A/N: Thanks so much for all your wonderful thoughts.
Most characters belong to S. Meyer. The rest belong to me. All mistakes are mine.
Chapter 17 – Invisible Heart
September 14, 2024 – NYC, NY: 12:55 a.m.
BELLA:
Emotionally spent after my confession, my breaths erupted in a ragged series of short gasps interspersed with long exhalations.
Standing in front of me, Edward remained eerily still. Grimly silent. His jaw, always uncommonly angular, was locked in the rigid shape of a three-sided rectangle, hard and unyielding. While I'd recounted the events of that heart-wrenching Saturday, nineteen years in the past, his features – still undeniably, irresistibly handsome – spanned a multitude of expressions from a deep-set frown to a rounded wide-eyed gaze, and lastly…to an ashen face drained of all blood.
He swallowed successively but with apparent difficulty, his Adam's apple moving in a painfully slow bob up and down, up and down. He expelled a loud huff of breath, then lifted his arms and linked his hands around his nape, the veins in his forearms protruding in a tight strain of muscles. But then he dropped arms and hands heavily as if the position wasn't helping, as if it were just serving to frustrate him all the more. One hand fell in a fist to his side, while the other raked roughly through his hair, repeatedly, only to return to linking them both behind his nape.
And I watched it all with an excruciating sense of growing nausea, as if insects crawled in my stomach and rose along with bile into my esophagus. The longer his silence wore on, the harder it was for me to breathe.
Yet, when he spoke, there was no sense of relief. His tone was measured, precise to the point of clinical, each word like a surgical incision cut exact yet profound. And I cringed at the stoniness I'd never imagined from his gravelly, whisky voice, not even in my nightmares. Even in our fights – even in that disastrous fight – Edward had never sounded so…lifeless. So empty. The opposite was true; in our angriest moments, he'd lashed out in husky, passionate fury.
This was a thousand times worse than that.
When it hit me that this was likely how I'd sounded to him nineteen years in the past – wooden and emotionless – that rivulet of bile shot to my throat.
"So…let me see if I understand this," he said, vacant and flat, more like someone seeking clarification on the use of a household tool than on an epic betrayal. "You thought I was going to replace you with my career. So you pulled out first."
I shook my head. "No. No, Edward. It wasn't like that. Heidi said-"
Dropping his hands yet again, he shook his head, but in such a manner that it soon became apparent he wasn't denying anything; instead, it was a passive gesture of massive disappointment.
"Yes, I heard what you said about Heidi. But let's…" – he lifted a palm into the space between us – "let's leave Heidi out of this for the moment. This was always about much more than Heidi."
"Edward, I know I hurt you," – I pressed my hands against my chest – "but-"
"And let me also reiterate that I know…I know," he expelled with a series of heavy, vigorous nods, "I hurt you first and messed up badly that spring and summer. I know I did. But it was about more than that, just as it was always more than the 'No relationships in the band' rule that gave you pause." His ensuing pause thundered like war drums. "From Day One, your doubts were about us, plain and simple. No matter what I said or did, you never expected us to make it in the long run."
"I…"
"Then I signed with Volturi, and everything after just served to validate your doubts, so that by the time Heidi showed up and spoon-fed you her garbage, despite all your tough comebacks…" he rasped, swallowing hard, "she gave you exactly what you needed to fulfill your own prophecy."
"Edward…" I began, faltering once again under the weight of explicitly and dispassionately delivered recriminations I couldn't wholly deny.
I'd known this. Years of self-analysis on the fears that guided me back then, coupled with a subconscious analysis of what exactly I'd done that morning – because I hadn't been able to consciously admit it to myself until I ran up The Last Call's staircase earlier in the evening – uncovered this horrifically salient fact: I fulfilled my own prophecy.
It was why I ran from Edward at the bar. It was shock, yes. But it was also guilt.
With his hands buried in his pockets, Edward scrutinized me through emerald eyes framed by an unfamiliar shade of black.
"Bella, as you and Heidi acknowledged, I was already heartbroken when I arrived at your doorstep that morning. And yes, it was self-inflicted heartbreak. I did neglect you once my career took off. I had something good…something great, and I took it- I took you for granted, set you carelessly aside with unjustifiable arrogance, with too much damn presumption that you'd understand and that you'd be there when I was ready."
"Edward, I should've-"
"So, she asked you to what?" he asked, then provided his answer on the heels of the question. "To go beyond breaking my heart…to stomp on it, trounce it so that it would expel any morsel of hope, for my own good. And you went along with that? Wait," he said, stepping back, his nostrils flaring, "why am I asking when I know the answer? There I was, praying for a reconciliation, for a second chance, when all the while, you and Heidi were planning my shredding."
"Edward, no!" I exclaimed in horror.
"A clean break?" he scoffed, shaking his head, "Iz, that was the messiest cut ever."
"Edward, it wasn't like that! I never…" I paused to catch my breath and try to find the words, but what words were there when I couldn't deny any of them? "I never wanted to hurt you. I mean," – I fisted my hair – "yes, I knew I was hurting you, but I thought you'd get over it quickly, that your music would help you- and Heidi said-"
"Heidi was a snake – a slithering, self-serving, septic snake, and I've never been more satisfied than I am right now," he sneered, "at the mess I left for her all those years ago. And yeah, she tossed me similar nuggets of wisdom regarding you and me, but you know what I did?" He grinned grimly. "I ignored her. I told her to mind her damn business when it came to my relationship with you, which is likely why she grew desperate and came to see you, hoping for a more willing ear to her poison."
"Willing? No!" I disputed. "Do you think I just stood there willingly?"
He quirked a brow, cocking his head.
"I didn't want to be the cause of your ruined career opportunities! I wanted you to succeed the way you deserved to succeed!"
