Chapter 13
~Bella~
Jasper came by the next morning with a pie from his mom and a healthy dose of farm-boy judgement. Overalls and ratty hair, smelling like grass and sunshine and buffalo berries. The pie was still hot, and he was still as full of it as ever.
"You still got that thing?" he asked, setting the pie down and frowning at the fawn. The deer frowned right back at him, ears twitching restlessly as she backed up to her customary spot between my feet. I raised an eyebrow and my chin, trying to look a few inches taller and stronger and braver than I actually was.
"Where else is it gonna go? I'm feeding it, at least."
"It should be with its mom."
"It doesn't have one," I snapped, but I didn't finish. I didn't say it all because I didn't need to. We both knew. Putting it into words was just a formality.
The fawn didn't have a mom, and neither did I.
"You still ain't dressing decent, either." Jasper's eyes dropped to the bandage on my leg, the hem of the nightdress. I knew he was here because of my trip to town yesterday. Sure he'd heard it from more than several people that Bella Swan was driven to town in that truck that should have died decades ago by a new guy that no one knew, and she probably had to have her leg cut off. Just as he opened his mouth to ask, the back door slammed. Neighbor was standing there in the entryway, silent and stoic as ever, in a grey t-shirt and a worn pair of jeans and a ratty pair of Converse. Paint-splattered and eye-patched, hair rumpled and jaw gone scratchy overnight.
Staring right at me.
He looked tired, and I couldn't help but wonder if he slept at all last night—because I sure hadn't.
"Your mom didn't teach you manners?" Jasper scowled in his direction, posted up in between us like a stop sign. "You're supposed to knock on a lady's door, not just barge in."
Neighbor just shrugged, his face slack, but it seemed like he wanted to glare right back. "She knew I was coming."
"That so?" He arched a presumptuous eyebrow at me.
"Someone's gotta check on her."
"I am," Jasper muttered. "She's just fine."
"Doesn't look fine to me." Neighbor's eye trailed all over the room: the peeling wallpaper and the splintered floors. The grunting refrigerator. The leaky faucet and the ivy sneaking leafy fingers in through the windows. The fawn between my knees and the grey hem of my nightdress. His gaze crawled up my arms, my neck, my face—slow and soft and deliciously hot—I flamed at the cheeks, went dry in the mouth.
"Who are you?" Jasper asked, straight to the point. Neighbor met my eyes over Jasper's shoulder, and we were going off to war together behind his gaze, all death-defying torment with a helping of fear and a hint of anger.
"Edward." Neighbor extended a hand in Jasper's direction, steady between them. All the air in my lungs solidified waiting for him to respond. It took him way too long. His own mom would have cuffed him upside the head for how long it took him to respond to the gesture. I gulped and stood rooted to the linoleum, my heart churning and my head full of echoes. This new word flinging itself around my skull like a moth in a suddenly bright room.
Edward Edward Edward Edward.
"Jasper... Whitlock." Jasper finally spoke, returning the handshake with a little more force than necessary, obviously thinking that his hometown name would strike a nerve in this new neighbor. "Listen here, Stranger. She's too young for you." Jasper pointed at me. "This whole town is watching. I'm watching. And you—" He turned back to me, shaking his head. "You gotta get rid of that damn thing." With one last glare in my direction, he pushed by us both and stalked out the door.
I couldn't look at him, but I knew he was staring at me.
Edward.
"Is that your boy?" He hooked his thumb over his shoulder in Jasper's disappearing direction, and I shook my head in disgust.
"Absolutely not."
"I don't like the way he talks to you."
"Me either."
Edward's mouth tightened, his teeth grinding as he stared at me. He swallowed something that must have tasted rotten, face twisting before his eye fell to my leg. "How's that gash? Feel okay?"
"Of course it doesn't."
"Let me look at it."
I shook my head. I couldn't let him touch me. Not now. I was still watching him lick his lips and still wondering what he was doing here. Still wondering how to feed myself and wake up in the mornings without that dreadful ache behind my heart. I couldn't let him touch me.
He rolled his eye and pointed at a chair. "Just sit."
There was no fight left in me.
I sat.
Gripping my chair, I watched him kneel in slow motion, his knee to the linoleum, head bent as he wrapped a big warm hand around my ankle. Fingers smoothing up my shin, pushing the hem of my nightdress up my thighs. The brush of his breath across my knees. He set my toes to his thigh, bracing my leg as he turned it, inspecting Dr. Clearwater's half-assed glue job. He was careful and thorough, silent for a long while, before he squinted up at me, thoughtful face and solemn eye.
"How old is too young?"
"That depends, doesn't it?"
"On?"
"How old you are."
He huffed, an errant thumb absently rubbing a circle into the soft spot behind my ankle as he studied me. His eye everywhere. I didn't know whether to wither or bloom, shrink or sit straighter, and his hands still hadn't let go of my leg. My knees were brushing his t-shirt, and his eye was lingering somewhere near my collarbone, and he was skimming his top lip with the tip of his tongue.
