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Scheduled for Friday
by Anton M.

64: A Part of Him

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Monday, February 27

"I warned you that something like this could happen! I offered to get you a second phone on Friday, but you keep insisting on taking a bicycle to a Formula One race. You're lucky your kid grew half a brain somewhere along the way!"

Edward stifled his laughter against his palm but remained silent given that we'd just gotten Riley to fall asleep (again). We lay on Riley's single bed, facing each other, with the boy asleep between us. I had half a mind to go ask Emmett to tone it down if I wasn't so sure it would've given him the opportunity to chew me out next. He'd been at it since Garrett, LaTonya and our lawyers left, and he'd now arrived at the issue of mom not noticing a message or a call about the release of Victoria and Peter's dad on bail.

It was two AM. Mom's laptop was open on Riley's new second-hand desk to surround us with the sound of the ocean.

"You can go to sleep," I told Edward. "Go get some rest."

Edward balanced over Riley before he lowered himself on the floor beside me. His movements were getting quicker and more coordinated, but his dazed eyes still revealed the aftereffects of his drugging.

I joined him on the floor.

"No," he replied. His gaze was full of concern. "Are you sure you're okay?"

Edward's black eye had darkened, his wrists were worse than mine, and yet, he kept worrying over how I was.

My heart was so full of him that I scooted to the spot between his curled-up leg and the one he rested his arm against. I kissed him. I tingled with relief and comfort when he sunk into our kiss, clutching my neck and brushing his lips against mine in slow, quiet movements.

"I love you," I muttered, scratching his scalp with my bandaged hand. "Stop worrying over me and go get some sleep. I'll join you after Emmett has torn me a new one."

Edward kissed the corner of my lips before he rested his forehead against mine, squeezing my neck. "Not in a million years."

We returned to the living room. Mom and dad were sitting by the kitchen island, Emmett was standing in front of them, and all of them looked up as we sat on two new-but-used mismatched stools.

My heart leaped in relief when Edward pulled my hand in his lap.

"I deserve all your anger but please keep it down," I said. "Riley's room shares the wall with the living room."

Emmett stared at me, face impenetrable, hands placed on the kitchen island as he stretched his arms.

"Emmett—"

"You shut up," Emmett hissed at Edward, quieter. "You're the only person in this room who did nothing wrong. It's very touching how much you jump to take responsibility for her but Bella has to face the consequences of her actions."

Edward opened his mouth, ready to argue, but Emmett's narrowed eyes stopped him. I realized that his tic hadn't shown up all night. Had he changed medications? Was he so pissed his body went beyond tics?

"Do you understand where, specifically, you went wrong?" Emmett asked me.

"I shouldn't have believed Edward's message," I replied. "Even with the nickname only Edward uses, he would've never invited me over like that."

"Yes but no." Emmett glanced at Edward. "I agree that you should've known better, but teenagers are stupid. You'd had a fight. I understand a teenager throwing caution to the wind to go see her boyfriend. You left a message and you made sure your phone was sharing your location. Make no mistake, I don't approve of you leaving the way you did, but I admit you at least attempted to make sure your parents knew your whereabouts. But where did you mess up the most?"

I hesitated. "I allowed them to take me to a second location?"

"Again, yes but no. You put up a fight, and you were a single girl against two or three adults. I'm glad you fought them. Always fight them. But what did you do wrong before they dumped you in their trunk?"

I racked my brain but all my answers were stupid—I'd walked up to the door? I'd allowed the Uber driver to leave? I'd shown up to Edward's house to begin with?

Emmett groaned, sitting on a barstool only to stand up immediately. "When you spoke to the police, you mentioned that the moment the Uber left, you felt like something was off. Your subconscious picked up that Edward would've never parked his Yamaha in front of his home. It probably also picked up that there was a random car pulled to the curb. You ignored your intuition. And after you ignored it, you tried to play nice with your abductors, not wanting them to think that you'd think they could have nefarious intentions. You ignored your intuition twice, Bella. Twice!

