The Other Way : Twenty Four

Don't Go Thinking That You're Fooling Anyone 

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I heard them before I saw them, their voices launching down the hallway and I stopped short, out of breath and trying to keep my gasping under control. Everyone was gathering for dinner and as I was making my way back to our regular table from the bathrooms, I stumbled across something I wasn’t meant to hear.

Alice. And Edward. Arguing.

About me.

“Why haven’t you slept with her yet?” Alice hissed and I clamped my hand over my mouth in horror, lest I scream out loud. I pressed myself up against the wall as though it would make me invisible and listened in from around the corner. This was the first piece of proof I had that they truly were confidants and here Alice was making a spectacle of me.

“Did she tell you that, or are you just guessing?” Edward grumbled and I heard her huff in response. She probably had her inky arms crossed over her chest and her chin jutted out, diamonds flashing as bright as her eyes.

“She told me.”

Edward forced down a frustrated growl. “She’s like a doll, Alice. In a glass house. She’s beautiful and vulnerable and it’s not real. It’s a fantasy.”

“You’re going to give the poor girl a complex,” Alice said softly.

I gulped, waiting impatiently for him to say something but all I got was silence. Dead air that was nothing but snowy static sparking in my ears as I worried hopelessly about everything they’d just exchanged with one another. I’d watched them share enough of those lingering looks to know that they could say more with their eyes than they ever could with their mouths.

“You’re going back,” Edward finally spoke up.

“I have to. It’s amazing to me that you don’t understand that,” Alice sighed.

“You know how I feel about it,” Edward said gruffly, a solid thump against the wall as he slumped against it. Or hit it.

“You have to stop doing this. You have better things to worry about than me.”

“Like what?” he hissed at her.

“Like, what happens to her when everyone goes home?” Alice asked and when Edward finally responded his voice was tortured, anguish and dread all in one.

“What happens to me when I can’t let her go?”

---

Dinner turned out to be a complete disaster.

Which wasn’t surprising at all.

Carlisle made a brief appearance and disappeared just as fast. Esme was still nursing her sunburn and was sunken too deeply into her redecorating projects to join us in reality, sending him to pick up supplies for her self imposed confinement. He kissed the back of my hand and clapped Jasper solidly on the back just as Edward and Alice appeared, both of them looking agitated and on edge.

Alice was poured into a skintight amethyst hued dress, tattoos on display and her feet covered in sand. She pranced over to us and planted a soft kiss on my mouth, one for Jasper too, looking distracted and scattered as she sat beside me and curled her fingers through mine. I didn’t know how much of it had to do with her conversation with Edward I’d just overheard.

I, personally, couldn’t think about anything else.

Edward had changed out of his ragged shirt and worn out jeans, a green button down now rolled up to his forearms and a new pair of dark wash jeans making an appearance. His hair was just as wild as it typically was and he trailed Alice into the restaurant with his hands in his pockets and his eyes on his feet. He looked distraught, brow furrowed and jaw hard.

“How’s the dock coming?” I asked Jasper, taking a sip from my wineglass and trying not to look at Edward.

“Nearly complete,” he replied with an easy smile, obviously happy with the progress. “We’re so far ahead of schedule that we took the afternoon off.” He winked at me, referring to me finding him in bed and the kiss he’d given me, a first even though we’d kissed millions of times before that.

Emmett rolled his eyes. “If that’s what you want to believe, Jasper, you go right ahead.” He took a drink from his glass and thumped it back down onto the table, glaring at Edward. “How did your little tea party with mom and dad go, Edward? Did you make tiny sandwiches and bond over baked goods?” He sounded like the left-out older brother, jealous and snippy and willing to say just about anything to make it known. Everyone else’s ‘afternoon off’ had obviously meant something very different for Edward, who was scowling back at Emmett.

“You knew they were going to try to buy me out, didn’t you?” he accused with a hiss.

Emmett raised both his eyebrows and set his mouth. “I didn’t know shit.”

“Sure you didn’t,” Edward snarled. “I would have appreciated some warning.”

“Welcome to my life, little brother,” Emmett barked right back. “The Cullen family has a new rising star and it ain’t either one of us.”

All eyes on Jasper.

“I’m not trying to steal anyone’s thunder here,” Jasper defended, reddening slightly around the neck but managing to keep his normal calm about him. “I’m only trying to do right by your father.”

“Whatever,” Emmett grumbled. “He’d never let me buy an island.”

“He didn’t let me buy anything,” Jasper corrected cautiously, managing to stay just shy of the line that separated patience from exasperation. “It’s a reliable investment. I only pointed out the obvious.”

“You bought your wife an island, don’t go thinking that you’re fooling anyone. That greenhouse? Even the staff is referring to it as Mrs. Hale’s.”

“She has nothing to do with this!” Edward nearly snarled, a fist to the table hard enough to rattle silverware, making Alice and I jump in our seats. He was glowering at Emmett, dark and savage, brandishing my banner and he’d never looked hotter. Jasper was staring at Edward, looking shocked by his outburst, mouth gaped open. He obviously expected Edward to jump to our defense even less than I did, and I closed my mouth before anyone could catch me.

