Mind The Gap / 11

Jasper had been climbing at a boulder field up north that was loosely coined Sailing Hawks, mostly for the high end subdivision that sprouted up around it and somewhat for the hawks that used to frequent the area. He’d been worrying himself over a problem there, sucked so far into his head that he plucked each and every last little fuzzball from my old couch before I finally agreed to abandon my trusted turf for a new one.

I told Bella not to bother bringing her shoes, but she tried to sneak them along anyway.

Her hand was getting better but she was in no shape to climb. The bruises were fading out to yellow and green, the swelling long-gone, yet I could tell it still hurt her. She winced sometimes when she picked up her fork and I caught her rubbing it tenderly during unguarded moments. Jasper took one look at it and agreed with me. I couldn’t help but smirk at her over his shoulder, knowing all the while that he’d back me up, and got to see that cute scowl of hers again.

Jasper and I hadn’t gotten much time together lately, something that I sort of felt guilty about but I shouldn’t have taken that climb from him. It was bad karma even though he asked me to do it, the rock singing for him and him alone. Those kinds of siren calls are meant for one person’s ears, which was why Jasper only half-heartedly attacked the Passion Pit. Fate has a way of staking her claim long before a climb has been completed and had named me in sole possession of the first ascent.

She must have surely done the same for Jasper because it was my touch that made the Delicate Place crumble.

Hindsight is such a bitch.

The point of impact was phenomenal. Blistering pain and blinding light. I thought for sure that I was dead for an entire split second, all those years of avoiding death finally catching up with me. But the rock fell clear and went headlong into the trees and I hit the mat with a solid grunt, the air leaving my lungs and my head spinning. I lay there and took an internal inventory, not moving until I was certain that nothing was broken.

I almost hit the mat again, the moment I sat up.

Bella was sprawled in the dirt, all limbs and hair and coughing.

One look at Jasper, standing ashen and paralyzed, confirmed all my worst fears.

I’d told her to stay away. Told her countless times to let me fall, that I would crush her, but in the end it wasn’t me at all. The rock that I thought might have killed me had taken her out too, and I could barely bring myself to inspect the damage. I was already so nauseous, head spinning and stomach curling in on itself, that the mere glimpse of one rapidly blooming bruise on her arm burst something hot and pulsing crimson behind my eyes.

Bella made a half hearted attempt at convincing us to stay but the day was officially ruined, dipped in liquid nitrogen and tapped ever so gently with a hammer, shattering into smithereens. As we finished packing up, I watched her attempt all of four hobbled steps before I demanded to carry her back to the car. It was hard to hold a civilized conversation through the blur of red fury and I probably threatened to knock her senseless if she kept fighting me on the issue, manners be damned. Jasper shouldered all of our gear and I bent to scoop her up into my arms, the air leaving her lungs and mine when I did.

So fucking light.

And so godawful heavy, all at the same time.

I marched us back to the parking lot under a burning golden sunset that did nothing to clear my vision. All I could see was that rock falling in an entirely different direction and pinning Bella to the forest floor. She had her head against my chest and I’m sure my heart was beating a staccato rhythm under her ear, pumping frantically through the millions of ways a falling rock could kill a person.

Heads, shoulders, knees and toes.

I deposited her in the back seat and drove us home in a screaming rage of silence. Focused on the headlights, blood boiling and skin gone up in flames. I was fucking livid. Angry with Jasper for no fucking reason, as though he somehow knew that this was going to happen and did nothing to stop it. Irritated with Bella for not listening to me when I told her to stay out of the way.

Absolutely fucking irate with myself for letting it happen in the first place.

I toppled that rock. It could have been Jasper, true, but it was me and Bella was in the fucking way. Again. You would have thought my head smashing her hand had taught her something, but there she was, in the exact place she didn’t belong.

Underneath me.

I should be happy that she was concerned enough about me to even do such a thing. Should be ecstatic that she would put herself in front of a falling object that could easily fucking crush her, for me, but I couldn’t make myself. I watched her from the rearview mirror as she pulled my sweatshirt over her head and curled up on the crash pad in the back, gripping the steering wheel hard enough to make my tendons sting.

All I could hear in my head the entire way home was Alice.

“You take care of her out there, right?”

---

I combusted the moment we got into her house.

I’d carried her inside, unable to watch her limp all the way to her door and deposited her at the threshold, not entirely sure if my arms could hold her any longer. I was trembling from head to toe and was just about ready to split open at the seams, a feeling so similar to the numbing onslaught that followed a first ascent that I half wondered where I was.