"I can easily forgive everything else you did wrong. You put up a hell of a fight, you spat in the trunk, you were quick, clever and clear-headed in a terrifying situation, you escaped and kept pressing Edward's button. I am in awe of how you escaped. Except you must never ignore your gut! Never. Because if you're wrong, you'll be a bit embarrassed, offend someone, whatever. But if you're right, it will save your life. And I'd rather you offend someone because of a false alarm than send your teeth to a lab to identify you. You must never ignore your gut."

Ashamed, I wrapped my arms around my good leg without letting go of Edward's hand. "You're right. I'm sorry."

Emmett stared at me in silence for so long that I was worried mom was going to fall asleep against the kitchen island.

"I should resign," Emmett said, finally.

"What? No!"

"No!"

"Christ no."

"Look at the evidence," Emmett replied with a disheartened smile. "If I put your protection as the focal point of my CV, nobody would hire me again. Victoria and the Morgans scare you at every turn, you disappear in the mall, Garrett shows up when I'm not there, and now, you're kidnapped under my watch. The only way I could've failed any more spectacularly would've been if you'd been found dead tonight."

"That's not true," I argued, dreading the prospect of him leaving even if he hated me. Because he cared. He was my security guard, in my team, showing up on the weekends and nights and facing consequences for my actions even when he had nothing to do with them. "Victoria and the Morgans would've freaked me out in your absence with any other security guard, Garrett didn't have any bad intentions, but even so, he specifically sought me out when he knew you'd be out of town—again, he would've done the same thing with any other security guard. You could've been sleeping in our living room tonight and I might've still sneaked out—it was not on you. None of it was. You can't know how much you've also prevented from happening because… I mean, that's how prevention works. We'd never know about it."

My parents followed our conversation in silence, both dead tired, both clearly in favor of keeping Emmett. Edward squeezed my hand as we waited for Emmett's response.

"I'm not sure I can trust you," Emmett said, seriously.

"I know." I grimaced. It was a low blow, but his words weren't unwarranted. "I fucked up, but… can we work on it?"

Emmett spent the night on an air mattress in our living room.

Edward couldn't recall his kidnapping. He spent Friday night at his gramps' place (reading all night) before returning to his home at Sunrise Forest trailer park on Saturday. Jasper came over. They shot some hoops in a nearby make-do court, ordered take-out (no doubt insisted upon by Jasper), played some old video games, and discussed Underground Memories and my involvement in it (which was when Jasper had sent me that video of Edward). Jasper left before dinner, and Edward pulled an all-nighter reading the fourth and fifth books.

His dad arrived home in the morning, appearing relatively lucid, and Edward tore himself away from the fifth book to help his dad remove some furniture from his dad's cluttered room—something Edward had wanted his dad to (be willing to) do for a long time. His dad brought Edward a drink. Carl didn't act strange, he didn't even seem to be hallucinating, and Edward thought nothing of it as he downed the entire thing. His dad went to the bathroom.

Feeling dizzy and sleepy, Edward sat down, convinced his two all-nighters were catching up to him, when he realized they had guests. He froze as he realized who they were, and stumbled toward his room, determined to lock himself in it when Peter's dad came upon him. They got in a fight but Edward remembered nothing else until he woke up in a basement with a throbbing head, stiff neck, and cuffed hands.

The lab hadn't gotten back to us with the results yet but it was likely they'd slipped some kind of date rape drug in his drink.

Edward was not convinced his dad had been the one to drug him, neither did he think his dad would've knowingly been a part of his kidnapping (lucid as he'd been), but we couldn't be sure. Edward's sense of time after feeling the effects of the drug had warped. Carl could've, and quite possibly did, gotten high in the bathroom, just after delivering Edward's drink. He might've invited Peter's dad and Victoria in from the backdoor who had then slipped something in Edward's drunk and ensured that Carl would've been high.

