*Bella*
I jogged across the street, my coat tightly wrapped around me and zipped up to my neck as I stared holes in the back of my father's head while he stood on my front porch, pounding on the door.
I think I could even hear him cursing.
I sighed and shook my head, wiggling around a little bit as I stepped onto my driveway and bit my bottom lip.
Corsets were not comfortable. And I just didn't have enough damn common sense to change out of it before running out of the house to face my next obstacle of the day.
Because God knows Jessica Stanley just hadn't been enough. Nope, my father had to be thrown in there, too.
In all fairness, though, I hadn't really intended on keeping it on for very long.
I'd told Edward to wait for ten minutes before coming over to meet him. It would give me enough time to find out what Charlie wanted and then be able to – hopefully – smoothly transition him into meeting my new boyfriend.
It would also give Edward a few extra minutes to calm down. I hadn't missed the look on his face when he'd seen me at the top of the stairs.
And damn it all to hell if it hadn't sent sparks through my entire body despite the words that had left his mouth.
Shaking my head, I took a deep breath and prepared myself as I passed by the cruiser and made my way toward the front steps.
"Dad!"
He jumped and turned around, his eyes narrowed as he stalked back down the stairs and over to me.
"What's up?" I asked, laughing lightly and swallowing hard when I met his eyes.
The last time they'd been that narrowed and squinty was when he'd found me in the backseat of Eric Yorkie's mother's station wagon one night while I was in high school.
I hadn't been allowed out of the house for two months for more than school because of that and really, it hadn't even been worth it. Nothing but having his tongue rammed down my throat and his hand up my shirt and my father had overreacted to the umpteenth degree.
He kept his eyes on me as he reached inside his dark blue jacket and came out with a folded up piece of paper.
He held it up in front of me, his eyes widening slightly before he pulled it down and unfolded it.
I watched him, one eyebrow raised as I wondered if my father had completely lost his mind.
He drove almost an hour out of his way to show me a piece of paper?
I continued to watch, sighing quietly as he finally unfolded the paper and held it up in front of me.
My eyes widened when I saw the picture he'd very obviously printed out from one of the many internet sites mine and Edward's night out had been posted on.
So much for that smooth transition I'd been hoping for.
"Uh…" I started, swallowing hard again and licking my lips.
He merely shook the paper in my face, pointing at it with his free hand before gripping it with both hands and shaking it again.
"Well…"
He dropped his hands, his head tilted slightly at me as he stood up as straight as he could possibly get and his nostrils flared.
"See, dad…"
He held up the paper again, shaking it furiously a few inches from my face before dropping it again.
Yes, father, I can see what you have. Stop shaking it in my face and I'll be able to explain everything to you.
"Why don't we go inside?" I sighed, motioning with one of my hands to the front door.
He quickly turned on his heel and stalked back to the porch, leaping up the two steps and staring at the door as he waited for me.
I took a deep breath, casting a glance over my shoulder at Edward's house before slowly walking up behind him and shaking my house keys out of my pocket.
I could say everything that I needed to say within ten minutes, right? I could definitely explain all that had happened in the past week and a half in ten minutes, right?
Right?
Sighing again, I unlocked the door and immediately wanted to slap my forehead in frustration as I walked in.
I didn't have any damn furniture. Charlie didn't know I didn't have any damn furniture. Charlie probably didn't understand why I didn't have any damn furniture.
"Bella, what in the hell happened here?" he roared, brushing by me and standing in the middle of my living room.
Ah, so he can speak after all.
What was it with all the men in my life losing that little ability today? First Edward and now my father?
It was a good thing that I didn't know many other men.
"Uh, Jake moved out?" I said quietly, closing the door behind me once I'd grabbed my keys from the door.
He narrowed his eyes at me and merely held up the paper again.
I rolled my eyes and stalked over to him, snatching the paper from his hands and throwing it to the floor behind me.
"If you want an explanation, you're gonna have to give that up."
I watched him suck in a deep breath before he crossed his arms over his chest and raised an eyebrow at me.
"Jake had a bit of a jealousy issue concerning Edward," I started slowly.
"That doesn't explain why you're on the internet!"
I pursed my lips at him and crossed my arms over my chest.
"If you'd listen to me, I'd tell you!"
