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So it surprised me a little when his fingers braided themselves into my hair, securing my face to his. My arms locked behind his neck, and I wished I was stronger—strong enough to keep him prisoner here. One hand slid down my back, pressing me tighter against his stone chest. Even through his sweater, his skin was cold enough to make me shiver—it was a shiver of pleasure, of happiness, but his hands began to loosen in response. I knew I had about three seconds before he would sigh and slide me deftly away, saying something about how we’d risked my life enough for one afternoon. Making the most
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He pulled my face away from his, breaking my hold with ease—he probably didn’t even realize that I was using all my strength.
“Ah, Bella.” He sighed. “I’d say I’m sorry, but I’m not.” “And I should feel sorry that you’re not sorry, but I don’t. Maybe I should go sit on the bed.”
It was so like my mother to forget exactly how paralyzed she was by heights until she was already strapped to a parachute and a dive instructor. I felt a little frustrated with Phil, her husband of almost two years, for allowing that one. I would have taken better care of her. I knew her so much better.
You have to let them go their own way eventually, I reminded myself. You have to let them have their own life.…
He was examining a flat black box with wires curling crookedly away from the main square in a way that didn’t look healthy for whatever it was. After a second, I recognized the car stereo Emmett, Rosalie, and Jasper had given me for my last birthday. I’d forgotten about the birthday presents hiding under a growing pile of dust on the floor of my closet. “What did you do to this?” he asked in a horrorstruck voice. “It didn’t want to come out of the dashboard.” “So you felt the need to torture it?” “You know how I am with tools. No pain was inflicted intentionally.”
His expression was carefully bright and positive; there was no trace of any deep emotion as he continued. “Well, we still have a little time. You’ve been liberated… and we have no plans this weekend, as you refuse to go to the prom with me.” He grinned. “Why not celebrate your freedom this way?” I gasped. “By going to Florida?” “You did say something about the continental U.S. being allowable.”
I glared at him, suspicious, trying to understand where this had come from.
His eyebrows pulled together. “I think this weekend is perfect,” he muttered. I shook my head. “Another time.” “You aren’t the only one who’s been trapped in this house, you know.” He frowned at me. Suspicion returned. This kind of behavior was unlike him. He was always so impossibly selfless; I knew it was making me spoiled. “You can go anywhere you want,” I pointed out. “The outside world holds no interest for me without you.” I rolled my eyes at the hyperbole. “I’m serious,” he said.
My imagination was sadly out of control. I’d taken a perfectly normal afternoon and twisted it until it looked like Edward was going out of his way to keep things from me. I needed therapy.
no girl ur right
Edward helped, making faces every so often at the raw ingredients—
“Charlie,” Edward said in a conversational tone. Charlie stopped in the middle of his little kitchen. “Yeah?” “Did Bella ever tell you that my parents gave her airplane tickets on her last birthday, so that she could visit Renée?” I dropped the plate I was scrubbing. It glanced off the counter and clattered noisily to the floor. It didn’t break, but it spattered the room, and all three of us, with soapy water. Charlie didn’t even seem to notice.
The plate I dropped this time landed in the sink, so it didn’t make as much noise. I could easily hear the sharp huff as my father exhaled. The blood rushed into my face, fueled by irritation and chagrin. Why was Edward doing this? I glared at the bubbles in the sink, panicking.
My glare turned icy. “If that’s how you want it. Do you want me to move out tonight? Or can I have a few days to pack?” Charlie’s face went bright red. I instantly felt horrible for playing the move-out card.
why's she holding it above his head like that... the toxicity. i'd be like ok bud!
You can’t honestly tell me you’d object to the plan if I was going with Alice or Angela.” “Girls,” he grunted, with a nod. “Would it bother you if I took Jacob?” I’d only picked the name because I knew of my father’s preference for Jacob, but I quickly wished I hadn’t; Edward’s teeth clenched together with an audible snap.
