A/N: This one, idk...


Footprints in the Sand

Chapter 36

As it turns out, Edward is just as particular about what movies he watches as he is about most things.

We've been deliberating Netflix selections for half an hour, with no end in sight. We had planned on watching Constantine, but it's not available, and have found ourselves in a stalemate.

The movies Edward suggests, I've already seen, and the one's I pick out, he's not very pro on. I make a mental note that he's not fond of romcoms, but that's pretty much the status quo for most guys.

"You're going to give me déjà vu from when my father used to make me watch them," I protest after he picks out the fourth war movie.

"Well, what do you suggest?"

"When Harry Met Sally?" I propose. I've only seen the end of it, after all.

He only turns to me, his eyebrows furrowed like he thinks I'm nuts.

"You're exasperating."

Chuckling, he slings an arm around my shoulders and continues to browse the menu.

His birthday itinerary is dinner, followed by a movie and then sex twice before morning, but at this rate, we'll still be arguing about what movie to watch by dawn.

"Robin Hood?" he puts to me.

I pause. I'm fairly certain I've never seen it now that I think about it, and I'm definitely not averse to watching anything with Kevin Costner. I tell him that as he throws me a dubious look.

"Should I be worried?" he asks.

"Have you looked in the mirror lately, counselor?" I reply. "You definitely have nothing to worry about."

Grinning to himself, he tugs me closer. "So, it's a go on Robin Hood?"

"It's a go."

He hits play, and we settle in to watch it, despite Edward constantly distracting me by where he insists on placing his hands.

"Would you stop tickling me!" I burst after twenty minutes of his warm fingers running up and down the side of my right breast.

He laughs gently and grabs a handful instead. "Who deliberately wore this dress?"

"It's summer," I explain away my halter neck, and God knows my temperature always skyrockets in Edward's presence. "Can you rewind it? I don't know what the hell is happening."

"Morgan Freeman is insisting on coming to England with him," he relays.

"Who's Morgan, again?"

"He's a Moor, I think."

"How did he...? Okay, the Crusades. You're distracting me!" I respond to his constant amusement over me and my expeditious brain.

"Bella."

We manage another several minutes before his over-adventurous hand wanders a little too far along my inner thigh. I slap it away as he smothers his laughter through his nose.

"Is that supposed to be Maid Marian?" I ask puzzled, threading my fingers through his in a futile attempt to prevent him from groping me further.

"I wouldn't imagine so. She's hideous."

"That's very shallow," I chide him, prodding my elbow into his ribs.

He jolts, chuckles and then points out, "Hollywood is shallow. John Little," he guesses when we come to the rapids scene.

"No doubt, and I'm guessing Christian Slater is Will Scarlet."

"Who the hell is Christian Slater?"

"Interview With the Vampire?" I reference the last movie I saw him in.

"Never seen it. Isn't that Brad Pitt, though?"

"He's in it as well," I clarify, patiently removing his palm from inside the bodice of my dress. "You are like a horny teenager."

"I can be that, if you like," he practically growls against the side of my neck.

"Not just yet," I hold him off with a small, easy-going sigh. "I didn't realize you were exactly like Addie when it comes to movies."

He laughs again, but that's all he seems to be doing during the movie, and the smooth fluidity of it is making me restless. Edward has an amazing laugh, the tenor and grit of huskiness behind it, but then, everything this man says and does is porn to me.

He particularly likes Alan Rickman, laughing out loud during several of his scenes, until he turns quiet. I rather naively assume it's because he's becoming engrossed in the movie, but if I was more observant, and less distracted, I would have picked up on his cues earlier.

I realize, perhaps a tad too late, it started after we're introduced to John Little's very pregnant wife, and I start to fear there's going to be a birth scene.

He's very clearly on edge I note after watching him peripherally for a few minutes; he's openly frowning and biting subconsciously on the inside of his cheek.

I should have known better. When a movie shows a pregnant woman, there's almost always going to be a birth scene. To what degree is usually the only question.

Graphically, in the case of this movie. Morgan Freeman's character has to turn the baby while in the womb so it can be born as John Little's wife screams in agony. At this point, Edward abruptly pulls himself from the sofa and leaves the room.

A moment later, the sliding door to the back patio slams shut as I practically jump out of my skin.

I follow apprehensively not long after, finding him leaning over the railing, his hands gripping it so tightly his knuckles are white, as his lungs heave forcefully in and out.

