagers spent the night together, and absolutely nothing happened?" she asked skeptically. Why was that so hard to believe? Yes, it wasn't true about last night specifically, but Rosalie had spent the night many times before without us doing anything.
"Yes," I answered, biting the rest of my thoughts back. They wouldn't help my case.
"Well, I'm sorry, but that's not going to happen," she said. "God, Emmett, how could you be so irresponsible?"
"I'm not being irresponsible!"
"You're breaking my rules, sneaking around, messing with a girl who – no matter what the circumstances – has a boyfriend. How is that responsible?"
"I haven't done anything wrong!" How could I make her understand that. Okay, yes, technically I had broken some rules, but what harm had been caused? And her conclusions were wrong! I felt like her wrongful accusations should balance out the correct ones.
Unfortunately that's not how it works.
"Emmett!" she said, her voice rising in volume. "You're just not getting it!"
"What's going—" I spun around as Mom's head snapped to the doorway to see a blonde man entering the kitchen, fixing his tie. Dress clothes or no, Dr. Cullen looked like he had woken up here. He stopped short when he saw me.
"I'm not getting it?" I asked, turning back to mom. "At least I get the incredible hypocrisy of this entire fucking situation!"
"Watch your mouth!"
"Are you serious right now?" I demanded. I knew that what I was saying was way out of line, on some distant level of my mind, but I couldn't stop it. It just kept coming, like verbal diarrhea. "Really? You're standing there, lecturing me about having a girl in my room, and then Dr. Cullen walks into our kitchen like he fucking lives here?"
"I'm an adult, Emmett. I don't have to justify myself to my teenage son! If I want someone to stay the night like that, I can do it!"
"No! As long as I'm still cleaning up after you as you mourn my father, you don't get to do things like this!" I shouted and I could practically see the words leaving my mouth. I wanted to reach out and grab them, to stuff them back in and undo what I had just said, but it was too late. I was pretty sure that, judging by her expression, they had just slapped her across the face. She stared at me for a minute, her mouth opening and closing as she tried to find something to say. Dr. Cullen shifted uncomfortably in the doorway. "Mom—" I started.
"Get out," she said, casting her eyes down to the counter.
"Mom—"
"Just... go somewhere for a while. I don't want to see you right now," she said, her lips drawn in a tight line. I nodded slowly. I wanted to apologize, to tell her that I hadn't meant it, that it had come out wrong. But maybe it would be best to let everything settle first. You know, let the dust clear before running in to make sense of the rubble.
I left the kitchen, brushing past Dr. Cullen and grabbing my coat and keys and leaving the house. I couldn't think of anywhere to go once I had started the Jeep. There just wasn't anywhere to go around here.
I threw it into reverse, figuring that if all else failed, I could just drive around aimlessly for a few hours.
At that moment, the Hale's door flew open and Rosalie came hurtling out, taking the steps in one long bound and practically flying towards the Jeep. Or rather, in front of the Jeep. I slammed on the brakes, managing to stop it just shy of hitting her because hell, I hadn't expected her to jump in front of the fucking car. God, did she have a death wish or something?
She kept running until she got to the passenger's door and threw it open, climbing in and slamming the door before looking at me expectantly.
"Well?" she asked after a moment of me just looking at her, waiting for an explanation as to what had caused this particular incident of Forks' special brand of batshit crazy. "Go!"
"Where?"
"I don't care, just go!" she commanded. Well, Rosalie says jump...
I hit the accelerator, rushing down the street and glancing from the road to her and back again, waiting for her to say something.
"Where are we going?" she asked. I snorted a laugh.
"I don't know. You're the one who told me to drive," I pointed out.
"You were already leaving! I figured you were going somewhere!" she said. Okay. Time to calm down a little.
"I'm just driving," I said as I merged onto the highway. "No real plans. So do you want to tell me what happened?"
"I told my parents about Royce," she said. And that was it. No more information offered. God, this was going to be like pulling teeth. Clearly it hadn't gone well.
"And?" I prompted her. She sighed.
"Apparently I'm a liar," she said.
"Fuck," I cursed. "They said that?"
"Well, Dad said that. Mom went into the kitchen and started making pudding," she mumbled.
"Why?"
"Because that's how the Hale household operates," she said bitterly. "We fix things, and if they can't be fixed, we hide them. If they can't be hid we find another way to cover them up. If there's just no way to cover them up, we just ignore them and pretend they don't exist. And I guess the best way to do that is to make pudding." She was quiet for a second before laughing. "And it follows this sick sort of order. Jasper, he fixes things. If he can't do it, then I hide them. If that doesn't work, the parents come back into town and Dad just covers them up, explains them away, and Mom makes fucking pudding like nothing's happening anyway. It's the stupidest fucking thing..."