“Yes,” he said in an unconvincing voice. “That would bother me.” “You’re a rotten liar, Dad.” “Bella—” “It’s not like I’m headed off to Vegas to be a showgirl or anything. I’m going to see Mom,” I reminded him. “She’s just as much my parental authority as you are.”
I glowered at him. “I can’t help myself when he gets all bossy like that—my natural teenage instincts overpower me.”
His jaw flexed. “Nothing at all. It wouldn’t matter if you were here or on the other side of the world, you still wouldn’t be going.” It was just like with Charlie before—just like being treated as a misbehaving child. I gritted my teeth together so I wouldn’t start shouting. I didn’t want to fight with Edward, too.
“His thoughts are relatively calm,” Edward teased. His expression made me wonder if there was some additional joke I was missing. The corners of his mouth twitched, fighting a smile. “I’ll see you later,” I muttered glumly. He laughed and kissed the top of my head. “I’ll be back when Charlie’s snoring.”
Edward and Alice playing chess was one of the funniest things I’d ever seen. They’d sat there nearly motionless, staring at the board, while Alice foresaw the moves he would make and he picked the moves she would make in return out of her head. They played most of the game in their minds; I think they’d each moved two pawns when Alice suddenly flicked her king over and surrendered. It took all of three minutes.
“Okay, Bella. Here’s the thing.” He got up from the couch and started pacing back and forth across the room, looking at his feet all the time. “You and Edward seem pretty serious, and there are some things that you need to be careful about. I know you’re an adult now, but you’re still young, Bella, and there are a lot of important things you need to know when you… well, when you’re physically involved with—” “Oh, please, please no!” I begged, jumping to my feet. “Please tell me you are not trying to have a sex talk with me, Charlie.”
“Ten years ago you didn’t have a boyfriend,” he muttered unwillingly. I could tell he was battling with his desire to drop the subject. We were both standing up, looking at the floor, and facing away from each other. “I don’t think the essentials have changed that much,” I mumbled, and my face had to be as red as his. This was beyond the seventh circle of Hades; even worse was realizing that Edward had known this was coming. No wonder he’d seemed so smug in the car. “Just tell me that you two are being responsible,” Charlie pled, obviously wishing a pit would open in the floor so that he could
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“Ugh!” I groaned. “I really wish you were not forcing me to say this out loud, Dad. Really. But… I am a… virgin, and I have no immediate plans to change that status.” We both cringed, but then Charlie’s face smoothed out. He seemed to believe me.
“Keep trying, Bella. I know you’ll do the right thing. You’re a good person.” Nice. So if I didn’t figure out some way to make things right with Jacob, then I was a bad person? That was below the belt.
“Sure, sure,” I agreed. The automatic response almost made me smile—it was something I’d picked up from Jacob. I even said it in the same patronizing tone he used with his own father.
But suddenly I knew that it wasn’t Angela that I wanted to talk to. That I needed to talk to. I stared at the blank black window, biting my lip. I don’t know how long I stood there weighing the pros against the cons—doing the right thing by Jacob, seeing my closest friend again, being a good person, versus making Edward furious with me. Ten minutes maybe. Long enough to decide that the pros were valid while the cons were not. Edward was only concerned about my safety, and I knew that there was really no problem on that count.
Besides, I needed to see him—see him smiling again the way he used to. I needed to replace that awful last memory of his face warped and twisted by pain if I was ever going to have any peace of mind.
My eyes were just beginning to adjust as I shoved my keys in the ignition. I twisted them hard to the left, but instead of roaring deafeningly to life, the engine just clicked. I tried it again with the same results. And then a small motion in my peripheral vision made me jump. “Gah!” I gasped in shock when I saw that I was not alone in the cab.
Edward sat very still, a faint bright spot in the darkness, only his hands moving as he turned a mysterious black object around and around. He stared at the object as he spoke. “Alice called,” he murmured. Alice! Damn. I’d forgotten to account for her in my plans. He must have her watching me. “She got nervous when your future rather abruptly disappeared five minutes ago.”