"Edward..." I say gently, realizing he's literally pouring with sweat.

"I-I'm s-sorry, sweetheart, I can't watch that," he stammers, the words strangling from his throat and sounding foreign to my ears.

"Hey," I whisper, reaching tentatively to touch his arm as he immediately flinches. He's shaking openly, and what's more than obvious is he's suffering from some serious post-traumatic stress. "Edward, talk to me..."

"Bella, please go back inside," he utters, clearly struggling to make his voice audible.

"Edward..." I appeal to him as he squeezes his eyes closed and practically shudders.

"Please," he pleads with me, and without another word, I turn and walk back in the house.

I don't go far, though, and taking a seat at the breakfast table that faces the backyard, I keep a close eye on him; watching as he continues to stand, rigid and unmoving, his head bowed low. My heart is absolutely breaking for him but I don't move; I barely take a breath. I feel as if I'm suspended and any sudden movement could make everything crumble around me.

It seems like an eternity before he comes back inside, but in reality, it's probably closer to twenty minutes. With his eyes steeled to the floor, he walks past me toward the stairs without so much as a glance in my direction, and I'm at a total loss as to what to do.

I give him another few minutes before I trail after him. He's locked himself in his bathroom; the shower's running, but I get the distinct impression he turned it on to drown out anything else.

"Edward?" I call out gently, tapping softly on the door. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine, sweetheart," he replies sounding everything but. "I'll be out in a second."

When he eventually emerges, he looks like absolute hell. He's pale, still clearly shaking, and steadfastly refusing to meet my eyes.

"Do you want a coffee?" I ask as he sits himself on the edge of his bed and buries his head in both hands.

"Sure."

Five minutes later, I place two steaming mugs to his nightstand. He hasn't moved from the defeated position I left him in, and walking slowly toward him, I cautiously move myself between his legs and cradle his head to me.

I hold him until his breath calms and he loosens even fractionally in my arms, even as tears spill silently down my face. He doesn't move to hold me in return; his arms hang limply by his sides, and he's so broken, I can barely stand it.

I don't know how to help him other than to offer him my presence. All I know is this man needs therapy. He needs it yesterday.

"Edward..." I whisper, and I'm not sure of the context behind it even as it passes my lips. I feel absolutely wretched for him.

"To watch... someone you despise being essentially tortured to death...is really not as satisfying as you'd imagine," he mumbles, sounding devoid of all emotion while simultaneously being flooded by it.

"I can't imagine," I whisper, sifting my fingers through his thick mass of hair before pressing my lips to the top of his head. "Do you want to talk about it?"

He expels a heavy breath and only then does he enclose me in his arms. "Not yet. Bella..."

Pulling himself to his feet in one fluid motion, he cups his hands to my face, angles it toward his and kisses me.

He needs this physical break, I understand it immediately, and so I give myself wholly over to him. Right there on the edge of his bed, with me on top, he takes me. He holds me tightly in his arms, his fingertips imbedding into my flesh as he fights the trauma of his own mind as well as the release of his body.

After, he's as physically exhausted as he is emotionally, and I realize maybe for the first time since I met him, whatever's eating away at him skin deep is taking an exponential toll on him.

"Do you want a bath?" I suggest, running the back of my fingers across his brow, wiping away the beads of sweat that are endlessly accumulating.

He nods in a fractured movement even as he struggles to rein back his breath, and pulling myself from over him, I make my way to the bathroom to run one.

When the tub is full, I have to practically coax him to his feet, and taking his hand, I lead him after me. He pulls it free a moment later, and hangs his arm around my shoulder until I feel as though I'm all that's holding him upright.

Usually when we take baths together, I relax on top of him, but this time, he inclines himself on one end of it, while I sit along the other with my knees pulled to my chest.

He still won't make eye contact, and I know it's from shame more than anything else. My father was exactly the same.

What is it about this stigma that men can't show emotion, and when they do it's something to be ashamed of? It's so incredibly detrimental to them.

"Thirty-seven hours she was in labor," he begins, his voice flat as he stares down at his hands. "Three epidurals that failed. I was never fond of hospitals to begin with. My mother will say I'm sensitive. I'm not. I'm just a coward."

"No, you're not," I insist emphatically, because it's the very last thing he is.

