Sunday, May 5, 2013

Chapter 45

“What sorority are you in?”

The girl nearest Bella at the table gave her an expectant look. Bella knew her answer would result in instant dismissal.

“I’m not in one. I’m just a friend of Mike’s.”

“Oh.” The girl still smiled brightly, but her eyes went dull. “How long have you known him?”

She was making perfunctory small talk now, but Bella complied.

“About four years. We dated a little in high school.”

The girl’s eyes lit up again. “Oh, so you’re rekindling the old flame?”

Mike wishes, Bella thought. “No, we’re just friends.”

The girl smiled knowingly. “Oh, I get it. Friends with benefits. It’s always good to have a black-up plan while you keep your options open. Especially with a sausage fest like this one at your disposal. Am I right?”

The girl let out a raucous laugh as her eyes combed the room full of well-dressed young men. Bella tried not to openly cringe at the remark. She had no idea where to begin to refute it.

She simply gave a limp smile, sighed and looked toward the back of the room. She wished she’d followed Mike to the bar instead of sitting here, feeling like a fish out of water. She was debating going to find him when she heard it.

Piano music.

She immediately thought of Edward and smiled wistfully. What she wouldn’t give to be here with him tonight instead of Mike. Or, better yet, to be with Edward somewhere else, having a much more low-key evening together.

The music was quite lovely, a lilting melody that reminded her of the first night he’d played for her, when he’d added his own composition to the end of a much more intense piece. She twisted in her chair, looking over her shoulder to the piano near the mini-stage at the front of the room.

Then she froze.

Edward.

What was he doing here? The thrill of recognition was soon replaced by the horror of realization. There was only one answer to that question. If he was here, then he was on a date.

Her stomach dropped, like she’d just plummeted fifty feet on a roller coaster. She was surprised at her visceral reaction. She thought she had come to grips with his job, especially since he had promised that sex would no longer be a part of it. Even so, it was easier to deal with when she could push aside thoughts of the nameless, faceless females he courted, and the places he courted them.

But now, the place was real. It had a name; a physical identity. So would Edward’s date, if Bella stuck around long enough to discover who she was. The panic rolling through her gut in waves was evidence that she was not nearly as ready to handle that revelation as she hoped she’d be. There was no ignoring the truth any longer. It was beckoning her in deceptively dulcet tones from the baby grand at the end of the ballroom.

Bella could barely feel her body as she rose from the table. Her feet were moving, but her brain had forfeited all responsibility for their actions. Her brain wanted her to stay right at this table and pretend she was wrong, and that wasn’t Edward serenading this room full of college students. In lieu of that option, her brain urged her to run. Just run like hell and never look back.

But her feet glided slowly, inexorably to the dance floor, where a small crowd had gathered to hear this handsome stranger create magic on the keys. As she approached, she catalogued each detail of his physique that she knew so well: the long, slender body; the broad shoulders; the nimble, elegant fingers dancing over the keyboard. There was the bronze sheen of the ducktail tickling his neck, centered between small, telltale beauty marks - the same marks she had covered with kisses. They led to the strong jaw she had stroked and nuzzled; the beard stubble she had felt between her thighs, massaging her to delirious heights of abandonment.

She could not see the rest of his face from where she was standing, but she didn’t need to. She already knew his beautiful features were molded by intense concentration. His body moved with the music, leg pumping the piano pedals, head nodding in time. She could see the sweep of his eyelashes over his cheek when he closed his eyes to savor the sound. In this moment, he was a man possessed by his art; and she was a woman possessed by his passion for music; for her. He had to be playing for her. She could not conceive of him playing such a poignant melody for anyone else.

He was hers. Hers and no one else’s.

She nervously fingered her bracelet to remind herself of that truth, in the face of the new and awful one that greeted her now. For leaning on the other side of the baby grand in a garish, attention-seeking dress was the embodiment of the ugly truth she must now acknowledge.

And the name of that truth was Jessica Stanley.

