We stood apart, our backs against opposing walls, prisoners to our own shackled demons. I didn't know how to do romance and shit; I had practically wrote the book on aloof detachment. I was not Superman - I saved my own ass, not a piece of ass. But standing in that elevator with Bella, the distance felt like staring at the ground from the top of a skyscraper. I wanted to reach out and catch her before she jumped, but how the fuck could I do that when I was at the bottom of the building? We were both rushing toward the pavement without any idea of how we'd got there in the first place. In my case, right through the concrete and soil, directly to hell.
At least, that's how it felt like to me. I had an inkling, like one of those stupid black blobs therapists used, that she felt the same. But then again, it could all be up to interpretation. She'd made it seem like her betrothal to Marcus had been a matter of convenience. It was entirely too plausible for my liking that real feelings had been involved and she simply didn't have the balls to cop to it. Maybe I was romanticizing the attraction we felt, an innocence that my withered soul greedily wanted to consume to rejuvenate itself.
She opened her mouth to speak, the minute movement catching me like a hook to the jaw. For better or worse, this woman had laid claim to me before we'd even hit puberty, yet she seemed completely unaware of the hold she had on me. My eyes roamed her face expectantly as she paused, the silence feeling like the concussive force of a firearm discharging. When the elevator doors popped open with a cheery ding, she still hadn't spoke. In the deafening silence, it may as well have been a bomb going off.
With a cough, she pushed off the cool metal wall and hurried through the doors without looking bad. A growl pressed against my sealed lips, hissing out as my hands snaked through my hair. This was so fucking frustrating, not knowing which way was fucking up around her.
By the time I had stepped off the elevator myself, Bella was long gone. Frustration welled in me like an angry toddler, petulant and unreasonable. I'd been gone for over a week, and when we finally came face-to-face again she'd fawned all over me in the same way Rosalie and Alice had fretted and fluttered over my brothers. While Bella may have been a butterfly, beautiful and fragile, I was a wasp, only capable of inflicting pain.
My macabre musings took me from the main level, where we'd stopped, up to my room. My hand closed around the handle, but I couldn't bring myself to turn it. I'd been feeling like a specter lately, outside my own body, and foreign. Ever since Bella had turned up in that hotel room my entire world had shifted to revolve around her so much, I had lost sight of everything else I knew existed.
Yanking my fingers off the brushed chrome, my feet turned of their own accord and carried me, stalking, down the stairs and out the front door. My car was where I'd left it several days ago in the roundabout drive, my keys still secure in the gas cap. Without a second thought I snagged them up and climbed in, taking off without any clear thought of where I was going.
My stormy thoughts took on a life of their own, blowing over my vision like angry black clouds. Their violent tenor took me by surprise, considering their only focus was Bella.
I was pissed about her life up to this point: her mom dying; moving away from everyone and everything she knew and loved; being forced to sell and mule drugs; getting in deep with Marcus. She had been the singular bright spot in the tar-like mass of my memory, the sole light among so much darkness, and now even that was tainted and murky. It made me nauseous in an unsettling way how just the sight of her drove me mad, my fingers hot and prickling with the itch to run my fingers over her beautiful, caramel skin. The easy way with which we could converse when we didn't think or try too hard - when we could just exist and be.
But we weren't built that way, her and I. Not anymore. Our lives were shaped by forces far beyond our control, some masochistic deity in the sky finding trite amusement at tugging our strings just to see how far it could jerk us around. I had never longed for any hand other than what I had been dealt, and yet I couldn't stop the sharp, fragments images of what could've been.
Me and Bella, being normal people doing normal things. We'd have went to middle school together, and dated awkwardly. That would transition to high school, where our fumbling attempts at kissing would turn into experienced passion. Graduating, together, and posing for pictures with our parents. Then college, and moving in together, and maybe even marriage as we worked 9-to-5s and argued over what we wanted for dinner and her lame taste in cinema.
The reality was so much more fucked up. I had a GED, barely, which was only the top of my storied history, themed by shades of murder and addiction. Hers was twisted around desperation and poverty, caked in brick red Havana clay and translucent gray cigar smoke residue. Our families were disjointed, the snapshots that defined us all mugshots and melancholy. We didn't get crisp diplomas, we got counterfeit dollars.
A voice from outside the car made me jump internally, my fingers reacting by rote as they spasmed around the grip of my pistol. Grubby fingers were tapping on my window, the man wearing tattered clothes attached to them hoarsely asking for some cash. With a growl I rolled down my window a fraction and was about to offer him a 9 cent fix when I finally registered exactly where I was.
Everything in this part of town was either boarded up, run down, or razed to the ground. There weren't any houses, only industrial buildings and chain-link fences as far as the eye could see. It was where Rose's shop was; why I had come here, of all places, was a mystery best saved for when I had a clear head on my shoulders.