"Sounds like it," I said. "But why didn't they believe you?"
"Because who waits three months to tell someone that they were raped?" she asked wryly.
"Someone who's scared they're going to be called a liar?" I asked. She laughed; an unnerving, desperate type of laugh. The kind of laugh that someone comes up with when they just don't know what else to do.
"They're going to make me apologize to him," she said. "For 'defaming his character'. I'm supposed to go over there tonight."
"You told them that he beat and raped you, so they want you to go to his house and apologize to him..." I said slowly, trying the words out for myself to see if they were more understandable that way. "In what world does that make sense?"
"The Hale one," she said. She chewed her bottom lip for a moment, glancing at me. "And there's more."
"What?" I asked, my stomach knotting. People usually saved the worst for last. If her having to apologize to that bastard wasn't the worst, what was?
"I'm not supposed to see you anymore," she said quietly.
Well. Merry Fucking Christmas.
/
RPOV
It was dark by the time we got back to Forks. I couldn't really tell you where we went. We didn't stop anywhere to make any one place stick in my mind. We didn't talk. It felt like there was nothing left to say. We both knew that me not seeing Emmett would only last until my parents went out of town again, which was scheduled to happen shortly after the New Year. That wasn't what was weighing on my mind, or his, I think.
What we had been thinking about was about to become a reality. As I kissed him goodbye and left the Jeep, I knew what we were both thinking about: The fact that even now, I was walking to my car, fishing my keys out of my pocket, preparing to go to see Royce, and trying to not vomit.
I knew I would be seeing him alone. It was a Saturday night. His parents were almost always in Seattle for some sort of event over the weekends. I felt like I was walking right into the lion's den. Hell, it felt like more than that; if I was walking into the lion's den, I was doing it with a layer of raw meat covering every inch of my body.
The drive to his house, just outside of La Push, was almost half an hour, but it felt like five minutes. I didn't have time to prepare for this. Even the hours spent thinking about it in the Jeep seemed like nothing towards that end. Before I knew it, I was sitting in the driveway, trying to force myself out of the car.
I wished, in that moment, that I was a smoker. At least then I would have a reason to delay going to the door. I'd have to finish my cigarette first. Or a pack.
As it was, I couldn't think of a way out of this. If my parents found out that I hadn't apologized – and the very thought of doing that made me want to gag – they would just make me come back again. Or worse, they would orchestrate it into some sort of public apology at the next get-together.
It had shocked me at first that they didn't believe me – that they were so ready to call me a liar rather than thinking that Royce, a guy they only knew by his parents, might have actually raped me. But I guess it shouldn't have. It was easy to ignore things in their world when there was no evidence to the contrary...
Evidence.
That's it. Evidence.
I got out of my car, slamming the door hard for one last burst of bad-ass confidence and marching up to the door to ring the bell before I lost my nerve.
/
EPOV
Three hours after Rosalie left my car, I was already going crazy. It wasn't the short amount of time apart that was doing it – it was the thought of the eight days before her parents left again and I would be able to see her. It was the thought of the first night in over a month sleeping without her. It was about wearing this fucking girly-ass ring on my finger without seeing hers to remind me why I like it.
I had already done my homework for break, made dinner, hunted down the credit card taped to the bottom of the sixth vertical blind to rent the carpet shampooer tomorrow so that I could clean all of the carpets in the house – the first of many punishments to come, I'm sure – and taken a shower.
What I saw when I came out of my bathroom made me feel sure that I was going crazy.
Rosalie was sitting on my bed, calm as could be, her hair falling in waves around her face as she looked down at the book that was open in her hands.
"Rose?" I asked quietly. She made a small humming sound in acknowledgment. This was too surreal. She had just told me that morning that she wouldn't be able to see me when her parents were in town, and now she was sitting here like nothing was going on, just reading while she waited for me to get out of the shower, like this was any other night. And the calmness was unnerving as well. Hadn't she just been to see Royce?
What had happened?
"Did you go see Royce?" I asked.
"Mm-hmm," she said, still not looking up from the book.
"And how'd it go?" God, were we playing twenty questions now or something?
"I'd say it went pretty well," she said, closing the book and raising her head to look at me. There was a split second where I saw her face and then it was like an opaque red curtain had dropped in front of my eyes.
What. The fuck. Was that? What was that? What was that?
No matter what inflection I gave it, I couldn't make the question process.
"What the fuck is that?" I heard myself asking. I blinked hard, trying to clear the red from my vision.
"Evidence," she said simply.
"Evidence?" I repeated, blinking again as my eyes slowly started to focus. I almost wished they hadn't. What I saw was horrifying. The entire left side of Rosalie's face was bruised, the worst of it at her cheekbone and brow. Her lip was split open and I saw, as she raised her hand to dab at it, that the wrist of her light blue sweater was now stained a dark crimson. Her ring, the ring that marked her as mine, caught the light, flashing at me.