Bella gaped at her, dumbfounded. She blinked. She blinked again. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Yet there was no mistaking that smug grin, frosty blue stare and cavernous cleavage. They belonged to a girl Bella had once called a friend, and later, a “frenemy.”

But there was no friend left in this foe.

Jessica’s self-satisfaction was all too apparent as she leaned possessively over the piano. She seemed to be laying claim to the talented man sitting there, like he was somehow her own personal triumph. The puzzle pieces began to fall into place as Bella stared. This was no coincidence. Not only had Jessica never forgotten Bella’s drunken slip about hiring someone from Renaissance Escorts, she had remembered Edward’s name. When it came up again at the bar last week, Jess had obviously put two and two together, then checked out Bella’s story to see if it was true. Mike inviting Bella to this party was probably all the incentive Jessica needed to use her newfound knowledge to exact a little revenge - not only for tonight, but for the Forks High School Prom nearly two years ago.

Bella continued to stare, the panic in her gut escalating. Even she had never known her former friend could be this calculating, this vindictive. But if she hadn’t realized it before, Jessica drove the point home with nauseating clarity the minute Edward finished playing. She looked Bella right in the eyes to make sure she was watching before she attacked him with a sloppy, open-mouthed kiss.

Bella thought she would throw up, right there on the plush carpet beneath her feet. How dare that vile wench touch him? How dare she violate him like that?

She paid for the right. That’s how she dared, a sadistic voice in her head reminded her.

The bile rose in Bella’s throat. She fought it back, but her face grew clammy. She had to get out of here. If she didn’t get out of here, she would faint.

Her head was spinning when she heard a familiar voice break over the continued clapping and cheering that surrounded her.

“Jess! What the hell are you doing?”

Mike was suddenly there, standing a few feet to her left, still holding fresh drinks in his hands. She couldn’t quite zero in on him, but she could see him out of the corner of her eye. She focused on the amber liquid sloshing around in the lowball glasses he carried. If she looked back at the piano, she would be sick.

“What does it look like I’m doing? I’m kissing my date,” she heard Jessica say, her tone reeking of entitlement. Bella could hear the rustle of her loud dress coming closer. Every hair on her body bristled in revulsion.

“Your date?!” The incredulity in Mike’s voice was impossible to miss. “What the fuck are you doing on a date with Bella’s boyfriend?”

Jessica’s answering cackle was sharp and cruel, cutting Bella to the bone. “See, that’s the beauty of it, Mike. Edward here will be anyone’s boyfriend, if the price is right. And tonight, he’s mine. Isn’t that right, Edward?”

Bella’s eyes slammed shut. She wished she could shut her ears as well. She didn’t want to hear, let alone see, the train wreck piling up in front of her especially since she was the one tied to the tracks in its path.

“Get your hands off me,” she heard an unmistakable velveteen voice hiss. And then, closer: “Bella, open your eyes. Look at me.”

But she could not. She was frozen in a cocoon of silence, eyes squeezed shut, trying to disappear.

“What the hell are you talking about, Jess?” she heard Mike demand.

“Let me spell it out for you. Edward Cullen is a gigolo. A literal, fucking male prostitute. She hired him for sex didn’t you, Bella? Mike, you remember that crazy story she was telling us at your dorm party when she was drunk? About paying an escort to take her virginity? Well, she wasn’t joking. It was the truth. I guess you and Jake weren’t man enough for her she had to go shopping online for the perfect prick to pop her cherry.”

“Shut. Your goddamned. Mouth.” The velvet voice shook with barely controlled fury. Bella could envision Edward’s livid face in her mind, but she couldn’t bring herself to look at him. She was too busy trying not to vomit, or pass out. She finally opened her eyes a sliver, but fixed them unseeingly to the fleur-de-lis pattern on the carpet between her shoes.

“Excuse me? I’m the one calling the shots tonight, not you. I paid very well for that privilege, remember?”

“Which makes you no better or worse than Bella, you do realize,” Edward snarled. His tone changed abruptly. “Baby, don’t listen to her. You don’t have to take this. Let me get you out of here.”