“You should have let me fall,” I growled at her, hands in my hair as I paced back and forth in the confines of her hallway. She slumped against the door and picked all the weight off her ankle, propping her foot up by the toes. When she spoke, her voice echoed through the hallway, soft and fragile.

“I was trying to spot you. I-”

“No! I told that you’d only get hurt! I told you to stay back. You should have listened to me!” I fucking shouted at her. Which was the last thing in the entire miserable world I ever wanted to do.

“Why are you yelling?” Bella shrunk against the door, tucking her arm behind herself to hide the bruise that was blooming there. That vision of her pooling blood into the pine needles flashed in front of my eyes again, eclipsing her face. Alice’s voice in my head again. “You take care of her out there, right?”

“Because I feel fucking responsible for you!” I raged, instantly reaching my tipping point and falling over the edge. My throat was so tight I could barely breath and I wanted to kiss her so badly I could hardly remember what I was so angry about.

“Why? Because I’m your Gabby?” Bella spit at me, taking a hostile stance to mirror my own and I fucking hated that I made her do that.

“No. It’s not that. I don’t want to call you that anymore,” I huffed, not wanting to ever hear that word in connection with her again. “I don’t want anyone to call you that.” I closed the distance between us, not wanting to have this conversation across the a bunch of space and stood right in front of her with my chest heaving. The red was fading to pearly rose pink but I was still shaking like a leaf.

“That’s why you call me Sparkles,” Bella grumbled and I shook my head in agitation.

“I don’t want to call you that anymore, either.”

“Then what do you want to call me?”

Jesus, I didn’t fucking know. I wanted to call her beautiful. I wanted to tell her that she’d spun my head around so hard that I couldn’t even come up with anything even mildly fitting for the exquisite weight all the air took on whenever she was near. Wanted to call a name across a crowded room and watch her turn her head with a smile that was meant only for me.

“Girl.” My brain to mouth transference is obviously out of order.

“That’s the best you could come up with? Girl? Not very creative, Edward.” Bella rolled her eyes and I didn’t blame her. The word alone was bare and bland. It was the connotation that was important.

“Not just girl. My girl.” It took everything in me not to choke on the words, reaching for her to ground myself, gripping her by the hip and pulling her up against me. Her body met mine in a molten fire spark of white light.

“Yours?” she whispered, and sounded just as breathless as I felt.

“Yeah. If you’ll let me.”

Bella flung her arms around my neck and teetered on her tip toes against me, her sore leg giving me the opportunity to hold her closer, lifting her off her feet. I came at her with an open mouth, pouring all my fear and hope and lust into her and sealing it off with my tongue across her lips. It felt so good, better than I had even thought it would and was only another example that I tended to take this girl for granted. When I picked her up to wrap her legs around my waist I didn’t even remember that anything hurt, lost in a haze of sparkled lust.

Until her thigh pressed up tight against my hip and catapulted a burning bolt of pain clear into the marrow of my bones, that is.

I wrenched my mouth off hers, pressing my lips to the skin of her neck and grinding my teeth through the pain, not wanting her to let go despite the pulsing agony. I latched my mouth onto her neck, tasting salt and dust and something subtly sweet.

“Ok.” Her breath blew in an lacy rush across my shoulder.

“Ok, what?” I fumbled to remember what we had even been talking about, fingers in her hips and her t-shirt in the fucking way. Hip on fire. Head in a tailspin.

“Ok, but you can’t ever call me Sparkles again.”

I groaned and clutched her closer, thumbs inching under the waist of her leggings and my knees trembling when her fingers scraped through my hair. She tried to pull my face from her neck but really only ended up digging her thumb into the oozing gouge on my temple. I hissed and she pulled her hand away, both of us eyeing the blood staining her thumb. My vision got lost in a blur of crimson and pale skin. Dots of ruby red scattered through the dust.

Even blood lost its color as it died, edging up on ebony with its last gasping breath.

“Just fucking listen to me next time, ok Sparkles?” It took a lot of effort to keep my face somewhat reserved, to keep from shaking her a little just to make sure the message sank in. I didn’t think I could take another scare like today. The thought of losing her now made me feel lightheaded and vulnerable.

Bella’s face pulled into that endearing scowl. “Hey, you-”

“Last time. I promise.”

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