That bastard hit my girl. He made her bleed. And she was just sitting there, looking at me like this was nothing. How could she just act like this was...
Oh please, dear God, please let this be nothing.
"Rosalie," I started slowly, forcing myself to stay calm. "Did he do anything else?"
"Nope," she said simply, dabbing at her lip again.
"He just hit you?" I asked.
"Well, he just successfully hit me," she said thoughtfully. "But you want to know something interesting? When you decide not to fight one thing, you have a lot more time to focus on fighting something else."
"What?"
"Let's just say that Royce might not be able to reproduce. Ever," she said, grinning. I was torn between wanting to hunt Royce down and beat his face in beyond recognition, wanting to laugh, and wanting to high-five my girlfriend because that shit was priceless.
"Evidence?" I asked instead, realizing that she hadn't explained earlier. She shrugged.
"They didn't believe me three months after the fact," she said. "So maybe they'll believe it now."
"You let him beat you for that?" I asked. She scoffed.
"I've taken worse from him before, and gotten nothing in return. This way, at least I won't be called a liar," she said. I just couldn't wrap my mind around this. This was how it had been before I moved here?
"How did no one notice this before?" I asked. "No one wondered why half of your face was black and blue?"
"I used to protect my face," she said, sighing. "And when I couldn't, I'd make something up. Look, I really don't want to go into all of that. I just wanted to let you know it happened, so that you didn't see it and go barreling down to La Push or something. The next time I see you, I don't want it to be through plate glass."
"I may still go down there, you know," I said, sitting down beside her.
"In that case, have you ever seen the video for that song, 'Feeling This'?" she asked, grinning for a second before wincing and bringing her sleeve back to her mouth as the skin split open again. I sighed and went to the bathroom to get a wet washcloth before coming back and holding it to her mouth gently, pulling it away after a moment to see only a small amount of blood on the cloth before pressing it back. At least it wasn't bleeding heavily, I guess.
"Fuck, he did a number on you," I said quietly, tracing the pads of my fingers over her bruised brow and cheek.
"The face is actually the least painful," she said. "I mean, it hurts, but at least now it won't hurt every time I try to take a step, or sit down, or lift something..."
"No, now it'll just literally hurt you to smile," I teased. She rolled her eyes. I wondered if she could see through the teasing to the fact that I was horrified by her casual talk of where it hurts more to get beat. "Are you staying tonight?"
"I shouldn't. If I get caught coming back in the morning, my parents will probably decide you did this," she said. "Anything to excuse Royce," she added bitterly.
"You should go bursting through the door screaming while it's still fresh," I advised.
"Nah. I thought I'd go for the silent suffering approach. Lay on the guilt a little," she mused.
"Good plan," I said, taking the washcloth from her mouth and kissing her softly, careful of her injuries.
Regardless of what had happened – whether she had baited it, or allowed it to happen, or hell, physically grabbed his hand and hit herself with it – I was going to kill Royce for this. Fuck the rules. The mat was now just a way to get us both in the same place at the same time.
Rosalie kissed me one last time before telling me goodnight and letting herself out of the house. I waited for her bedroom light to come on, to make sure nothing bad went down when she got home, before I finally went to bed.
It was actually really hard to sleep without her.
/
AN: Again, sorry that this chapter took so long. Seriously.
Unfortunately, as much as I hate to tell you guys this, I feel like it's only fair to let you know some of the things that delayed this chapter, and may potentially delay the next one (although nowhere near as long). Last April, I joined the US Army. I was sent home part of the way through Basic, and discharged honourably, but according to my First Sergeant, I'm still "assimilating to civilian life", so I'm going in about twenty directions at once. Also, in May, my brother shot himself. He's alive, but recovering slowly, and some of his surgeries are still pretty extreme, so that holds things up every now and then. Add to that my rush studying for my national CPhT exam, and I've got a lot going on. Please bear with me until this all calms down?
Anyway, as far as notes on this chapter go, the music video referenced early in the chapter is "Feeling This" by Blink-182. It took place in a military-style juvenile detention center, and was basically about the kids overthrowing the guards and shit. But the part Rosalie is talking about is the couple that was essentially fucking through a plate glass window. It's actually a pretty amusing video. You should YouTube it. :D
There is so much I would love to say to all of you, but well… I really don't think any of you want a three-page AN. Everyone thank Cydney94 and Nachos4Children for finally succeeding in pulling my head out of my ass long enough to get back to work on this!
Reviewers get eternal love and the smuttake missing from this chapter – Christmas night, after the rings.
So much love to you all! Seriously!