“Are you serious?” Mike’s confusion and denial were apparent. “What are the two of you trying to pull here? This is bullshit. Bella, tell me this is complete bullshit. It can’t be true. Tell me you didn’t actually pay this douche-bag to . . .”

She heard his voice falter and die. What she had done was clearly unthinkable to him not to mention everyone else within earshot. Their shocked whispers and barely stifled laughter ricocheted between her ears as loudly as the gut-churning conversation taking place in front of her. She wondered if it was possible to die of mortification. She felt like a pillar of fire, burning head to toe in excruciating humiliation, yet somehow encased under an icy shell that rendered her immobile.

“Bella, don’t let them do this.” Velveteen softness at her right, coming closer. “Look at me. Let me help you.” She thought she saw his hand in her peripheral vision, reaching out to her; but she couldn’t seem to move her eyes, let alone her limbs.

“Oh, please.” Jessica’s snort was derisive. “She’s fine. She’s just embarrassed as hell to admit what she did, and for good reason. Mike, you’ve always had such a blind spot when it comes to her, and she uses it to her advantage. She’s been stringing you along while she pretended to be dating Edward, when he’s nothing more than a hired hand. And other parts.” She snorted again; Bella’s stomach lurched. “You deserved to know the truth. You’ve always deserved better than her.”

“Oh, and I suppose that’s you? Someone who claims to be her friend, and mine, but then sets us both up to be publicly humiliated? With friends like that, who the hell needs enemies?”

“You can’t seriously be taking her side. She hired a male hooker to fuck her! After you tried to get in her pants all through high school and she always said no. She’s the one who humiliated you! How can you forgive her for that? For resorting to something so low so trashy?”

Bella’s head spun like a top. She could feel her equilibrium give way as her ankles wobbled and her knees buckled. The velvet voice cried out her name. A strange commotion immediately followed, punctuated by a loud shriek. The last thing she saw was the fleur-de-lis surging up to meet her before everything went black.

.

.

Edward caught Bella before she ever hit the ground.

He’d been watching her like a hawk throughout this entire tawdry exchange. He didn’t give a flying fuck what that bitch, Jessica, said about him, or what any of the overdressed co-eds in this giant ballroom thought. The problem was, Bella did. She clearly couldn’t handle being called out on the carpet like this in front of her peers. He’d never seen her so pallid, so devoid of color. She’d changed from beet-red to snow-white in the space of a few minutes, and that’s when he began to really worry.

He wished he had grabbed her sooner. Just grabbed her hand and pulled her out of this situation before his disgusting date had time to spew her vitriol. But the truth was, it had taken him a couple of minutes to even figure out what the hell was going on.

He’d been mostly annoyed, and slightly repulsed, when Jessica had laid that kiss on him. He’d fought the urge to wipe his mouth with his hand afterward. But when he turned and saw the true target of her attack, he was stunned.

What was Bella doing here? She wasn’t in a sorority. A U-Dub Greek function at a four-star hotel was the last place he ever thought he’d find her. And yet, there she was, in that unforgettable blue dress; staring at Jessica with a horror and betrayal he hoped to never again see in her eyes.

His horror matched her own in that moment. How? Why? What was going on?

Her eyes left his and flashed to her left. Edward’s followed, to find that idiot Mike Newton standing there, his astonishment nearly equal to theirs. Edward didn’t even know the guy was in a fraternity. Bella had never mentioned that. And she’d certainly never mentioned she’d be attending this party with him, or Edward would have found a substitute escort for Jessica. He never would have knowingly subjected Bella to seeing him on a paid date like this.

But his pangs of regret soon grew to stabs of pain when he realized what Bella was truly being subjected to. Every ugly word that fell from Jessica Stanley’s lips filled him in, letting him know that his presence here was no mere coincidence, but part of a personal vendetta in which he was an unwitting pawn. Why had Bella never mentioned this girl’s name before? Had she even realized how Jessica had it in for her?

