Chapter 24

~Edward~

She sat at my kitchen table in my shorts and shirt, sipping on the whiskey I'd given her as soon as she'd changed out of her dirty plaster and glass-littered clothes. She pulled her legs up and embraced them, resting her chin on her knees, making her appear small and childlike.

I didn't want to push, but what the fuck had happened over there? It was a tornado, as sure as shit the same as the one that brought me to find her in our field in the first place.

Last thing I knew, I was coming out of my kitchen, whistling and happy to have made her a fucking tuna sandwich, only to see the shed doors wide open and the darkroom empty. She'd gotten another shot developed. It sat right there on the workbench, and when I looked at it, it seemed harmless enough to me.

It was just one of the pictures of her house, but obviously something had been on the lens, and she had a sun shadow streaked clear across it from upper left corner down to where the garden grew in the bottom of the frame.

She couldn't be so upset about that, surely? She had just started to learn how to take pictures; these things happened. Hell, one of my best shots—a bolt of lightning striking a beach in Adelaide, Australia—was ruined by my own stupid finger getting in front of my lens like an amateur.

"Bella?" I'd called out, thinking maybe she had slipped by me in the house to use the bathroom. I looked around for the deer, and it was gone too. Standing in my gravel driveway, I stared dumbly at my property like I'd catch her sunbathing nonchalantly on the porch.

A faint crash sounded behind me, and I whipped around, my heart beating fast. A sick, unnamed dread filled me, and my war-honed instincts told me it wasn't more unbalanced flowers on a sill. This crash was deliberate, had meaning, and when I heard her voice, harsh and angry, call out after it, I had no other thought in me but to move.

Running over the dead grass through the field between our houses, the crashes that hit my ear became more frequent and loud. I stopped short when I saw the deer on shaky legs just outside the house, its little ears trembling and flicking at unseen flies.

Suddenly, a baby doll missed my head by inches, and I stared at the blank-eyed monstrosity now lying on the grass, its arm bent grotesquely behind its gray body. My blood rushed through my ears, and my heart hammered double.

I knew that doll.

It was the doll in the picture. The one Bella stood next to, her eyes sad, even with a smile on her face. It was the doll the old men cruelly joked about outside Sam's hardware, like Bella was nothing, so it didn't matter what they said.

The crazy woman's doll.

Bella's crazy mother's doll.

The screen door was split, and the mesh laid dead on the floor as I walked through the splintered wood. "Bella?" I called, but I didn't really expect an answer. I moved through the kitchen, my feet stopping short as soon as I saw the hole in the floor where that odd stain had been.

Hacked and jagged, the rim around the now-exposed dark wood floor screamed at me that something had gone seriously wrong in this house at some point. Still was, I knew, as I looked at the plaster powder covering the sofa and Bella's footprint squarely in the middle of the chaos.

Another crash from above, and I stared at that footprint, cursing her and her damn desire for bare feet. "Bella!" I yelled again, taking the steps two at a time. My heart beat me up there, my pulse making my veins close to bursting. Unsure of what I would see, I slowed before I reached the door. When I finally looked into the room, I saw in front of me the very thing I felt in myself every day.

Pure and utter agony.

"Can I have some more?" Bella's small voice snapped me from my thoughts and dropped me back in my kitchen. I poured a bit more whiskey in her glass and a lot more in mine.

The chair scraped against the linoleum as I sat across from her. I wanted to take her into my lap, to hold her and shush her and smooth away the baby-fine hairs around her forehead as I kissed them. But I stayed where I was, knowing she'd let me do other things to her until we both forgot about what happened that afternoon and got caught up in each other. The old me would've taken every liberty to not have to deal with any of this, but the new me—the one this annoying neighbor was eliciting—wanted to soothe her in other ways.

"So…" I swallowed around the burn of the liquor, unsure. "That happened."

"Yeah."

My fingers fiddled idly with the lace doily that sat under the napkin holder. "Wanna say something about it?"

"What's there to say?"

"You said you wanted to burn your house down." My lip turned up a bit. "After your bang-up job remodeling over there, I don't think you have a choice now."

She stared at me, eyes as big as that damn deer. The clock on the wall ticked the seconds until a slow, sanguine smile filled her face. Her hand went up to cover it, but there was no denying she was on the verge of laughing, and I was relieved.

"I mean, it was dated and all, but really, you should've just hired a decorator." Her shoulders shook a bit, and she ducked her head. "Remind me not to ask you to help with this place." That did it: she laughed in bursts, and it was a beautiful thing to hear. She laughed big, loud and all out. So loud for a girl her size.

