Mind The Gap / 12

I woke up in her bed.

White sheets printed with tiny purple flowers and blinding sunlight pouring in through the window. It took me a moment to register where I was, unfamiliar surroundings and enough pillows to supply a small department store. She was gone, the other side of the bed empty but the sheets were still warm and I knew she hadn’t been missing for long.

I rolled over in a fit of groggy sleep and remembered only then that my hip might be fucking broken. Yesterday came pouring back in a torrent of flooded images, all rock and blood and anger and steam and milky water pooling at our bare feet. Falling from the rock and landing in her mouth. The way she stood there in front of me, damp and warm and smelling like Rose’s flowers, dripping water onto my toes from the ends of her hair, asking me not to leave. “Stay. Please.”

We ended up in the shower. Stroke of genius on my part, though at the time I was really only concerned with getting all the chalk and grime off of her so that I could get a proper look at her bruises. I watched her peel herself out of her clothing, finally catching a mere glimpse of her naked body as she stepped into the steam and begged my dick to just let me be somewhat decent tonight.

It didn’t pay attention at all.

I spent the entire time trying to pretend that it wasn’t pressing up against her thigh as I cleaned her up, having to fold my hands over my stomach when I stepped away to let her wash her hair so that I wasn’t tempted to reach down and rub one out to the sight of it. Every delicious curve was there and I could already see the faint beginnings of her new muscles. Roping her arms and rising on her abdomen, laced in water and a steam.

This girl was going to be the damn death of me.

I set her on the vanity after the shower, head finally clear enough to take stock of the damage that had been done today. Her forearm was sporting a bruise the size of my hand, which meant that it stretched clear from her elbow to her wrist. I used Rose’s goop as an excuse to check out her bones, moving her wrist and bending her at the elbow, waiting for a wince or hiss of pain, but nothing came. The injury on her leg was worse, but again, there didn’t seem to be any damage to the bones which made me breathe a sigh of relief.

My hip, however, was surely bruised to the point of mush.

We tried to make out a few times, but never got farther than we had in the hallway. The bruise on my hip looked like a damn watercolor painting and when she tried to climb on top of me, her knee cap hit my surely crushed bone and I saw a flash of white light behind my eyes. I swore for a moment that I was going to be sick and tossed her off me, pressing my face into her sheets and letting the clean, sweet smell of her drown away the fading echos of pain.

Bella appeared in the doorway, knocking out of my daydream in my t shirt she’d thrown on last night, which barely covering anything. She padded into the room and stood beside the bed, offering me a cup of coffee. My eyes fell to the bruise on her arm and I swallowed down a lump of something awkward. This was the first time I’d ever woken up in a woman’s bed without having slept with her the night before and I wasn’t entirely sure what was going on between us.

“How are you feeling?” I asked her, accepting the cup and letting it burn my fingers.

“Sore,” she admitted. “You?”

“Same.” I really hoped my rapidly hardening dick wasn’t apparent under the thin sheet.

“Alice and Jasper are on their way.” Bella perched on the edge of the mattress, hair around her elbows and her face thoughtful.

“Together?”

Bella nodded and I thought about how dejected Jasper looked last night when we dropped him off, though I had barely bothered to notice at the time. It was interesting that he’d called Alice in lieu of Emmett, but I guess that in a way, he’d found himself a Gabby too.

---

Alice was in a fury when she arrived. She didn’t even greet us, just stomped in the door and demanded to see Bella’s leg. She gasped and threw her hands over her mouth in horror which she only removed to slap me when she spotted the bruise spanning my shoulder.

She even hit Jasper, which I took to be a bad sign.

“What would happen if you were out there, god knows fucking where, and you got pinned under a rock?” She glared at Bella and I got a surge of sudden angry strength, sure in an all-knowing instant that I would never let it happen.

“That wouldn’t happen,” I spat and Alice narrowed her eyes at me.

“You don’t know that.”

“We’d move the rock. She’s never out there alone.” It was true. A far as I was concerned, Bella wasn’t going to climb anywhere in the whole entire miserable world without me there beside her.

Ever.

“There are rocks even you can’t move, Edward,” Alice hissed at me, echoing the conversation that had been haunting me.

I hated more than anything that she was right.

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