Without another word I pulled away from where I'd been idling on the curb and headed for the shop, which was about a quarter of a mile up the street. The gate was closed when I swung the car into the drive, everything beyond the fence obscured by tarps zip tied to through the links. From above me I heard the security camera click on, alerted by the motion. Even with my blacked-out windows up, my car was recognizable by anyone who'd been around long enough, so when the gate didn't immediately slide open, I rolled my window down. Unclicking my seatbelt, I threw my torso out of the car to glare at the camera, incensed.
"The fuck are you waiting for? Open the damn gate, you fucking moron!" I yelled. After several pauses without any response, I dragged myself back into the seat and began to dig around for my phone to call Rose. Even if she wasn't here, she'd rip any asshole that required a new orifice, or at least I assumed she would - it was me, after all.
Finally a voice crackled over the built-in speaker on the camera. "Who the fuck are you? Get lost, poser, befor- ah, fuck, hijo de puta, jefa, lo siento! Mi malo, mi malo!" The words were punctuated by violent smacks of what sounded like a crescent wrench colliding with a hand. Only one person warranted a response like that - apparently the blonde demon was in house, after all. The gate slid open, but I still leaned out of the car again and gave the poor sucker a one-finger salute before I drove in and parked in front of a shuttered bay.
The security was necessary since this was a haven for any low life that boosted cars. Rose took in the hot rides and scrapped them for parts or swapped the VIN so we could reuse the car, or resell it. In exchange the people who brought in the cars usually got a cash payment, but there was the few exceptions who did it for a quick fix, too. We deliberately kept the outside of the building shitty and well-worn, but the inside told a different story.
I pushed in through the side door after punching in my code, walking through the lobby and straight to the garage. While it was mostly a front, Rose still did honest work when the less fortunate had need of it. Since the location's primary stream of revenue was under the table and off the charts, she could afford to offer more legit services for dirt cheap, or occasionally even free of charge. We were practically modern day fucking Robinhoods, except for the fact we were usually helping those actually robbing the hoods.
By the time I entered Rose had finished chastising the poor fucker that had barred me, and was knee-deep under the chassis of an '87 Corvette. Her long, slender leather-clad legs were poking out from beneath the front end, lifted just off the ground on one of her hoists, on a creeper. Wordlessly I slid into a rolling shop chair and dug around in the bottom of her tool cabinet for the bottle of tequila I knew she kept stashed there.
My mood wasn't going to allow me to fuck around with a glass, so I took the entire bottle and lifted it to my lips and took a long pull. At the sound of the fifth smacking against the cabinet, tools rattling, she slid out and gave me the customary once-over she usually reserved for department stores and cheap liquor.
"Well, well, well, if it isn't Miami's reaper in the flesh. What brings you to my lowly shithole?" Her scathing voice, like nails on a chalkboard, immediately soothed whatever had been battering around in my head like a ram. She never failed at coming up with some contrived nickname for me, like I thought I was Billy Badass or something. I was just doing a job, same as her; she just seemed to rank aiding and abetting in grand theft auto higher than homicide.
Throwing her a dispassionate look, I took another draw from the bottle before responding. "Just needed to clear my head."
With a snort, she disappeared back under the car. This shit was nothing new for Rose - I could've been a literal fucking angel and she'd still think I was beneath her. That made it all the more surprising when she reemerged after a moment, eyeing me skeptically.
"Is this about that girl you brought home?" In and of itself, me bringing Bella around was a shocker for most of Carlisle's family. It was well understood I didn't bring women around, enough to the point that Allie had seriously questioned my sexuality. The fact that I actually seemed to care for said woman was a giant flashing exclamation point.
I just nodded, turning slightly to obscure my face. I didn't want to have this conversation with Rose of all fucking people, and yet that's exactly what seemed to be happening.
"This may come as a surprise to you, but I do have a fucking soul. I like her, Rose. Bringing her into this world, our world, when she just fucking got out... it's fucking eating at me. She ain't like you and me. She hasn't been fucking... corrupted yet, desensitized to the fucking violence. Even if she doesn't die, what if being in all that fucking kills her? You know what I mean?"
To her credit, Rose didn't laugh as I'd been expecting her to. She sat up on the creeper and rested her arms on her knees, staring out into the shop. It was pretty empty at this time, business not ratcheting up until much later, much like a lot else in our lives. We seemed to exist by the moonlight, only entering the daylight as visitors.
"I know we don't always see eye to eye, Tone, but I wasn't exactly born into this shit, either." I scoffed, thinking of her days running moonshine. Yeah, she may not have been a gangster's girl, but she'd still been a criminal.
She took a wavering breath, probably trying to ignore my reaction, before continuing. "Yeah, yeah, I fucking know. Hear me out, though. Does she love you?" I just shrugged because I honestly had no fucking clue. We'd just reconnected after fucking years - somehow that didn't seem like an appropriate ice breaker. "Then maybe keep your distance? I don't mean totally ice her out, but if you really don't want her involved in all this shit, you need to keep your own personal feelings for her away from her."
The fact that Rose wasn't even trying to be malicious or snotty should've made me feel better. Grabbing the bottle of tequila I took another pull, trying to numb myself against the stabbing pain in my chest.