"I'm sorry, Bells, but I'm a little confused!"
"I'm trying to explain it to you!"
He huffed and nodded once, his clear indication that he was going to let me speak.
"Jake didn't like that I was friends with Edward." I pointed out the windows at my side to Edward's house. "It got too much for him to deal with and he broke it off with me. He moved out and took almost everything that he could."
"I never liked him," Charlie said quickly, his arms falling to his sides as he stuffed his hands in his jacket pockets.
I rolled my eyes.
While it was true that Jake wasn't his favorite person in the entire world, I couldn't believe it when he said that he didn't like him. Aside from the fact that Jake was his best friend's son, Charlie had gone to great lengths to encourage my relationship with him.
Come to find out, it had been the worst thing that I could've ever given in to.
"Yeah, well," I finally grumbled, looking down at my feet.
"Are you okay?" he asked after a few moments of silence.
I sighed heavily and looked up at him again, feeling awkward and more than a little lost about this whole thing.
"I'm much better now that I'm with Edward."
I watched him shift his eyes toward the paper lying on the floor and resisted the urge to roll mine yet again.
"We've been together for about a week," I started, shaking my head at the time line.
It felt like so much longer. And not in a bad way, either. Like I'd known him my entire life and it had just taken me this long to realize what I'd been missing out on.
So much had happened during that week.
"And this was our way of coming out to the public."
"Hell of a way," he grumbled, rocking back and forth on his heels. "It would've been nice to know something like that, Bells, instead of having to find out from one of the guys I worked with."
"Does he have nothing better to do than troll around online and look for the latest celebrity gossip?" I grumbled, crossing my arms over my chest again.
"His daughter is apparently a big fan of this Edward fellow. He spent half the night trying to get her to stop crying about it."
I sighed again and shook my head disbelievingly as he rolled his eyes.
"I'm not going to apologize for it."
"Is he good to you?" he asked quickly, his eyes zeroing in on mine and squinting slightly.
"He's very good to me," I answered quietly, nodding and licking my lips. "He'll be over here in a few minutes and you can meet him then."
Charlie nodded solemnly and I watched as he brought one hand out from his pocket to gently pat his gun resting in the holder at his side.
"You will not do that to him!" I exclaimed quickly, pointing at him.
"Do what?" he asked innocently, raising an eyebrow.
"Dad, he's important!"
He pursed his lips, clearly unhappy with that statement and dropped his hand to his side again, grumbling under his breath as he shook his head and looked out the windows.
"What else did Jake take from you?"
I sighed and reached up to tap my forehead. I really didn't want to have this conversation with him right now. There was entirely too much floating around in my head to even attempt trying to explain all of that to him.
"What didn't he take?" I sighed, dropping my hand back into the crook of my arm and looking up at him.
"Then why in the hell don't you have any new furniture? Why in the hell did you let him take everything?"
"What was I going to do?" I exclaimed, throwing my hands out at my sides. "If you hadn't noticed before, he's a hell of a lot bigger than I am!"
"You have the recliner!"
He pointed to the poor thing sitting off to the side and I sighed, nodding.
"Yes, I'm aware of that."
"That's it!"
I blinked at him. I was really glad that he wasn't a detective.
"Why haven't you gotten anything new?"
"I haven't really had the time to go look."
"Why not?"
I bit my bottom lip and motioned with my head toward the front windows and Edward's house.
"He's leaving in a week to go home for the holidays. I'm spending all my free time with him and that doesn't include going shopping for new furniture."
Charlie shifted his feet and stuffed his free hand back into his pocket, looking down at his shoes and grumbling under his breath again.
We'd never talked boys or relationships or the extent of any of them while I was growing up and I hated that we had to start now.
I'd moved in with him during my junior year of high school. My mother had just gotten married to Phil and they wanted to travel; get out and see the world while they could. My mom, however, refused because I was still in school and she wasn't going to take that away from me.
I'd seen how much she'd really wanted to go and had exiled myself from my very comfortable home with my mother and Phil in Jacksonville, Florida to move back to upstate New York with my father.
I vaguely remembered living there with both of my parents when I was younger, but only remembered visiting for a few odd holidays and having Charlie tell me all about how we'd all lived in New York once upon a time.