He’d get the answers later. For now, he had to save Bella. He watched helplessly as she visibly shrunk under this harpy’s accusations, folding into herself like a collapsing house of cards. She didn’t seem to hear him speaking to her, or simply couldn’t respond. The second he saw her going down, he shoved arguing Jessica and Mike out of the way and grabbed her up in his arms before she hit the carpet. She fell limply against him, a tiny rag doll in his embrace.

“I’ve got you, baby,” he whispered, scooping her up in his arms. “Wake up, Bella. I’m here. I love you. Wake up.”

He continued to murmur in her ear as he adjusted her in his arms so he could carry her outside.

“You ruined my dress, you asshole!” Jessica screeched, at either him or Mike, he wasn’t sure which. A quick glance proved that in his haste to catch Bella, he’d pushed her into the drinks Mike had been holding, thoroughly dousing her tacky outfit.

“Looks like a vast improvement to me,” he spat as he elbowed past her, an unconscious Bella cradled to his chest.

He carried her out to the chair-lined foyer and looked around for a vacant seat. Bella stirred slightly, her head moving against his chest.

“What happened?” she slurred.

“Your worst nightmare,” he muttered, taking her to an isolated corner and sitting her carefully in one of overstuffed armless chairs. “And you survived.”

He gave her a grim smile as he knelt on the floor next to her. “Now, I want you to lean forward and put your head between your knees for a minute or two. Can you do that for me?”

She nodded woozily and bent over, elbows on her thighs, face in her hands. Edward rubbed her shoulders and back in long, gentle strokes. She finally turned her head sideways to look at him.

“Did I black out?”

He nodded. “You scared the hell out of me.”

“I’m sorry.” She felt one fat, hot tear roll down her cheek.

“You have nothing to be sorry about. Not one fucking thing. No matter what anyone tries to tell you.”

He reached up to wipe the tears from her face. He hated what all of this had done to her. He felt as culpable as Jessica in this mess, despite his ignorance to her scheme. He was the one who’d remained a gun for hire. How did he ever think he could keep Bella out of the line of fire?

“Bella . . . are you okay?”

Edward looked up to see Mike standing there, mouth hanging open. He looked as shell-shocked as he sounded. He reached a tentative hand out to touch her, but Edward’s cold glare stopped him.

“I’m okay, Mike. I just got blindsided for a minute, that’s all.”

Leave it to Bella to downplay what she’d just gone through. Edward continued to stroke her back, her hair, while Mike fumbled around for words.

“That’s good. Shit, that was brutal, what Jess just did in there. I know she can be bitchy, but I had no idea she’d do something like this. You know, bring Suit-Guy ” he halted at Edward’s questioning gaze “uh, Edward to this party, just to fuck with us.” He paused and pulled at his shirt collar, like it was cutting off his breath. “She wasn’t serious, was she? About the hiring? And . . . the virginity. . . ?” Mike trailed off with a grimace.

“Now is not the time for this,” Edward warned him.

“No, it’s fine.” Bella took a deep breath and slowly raised herself to a sitting position. She looked at Mike with weary resignation. “It’s true. Everything she said was true.”

Mike stared at her blankly. He obviously didn’t want to hear that, or absorb its implications.

“She was wrong about one thing,” Edward said. Bella gave him a curious look. “I’m not with Bella because she pays me she doesn’t. I’m with her because I love her.”

Her eyes pooled with tears again. Edward grabbed her hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze.

Mike still looked confused. “But you are an escort, right? And Jessica did hire you for tonight?”

He took Edward’s guilty silence as confirmation. He shook his head in disbelief, shifting his focus to Bella. “And you’re okay with that? With him sleeping around on the side, for money?”

“He doesn’t sleep with them,” she quietly denied, but her eyes couldn’t quite meet Mike’s.