He glances up at me only very fleetingly and throws me a hastily put-together smile, but he can't maintain it, and he quickly goes back to avoiding my gaze. "I'm allergic to penicillin," he explains, his forehead heavily knotted. "When I was eight, I had my appendix out. And after, they pumped me full of it. I couldn't breathe. It... it was terrifying. I still have nightmares over it, so hospitals are always the last place I ever want to be."

"Yeah..." I say softly, nodding in understanding.

"I wanted her to have a C-section," he continues, his voice completely flat and empty. "They were warning her the baby was big, and to avoid complications..." He shakes his head, his face subtly clouding. "She opted to have her normally, knowing how much longer it'd take, just to spite me. She was well aware of how much I hate hospitals."

Of course, she fucking did, I come very close to blurting out bitterly.

"She was convinced the baby would be small. She was on a diet the entire time she was pregnant—while telling everyone I threatened to leave her if she put weight on." He laughs once dryly. "By the time we were halfway through it, she was begging and pleading with me to make it stop. To take the pain away. She was clinging to my hand, refusing to let me leave. I don't know why the epidurals failed. They never explained it."

"Most times it's due to the epidural space," I offer up timidly.

Gauging me for the longest moment, he scoffs to himself. "It took two hours of her pushing for the baby's head to be born. I didn't watch. I couldn't. I don't know how I even stayed on my feet. She was screaming and cursing me. Calling me every name you could imagine. Then, Addie... got stuck."

"Oh my god..." I murmur, because I've seen it more times than I ever want to recall. "Her shoulder?"

"Yes," he answers quietly, "and they couldn't get her out. There must have been about ten doctors in the room, and she—my ex-wife—was screaming unlike I've ever heard before. I thought she passed out. I'm guessing everyone else thought she did as well, but they were more focused on the baby. I remember a nurse putting an oxygen mask over her face, but it wasn't until they noticed her start to...change color." He pauses to rub his furrowed brow heavily with his fingertips. "Everything after became very... intense. I think they forgot I was even in the room. There was a team working on her and another trying to get Addie out. They were practically tearing her open, and I just stood there, unable to move; unable to look away."

"Jesus, Edward..." I whisper, beyond horrified. I knew Addie's birth had to have been traumatic, but I can barely conceive of what he's telling me. I'm struggling to hold my tears back, to contain my emotion. He doesn't need me falling apart right now, but I'm becoming so choked, I can barely breathe.

"I'm not sure how long it took for them to get her out, but when she was finally born, she was...grey, limp. Not moving. Not crying. That's when one of the nurses dragged me out. I guess they informed my father about what was happening, because the instant I left the room, he immediately pulled me outside. I barely remember anything past that point. I think I might have passed out. I'm not sure."

"Oh, god. I'm so sorry," I just manage to articulate before I'm overrun by tears.

He scoffs again; it's emotionally charged and without an ounce of humor. "I heard those three words a lot in the early days..."

"I can't imagine," I reply, so softly I don't think he catches it.

He falls quiet for the longest time, his gaze vacant, unfocused, his mind elsewhere, before he eventually breaks himself from it. "I guess it was maybe an hour later when one of the doctors informed me my ex-wife had expired." He quotes that one word with both sets of fingers. "He wasn't sure why. He told me they needed to do an autopsy. I signed every form the hospital shoved at me and then asked how the baby was. It was a nurse. She wouldn't look at me, and she wouldn't tell me much; just that Addie was still being worked on." He stops abruptly, and rubs his eyes this time, at the tears he has no way of concealing from me, or holding back.

I grab his hand as he draws me to him and allows his head to fall to my shoulder. "You don't have to say anything else," I tell him. He's said more than enough.

More than enough.

"Bella," he mumbles. Maybe he spoke my name in complaint, or maybe out of frustration. All I know is it's the very opposite of how he usually says it. "Just let me finish this because I never want to speak about it again."

Nodding hastily, I swat my own tears away before he becomes aware of them. I'm not fooling him, though.

"I was told Addie suffered an extensive brain injury. They didn't expect her to survive the night, and I was so angry, Bella. She was forced to suffer through so much as well, and all because her mother deliberately went against doctors' recommendations." His voice hardens with resentment and his entire expression momentarily darkens. "I didn't give a shit that she died, and when I first laid eyes on Addie, I was fucking rejoicing over it. Addie was completely blue—they had to lower her body temperature—and for the first week of her life she was sedated. She was in the NICU for eight days, and stayed in hospital for another two weeks after that. Her brain scans were bad. Really bad. They told me to take her home and love her, but not to expect anything from her. She wasn't supposed to ever walk or speak, and they had her down as a DNR if she was ever brought to emergency."