Emmett stood and threw his napkin onto the table, looking put out and petulant. “You’re taking that side? Fine, little brother, but don’t think that I’m going to forget it.” He stormed away, dismissing dinner as easily as if he was declining a second round of drinks.  

Dead silence. For an eternity.

Broken uncomfortably by a troupe of kitchen staff, the head chef sauntering out to detail the creation placed in front of me that I had no stomach for. Alice cleared her throat, sounding just a little nervous as she tried to fill up the stifling quiet the followed their disappearance. She wet her lips and gave me a once-over before peering at Jasper.  

“Jasper,” she purred. “I think I want to marry your wife.”

She got a tentative laugh out of me, Jasper rolling his eyes and Edward shooting her a glare dipped in acidic irony. Jasper glanced at Edward pointedly before answering Alice, reaching under the table for my hand, spinning the diamond band around my finger.

“I don’t know how willing I am to share her. I’ve been trying to get her to agree to come to the mainland with me all afternoon, but so far she’s shot me down.” Jasper smiled at me and he curled his fingers through mine, teasing me just enough to make my tongue go numb and my entire mouth prickly.

His suddenly fervent kiss springing back to life on my already bruised lips.

“She doesn’t want to go?” Edward was asking Jasper, but still staring at me.

“No.” Jasper shot him a deathly serious stare. “She wants to stay here with you.”

Edward swallowed roughly and I knew that was probably the last thing he wanted to hear considering his conversation with Alice not moments ago. He had one hand fisted to his mouth, the other wrapped around his glass, and all I could see were the letters on his knuckles and the only noise in the whole miserable world was him asking Alice what was to be done with him if he couldn’t let me go. His lip rings were firmly tucked away and he was obviously peeling me out of my dress in his head.

How had I gotten here?

Holding tight to the hand of the man I adored while allowing the one across the table to undress me with his eyes? Crawling from one bed to another and getting something distinctly different from each one? It all seemed impossible, too much to hold inside, and I was worried that I might split open right down the middle. I tore my hand out of Jasper’s and stood, trembling even though I hated myself for it, about to spill all of my insides right onto the table in front of everyone. Edward was rising to his feet right behind me and Jasper gripped hard at both arms of his chair, watching me intently. Both of them looked poised to spring and I knew I should stay and untangle this hopeless mess.

I took off instead.

Darted through the big empty hotel, ducking through the kitchens and taking the back exit into the night. Someone was following me, though I had no idea who and didn’t want to risk glancing back over my shoulder. Not entirely sure if it was Jasper. Or Edward. Not entirely sure who I wanted it to be.

“Bella, dammit!”

A voice followed me as I ran blindly, panic tasting like liquor and my mouth so full of fear that I was nearly choking, but all the lavender in my throat made difficult to swallow. I didn’t know if I was scared of them, or myself, or the entire situation, or if it was even fear at all. I didn’t know where I was running to or what I was going to do once I got there. Didn’t know my name or my face or why I was caught up between two boys who both stood an equal shot at breaking me.

The soft sole of my foot caught against something sharp and I could almost hear the jagged ripping noise my skin made when it broke open. I limped the last few steps.

The greenhouse was shining in the last fading rays of the sun, all the glass catching the light, blindingly bright. It took all of my strength to get the heavy door open and I stumbled inside, out of breath and depleted of the energy to run anymore. A lone employee was watering in a far corner underneath the gnarled tree, another one of those dark-skinned beauties that made my heart wrench, and he hastily dropped his hose, nodding his head in brief acknowledgment before he fled. I wondered if it was because I looked like a half-crazed lavender addict, because that’s surely what I felt like.

Strung out on opiates and too much overwhelming reality.

He wasn’t far behind, all the reflective glass casting transparent reflections of him all around me, a funhouse of his fuzzy features everywhere I looked. He stopped just in front of me, panting.

“I thought you were Jasper,” I gasped.

“Do you want me to be?” Edward’s eyebrows compacted.

“No.”

“Why did you run?” He was still breathing hard, fingers twitching at his sides as though he was itching to reach out and grab me.

“I heard you fighting with Alice.” I ignored his question, still panting.

Edward rolled his eyes. “I can’t fend her off.”

“Is that really how you feel about me? I’m a fantasy?” I bit my lower lip if only to keep it from pushing out in a pout and tried not to feel as hurt by his comment as I actually was. It was the truth, really, and he was far more observant that I was for noticing it. Braver than I was for acknowledging it. Stronger than me, for attempting to fight it.

“Yes, I’m convinced that you’ll disappear if I push this too far. Vanish.”

“Where would I go?”

“Back to your life. You seem happy with it.”

“Maybe I’m not so happy. Maybe I’m stronger than you think.”

“I hope so,” he sighed, not specifying if he hoped for my strength or my possible disillusionment. “Let me look at your foot. You’re bleeding everywhere.”

Sure enough there was a puddle of dark red blood slowly growing beneath me, a steady drip-drip-drip of sticky red goo that made me lightheaded and weak stomached simply looking at it.

“Alice said you sewed her foot up with an earring and a piece of thread,” I gulped, trying to force down my stomach. Edward smiled wistfully, mouth curling up just like the question-mark scar on her foot.

“True, but there’s a fully equipped medical wing here. I don’t think we’ll have to resort to anything quite that dramatic.”

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