It had been a very quiet two years before I graduated high school – neither of us really knowing what to say to the other most of the time and only really talking about boys when I had a date for the night – and my grandmother had suggested that I work for her at the local bookstore.
I'd fallen completely in love with the ins and outs of a family run business and even when my mother had called to say that they were settling back into Jacksonville, I hadn't wanted to leave.
I'd unknowingly fallen in love with upstate New York and honestly hadn't wanted to go back to live in the hot, sticky climate that I'd adored two years before.
"How did you not know that Jake moved out?" I asked after a few more moments of uncomfortable silence, desperate to change the subject. "You talk to Billy, don't you?"
"We don't discuss the love lives of our children, Bella. Unspoken rule," he grumbled, digging his toe into the carpet.
I nodded, biting my bottom lip before sighing heavily and looking over into the dining room.
"Have you eaten?"
"I haven't been home yet."
"Would you like to or is Sue making you something for when you get there?"
"Sue's got some scrapbooking class or some other thing," he mumbled, waving a hand absently at the window. "I was just going to stop and get something on the way home."
"I'll make something. We haven't eaten yet either."
"We," he scoffed, huffing and looking out the windows again.
I rolled my eyes and finally shed my coat, throwing it on the recliner and walking into the kitchen.
I didn't even know what I had to make. It had felt like a lifetime ago that Edward and I had gone shopping together and I'd gotten so used to being in his kitchen, in his home, making myself comfortable and eating all of his food that being back in my own kitchen was a little like being on a foreign planet.
"Will you promise to be nice to him?" I asked as I heard his footsteps in the dining room.
"I'll put my best foot forward."
His best foot forward usually meant staring at whoever he wasn't sure he approved of and making them as uncomfortable as they could possibly get within the first three seconds of meeting him.
Edward was nervous enough when I left the house – pacing around, his hands in his hair and his movements jerky and stilted – and the last thing he really needed was my father staring him down and making it ten times worse.
"That doesn't reassure me, dad."
I opened the refrigerator and leaned on the door before shaking my head, closing the door and sidestepping to open a cabinet and grab a bag of pasta.
"You're throwing an awful lot at me today, Bells. I'm doing my best here."
I stood up straight and walked over the counter, throwing the bag on it before leaning my hip against it and looking over at him as he stood in my dining room.
"Dad, he's really important, okay? So it would really mean a lot if you'd just… hide your gun. Somewhere. Preferably not within reaching distance."
"Bella, I won't threaten him and I won't kill him. What more do you want from me?" he sighed, finally taking his jacket off and resting it on the back of one of the chairs.
I sighed as well, chewing on my bottom lip again before shaking my head and waving a hand at him as I turned around and grabbed a pot from the overhead cabinet.
Asking him again to be nice to him would probably get me nowhere.
"So why don't you tell me the whole story, Bells?" he asked as he walked into the kitchen behind me and over to the refrigerator.
I heard beer bottles clanking together as he grabbed one and walked over to the sink to start filling the pot with water.
"How'd this all happen?"
I listened as he twisted the top off and threw it in the garbage, thinking about how I was going to explain all of this to him.
Taking a deep breath, I flicked off the water once the pot was half full and walked over to the stove before launching into the whole story of how we met, the Jacob situation and how we'd decided to start dating.
Leaving little tidbits out such as getting buzzed and practically attacking him the first time I kissed him.
Short, semi-sweet and directly to the point while I moved around my kitchen, making a quick dinner that we could all try enjoying.
He'd migrated back into the dining room and had sat down by the time I was finished, playing with the label on his beer bottle and nodding his head almost mechanically.
He opened his mouth and then snapped it shut again when we heard a knock on the front door. Wiping my immediately sweaty palms on my jeans, I took another deep breath and pointed to the pot on the stove.
"Will you make sure that it doesn't boil over?"
He nodded once more, his eyes trained on the clear view he had of the front door from where he was sitting.
"Yeah, sure."
Sighing, I licked my lips and walked by him into the living room and yanked open the front door to reveal a very nervous Edward standing in front of me.
His hair was always messy, yes, but this was an extreme. Most of it was sticking up in two different directions as if he'd been yanking on it for hours, his eyes were slightly wider than normal and his bottom lip looked like mine usually did when I was nervously trying to chew it off.