Or maybe his dad did drug him.

Telling Edward his dad hadn't been involved would've been a lie, but it was possible that his dad was just delusional under meth and wasn't a part of any pre-meditation. Because yes, his dad had been present at my kidnapping, but, as much as I remembered, he hadn't even touched me, much less attacked me. He was just there. We didn't know if Victoria and Peter's dad had planned the whole thing with him or if he'd just been a drug-addict in the wrong place at the wrong time, eager to get his share of money that would've allowed him to get more drugs.

We'd gotten incredibly lucky with a half-empty ER and were done in two hours (unheard of), but that came at the cost of random people in the ER waiting room taking unauthorized photos of us (they went against hospital policy). It felt reminiscent of my previous week in high school, with whispers of, "Oh my God that's Bahati!" "Is that really her?!" and, "Holy shit G-Kam is with her," but a doctor took pity on us and ushered us in before a line had formed for autographs.

I still couldn't quite grasp the reality of people gasping at the sight of me. It was too surreal to put into words.

My shin was stitched up. Edward's injuries were checked over. Luckily he didn't have anything worse than a black eye and the wound on his right wrist that needed stitching, but you'd have never known from the barely suppressed panic in his eyes as he calculated the cost of being taken to the ER.

Edward didn't have health insurance.

He'd reapplied for Medicaid about a month ago to be covered as an 18-year-old but his application hadn't been processed yet.

Mom and I knew this terror all too well, and mom knew exactly which details to pry out of Edward and the nurses to get in contact with the people preparing his bill. What followed was the cutest covert fight between mom and Garrett about who should've (been allowed to) pay Edward's hospital bill. I would've happily covered everything myself had a nurse not been busy with cleaning my knuckles, and by the time Edward and I were both discharged, mom and Garrett had split Edward's bill and arranged everything so that any future bill (should there be one) would be covered by Garrett and my parents.

Understanding what had happened, Edward argued with them, refusing their help, but when he saw that it wasn't a fight he could've won, he got still and quiet, his eyes expressing everything he couldn't say. He hugged them.

I could've burst from affection for my incredible boyfriend.

Edward and I gave our testimonies in (another) police station in the presence of Garrett's lawyers. I'd thought Garrett's precautions to be overblown until the discussion veered to me having driven a motorcycle without a license. Edward didn't say a word during the whole argument but his eyes reveled how pissed off he was, and Garrett's lawyers cited some exceptions in the law for preserving a human life (mine). Garrett refused to let me agree on community service for breaking the law, threatening the police with a PR nightmare while looking like he was charming their pants off.

I had mixed feeling about it. On the one hand, I did drive on a highway without a helmet or a motorcycle license, on the other… I didn't do it for fun. I would've never done it under different circumstances, but it was way too late in the night to wrap my head around all the intricacies of the ordeal we'd been through.

In the end, the police didn't charge me with anything.

…

A few hours after we went to sleep, quick and shallow breathing warmed my neck. An arm tightened around me. Edward didn't shout or talk, but his upper body was covered in sweat, and his grip only tightened when I struggled to turn in his arms and wrapped my own around his neck.

"You're okay, baby," I whispered, nuzzling his hair. "I love you. I'm here. You're okay."

Edward kept panting against my skin until he heard me, took a deeper breath, and relaxed. He stroked my back.

"Sorry," he mumbled, voice groggy. I shifted to ask about his nightmare but he caught my lips in a kiss. He clung to me as he rolled me on my back, one arm sliding under my T-shirt and the other caressing my cheek, but his lips never left mine. The unrushed way he tugged at my lips, nipping and sucking and breathing against my mouth, so at odds with his needy grip, sent an ache through me.