"Oh god, Edward..." I gasp, clamping my hand over my mouth as tears spill between my fingers.

My poor, sweet little girl.

Meeting my eyes, he smiles, and it absolutely breaks my heart. All this pain and heartache he's been carrying by himself, it's been slowly eating away at him. This whole time. "For the first week at home she slept a lot and was getting tube fed, but then... my mother suggested I try giving her a bottle. She drank every last drop, and while I didn't really have anything to compare her to, to me she appeared completely normal. She was smiling at me and making eye contact. She was very curious by everything around her. My father told me I probably wouldn't start noticing anything was amiss with her until she was a bit older and started missing her milestones. Except she didn't. She was sitting up at five months, crawling by six and eating everything that was put in her mouth. She was saying her first words at four months and when she was unhappy with me, she'd let me know. My father was keeping a very close eye on her, and he started to suspect her initial scans were inaccurate. So, when she was six months old, he gave her another MRI, and the results came back completely normal. There was nothing wrong with her. I think it's the first time I even breathed since she was born. My father was shocked by it. He expected to see some level of brain damage, but there was none. He said babies have a very uncanny way of healing from these things that they still don't fully understand."

"They do," I agree, gently cupping my palm to Edward's cheek. I knew Addie was special, but this child is an absolute miracle. While a lot of babies never fully recover from such a traumatic birth, you hear the stories of others defying their prognosis's all the time, and it doesn't surprise me at all that Addie would be one of them. That child has a definite mind of her own and a will of iron. Exactly like her father. "How big was she when she was born?"

"Nine pounds. Just over, I think. Nine-one," he answers, placing his hand over mine and roughly clearing the emotion from his throat.

"It's big, but not overly so," I say more or less to myself. "You hate that I'm a labor and delivery nurse, don't you?" I put to him delicately; though, it's not really a question, and I'm well aware of the answer.

"I'm not going to lie, sweetheart, I don't like it at all, so I don't think about it." He's already getting on top of it, I realize, and he doesn't look or sound anywhere near as shellshocked as he was only a few minutes ago. "I tell myself you work in Emergency with Alice. I don't want to put my bullshit onto you, so if I do..."

I nod my head hastily in reassurance. "I know. It's okay. Have you thought about going back to therapy?" I ask as tactfully as I can manage, even as he frowns and glances away.

"Last time I went, he suggested I watch birth videos to desensitize myself. I... couldn't do it."

"Jesus," I mutter. Talk about throwing him straight into the deep end.

"Bella?" He speaks my name as a question.

Yeah?" I reply softly, meeting his eyes.

The intensity of them hasn't wavered but there's just something so fractured within their depths that's absolutely breaking me.

"Ask me."

"I'm sorry?"

"You have a question you want to ask me. So, please do it."

"I-I... I'm not sure what you mean." I'm only half truthful because we both know I do, and my response is pure avoidance.

"You do," he contradicts me. "You think I'm not aware of what you're thinking when your mind goes to where ever the hell it does?"

"How do you know?" I question him in barely a whisper.

"Because, I figured you out." He smiles; it's one-hundred percent compromised, but it's still as charming as it always is. Jesus, this man. What am I supposed to do with him? "I told you I would."

"You did," I concede, as my expression mirrors his.

"So, ask me, because I don't know how to tell you. I've been wrestling with it almost from the moment I met you. I still am, and I'm still not sure what I'm going to do about it."

Bowing my head, I nod once reluctantly and expel a wearied breath. "You've had a vasectomy, haven't you."

"I have," he admits quietly, his voice overrun with culpability as his forehead rests momentarily with mine. "I got it done when she was still pregnant. I never told her."

"Well, that makes sense," I acknowledge, not meaning to sound as numb as I suddenly feel. She got pregnant as a means to control him. Of course, he'd do whatever he could to protect himself.

"I'm sorry, baby, I—"

"When I needed the emergency pill, I thought you'd flip out, but you just... let it go," I interject, explaining my reasoning.

"I'm a

fucking prick, Bella," he mutters, squeezing his eyes closed and rubbing them with his thumb and index finger. "You've been worried about it this whole time, when you never...needed it."

