..::.. Chapter 38 - Blood Red ..::..

Young - High school, Continued ...

Blood in my mouth. It's mine. It isn't. I don't know whose it is. My hands shake. I grip the steering wheel.

I swallow and let the salt slide down my throat. The house is down the block. The sun is still trying to set, falling asleep, making the sky fiery red.

The wheels screech to a stop, crawling up the lawn. Mom's rose bushes get mangled beneath. I cough. The red comes up. Speckles sprinkle over my hands and the window.

I watch the dots. I wipe them down with a sleeve. It just makes it worse.

Dad will kill me.

I climb out, and maybe my shirt will clear it up. I wipe down more with it.

I'm tired. I let my shirt fall back around my torso, and then realize there's pain there. My knee buckles and I struggle to get back up. The heavy door to the car closes in on me.

I cough. I spit.

The grass isn't green; it's blood red.

Then lights go on. The glow comes from the Cullen house and the kitchen from home. Then the porch.

"Bella?" Mom.

I look up, and Mom is running. Her eyes are wide. Edward's are too. He's at his front door, and I turn my eyes to him across the lawn. He's not mine anymore. I gave him up, but right now, he doesn't give up on me. He charges forward, hops over his porch, over bushes with a leap. He calls me, and he's devastated.

I roll my eyes. Maybe they roll on their own. Maybe things go black for a split second. All I know is he'll be so overbearing. I manage to stand and close the car door.

"I'm sorry, Mom," I say when she's close. The fender was driven through bricks of this stupid little fountain she keeps on the lawn with flowers around it. I sniff and wipe at my lips. And that metal, that blade, Edward's, is still in my hand.

I lift it. I stare. Red all over, sticky wet.

"I … um. I made a mess," I murmur to her.

Mom is all arms raised toward me. She's speechless, quaking. She's slowly stepping up to me, and her hands grip my shoulders. Edward takes over and pulls me, and he's looking and looking.

Then Mom is shouting. She pushes him away.

"Don't you touch her!" she says.

I lift a hand to him. "I took care of it," I say.

He's just dumbfounded. He maneuvers around Mom and lifts my shirt to see if it's my blood. He turns my face to look at my jaw. He swipes the blood off my lips with a thumb.

"What in Christ happened? Who did this?" Mom shouts.

Edward is quiet, but he's asking himself the same things. His jaw goes sharp.

I watch him. Blood drains his face, pale. Utter grief. I frown slightly and shake my head. "I took care of it. I'm fine," I repeat.

Then, I cough, and the blood coming up betrays me. I'm keeping cool, but it's not happening. The lawn goes sideways, and my head is soon on a roller coaster. I squeeze my eyes shut and command my vision to straighten, but I stagger.

Edward catches me. I push his arms away. "I took care of it," I say again. Mom cries. She's banging her fists against Edward's chest telling him things. Spewing the fault at him.

But I catch those eyes. Just over Edward's shoulder is that man, the one in the wheelchair. He watches on from the porch, rolled out, as Jasper looks on from their lawn. I see it; the old man's slight mischief, the gleam in his eyes, the shift in those old wrinkled lips. Major grins at me from his wheelchair.

I point this blade right at him. I nod to myself. Edward catches the hand, and he takes the blade back.

He steps away; from Mom, from me. One look at me, one decision made. Fire blazes at his shoulders.

He's going to kill tonight.

I watch him hop into his car, and he's off to see what I've done. Of course, he knows where I've been, but he left me alone today, upon my request.

Jasper yells for him. He curses and yells for Emmett inside. That one goes off running after Edward.

What's left is that grin. That knowing grin. Major is getting a front row seat to this show he orchestrated.

Then, Dad runs out. He looks at the mess. The car is tilted oddly, bricks and roses rolled in a heap beneath it.

I give him one good look and say, "You'll need to clean up the office. You'll need to hire a new receptionist. I quit."

Horror strikes his features. Regret. Tears brim as he takes this all in.

"Renee, take her inside," he says. And he's finally woken; the man of the house. He revs the engine, and the wheels turn the grass beneath them. Angry whirls try to free themselves until the wheels grip. He backs up into the street leaving all the crumpled remains behind. I've never heard Dad screech the wheels of the Firebird before.

It took blood to set fire under his feet. Mine seems to drain right out of me.

I can't stand.

Everything goes black.

…