He erupted in an incredulous guffaw. “Oh, sure, of course not. He doesn’t actually have sex with any of them.” He let out another hysterical laugh. “I’m sure that’s what he tells you. I just can’t believe you fall for it. Wow.” He looked up at Edward and shook his head again. “That’s some snow job, Cullen. You’re good, I’ll give you that.”

Edward stood and took a menacing step toward Mike, fists clenched. “That’s enough from you. You don’t know a damned thing about either of us, so shut your fucking mouth before I shut it for you.”

Mike glared back, nostrils flaring, mouth twisted in disgust. “Apparently I don’t,” he agreed. He glanced down at Bella. “I guess I never knew you at all.”

The disillusionment in his voice cut her more deeply than the contempt. She closed her eyes and let out a ragged sigh as he turned and walked back into the ballroom. Edward immediately dropped to his knees in front of her, reaching out to cradle her face in his hands.

“Don’t listen to him. I’m not lying to you. You know that, don’t you?”

Another tear escaped, making her frown. She wanted to be done with tears already. “I believe you,” she said. “I know you wouldn’t do that to me.”

“Do you?” he asked. Traces of doubt lingered in her voice, despite her reassurances. “I know how much I’m asking when I ask you to trust me. Have they made you doubt that trust?”

More tears. She reached up and angrily wiped them away before Edward could. He dropped his hands to her lap, gripping her knees. The warmth surged up her legs, calming and protective. She looked at his face, stricken with worry, desperate for an answer. Those were the eyes she trusted. The ones she was desperate to believe in.

“No,” she said adamantly. “I won’t let their petty bullshit come between us.”

Edward’s face relaxed slightly and he let out a grateful chuckle. “That’s my girl. Fuck ‘em, right?”

“Right.” But despite her smile, she sounded less than convincing, and her eyes were still rimmed with red. Edward reached up to stroke the hair at her temple, pushing it off of her face. He repeated the gesture a few more times in an effort to soothe her. But he still wondered what upset her most: lingering doubts she might have about him, or being humiliated in a vast sea of her peers.

“Do you know what I thought when you first told me the story about Jake, and why you hired me?” he asked her.

She frowned and shook her head.

“I thought you were really brave,” he said. When she smiled at that, he added, “And crazy.” Her smile faded. “Brave for being so decisive about what you wanted, and hiring me to make that happen. But crazy for caring what Jake, and all the other judgmental kids at that party, thought of you. I don’t understand why their opinions meant so much to you that you would do something so drastic. I don’t understand it now,” he confessed, his eyes glancing to the ballroom next to them.

Bella stared, her eyes brimming over again. He had finally posed the question that had stumped her whenever she tried to answer it, even to herself.

“I. . . I don’t know,” she began haltingly. The earnestness of his gaze had her delving deep for answers. “Maybe it comes from a lifetime of being picked last for the team in gym class because I’m so uncoordinated. Or laughed at in the locker room because I was the only eight-grader who still didn’t need a bra. Or passed over by the boys at every dance because they never noticed me. No one ever noticed. I mean, my mom was pretty much my best friend when I was growing up. I never felt like I fit in with anyone my age until I moved to Forks when I was sixteen. And that misfit girl is still in here somewhere, after all this time. I keep trying to outgrow her, but she still finds me and trips me up, at the worst possible times.”

Edward ached inside at her words. Kids were cruel, sure, but she’d seemed to take every slight to heart and let it fester there instead of letting it go. He imagined that each new tear he wiped away with his thumb was another latent insecurity coming to the surface, finally being released.

“Mike noticed you,” he said. “He was the first, right?”

She nodded. “He actually picked me first for his volleyball team, even though I always nailed him in the head with the ball.” She laughed, then sniffled. “I was just flattered he wanted to date me. I thought that would be enough to make me feel the same way about him. Instead, I just ended up hurting him. And Jessica, though I didn’t know it at the time. She never let on how much she liked him. I didn’t find out until later. And I never knew just how much resentment she had toward me until now.”