My heart instantly went out to him and looking over my shoulder to find that Charlie was most definitely not watching the pasta, I reached out and gently pushed on Edward's chest before stepping down onto the porch and closing the door behind me.
"He hates me!" Edward exclaimed the second the door clicked into place.
"He doesn't know you. He can't hate you."
"He doesn't have to know me to hate me, Bella."
His hands went into his hair again and I grabbed onto his wrists, yanking them down and forcing his hands on my waist as I stepped into him.
"Edward, he doesn't hate you," I said softly, attempting to make his eyes meet mine.
When he kept looking away from me, I moved my hands from his wrists and grabbed his face, waiting until his eyes met mine before I started speaking again.
"Calm down."
"Bella…" he whined, his fingertips digging into my waist as he pulled me closer to him.
"He's not used to this either, okay? He knew Jake before and while he still didn't like that we were dating, at least he'd known him a little bit. He doesn't know anything about you except that you're an actor."
"And that goes against me!"
I bit my bottom lip and looked into his eyes, running my thumbs over his cheeks.
"You don't have to meet him tonight, I guess," I said quietly, my heart falling.
It surprised me that I wanted them to meet. I guess it was just one more way to incorporate him into my life and meeting my father was one hell of a big step for that.
But if he wasn't sure about it and if he wasn't comfortable with it, I wasn't going to make him do anything that he really didn't want to do. I wasn't going to push him into something that made him uncomfortable when the entire reason for him even being in upstate New York was so that he could escape.
I hadn't really let him do that this time. And if he truly didn't want to meet my father, well, I wasn't going to make him.
"I can just tell him that you aren't feeling well. We can do this another time, I guess."
I watched as his eyes closed and he sucked in a deep breath before he pulled me against him and gently placed his lips on mine, his arms winding tightly around my waist.
"Does he have a gun?" he asked, pulling away only a little.
I swallowed hard, letting my eyes open slowly to meet his as I nodded a little.
"Will he kill me?"
"I'd never let him touch you," I whispered, running the tips of my thumbs down the bridge of his nose. "But really, if you don't…"
One of his hands disappeared from my waist, reaching out and twisting the doorknob behind us.
"Remember me fondly, okay?"
I rolled my eyes and kissed him one more time before turning around, smiling stupidly at the door and letting him push it open for me.
Charlie was still sitting at the table, both hands grasping his beer bottle when I walked in with an eyebrow raised in my direction. He stood up when Edward stepped in behind me and cleared his throat as he stuffed his hands in his pocket.
Proudly framing the gun in his holster while he was at it, too. I rolled my eyes and waited to hear the door close completely and for Edward to shed his coat before grabbing his hand, linking our fingers and walking into the dining room with him.
Immediately, there was about a three foot thick wall of tension in between the two of us and Charlie and I couldn't stop the sigh that escaped my lips.
"Dad, this is Edward," I said once we both came to a stop. "Edward, this is my father, Charlie."
I let go of Edward's hand and could've sworn that I heard a small whimper sound from him when I did so.
Charlie looked Edward up and down and I had to fight the urge to smack him and snatch the gun away from him.
Really, he was just making this worse for everyone. And if one of them didn't say something soon, it was altogether possible that I'd scream at the top of my lungs.
It would break the ice if nothing else. And I'd feel a hell of a lot better about this whole thing, too.
"Nice to meet you," Charlie finally mumbled, holding out one hand when he was done with the apparent appraisal.
"You too, sir," Edward managed, holding out his hand and clasping it in Charlie's.
"Actor, huh?"
They both dropped their hands and I narrowed my eyes at Charlie, silently warning him that while he had the gun, I'd kill him if I had to.
Somehow.
"Yes, sir."
Oh, Jesus. He was going to say sir after everything, wasn't he?
Why had I wanted this to happen? Why had I thought this was a good idea?
"Leaving in a week, huh?"
"Yes, sir."
Charlie nodded, stuffing his hand back in his pocket and rocking back and forth on his heels again.
"Live out in California?"
"Yes, sir."
"Where's your family from? They in California too?"
"No, sir. My family lives in Washington; in Forks."
Charlie snorted and my eyes narrowed into little slits.
"Forks, huh?"
"Yes, sir. Small town; rains ninety-nine percent of the time and I've known the same people for the majority of my life. It's home."
