Chapter 28

~Edward~

After Bella left, after I bullied her to leave, I stood for a long time at the kitchen sink. I'd answered only one of her questions, and then I lashed out before shutting down completely.

She tried to warm me up when she saw it beginning, tried to soothe the beast I'd let surface. She was so good, so loving—it only reminded me of how much better she could do without me in the picture. With some other man in her life to love her and care for her like I was incapable of doing. Just like I thought I was eventually going to do, I knew I'd hurt her as soon as the words left my mouth. I just didn't think I'd do it so soon. The look on her face when I snapped that it was none of her fucking business was almost enough to make me run after her and pull her in my arms, confessing all of my dirty sins to her and begging her not to leave me.

Almost.

Instead, I gripped the chipped porcelain and broken formica until my fingers ached, and I knew they'd creak in pain once I released them.

I felt shitty for hurting her. Worse than shitty. I felt some of the old shame I thought I'd shaken rise up in my throat like bile. I felt shitty for not telling her, too. For not trusting her—instead, flipping the switch on all the good we'd had growing to the point where I feared I wouldn't get it back.

I wanted it back. I wanted her back. I knew it as soon as I'd told her to go. Back in my house, in my arms, in my bed, in my burgeoning reality of dreams instead of nightmares. I only felt good when she was near me, and I'd just thrown a knife straight through that.

There was only one person I could think of who didn't hate me and knew the truth of what I'd done, and I'd been avoiding her for selfish reasons. She had to be in pain, had to be hurting as much as I was, but I'd turned my back and fallen into this dream world of an existence with an isolated house and a kooky neighbor, without a thought to the woman who got me here in the first place.

I needed to call Rose.

My fingers did protest in pain as I unfurled them and reached for the phone. The metal burned my skin, and the screen stared at me blankly, waiting for action. Before I could change my mind and drown in my hundredth tubful of self-loathing, I hit her number and waited through half a ring before her unmistakably anxious voice filled my ear.

"Edward? Are you okay?"

I closed my eye in guilt at the fact that she assumed that something was horribly wrong for me to call. "Yeah, it's me."

"What's going on?"

I said the first thing I thought of. Something I should've said a long time ago. "I'm sorry."

"For what? Calling? You didn't disturb me, just reading."

"No, Rose. I'm sorry." My voice cracked, full of the dread and pain and all the fucked up things I said and did to her. There was silence on the other end after her sharp intake of breath. I waited for her to say something, anything, but nothing came. "I'm so so sorry, Rose."

Her voice was calm, mellow. "I forgave you a long time ago, Edward."

"But I never said it. I never said, 'I'm sorry.' And I am. I'm so fucking sorry." A sob I hadn't known was captured in my chest came out in a whimper. My hand covered my mouth instinctively, trying to keep it in, like I had for months now.

"I know you are."

Silence between us while she waited for me to continue. I had so much to say, so much swirling around my head, but I chose the one thing that had been eating at me the most. "How did you ever forgive me? How did you even want to ever see me again, let alone help me?"

She sighed. "I love you. He loved you. You were hurt by… it… as much as I was. How could I not be there for you? Not be there for my husband's brother whom I love like my own?"

"I should've been the one there for you. And you should hate me for what I did."

"You didn't fucking kill him, Edward. And I told you," Rose said, her voice taking on the stern parent tone she'd used with me the night I finally decided to let her in and help me. "You hated yourself enough for both of us."

Her words stung. Cut and shot through me like a bullet. I knew they were true, but it didn't make me any less guilty of a horrific crime. But hearing them, I knew she believed them. Rose would never bullshit you—on that, she was reliable. I sagged against the counter. "I did."

"Did? Past tense?" The surprise and hopefulness in her voice was obvious. "Put the real Edward on the phone, please."

Leave it to her to turn discomfort and anxiety into humor. "I think it's me. I've been feeling… better."

"I'm happy to hear that, truly. Is it the house? You're comfortable there?"

I wiped at my eye with the back of my fist. "The house is great. I'm painting it."

"That sounds good. It needed it. How's the eye?"

My fingers touched the leather. "I don't know. The patch is still on."

"Edward! You were supposed to take that off weeks ago."

"I know."

"Why haven't you?"

"I don't know," I lied.

"You're not helping yourself. You'll never be able to—"

"I know," I repeated dumbly, cutting her off from saying what I know she wanted most in the world, besides Emmett coming back. But it was something that would never happen.

Rose let it go, thankfully. "So what else is new? The house is being painted; what else?"

My bare toe skirted around the crack in the black and white vinyl tile, debating what to say. To say it out loud made it real. "I met someone."

Silence again. I pictured Rose's mouth open and her eyes wide, an image that made my heart warm. I smiled slightly, missing her. "A girl?"

"A deer." I felt my face heat. "And maybe a girl."

"I want to hear about the deer sometime, but tell me about the girl first."

How to describe Bella? "She's strange. And broken. And kind of unrealistic. But for some reason, she likes me."

"There's a lot to like about you."

"Less than there used to be. I don't deserve her."

"Don't, Edward," Rose snapped suddenly. "Don't deny yourself something else that makes you happy because you feel like you need to punish yourself for the rest of your life. You need to forgive yourself. You need to. Or you're going to eat yourself alive and join Emmett in the ground. And I, for one, can't go through burying another person I love. You owe it to me, to him, to be happy. You know he forgives you, too."

With those words, my face crumpled, and I finally slumped on the floor in front of the cabinets. Rose let me cry... let me sob. The first real display of human emotion I'd had since my violent outburst and drunken rampage in her living room, before I finally accepted her help. Enough of it, anyway, to get me sobered up and wanting to etch out some thin facade of a life.

Choking on my own heartbreak, I stayed silent as I tried to embrace what she said. "I know he does—that's what's fucked up. So fucked up." I wiped my nose on my t-shirt and inhaled Bella's scent, still lingering there like a ghostly cobweb long after a spider has abandoned it.

"Life is fucked up."

"Rose, she has no idea how fucked up I am."

"If she's put up with you this long, she must see something in you." She chuckled a little. "If you can find someone to be fucked up with, you should hold onto it and never let it go."

"How, Rose? How can you be so fucking strong after what happened? How do you not want to crawl out of your skin and disappear?"

"I ache, Edward, of course I do. But Emmett and I knew this could be a possibility someday. Doesn't take away one minute I spent with him. I would do it all over again knowing the outcome."

"I miss him, Rose. I miss him so much."

"Me too. I miss his big, goofy face and the way he could belch 'Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.'"

That made us both laugh, and I felt a lightness in my chest. I had the urge to tell Bella that story. "Do you talk… about him?"

"Every chance I get. Hell, I talk to him. Tell him about my day. It helps."

"How do I…"

"Tell this girl you still haven't given me a name for about him?"

"No." I swallowed thickly and shut my eyes. "About what I did."

Rose inhaled deeply. "You tell her the facts, not your version of it, and let her see it for what it is herself."

I thought of Bella sitting and listening to the ugliness that lived within me every day. Thought about showing her the evidence in the attic that kept the blanket of despair over me like a shroud hiding mummified remains.

And all I could see was her holding my hand and looking at me with her big, brown eyes full of kindness.

"Bella. Her name is Bella."

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

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HB&PB