"Succeed in my career, you mean?" he asked flatly.
"Yes!"
"Mm." He nodded yet again. "My career."
And again, he wrenched his hands out of his pockets, linking them flat over his head and tilting his chin to the ceiling. The thunderous, rumbling growl he then released reverberated in my chest. When his eyes shot to mine, my breath hitched.
"I gave less than two shits about my career!" He extended his arms sharply, stretched out into arrows between us, with their pointed heads aimed at me. "It was you, Iz! It was you I always wanted!"
"You were twenty-two, Edward! You were too young to make that kind of decision!"
Edward dropped his arms heavily as if in surrender. He shut his eyes and hung his head, shaking it from side to side. Humorless chuckles escaped him, fading into a husky voice once again restrained, yet no more reassuring for its forced calm.
"At twenty-two, I was too young to decide that you meant more than my career. But you, at twenty-one, were better equipped to decide the opposite for me."
My stomach lurched. "I didn't want to ruin your opportunities," I said, pleading for him to understand. "That sort of opportunity happens once in a lifetime."
"That was the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity," he echoed, and if he meant for the concurrent emptiness in his voice to magnify the ridiculousness of my words, he succeeded.
Still, as foolish as I now knew it to be, I tried to justify twenty-one-year-old Bella Swan's thought process.
"Edward, you were, you still are so damn talented. I watched you perform tonight, and God," – I shook my head – "your talent hasn't diminished an iota. It's rare. It's not just your voice, your lyricism, the way you strum a guitar, or even your appearance. It's something innate in you that very few performers are born with."
He said nothing, standing there with his chest rising and falling in deep, exhausted breaths.
"It was either take that away from you by letting you quit," I shouted, "or staying until you grew tired of me!"
"Yet, I quit the business years ago and haven't regretted that decision since," he countered serenely. "And now," he nodded, stepping closer, "we come to the crux. You were always so damned sure I'd outgrow you when I'd dreamed of being with you even before I joined Olympia. I'd see you around campus, laughing, full of life, and…and I don't even know," he shrugged. "You just called to me. A muse, plain and simple. I'd sit behind you in that lecture hall we shared and compose songs for you, fantasizing about working up the nerve to approach you and play you one someday."
My bottom lip trembled, and my eyes stung. "Edward, you were so young when you fell in love with me."
"Too young to know what I wanted, huh? But you, at a year younger, were wise enough to make decisions for both of us."
For a moment that stretched into a painful eternity, we remained silently locked in one another's gazes. Abruptly, he turned and strode away. Panicked, I opened my mouth, then shut it when he pivoted and stormed back just as suddenly. He halted with the same brusqueness, fisted his hair, and rounded again, pacing back and forth. When he spoke, it was more to himself than to me.
"I don't know why I'm so affected by this revelation. I mean, God," he scrubbed a hand down his face, "I've had years, decades to get over you. And I knew… Never mind what Heidi said or did; even before that, you couldn't say the words. Back then, I told myself it was because of the mess with your parents, but-" He stopped, and his eyes flashed to mine.
"But you just never felt it, did you?"
"Edward, I-"
"Do you remember that argument with Alice that night before our ferry ride?"
"What?" I asked, bewildered.
"The argument with Alice. Do you remember how it started? Rose was pretending to flirt with me. We figured out later that she was trying to get a rise out of you, to get us both to speak up – but that's not the point." He waved it off. "We talked about that once. She was pretending to flirt with me, and Emmett was next to her, choking back laughter. And although at the time, I wasn't sure what the hell was going on, when you later explained that it was a raw grain of truth from an alternate universe, all I could think to myself was, 'Damn,'" – he shook his head– "damn, I hope that someday, Izzy and I are that sure of one another…so damn sure…'"
He trailed off, so I finished the thought for him. "So sure of one another that even alternate-universe facts…even raw grains of truth couldn't break us."
He nodded, his gaze swimming in a sea of unfathomable sadness. With one more cautious step, he stood before me and reached for my hand. I surrendered it to him willingly, shivering as he turned it over so that my palm faced upward in the tight space between us. He brushed two fingers across my palm with featherlike strokes, then dipped his head so that his emerald eyes aligned with mine.
"You had my heart right here, Izzy," – when his voice broke, I choked back a sob – "right here, from the very beginning. I hurt you, then you hurt me, and I left your room that day in stupid indignation, pissed off…and shattered. But you flayed my heart. She told you breaking it wasn't enough, so you filleted it." He dropped his eyes to my hand, skimming his fingertips back and forth over my palm as if he were filleting an invisible heart – a raw chunk of meat. "You pulled a Phil," he whispered.
My blood ran cold, and a rogue tear fell over my palm, across the invisible heart.
"Edward, I never meant to…"
"Those first few years, I gave away the raw chunks in bleeding slices to people who couldn't have cared less about them or me." He flicked his index finger's tip across my palm in random trajectories as if flicking away specks of dust…or the slices of his mangled heart. "When I came to my senses and left it all behind, they sued me." He smiled poignantly and shrugged. "Labels, producers, venues, performers, they all came for their pound of flesh, and I gave it to get them off my back. So there I was, back at square one…" Carefully, he closed my fingers over my palm, turning it into a fist as he wrapped his hand over mine. Then, he met my eyes. "Square one, minus you."
"Edward…" I rasped, squeezing my eyes shut.
"That's where your sacrifice got me," he breathed in his husky, gravelly voice, his warm breath fanning across my face for a few moments before his soft, familiar lips brushed against my forehead. "So I hope…I sincerely hope it worked out better for you. Goodbye, Izzy."
He released my hand. I kept it in midair, unable to move while tears spilled over onto my cheeks…onto the heart I once held tightly in my hand. When I recovered myself enough to pry my eyes open, Edward was gone.
A/N: Thoughts?
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