Charlie nodded, continuing to rock back and forth on his heels as he kept his eyes on Edward's.
"What do your parents do?"
"My father's a doctor and my mother's an interior designer."
Charlie nodded again, humming before he stopped rocking and reached over to grab his beer bottle from the table again.
"How do you plan on making this work with you being all… an actor?"
I closed my eyes and sucked in a deep breath, slowly shaking my head from side to side as silence encased the whole house.
We were going to have this conversation now? We hadn't even talked about it between the two of us yet.
"Well," Edward started slowly, his hand grabbing and squeezing mine.
I opened my eyes and looked back at him, smiling slowly when I saw that while he still looked slightly crazed and terrified, he had a small crooked smile on his face as he looked at me.
"We both know that it won't be easy, but we trust each other. And every time I get an extended amount of time off, the first place I'm headed to is an airport to get back here. Phone calls," he shrugged easily, looking back at Charlie and smiling nervously. "We'll make the best of it."
Charlie hummed again, draining the minimal amount of liquid left in the beer bottle before hooking one thumb into his trouser pocket.
"Water's boiling over, Bella."
I was still staring at Edward, my heart beating fast in my chest and my teeth gnawing on my bottom lip as I ran over the words he'd just said.
He was going to come back here every chance he got. Granted, I didn't know how often that would be, but still… he wanted to come back here because of me.
Most importantly, while we hadn't talked about it, he'd thought about what would happen. He'd made a plan; he had a plan for us.
I was really beginning to resent that my father was standing in front of us.
The corset was suddenly digging into my sides, making its presence clearly known and absolutely begging me to let Edward take it off.
Something he couldn't do and I wouldn't let happen with Charlie surely staring holes into the side of my head at the moment.
"Bella!"
I jumped out of my little world and looked back at Charlie, slightly annoyed that he'd interrupted all of my musings.
"What?"
"The water's boiling over!"
I looked at him, blinking and trying to understand what the hell he might've been talking about before it finally clicked.
"Shit!"
I untangled my hand from Edward's and flew into the kitchen, quickly lifting the pot off of the burner and flicking off the flame. I heard Edward chuckling behind me and turned to see that he was getting the strainer out of the cabinet and placing it in the sink for me.
"Forget something, love?" he asked quietly, smirking at me as he kissed my cheek when I made it over to him.
"Shut up," I mumbled, gently elbowing him out of the way.
He laughed and reached out to squeeze my side before stepping behind me. I heard him open the refrigerator door and snuck a look over at Charlie, who was watching us carefully with his lips twisted to the side as he tapped his fingertips on the beer bottle in his hand.
I merely raised an eyebrow at him and he raised one of his back at me, nodding slightly in the direction of my refrigerator and ultimately, Edward.
"Do you want another beer, Char… uhm… I mean…"
I pressed my lips together in an attempt not to laugh at him and closed my eyes briefly before turning back and dumping the pasta into the strainer.
"Yes, Edward, thank you."
I heard him laugh nervously and coughed to cover up the laugh that wanted to make its way out of my throat.
"Bella, you want one?"
I looked over at him as I set the empty pot back on the stove and nodded, smirking at him.
"Yeah, sure."
He playfully narrowed an eye at me before grabbing three bottles out of the refrigerator and handing them to us. He flicked the top off of mine quickly, throwing it in the garbage before setting it down on the counter next to me and kissing my cheek again.
"So," Charlie interrupted, clearing his throat as he twisted the top off of his beer and threw it carelessly onto the table. "You're still coming to the house for Christmas, right Bells?"
Edward had stepped back at that point and I sighed quietly, turning on the tap water and letting it run over the pasta as I nodded.
"Yeah, dad, I'll be there."
"Sue said she'd make dinner this year so you don't need to worry about that."
I smiled softly and looked over at him, nodding and doing my best to ignore the painful tugging on my heart that was clearly reminding me that by Christmas, Edward would be gone.
"That's great. Tell her thanks."
"Seth and Leah will be there, too."
I rolled my eyes, slamming my hand on the tap to turn it off and sidestepping to get a bowl out of another cabinet.
"Great," I grumbled.