Edward nodded slowly as the picture became clearer. “Bella, you have to understand something. Any unintentional pain you caused them doesn’t even come close to what they did to you tonight, especially Jessica. She was intentionally, excessively cruel to you. You didn’t deserve that. No one deserves that kind of public humiliation. But my guess is that this will all backfire on her in a big way. Maybe she succeeded in changing Mike’s feelings about you, but in the process she probably changed his feelings about her, too. You may think he’ll never forgive you for not loving him, but when all is said and done, she’s the one he won’t forgive. And she’ll be the one suffering because of it. Not you. She brought it on herself. I’m just sorry she was able to use me to do it, and hurt you so badly in the process.”

His voice grew low and hoarse. “I hate that I hurt you. I’m so sorry. Please forgive me.”

She stared at him, trying to take in everything he’d just said. Somehow he’d managed to shoulder part of the blame in Jessica’s machinations. She wanted to argue with him, but maybe he was right. All of them had played a part in the ugly scene that transpired tonight. There was no point in playing the blame game now.

“There’s nothing to forgive,” she told him. She placed her hand over his as it cupped her face. “You didn’t know who she was or what she was up to. I never thought there was any reason to tell you about her. I kept trying to push Mike in her direction. I even tried to get him to ask her to this party instead. I wish he’d asked her first, before it was too late.”

Edward took her hands in his and let them rest on her lap. He looked down at her tiny fingers entwined in his, nestled on that blue satin he remembered so well. Why had she worn that dress? He frowned, knowing he shouldn’t ask, but he couldn’t stop himself.

He raised his head to look her straight in the eyes. “Bella, why, did you come here with him tonight?”

Her forehead creased; her eyes were filled with regret. “To distract myself. So I wouldn’t sit around, wondering what you were doing on another Saturday night.” She let out a wry laugh. “Got my wish, didn’t I?”

Edward’s eyes closed; he took a deep breath. “I didn’t get out soon enough,” he muttered. He raised her hands to his and tenderly kissed her knuckles. “I’m sorry.”

“Stop,” she ordered. “Stop blaming yourself for Jessica’s vindictiveness. You were here to catch me when I fell. That’s all I care about.”

The light finally returned to Edward’s eyes. “Prove it,” he said with a challenging smile. “Prove that she can’t touch us that she hasn’t won. She thinks she succeeded in bringing you down, making you a laughing stock. Don’t give her the satisfaction.”

Bella brows knitted warily. “How?”

He heard the band begin to play again, starting their second set. He nodded toward the ballroom, gave Bella’s hands a squeeze and said, “Dance with me.”

Her eyes grew round with anxiety. “I can’t.”

“I know you think you can’t, but I don’t believe that. You’re stronger than you know. You can stand up to them. I’ll help you.”

“No, I mean . . . I can’t dance,” she admitted. “At all.”

Edward couldn’t help but smile at that. “I’ll teach you,” he promised. “You just follow my lead. You know I won’t let you fall.”

She looked into his eyes and knew there was little she could refuse him, even though she wanted to go back in that room like she wanted to stick hot pokers in her eyes. Enduring public ridicule was, indeed, her worst nightmare. But maybe she needed to face it in order for it to stop haunting her.

Edward could see the dread on her face. He was desperate to help her conquer this demon.

“Bella, do you know anyone else in that room, aside from Mike and Jessica?”

“No, not really.”

“So they’re all strangers, most of whom you won’t likely see again, unless you start hanging out at frat parties. Right?”

“Right. And I really don’t see that happening after tonight,” she said with a bitter laugh.

“Exactly. So their opinions really don’t matter in the grand scheme of things, do they?”

She balked. They shouldn’t matter. So why did they?

And then, self-realization dawned.

“They matter because I agree with them,” she said, so quietly that Edward could barely hear her.

He stared at her, his heart thumping uneasily. “What do you mean?”

“What I did . . . hiring someone to take my virginity . . . It isn’t normal. My whole thought process in doing that wasn’t normal. Thinking that having sex would change me; force me to grow up. Make me confident and impervious to everyone’s opinions about me.”