"Seventeen," he said.
"No fucking way," I gasped.
He laughed out loud, a short chuckle that he reined back in almost as soon as he had set it free, like he had a bird trapped in his ribcage that he never let out. "Not me. You."
I shook my head. "Higher."
"Eighteen."
"I'm not a girl," I snipped. "Higher."
His eye fell back to my neck, gaze going heavy and deep as he licked his lip again, the bottom one this time. "Nineteen."
I clamped my thighs together and parlayed. "Thirty-five."
"Lower."
"Thirty."
His eyebrows raised, looking faintly delighted at my transgression. "That's not how it works."
"I'm narrowing my field. Thirty-four."
"Wait-"
"Thirty-two."
He scowled, which meant I'd hit my mark. "Twenty." He pointed a finger at me, dead center on my heart, and I couldn't lie.
"Bingo," I whispered, my face falling to stare at my lap. He was still rubbing that circle into my ankle, and I watched the pad of his thumb, the mindless whorl he was tracing onto me. As he followed my gaze, he seemed to realize what he was doing and jerked back into business mode over mindless small talk.
"It looks fine. Not infected. At least, not yet," he muttered, pulling my nightdress back down over my knees. When he stood, he looked woozy, as though there was too much blood in his head or too much air in the room, and he swayed on his feet in front of me.
"Think that boy is wrong. You're not too young for anything."
"I told you. He's just some kid whose mom sends him over to make sure the house is still standing, and I'm not dead."
"Seems he's doing a piss poor job of that." Edward did another one of those glances around the kitchen, his one eye disappointed enough for the both of them. "This house needs more than some kid coming over to check on it. And you—"
"He doesn't know what I need."
"What's that, exactly?" His eye narrowed, speculation and curiosity. "What do you need?"
"Does it matter?" I snapped, fingers twitching around the bandage on my leg, and the fawn rubbing up against my calves like a cat, and oh my God, life was so confusing.
"It should," he said glumly.
I ran by him, up the stairs and into the bathroom, slamming the door behind me. I was breathing hard enough to make my lungs burn and blinking back tears of rage. Humiliation. Disappointment. I stripped off the nightdress, flinging it aside, skin crawling. Let it crumple at my feet. The house quiet below except for the familiar thud of a hammer. I cranked the shower as hot as it would run, stepping underneath, washing my hair clean, and soaping myself down. My skin was sore to the touch, achy and timid. Cranky and curious. There was a tiny fire sparking to life right below the surface, coming on stealth and sly, full and tender, making me ache for something I didn't even know existed until he looked at me. Like that.
He must have liked what he saw because he didn't look away.
He looked harder.
Longer.
I'd never kissed anybody. Never been kissed, not by anyone, much less someone so wild and out of place. Not by someone so splattered in scar tissue. Not by someone with only half of their vision and even less of their smile. I wondered what it would feel like… his mouth. Soft and overheated, warm and wet, and oh God, I sent a zing clear down to the soles of my feet that left me gasping. I shut my eyes and did it again, letting my imagination run completely stark wild crazy with the thought of him. Downstairs. Sweating. Cursing. Pounding. I'd never had anyone to think about this way until he came along, and here I was, in the shower, not ten feet above him, letting my imagination slip his hand between my legs. Letting him breathe hot and heavy down my neck. His fingers and his tongue and his shoulders stretched tight underneath his t-shirt. The nails between his teeth and the wrinkles at the corner of his eye. The strip of skin showing above his jeans. His scars and his half-smile.
His hands.
His lips.
On me.
Fingers kneading down across my hips, between my thighs, slippery-wet and smooth. Sliding higher and deeper until the spot between my legs was crushed deliciously beneath him. He lit a fire in my belly that I could feel in my fingertips, tucked deep up inside, knuckles sliding sure and steady against all of my overwhelmed skin. His lips and his tongue... my throat, wrists, nipples… my high-anxiety heartbeat.
Feeding the fire with every lick and push and pull and thrust.
The water ran cold.
I stumbled out of the bath in a daze. Sat at the top of the steps completely naked, dripping water, watching him work. Every inch of my skin was prickling with static like the snow channels on the television, too fuzzy to see through. My fingertips were tingling, and something was burning in my belly, aching between my legs. I gripped the edge of the step as he pounded nails into my porch, fixing the hole I'd punched through it yesterday.
With the last nail sunk deep into the wood, he stood and dusted his hands off on his thighs, stretching his arms before he turned and glanced up the stairway, spotting me sopping wet and naked on the very top step. A puddle was dripping steadily onto the step below me, and my curls were starting to tangle. He tore his eyes away, looking out over the prairie and swallowing roughly.
"You better go put some clothes on."
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