Seth I didn't mind very much. In fact, we'd always gotten along pretty well and I found him to be my saving grace during the holidays. We spent more time making fun of our blended family members than we did actually talking to them and it was one of the best ways to relieve all the stress the holiday heaped onto my shoulders each year.
Leah, on the other hand, had had it out for me the minute she realized that I was dating Jake. She'd been snooty and bitchy and had done her best to flaunt herself during all the holidays when I brought Jake with me to the house.
She'd had her eyes on him ever since I could remember and would do her best to wear the lowest cut clothing she could manage to find when she knew he'd be coming with me.
I could only imagine how happy she'd be this year when she found out that we'd broken up.
I couldn't wait for those snide comments that would be thrown my way during dinner.
Because there was always something and it was always during dinner when I couldn't reach across the table and slap her without being banished from the house for the rest of my life.
And the pathetic, "Leah, that's not very appropriate," reprimand that Sue shot her way every year never really managed to keep her trap shut for very long.
Don't get me wrong; I adored Sue and she was perfect for my father. Her daughter, on the other hand, really needed to be smacked around a few times so that she'd learn some damn table manners.
"It won't be that bad this year, Bells. I heard that she was dating someone."
"Poor bastard doesn't know what he's gotten himself into," I mumbled, dumping the pasta into the bowl and nearly throwing the strainer into the sink.
I heard Edward snort from behind me before he was at my side and pulling down three bowls for us.
"I hope you guys don't mind eating plain tonight," I announced, grabbing a serving spoon from the drawer and digging it into the pasta before grabbing it and walking into the dining room. "I didn't have much time to plan."
"Anything's better than Burger King, Bells. If Sue saw another burger wrapper in the trash when she got home, I probably would've spent the rest of the night hearing about it."
"You need to eat better," I said casually, shrugging as I set the bowl in the middle of the table and moved out of the way to let Edward place the other bowls on the placemats.
"Does she do this to you, too, Edward?" he asked as he sat back down in the chair. "Nag you about eating right?"
I shot him a look over my shoulder, smirking slightly as I disappeared back into the kitchen to grab the butter and utensils.
"She's been feeding me since I got here, so I've had no room to complain about anything."
I smiled smugly to myself as I walked back into the dining room and set everything down on the table, looking over at Edward as he sat down and laughing as he grinned up at me.
"Well, don't get used to it," Charlie grumbled, shifting in his seat. "It doesn't take long for them to start working on you to make you what they consider better."
I pursed my lips at him, raising an eyebrow and kicking his shin. He howled in pain, immediately reaching down and rubbing the spot where I'd kicked him.
He didn't say anything more, though.
"Either of you need anything else?" I asked dryly, placing my hands on the back of the chair and looking in between them.
They shook their heads – Charlie still pouting up at me and rubbing his leg – and I sat down, getting comfortable before realizing that I'd left my beer in the kitchen.
"Shit," I mumbled, pushing my chair back out.
"Sit down," Edward said, quickly pushing his chair back out and jumping up, apparently having the sudden ability to read my mind. "I'll get it."
He reached out and squeezed my shoulder as he passed by me. I looked over at Charlie as he grabbed the spoon from the pasta bowl and tilted my head at him.
He rolled his eyes and shrugged his shoulders as he sat up straight again, dumping the pasta onto his plate – his way of saying that Edward was not so bad.
My heart jumped in my chest and I had to fight the squeal and the sudden need to leap across the table and hug him as if my life depended on it.
He may not have liked him all that much just yet, but he didn't hate him. And he'd started actually talking to him as opposed to questioning him about every little detail that he could think of within three seconds.
For Charlie, that was probably as good as it was going to get right now.
I smiled and looked up as Edward placed my beer in front of me and sat down again. I reached underneath the table and gently squeezed his knee, smiling brightly at him.
He placed his hand over mine and curled his fingers around my palm, squeezing back and running his thumb over my knuckles.
No, this day hadn't been that bad at all.
~*~
"So, ah," Charlie grumbled, uncomfortably rubbing the back of his neck as we stood outside on my porch an hour later.
I patiently stared up at him, my hands clasped behind my back and comfortably tangled up in the jacket both the men in my house had insisted I wear.
They were worse than overprotective mother hens. They'd also spent most of the dinner telling embarrassing stories about how I seemed to enjoy falling flat on my face every chance I got.