Edward could see the epiphany written all over Bella’s face as she spoke. He held his breath, and his tongue, while he waited for her to continue.

“But it was my own opinion I didn’t like. My own judgments about myself. So their judgments are just a giant mirror reflecting back at me. If everyone agrees with my assessment, then we can’t all be wrong, can we? They’re just affirming what I already know about myself; what I don’t like about myself. That’s why it hurts. That’s why it’s so hard to ignore.”

Edward swallowed hard. “Do you regret hiring me? Do you regret us?”

“No,” she insisted. “You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me. The one good thing that came out of my mistakes. I only regret how we got here. I know I can’t change it. But it’s just hard to accept sometimes. Whenever I realize I won’t ever be able to admit to my mom and dad how I met you, that’s when I know that deep down, I’m ashamed of it.”

She could see the flash of pain in Edward’s eyes before he looked down at their hands, still folded tightly on her lap.

“You once told me you could never be ashamed of me,” he whispered. He looked up again, his eyes beseeching. “Has that changed?”

“No.” She gripped his hands more tightly. “I’m not ashamed of you. I’m ashamed of myself.”

He took a deep breath, his mouth twisting in frustration. “So it’s okay for me to make mistakes, but not you?”

Her eyes widened in surprise. “That’s not what I meant.”

“Then what did you mean? We’re in this together, Bella. I’m no prouder of being a gigolo than you are of hiring one. We’ve each made mistakes; done things we regret. Maybe neither one of us is normal, whatever that means. If being normal means being perfect, then I guarantee you that not one person in that ballroom fits the bill. Every single one of them has done something they’re not proud of. Something that would make them as mortified as you were if it was exposed in front of a room full of people.

“At some point, you have stop beating yourself up for not living up to whatever ideal you have in your head. You’re human. You’re going to fuck up sometimes. You need to stop judging yourself and start forgiving yourself. Cut yourself the same slack you cut me.” Edward let go of her hands in order to wipe away the brand new tear that trickled down her right cheek. “Give yourself the same unconditional love you give me. Love yourself the way I love you.”

She felt another tear spill as soon as Edward wiped the first one away. He was hitting her with a truth even more profound than the one she’d just uncovered. She knew he was right. She thought back to the poem she’d written when she first met him, detailing her struggle to accept herself. She’d known then that his acceptance and love was the key to her finding the same within herself. Now she realized just how right she’d been.

“I don’t regret a single thing about us, Bella. I’ve hated myself for the past two years for prostituting myself, but I’d do it all over again in a heartbeat if I knew you were waiting for me at the end of it. Every minute I’ve spent with you was worth it. I wouldn’t dream of trading any of it for a perfect track record. If either of us had been normal, we never would have met.”

“I would never trade one moment with you, either. For anything.” She sniffed back her tears and reached out to touch him, to rest her hands on either side of his neck, thumbs stroking his square jaw. “I like to think we would have found each other somehow, anyway. That we were destined to be together. I felt it that first night that there was a reason we met.”

“And you were right,” he agreed. “But maybe tonight was part of that reason. Part of the journey you had to take. You have a chance to let go of all of it now. All those unrealistic expectations of yourself. Your guilt at not living up to them. Your regret over whatever mistakes you think you’ve made. This is your chance to be free.”

Bella smiled through her tears. She knew he was referring to their conversation the night they met, when she thought he was the one who needed to be set free.

“Thanks for not throwing my words back at me,” she said with a rueful laugh.

“Hey, they were wise words. And they weren’t the only ones. You told me to fuck the rules, remember? Don’t let anyone tell you what’s normal and what’s not. What’s forgivable and what’s not. Be proud of who you are.”

He smiled, then stood up and held out his hand.

“Dance with me, Bella.”

Edward was right. Maybe it was time to take her own advice. If he loved her, she could certainly find it in her heart to love herself. And that was the only opinion that really mattered.

She took a deep breath and put her hand in his. Then she stood tall and walked with him back to the ballroom.