Author's notes:
I couldn't leave you with such a nasty cliffie for too long. :)
An idea popped into my head, and for once I didn’t think it was totally fucked up.
Chapter 51
A tap on my shoulder nearly got Bella shot.
“Where the fuck were you?” I hissed under my breath.
“The bathroom,” she replied with wide eyes. “I didn’t get a chance to go before…and then there was this guy…”
“What guy?” I asked, looking around. Bella looked over her shoulder before slowly scanning the bar.
“I don’t see him anymore,” she said.
“What was he doing?” I asked. I didn’t know who the fucker was, but I had plenty of ammunition left.
“He came up and talked to me,” she said. “But I didn’t understand what he was saying.”
I took her by the arm and started heading out the door. Now was not the time for chatting anyway. We needed to make a quick exit before any of my activities were discovered. I didn’t need the guy standing at the door to the back rooms to remember me very well, and the longer I stayed the more likely that became.
I hailed a taxi on the street, and took us to our hotel. I told Bella to get her things back in the bag since we weren’t staying. She wasn’t happy about it, but she threw everything back into her suitcase and we were off again.
A couple hours later, we were on a train to Heidelberg.
I showed our passports to the conductor for what must have been the twelfth time before dropping down into the bench seat next to Bella. At least we had ended up in a car without company, and I was grateful for that. I took a deep breath, trying to relax for the first time since…well…since yesterday morning. Or maybe the night before. All the days were starting to run together. Was it Tuesday still?
I looked over the Bella, who looked completely exhausted as she sat with her hands in her lap, gripping the handled to her suitcase.
“You want me to put that in the overhead bin?” I asked, pointing at the bag. She shook her head.
“I’ll just have to get it down again, then unpack it, then pack it back up,” she said. That’s when I noticed her hands were trembling.
I wanted to open my mouth and say…well…something, but low and behold, I had no idea what I should say. Saying nothing didn’t seem right either, though.
“Once we get to the next place we should be able to stay there a while,” I said, hoping it sounded comforting, but doubting it. Bella just shrugged. I wondered if she had been watching me shrug and maybe practicing my methods. She seemed pretty good at it. I knew she was upset, but figured anything I would say or do would just make it worse. Then I remembered how asking her worked before.
I reached out and placed my hand on her arm.
“What can I do?” I asked her. Bella’s eyes met mine briefly, then she looked back to her fingers gripped around the suitcase handles. She shook her head and huffed out of her nose.
“I was just thinking,” she said quietly, but did not elaborate. Because I am a glutton for all things anti-me, I had to ask for more.
“Thanking about what?”
She let a humorless laugh escape her mouth.
“When I was a kid, I thought about what my wedding night would be like,” she admitted. “I thought of a lot of different things, but this wasn’t in the list.”
Fuck.
Add one more thing to the extremely long list of shit I’ve fucked up in her life. I mean, that’s the kind of things girls think about a lot, isn’t it? I remember someone telling me they did – maybe it was Emmett. Yeah, I was pretty sure it was him. Bella probably had some grand idea of love and hearts and flowers and shit, and she was stuck with me.
I hoped she would sleep on the train, because she certainly looked like she needed it. She didn’t even nod off though, and we spent most of the time sitting in silence. When we reached the train station in Heidelberg, I rented a car and headed off into the countryside towards the little house just outside of Dilsberg. It was a small place, but secluded and pretty much unknown. You couldn’t even see it from the road, and no one who didn’t know it was there would ever have found it.
I carried Bella’s suitcase and my bag into the one and only bedroom and dropped them down at the foot of the bed. I took a quick look around and made sure all the lights worked and the toilet flushed. Then did a quick scan for any electronic signals that might indicate a bug had been planted. Satisfied the place was pretty much undisturbed from the last time I had been there, I pulled out the phone and called Emmett.
“You got a trailer, you know,” I told him.
“Yeah, he followed us for a few hours,” Emmett replied. “At the moment, he’s eating grit at the bottom of the river, though.
“Nice. Who was he?”
“Dunno for sure,” Emmett said. “but he seemed to be alone. We’ll keep a look out. Oh, and since you aren’t here, I get first dibs. I’m taking Aro’s boats.”
“Yeah, fine,” I said. I didn’t really care which portions of Aro’s business I ended up controlling. I hung up and went back to the bedroom where Bella sat on the edge of the bed, still looking about a worn out and miserable as she could be. Not that I could begrudge her any of that, but I still wished there was something I could do. I was still our wedding night, technically. There should have been something I could do to make it not totally suck.
An idea popped into my head, and for once I didn’t think it was totally fucked up.
“Bella?”
“Yeah?” she looked up at me. I could see the remnants of tears in her eyes.
“I’m sorry your wedding night sucks,” I said. I immediately wished I could take it back, but there was nothing I could do once the words were already out of my mouth. “Um…can I try to make it better?”
She eyes me warily.
“How?”
“Would you…um…would you give me the honor of dancing with you?” I sucked my lower lip into my mouth, wondering how perfectly stupid my idea probably was now that it was out in the open. I looked back up to her, waiting to see if she was going to smack me across the face or anything, but she didn’t. She just looked at me for a good long while before tears started dripping down her cheeks again.
Shit. I had fucked it up.
Before I could say anything else stupid, Bella nodded to me and stood up.
“I don’t know how to dance,” she said through her tears.
“I don’t either,” I said with a shrug. I took a step forward and put my arms around her. She put her hands around the back of my neck and lay her cheek against my chest. We didn’t have any music, and all either of us could really do was sway back and forth a bit, but it didn’t matter.
Sometimes you go with what you got, right?
Chapter end notes:
Awww...Doofus has good idea! Good Doofus!
More tomorrow...probably.