Just because Edward didn't have that much ammunition in that department didn't mean that he hadn't had anything to talk about.
And he was now able to walk away from the entire thing with entirely too much knowledge on how clumsy I really was all the damn time.
While I was glad that Charlie hadn't attempted touching his gun again throughout the entire meal, I wasn't too thrilled with the idea that they'd managed to bond over something like how impossible it was for me to stay on my feet for very long.
"Thanks for dinner," he continued, shifting uncomfortably on his feet and dropping his hand to his side. "It was good."
I raised an eyebrow at him and nodded, fighting off the smile that threatened my lips.
"You're welcome. Tell Sue I said hi, okay?"
He nodded almost frantically, his hand sliding back around his neck as he stared holes in the floor of the porch.
"I guess," he finally started, huffing and slapping his hand down against his thigh before finally looking at me. "I guess he's not so bad."
I suppressed the grin and shrugged, shaking my head at him.
"No, he's not."
"And I guess you could've done worse."
"Dad, we both know that I have done worse."
He grunted, looking over at the door and nodding absently.
"Does he always do all of that stuff for you? Without you having to ask him for it?"
I nodded, moving my hands from my back to wrap them around my waist and smirking.
"It wasn't an act, dad. Edward's always like that."
He huffed before looking back at me and sighing.
"Promise me that you'll be careful, okay?"
"Dad…"
"No one's good enough for my baby girl," he said quickly as he pulled me into a hug and awkwardly kissed the side of my head.
I relaxed into him and closed my eyes, wrapping my arms tightly around his waist and hugging him tightly.
It wasn't often that Charlie showed a whole ton of affection and while I'd come to expect it from him and not push it, every time he did hug me or say something like that to me, I was back to being the girl in high school that had come home crying my eyes out when my first semi-serious boyfriend in a new town broke up with me. And he'd hugged me and let me cry on him for the rest of the night, not saying a word and just being there when I needed him.
"All right," he sighed, backing away from me and stuffing his hands back into his pockets. "Sue will be home soon and she'll be wondering about all of this."
"Told her, huh?"
"She's the one that talked me out of running home to grab the shotgun before I came here."
I rolled my eyes and smacked his arm while he laughed.
"I'll call you and we'll nail down some real plans for Christmas, okay?"
I nodded and quickly stood up on my toes to kiss his cheek before he grumbled a goodbye and nearly sprinted to the cruiser.
I smiled after him, waving as he backed out of the driveway, flashed the red and blue lights on top of the car and drove off down the road.
Shaking my head and laughing lightly, I turned and walked back into the house, shedding my coat again and walking into the kitchen to find that Edward was already loading the dishwasher for me.
I stopped and leaned against the doorjamb, crossing my arms over my chest and smiling softly as I watched him.
The hot shot actor that had teenage girls crying over him all night was standing in my kitchen, putting dirty dishes into the dishwasher as if it was the most natural thing in the world.
He had put everything on the line for me. He'd sacrificed the majority of the privacy that he craved while he was here to show the world that he was taken. He'd met my friends and my father and he'd had me meet his sister. He was dealing with what I could only imagine was a very upset agent because of me; because he'd wanted to.
He'd been terrified when I answered the door earlier tonight and he'd been just as scared meeting Rosalie and Angela but he'd done it anyway.
He'd done it for me.
I pushed myself off of the doorjamb and walked over to him just as he was shutting the dishwasher door. He turned and smiled, holding out a hand for me.
I grabbed it as I reached him and stepped up on my toes, burying my other hand in his hair and pressing my lips against his. His other hand rested on my waist as I stepped in closer to him and I opened my mouth under his.
His tongue immediately met mine and he squeezed my hand, his other arm wrapping tightly around my waist.
"I love you," I breathed as I stepped down from him.
He smiled, his thumb rubbing my back gently.
"I love you too." He kissed me again. "Are you ready to go home?"
I grinned and nodded, turning on my heel and walking ahead of him to go back into the living room to once again grab my coat.
As much as I'd loved this house when I bought it, it no longer held the same kind of happiness I thought I'd had before.
My home was with Edward; along with my heart and every single inch of my soul. I was connected to him in ways that I never thought possible and I'd never change that for anything.
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