We laughed together until she wiped happy tears from her eyes. Pouring us both more whiskey, I waited on her to come around, but she wasn't offering up anything. She seemed more at ease than she had been an hour ago, when I was literally scared about what she might do. Sipping from my cup, I couldn't help but think about my own breaking point, the mess I left in Rose's apartment as I tore through it like a hellstorm, lashing out in a drunken stupor and pleading with her to just kill me, kill me like I'd killed him.

Bella chuckled and pulled me from my thoughts. "Look at that thing—she thinks she's a dog." I glanced over to the faded maroon couch and watched the deer claw at the cushion beneath it, before curling up in a ball to sleep.

"No one would ever believe it." I could barely believe it myself—that I'd let these two creatures into my home and into my life—a life I was hell-bent on living out in solitude, so I couldn't harm anyone else. But I didn't seem to be hurting Bella at all. In fact, I felt like I was something she needed, something that finally came along to break the webs of misery clinging to her for who knows how long. From what I could tell, the camera really seemed to wake her up from her drifting stupor and rescue her from the cloud of rumors that followed her. Something happened this afternoon with that picture of her house, but I hoped that didn't mean she was done exploring what life might be like for her outside this black hole of a town. I deserved to live here; she did not.

"Why don't you take a picture of it, so we have proof?"

"Um…"

"Look, I don't know what freaked you out about that picture, but that kind of thing happens all the time. Exposure is wrong, aperture is off—hell, a piece of dust once ruined an awesome picture I took of a teepee in Nevada. It happens."

"A piece of dust?"

"Yeah, a squall of wind kicked up and got in the lens. I cleaned it out and moved on." I kicked her leg under the table. "Move on." I meant it much bigger than that, bigger than a ruined picture. "I think you have a really good eye from what we've developed already."

I watched as her face changed. Fear to hope, hope to pride. "You think I have a good eye?"

My hand rose, and my knuckles brushed the hair away from where it lay across her forehead. My fingers traced the outer corner of her eye, tiptoed across her slightly freckled nose, and landed at her cheek, which I stroked gently. "I think you have a beautiful eye." She dipped her head slightly and smiled at the compliment. "The other one isn't bad either." Smiling at her, my heart swelled with life at the ease in which I did so.

I decided right then and there, that if this fragile girl was strong enough to overcome the shadows that dwarfed her, maybe I wouldn't fight the life that was trying to crawl back inside me. At least I'd try.

"Okay. I'll go get the camera from the darkroom."

"Sounds good."

"On one condition."

My entire body froze. Sure she was going to badger me into taking pictures or talking about myself or any of the hundred things I was trying to avoid by moving into her backyard. My hand gripped my whiskey tight, tight like the fear and pressure that was clenched around my heart.

She nodded towards the old radio in the corner. "Teach me how to dance?"

"Dance?" I replied stupidly, like I had no idea the meaning of the simple word.

"You seem to be a natural teacher," she blushed a bit at that, and I wondered just what she was thinking about. "And I've seen you walk and move. You have a stealth, a grace, that can't be taught. I'll bet you're an excellent dancer."

The stealth and grace as she called it was years of learning to not walk on land mines or dead bodies. And her request felt very much the same.

"I don't know…"

She stood, her hand reaching out for mine. "I would really like to be close to you right now." She admitted that so unafraid, I was in awe of her. To see her happy again after the events of today... well, I didn't have it in me to see her look so broken and drained anytime soon. She pulled, and I followed, out into the middle of the living room that now had a few more pictures on its wall. Rice paddies in Thailand, a giraffe in Africa with its neck surrounding its young, a vast white Alaska with a single polar bear in the middle of a glacier, and most recently, the picture of my parents at their anniversary party.

"I don't really know how," I confessed, relieved at least it was a slow Gershwin tune and not some swing. Bella took both her hands, reached up and gripped my shoulders and pulled herself up a few inches. I looked down at the brown carpet, bare in spots, seeing my feet now under hers.

"I trust you," she said, like she really fucking did. I wanted to scream at her that she shouldn't. That I was no good, no good for her, and I would ultimately break her.

But I didn't.

I swayed slowly like she was some fragile egg I was afraid of cracking and spilling her guts all over the floor. We stuttered around in a circle for a minute, my hands gripping her waist to hold her to me or to make sure she didn't run, I wasn't so sure. We moved together like that until she took her arms and circled them around my neck, her body pressing against mine, as someone sang about summertime being easy.

And it was, right then. It was so fucking easy. What was heavy just moments ago in my dead heart suddenly felt lighter, as light as she was as I clumsily stumbled her around the room.

"I trust you, too."

Mad love to LayAtHomeMom, Hadley Hemingway, and CarrieZM for making us pretty.

Enjoy, and leave us your thoughts!

HB&PB