The Edge

Making Up is Easy to Do

Summary: Charlie arrives at the Cullen house for holiday celebrations

Two Days Later

Bella closed the car door gently and moved around the front of the Porsche to join Charlie where he was waiting for her. He was supposed to have arrived in Seattle the day before, but he'd been held up on police business and was forced to delay his departure. The weather was starting to get really bad, and the smart thing to do would have been to wait out the storm, but Bella knew that Charlie wouldn't wait it out if it meant not seeing her on Christmas Eve, so she drove up to Forks to drive him to Seattle. There wasn't enough snow on the planet to make her lose control of the car, and while Charlie grumbled a little bit about not being a baby just because he was human, Bella knew that he appreciated the thought.

Bella wrapped her arm around Charlie's waist, allowing him to drape his arm over her shoulders and pull her against him. He wasn't showing any outward signs of nervousness, poker and police work had given him a strong game face, but Bella knew that he was nervous. She and Alice still visited him all of the time, but the rest of the family was almost exclusively based in Seattle, so he hadn't spent any significant amount of time around the other Cullen's since they had 'come out' as vampires to him.

"It'll be alright," Bella said softly, squeezing her father gently as they made their way to the front door. "They don't bite ... anymore," she added, gazing up at him with a little smirk on her face.

"Oh, ha ha," Charlie murmured glaring down at her. Bella continued to smile at him however, and he was only able to keep up the surly expression up for a few more seconds before he dissolved into a grin.

Seeing him give in, Bella smiled even wider and then pushed up on her toes and pressed her cool lips against his cheek.

"I'm still not used to that," Charlie sighed shaking his head a little as he accepted her frosty kiss.

He missed Bella's old warmth at times like that. They had never really been touchy-feely with each other, he wasn't built that way and Bella wasn't either (unless Alice Cullen was involved), but every once in a while she used to touch his shoulder as she walked by his chair on the way to the kitchen, or she'd given him a little hug just because, and it had always been so nice to feel her warmth.

"I know," Bella sighed softly as they entered the house.

It had been nearly a year since he had learned that she was a vampire, but he was still adjusting to the news. He had taken the news about her relationship with Alice so well, that Bella had half convinced herself that her father would barely blink an eye if he ever learned that she was a vampire. So, when Alice and the others had shown up on her front door that night months ago, she had actually been pleased and relieved. It had been taking a toll of her lying to him and she was happy that the truth would finally be revealed.

However, Charlie had blinked an eye when he discovered the truth. He had blinked a lot.

The weeks after Charlie had learned the truth had been rough on them both. Charlie had tried, that first night he had asked her more about what it meant to be a vampire, what was different about her, what Hollywood had gotten right and what it had gotten wrong. And after she explained things to him, and emphasized the point that she and the rest of the Cullen's only fed on animal blood, he had seemed a little more at ease.

But despite that slight decrease in tension, things between them had been strained. Charlie had been awkward around her, uncertain what to say and do now that his child had been transformed into something that he couldn't fully understand – no matter how much Bella tried to explain things to him.

In those first few weeks, Bella had caught him watching her with a half awed and half terrified expression on his face. She was newborn, and she couldn't go for as long without hunting as the rest of the Cullen's could, which meant that she had had to hunt frequently during those weeks she had stayed with him after the revelation. She had tried to go at night when he was asleep, but there were times when she hadn't been able to wait. There were times that she'd had to leave immediately to avoid disaster, and she knew that at those times – when she looked at Charlie unblinkingly with her inky black eyes, a constant rumbling emerging from her chest as she stared at him hungrily – she scared him. He would say that it was fine, that he understood, but he looked at her like she was a rabid beast frothing at the mouth, and she knew that he was terrified.