"Addie tells me all the time you don't like babies, that you don't want anymore..." I scoff to myself at how willfully blind I've been. The signs were always there; I just refused to see them.

"It's not that I don't like babies. It's just... the idea of you being forced through that makes me want to... And knowing one day my daughter will have to go through it, too." Frowning, he pushes the heel of his palm into his eyes this time, and it does nothing to disguise the revulsion overrunning his expression.

"Was Addie born at Harborview?" I ask after a moment of attempting to process it all, but I can't. I'm not sure how I ever will, but I've never heard of anything like that happening where I work, and horror stories are discussed regularly in the staffroom.

"No, it was at Virginia Mason. Bella..."

"Yeah?"

"Can you give me a few months?" he asks, and when I meet his eyes, I realize he's pleading with me.

"To...?"

He shakes his head in open frustration, even if it's directed toward himself. "To... figure it out."

"About me?" I venture, wanting to shy away from him.

What does he need to figure out?

His eyes snap to mine resolutely. "I don't want to lose you, sweetheart." Curving his hand around my jaw and cheek, he draws me to him. "At the same time, I don't want her dictating the rest of my life."

"Edward..." Untangling myself from him, I pull back. "You're confusing me. What is it you're trying to tell me?"

"I'm... I'm not sure I ever want to get it reversed," he admits, keeping his eyes trained on mine as his brow knots heavily over them.

"So... you're asking me whether I can be with you knowing you can never give me a baby?" I surmise, feeling my heart sink into my stomach.

He shakes his head, but his expression completely contradicts it. "If I were to tell you I didn't want another baby, would that be a dealbreaker for you?"

"I..." A sound bursts from me; one steeped in as much disbelief as confusion. "I have no idea how to answer that."

"I need to know how you feel about it," he explains his reasoning, as his eyes, intense and overrun, are just as beseeching. "Would me and Addie be enough?"

"Of course, you're enough," I answer without hesitation, my voice impassioned because what I feel for him, what I feel for Addie, there's not words enough to properly convey. "But, Edward, I'm not sure how I'm going to feel a year from now. Ten years from now." I stop abruptly, feeling like a selfish monster. Should I even be telling him this right now? Should we even be discussing this in light of everything he's just confessed?

"Do you trust me that we can work through it?" he asks in a small, troubled voice.

"Of course, I do. Edward, you're enough," I promise him, and pulling myself on my knees, I cup my hands to his face and kiss him, over and over, repeatedly. Tomorrow isn't promised, and I have everything I ever wanted right now. Today. "You're enough," I echo against his lips, as tears spill over and quickly take hold of me. "Both of you."

At some point he drags me out of the bath to his bed, and as if the weight of the world is suddenly lifted off his shoulders, the man I've come to know over the last seven months is back before me. Overly serious, intense and intimidating beyond compare, but oh-so sweet and tender-hearted.

"I'll do anything for you, Bella," he utters out, his voice rustic against my skin in between kissing and tasting me, inch by painful inch. "If you want me to reverse it, I will."

"We're talking babies?" I joke, pulling him back up to me because the man has a serious boob fetish. "Already?"

Alice is most definitely having a girl. She was right all along.

On hopelessly crumpled and damp sheets, with the moonless breeze of summer washing over us through his open window, I give my body to Edward for the second time tonight to reconcile, to find peace, with all those demons of his. He's rough. Very rough, but it's a release he needs, so he can finally pull himself from the shadow of his past.

"I'm sorry for lumping all my bullshit on you, baby," he tells me, his eyes clamped shut as he reaches that summit well before I do.

"Shut up—it's not bullshit. Oh my god." He's going to be the absolute end of me.

Edward and I have mastered the art of full conversations during sex. Albeit somewhat stilted and breathless, and we still laugh as much as we ever do.

But to hear him laugh again after the horrors of what he told me tonight is like sunshine. The same feeling his little girl gives me every time she flashes me that cheesy grin of hers.

We start out with Edward on top, and end with me draped over his firm, semi hairless chest, choking on my breath as a thousand questions run through my mind. A thousand what-ifs; a thousand hypotheticals, and I don't have a single answer for any of them.

All I know is right now, in this very moment, all I want is this man beneath me and his beautiful little girl.

How could I ever give up Addie? How could I even survive without her father? They're the family I once knew. My past and future converging to fill the void in my heart.


A/N: Thanks for reading, and for all the love.

xoxo