Chapter Fourteen
Edward
I'd told a dozen lies to get Renee out of the house.
Bella had fallen asleep, I said. She was tired. She hadn't been sleeping well—grief, exhaustion, anything. I layered excuse after excuse, hoping one would stick, and eventually, Renee relented.
I stood at the door, watching her drive away, her face still tight with suspicion, her movements stiff with the need to stay. But she didn't fight me. I'd chosen my words carefully, and even she knew when to back off.
Because Bella had made it clear—her grief was private.
It was something sacred, almost. Fragile. Precious.
She kept it close, guarded like it was something living that might shatter or die if exposed. Hidden from sunlight so it wouldn't burn. Kept safe from prying eyes so no one could twist it into something ugly or small.
Now, the house was quiet. Finally.
Empty of footsteps, of condolences, of that unbearable well-meaning chatter that only ever seemed to scrape at Bella's nerves.
And I was still on the floor in the hallway, my back pressed to the wall, knees bent, hands slack in my lap.
Clueless. Scared. Horrified.
I couldn't bring myself to move. My body had gone cold, like I'd shut down somewhere in between logic and instinct. I could hear everything—the creak of the old pipes, the hum of the refrigerator, the faint, rhythmic sound of water slapping tile.
And her.
Her hands were still moving. Still scrubbing.
I could hear them through the partially open door of the bathroom—desperate, frantic movements. Back and forth, back and forth, over and over. The same patch of floor, most likely. It had long since been clean, but that wasn't the point.
She was still in the black dress. Still barefoot. Her hair was pulled back loosely now, but strands had fallen out, clinging to her damp skin. Her knees were tucked under her, pressed hard to the tile, and she hadn't acknowledged me.
Maybe she didn't see me.
Or maybe she did—and didn't care.
Either was possible.
Was she lost in grief? Was this the shock setting in?
That brutal, numbing stage where the brain tries to keep up with reality. A single bullet. A gunshot that stole a man from the world in a blink.
From her world.
It would be easy to believe this was all about that.
But I knew better.
I knew the way her voice slipped out in barely-there whispers, words I couldn't always catch. I knew the way her gaze drifted somewhere far past the walls of this house. Past me. Past now.
Panic tightened in my chest like a fist.
A realization swept in—fast, sharp, and merciless. It hit me like a wave and dragged me under with no chance to gasp.
That look in her eyes…
I'd seen it before. In the memories of people who knew her. In the blurred, tear-soaked moments of their worst days. In those thoughts they tried to hide, but couldn't.
And now I was seeing it in her.
This wasn't just about Charlie.
Not entirely.
This was about Bella. About something older than this grief. Something deeper. Something that had been there all along.
Hiding.
But it couldn't hide from me anymore.
A history of disproportionate responses. A complete disregard for her own wellbeing.
How many times had she offered herself up without pause, without thought—without care?
She gave herself to James like her life meant nothing.
Lay alone in the woods the night I left, waiting for death as if it were a friend.
She climbed onto the back of strangers' motorcycles not caring about the possibility of consequences.
She jumped from cliffs with no regard for what waited below.
Over and over, she'd taken her life and placed it in other people's hands—or simply tossed it into the void—as if she didn't mind if it was lost.
Always risking.
Always giving.
Bella was selfless. I had known that from the very beginning. But there's a line between selfless and sacrificial, and I had let her blur it until it disappeared completely.
And now I was forced to ask myself the question I should have asked years ago:
Where was the line?
When should I have stopped admiring her bravery and started seeing the wound behind it?
Because it wasn't courage.
Not really.
And it wasn't recklessness either.
It was a cry.
A pattern.
A wound she'd been taught to conceal.
I'd missed it.
The signs.
The quiet, constant pleading that had lived behind her eyes for years.
She never said the words.
But now I realized—she didn't have to.
Because I'd always had the tools to see it. To know it. And I didn't.
I didn't want to.
Because no one ever does.
No one wants to look at someone they love and admit that they're not okay.
That maybe they never were.
But watching her now—scrubbing like she was trying to erase herself from the tile—there was no denying it.
Her hands were red, her knuckles raw. The dress clung to her knees and soaked up the water on the floor. She looked hollowed out, like she was being held together by instinct alone.
And I was just sitting there.
Useless.
Watching the woman I loved fall apart in front of me and realizing—maybe I'd never known just how broken she already was.