“Because she can’t see the wolves, you know,” he explained in the same low murmur. “Had you forgotten that? When you decide to mingle your fate with theirs, you disappear, too. You couldn’t know that part, I realize that. But can you understand why that might make me a little… anxious? Alice saw you disappear, and she c...
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With my lips mashed together, I retrieved my keys and stiffly climbed out of the truck. “Shut your window if you want me to stay away tonight. I’ll understand,” he whispered just before I slammed the door.
man i'd keep that shut for days
“Renée is so much more… perceptive than Charlie in some ways. It was making me jumpy.”
As soon as the hugs and squeals of delight were out of the way, Renée began to watch. And as she’d watched, her wide blue eyes had become first confused and then concerned.
“Bella?” my mother asked, looking out past the sand to the lightly crashing waves as she spoke. “What is it, Mom?” She sighed, not meeting my gaze. “I’m worried.…” “What’s wrong?” I asked, anxious at once. “What can I do?” “It’s not me.” She shook her head. “I’m worried about you… and Edward.”
“You two are more serious than I’d been thinking,” she went on. I frowned, quickly reviewing the last two days in my head. Edward and I had barely touched—in front of her, at least. I wondered if Renée was about to give me a lecture on responsibility, too. I didn’t mind that the way I had with Charlie. It wasn’t embarrassing with my mom. After all, I’d been the one giving her that lecture time and time again in the last ten years. “There’s something… strange about the way you two are together,” she murmured, her forehead creasing over her troubled eyes. “The way he watches you—it’s so…
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Edward’s icy fingers brushed my cheek. I looked up, blinking, coming back to the present. He leaned down and kissed my forehead. “We’re home, Sleeping Beauty. Time to awake.”
“Charlie’s not going to be difficult,” Edward promised, his voice level with no hint of humor. “He missed you.”
My eyes narrowed in doubt. If that was the case, then why was Edward tensed as if for a battle?
“That’s… um, good. Glad you had fun.” Charlie turned away from Edward and pulled me in for an unexpected hug. “Impressive,” I whispered in his ear. He rumbled a laugh. “I really missed you, Bells. The food around here sucks when you’re gone.” “I’ll get on it,” I said as he let me go. “Would you call Jacob first? He’s been bugging me every five minutes since six o’clock this morning. I promised I’d have you call him before you even unpacked.”
I didn’t have to look at Edward to feel that he was too still, too cold beside me. So this was the cause of his tension.
“Jacob wants to talk to me?” “Pretty bad, I’d say. He wouldn’t tell me what it was about—j...
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It felt sort of like homesickness, this longing for the place and person who had sheltered me through my darkest night.
Edward leaned against the counter, and I was distantly aware that his eyes were on my face, but too preoccupied to worry about what he saw there.
The school thing seemed like the key to me. That was the only real question Jake had asked. And he had to be after an answer to something, or he wouldn’t have been bugging Charlie so persistently. Why would my attendance record matter to him, though?
What difference could three days make?
I froze in the middle of the kitchen. The package of icy hamburger in my hands slipped through my numb fingers. It took me a slow second to miss the thud it should have made against the floor. Edward had caught it and thrown it onto the counter. His arms were already around me, his lips at my ear.
Three days could change everything.
“If I asked you to do something, would you trust me?” Edward asked, an edge to his soft voice. We were almost to school. Edward had been relaxed and joking just a moment ago, and now suddenly his hands were clenched tight on the steering wheel, his knuckles straining in an effort not to snap it into pieces. I stared at his anxious expression—his eyes were far away, like he was listening to distant voices. My pulse sped in response to his stress, but I answered carefully. “That depends.” We pulled into the school lot. “I was afraid you would say that.” “What do you want me to do, Edward?” “I
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“I’m not staying in the car,” I said. Edward groaned quietly. “Of course not. Well, let’s get this over with.”
With a sense of astonishment, I realized that Jacob looked dangerous to them. How odd.
