Chapter 6: Breaking
Edwards POV
Bella was on the floor, crumpled beneath me, her body wracked with violent, gut-wrenching sobs. Her cries weren't just sounds—they were agony given form, tearing through the room, through me, through the walls that barely contained her grief. I held her as tightly as I could without hurting her, but it didn't matter. There was no holding her together.
She was breaking apart right in front of me.
Her fingers clawed at my shirt, twisting the fabric like she needed something—anything—to keep her tethered to this world. But I knew it wouldn't be enough. Nothing would.
I heard her before I saw her.
Alice stood frozen in the hallway, a ghost of herself, silent and stricken. I didn't need to look at her to see the horror unraveling in her mind.
I saw it all.
The vision had come too late. She had seen the moment just before it happened—the shuffle of feet in the dark, the crash of something breaking, the sharp inhale of a startled breath. The man hadn't come there to kill. He'd been desperate, panicked. The gun was just insurance, a threat to get what he wanted.
But threats mean nothing when fear takes control.
Alice had seen it, had felt it, the way Charlie reached for his own weapon, his instinct to protect overriding any hesitation. The way the man across from him flinched, his heartbeat spiking with terror.
The pull of a trigger.
One shot.
One bullet.
That was all it took.
Alice had run through town, faster than the human eye could comprehend, desperate to stop what she already knew was set in stone.
She had failed.
And now she stood in the doorway, drowning in a guilt that rivaled my own.
Bella's sobs filled every space, every crack, every inch of air between us, and Alice flinched.
I heard it before she turned to leave—I can't. I can't listen to this.
Then she was gone.
But Bella didn't notice.
Her body trembled violently in my arms, and I pulled her closer, lowering my head to rest against hers. I wanted to take it from her—to pull this pain from her chest and force it into my own. But grief didn't work like that.
Her breath hitched, and for a moment, the storm inside her quieted.
I almost thought she was slipping into exhausted silence.
But then it hit her again.
No.
It ripped from her throat, raw and desperate, like she could undo reality if she just refused to accept it. Then the sobs came again, shaking her body so hard I felt it in my bones.
The pain—the unbearable, all-consuming grief—was searching for somewhere to settle inside her, somewhere to root itself deep, where it would live inside of her forever.
And I could do nothing but hold her through it.
The man who took Charlie's life would never know the gravity of what he had done.
He would never know what he had stolen, the hole he had torn into Bella's world, the way her small frame barely contained the grief that now ravaged her. He would never hear the broken sobs tearing through her throat, never feel the way her body trembled beneath the weight of a loss too great to carry.
And even if he did—if he were forced to face her, to see the devastation he had wrought—would he even care?
Or would he only see what would be taken from him?
Because Charlie had died, but his partner had survived. He had seen the man's face. The arrest wasn't a matter of if, only when. And Alice—already sick with guilt, already searching for a way to do something—would make sure of it.
Justice would come.
But would it bring Bella any comfort?
I doubted it.
She wasn't a vengeful person. She wasn't the kind to rage against fate, to seek retribution to ease her own suffering. She felt loss too powerfully for that. It consumed her, wrapped itself around her, pulled her under until she wasn't just mourning—she became the grief itself.
I had seen it before.
And now I was seeing it again.
Her sobs quieted for just a moment, only for another wave to crash over her, another broken no spilling from her lips as she curled tighter against me.
I held her.
I would hold her for as long as she needed. Forever, if it meant keeping her from being swallowed whole.