Desperate to feel him closer, I rubbed against his hard-on. It took the barest flick of my fingers for Edward to throw off his damp T-shirt. My inability to see him beyond his contours made touching and kissing him all the more exciting, his warmth, his scent, the feel of his muscles under my palms and the low, growl-like hum he muffled against my neck when I squeezed his ass and arched against him. No sooner had I torn off my own shirt did he wrap his lips around my nipples, licking and humming and loving them while his hand slid inside my panties and gently brushed over my pubes. I shivered.

"Missed you," Edward mumbled into my skin, voice so sluggish from sleep I was amazed he was awake.

He slid his fingers between my legs, setting a slow, gentle rhythm that made me bite his shoulder and squeeze his muscles. Edward sped up his movements and swallowed my hums as I trembled with pleasure, gasping against his skin. His sharp breathing and pulsing cock made me impatient to push off his boxer-briefs. He complied.

Edward groaned when I took his hand and pulled my panties to the side with it. Ever-concerned about hurting me, he found our bottle of lube, squirted it blindly in his hand, lubricated his cock, and took his time sliding into me. I felt hot and loved and needier than ever.

He nuzzled my neck, waiting.

"Don't stop," I whispered straight in his ear, adoring his weight and how slick he'd made me. "I'm so, you made me so… I want you harder and deeper. However rough you want. You feel amazing."

Edward's chest rumbled with his moan, and I kept my injured leg carefully relaxed by holding him tighter with the other. I clutched his back with my hands, squeezing him, adoring Edward's every breath and whisper as he sucked on my boobs and played with my nipples. He explored my skin with his wet lips, thrusting against me, stretching me, and I savored the little moans I earned when I tickled his scalp with my fingertips.

I was close to the edge when he picked up speed, hiding his face in my neck as he came inside me. He caught his breath before his fingers sneaked between us, and I clenched around his still-hard cock as he rubbed my clit.

I had the hottest image in my head of my panties pulled to the side, knowing he'd wanted me so much he hadn't even removed all my clothes.

"Jesus fuck, baby," Edward growled, voice so low and breath so hot in my ear that I lost myself in the feel of his fingers and his cock, hard and throbbing and moving again inside me as Edward came once more.

Limp and damp and lightheaded with pleasure, I relaxed against the bed, arms lazily wrapped around Edward's neck and lips pressed against his hair.

"That was… fuck." Edward touched my cheek with his nose, almost certainly wearing a mad grin. "Was it—? Did you—?"

"Yes and yes," I whispered, still panting, loving his cock still inside me. "If you get any better at this I will never leave the bed."

Edward caught his laughter just before he woke up the whole house, but the smile in his voice was undeniable.

"Out of this world," he replied softly, with feeling, playing with the curls on my neck. His tender voice was full of awe. "I can't believe I'm allowed to touch you like this."

"Always," I said, pulling him into a kiss, not minding how sweaty and hot he felt in my arms. Edward pressed his lips against my temple, humming before his entire body went rigid.

"Your leg," he said in horror. "Your leg! We shouldn't have— I shouldn't have. I'm so sorry, baby. Fuck. I didn't remember— Why didn't you tell me no?"

"My leg is okay," I replied, not allowing him to pull away. "It's perfectly fine."

"Bella…"

Still snuggled against his chest, I reached for my phone and dearly hoped my wound showed no signs of blood seeping through as I pulled the blanket off my curled-up leg and cast a blinding torch at my stitches.

Edward relaxed against me when it was fine. I shut off my light.

"I'm sorry I forgot." Edward kissed my eyebrow. "Always remind me, baby. Don't let me hurt you."

"I'm sure you just made it heal faster," I joked, kissing his shoulder and stroking his back. Edward's breath puffed against my hair, cooling my damp skin, and I could tell he had a lot on his mind. I asked, and my insides twisted when he was unwilling to talk about it. He was here, with me, so close, breathing against my skin, and yet… a part of him wasn't, and it terrified me. But Edward stayed silent, playing with my curls until I fell asleep.

…

A/N: You are the absolute best. Thank you for sharing your thoughts :) I'm so lucky to have you as my readers!