A/N: Friday. I wanted to give today. Enjoy.

..::.. Chapter 11 - Baby, Please ..::..

Present

I lift my face off the tiled floor long enough to blink up at a shadow. It casts over my eyes, my blotchy eyes. I intake air like the after effects of crying for hours. Sucking in sorrow. Sighing out despair.

I see him. His lips grim. Memories coming back of our first kiss.

There were a lot of firsts.

His chest is bare underneath the robe. He stands at the door I left open. He watches. My satchel that he must have fetched from the car is in his hand. The keys in his other hand dangle. He drops both on the mahogany table by the door.

He makes coffee. He knows where everything is. He walks around the kitchen in bare feet over floors that were once splattered with blood. He fills the filter with coffee, then adds the water.

The purr and drip of solace on glass takes up the room, along with the aroma.

"Come," he says when he makes it slowly to my side.

I close my eyes. A new line of tears makes it down my temples.

"I killed a man. I killed two," I say instead.

He does this dry chuckle as he crouches beside me. "You've killed far more than that. Nothing new."

My heart can't take it, my ears. I cover them. My chin trembles holding back a scream.

"What happened to me?"

"You were shot. You went into a coma for a long time. You forgot. We left it at that."

I shake my head "No. No." He lifts me when I attempt to sit up. I'm on my feet, shaking knees. My eyes set on his chest. His strong arms around me. I dare to look into his eyes.

"I already have this life. Maybe I shouldn't remember."

"You don't want to remember me?" He smiles, chases tears with fingertips.

"Maybe it was meant to be." I seethe. He watches me. This sudden sadness in his eyes and knitted brows. "Mom died because of you, because of your damned family."

He closes his eyes. He presses his forehead to mine. I push him away. He staggers back.

"Who were they? What did she ever do to them?"

He shakes his head. Sighs. He grabs two mugs from a cabinet and places them on the countertop.

"I don't know," he says, his back toward me. Coward.

"You don't know. You're a Cullen. The head of the family. What is it? The Boss? A fucking leader who knows everyone and all things that moves in this town. Gets updates on his stupid phone he keeps close. You, Edward Cullen Jr., doesn't know who killed my mother and who tried to kill me?" He doesn't respond.

His profile is raging red. He takes shallow breaths. He's pissed? Well, I'm pissed, too.

The crash is loud, and I missed. He flinches away. He looks back at me. I reach and grab anything in my vicinity.

"Bullshit!" I scream. I swing my arm. He dodges out of the way this time. He looks back at broken glass. His wide eyes back at me. "You did this to us!"

He charges at me when I reach blindly for anything else. I tense. I dive under his arm, and that handle is just an arm's length away. I reach. We slam against the cabinets. I pull. Like straws, I get the luckiest draw. The blade is long and sharp.

I turn and twist my wrist. He's on me, then he's not. He stands back, hands up, legs spread, and muscles tense.

We dance this out.

"Baby," he says. I flip the blade and cut the air.

"Don't you dare call me that."

He looks at my hand then at me. "You see that? I taught you that." His mouth turns up at the thought. It sobers right up when I swing but an inch from his chest. He blinks.

"Enough," he says sternly.

I shake my head. "Oh, no. We're just warming up."

I go around the island. He aims the other way. So, I climb it. I stab the marble where his hand flinches away.

"Tell me you did everything in your power to find them and make them pay," I say. He gets close. I shuffle around to the living room. He follows. I pull a shoe off and throw it at him, then the other. He grunts when a heel stabs his gut.

He's red with anger. His eyes pierce from under his lashes.

"That's all you do. Right there." I point at his devil eyes with the blade. "You take, intimidate, and scare. Well, you don't scare me. You don't do shit for anyone but yourself! They took my life away, my mother's and you stood by. You coward!"

I stand on the couch as he gets closer. I climb the side. The lamp goes flying his way by my hand.

I don't know how but he's a mere foot away. Whatever he has hidden behind his back he aims right at me. I yelp.

I look down. My blouse splits apart.

He drew the shortest blade. The unlucky-for-me blade. The metal beams under the sun.

I stare. My chest heaving. "This was my favorite one," I seethe.

He nods once. "I'll buy you another. More. Anything you'll ever need. We'll leave."

"Your dirty, filthy money?"

"Baby, please." Then he cringes.

I flick my knife. The red gash turns crimson red. He holds his side.

"Go to hell," I offer instead.

His jaw goes sharp, so do his eyes.

I reach for my phone and unlock it. Those three digits under my trembling thumb. Fuck him and his family secrets. I'll tell them all.

A wall slams into me. I watch as the phone slides under a table. He's over me. I turn and push at his chin with the heel of my hand. He pins my arm.

I twist and turn. I hook my leg around his back. I'm over him. I bite his chest. He hisses. The growls coming out of him vibrate through my chest. He pushes me. I roll away, ending with a loud crash.

My eyes flutter. Pain shoots up my neck.

This time his legs pin mine, then my arms. Chest to heaving chest.

He lets go of his knife. The blade stuck to the floor by my head where he drove it. "I will hurt you," he says.

I'm panting under him. My hair in disarray. These eyes of mine prickle as my muscles settle. I grow limp, giving up.

He lies. He doesn't see it. "You already have," I tell him.

"I tried," he says. "It's been years, I've killed a lot of men trying to find them. It was impossible; I had to learn to let you go."

"I hate you." Hot tears blur my eyes.

He melts. He pulls me close. His lips ghost over my skin. "You don't. You love me, Bella. You came to me, to this house. Now I refuse to let you go."

The doorbell rings. It rings again and again.

"Bella, it's me!" Jess.

Edward looks up, then he looks at me. His lips are the last thing I feel before he's gone like a nightmare.

...

You know that friend who would help you hide a corpse and ask questions later? Well, that's Jess. The little while I've known her, we've learned to be on the same page.

One time, I took her cell phone the entire day so she wouldn't text that guy from work, who also happens to be the president of the company. And today, when she came in, I asked her to cover all the windows with sheets and lock all the doors once I let her in. He watched from his house the entire time. Until that very last moment, we covered up his glaring stare.

Titt for tatt. She complies with me, I comply with her. And when I'm sitting on the floor of the bathroom, she makes room for herself and waits for me to talk.

"I need to get out of here," I say. She nods.

"We'll pack your bags. Where to?"

I chuckle through tears. "You're amazing."

She shrugs. She thinks on what she'll say. "I mean… there was always something about you. I knew you had a story. I've been waiting to hear it since I met you. Someone looking so hurt, moving from the city, back home. There's something." She pauses. "So, what is it?"

I watch her. If I do open up, would her life be in danger? I rest my aching head on my hand.

What do I remember?

The only thing I can conjure up is this, "My mother was murdered. I watched it happen, and I killed the man who did it. I almost died trying."

She's quiet.

"But that's… just the end of it." I continue. "Or what I can recall. I forgot that part of my life."

"Just that part of it?" she asks.

I think. I think hard. I only remember Edward in high school. His Polara, corduroy pants, and his bad attitude. Edward in middle school; our first kiss that summer and the funny looks he'd give me.

"Everything before. Nothing but Chicago after."

She nods. "So what does that have to do with the crazy man next door?"

I look at her. She shrugs. "You didn't cover the windows on the other side of the house."

I stare at my hands.

"He has everything to do with it."

. .

. .