Unforgivable Lacerations

Chapter Forty-Four

The song is Hit The Floor by Linkin Park. The song is mentioned in this chapter. 

*_*_*_*_*

"Happy New Year," Edward murmured into my hair as we sat on the outskirts of Manistee city, watching the fireworks spiral upward and present a display of colors in the night sky.

"Happy New Year," I replied back, wanting more than ever to feel his cold lips against mine. Instantly, at the thought of a male's lips on mine, I flash-backed to a memory where Jacob would devour my lips; biting them so hard blood would draw, sucking them so strongly that bruises formed, and scarring me so deeply that I couldn't physically do what I mentally wanted.

I wasn't ready for that. Period.

Silently, Edward and I watched the sparks of every color in the rainbow pop and twinkle, miles away from where they were being lit. Even though I had seen fireworks before and had celebrated a new year nineteen times, it was different now. With Edward's arms wrapped firmly around my layered torso, and his face nuzzling my hair, I felt at peace.

Normal.

As if this was what any other nineteen-year-old girl with a boyfriend was doing. 

"You know, I have witnessed over a hundred new-years in my lifetime, but not one has ever been this special." Edward broke the tranquil silence with his mere whisper. "You make me feel complete, Bella."

The words he had spoken made my heart race and my stomach erupt with butterflies. Not the horrible ones someone endured when they were about to ride an airplane for the first time, but the type that only Edward could make, which caressed the skin of my stomach rather than jabbed. 

"As you do with me, Edward. In my life, I have never felt so normal then how I am with you beside me, which is slightly ironic." Given the circumstances that he was a vampire and I was an abused human who was still heavily recovering, I felt light. It didn't happen often in one's life, where all they felt was love. No pain. No misery.

Love.

While love could destroy me in one second with the simple words of 'I'm leaving'- or 'we're leaving', in this case, and feel like a hurricane of passionate emotions, it also made someone feel alive. The past year I felt like a walking corpse, but with Edward, the colors around me, that I had tuned to black and white where nothing had a meaning, were starting to seep back in my mind. It was like ink found the paper, exploding the A4 piece with lightening colors.

Love was overwhelming, passionate, effortless and...indescribable with Edward.

He swept me off my feet just by looking into his eyes. People would say that love was effort and not a walk in the park. But I begged to differ, apart from the year of depressive misery without him, my soulmate was exactly that. A soulmate.

"I love you." I needed to say the words out loud from my thoughts. To finalize the trail in my mind. I felt Edward smile in my hair.

"I love you more than words can comprehend, Bella." Edward's words drifted around us until silence. Embracing the afloat words and tucking them into my heart, I kissed Edward's cheek.

'I'm so sorry, I wish I could kiss you,' I thought as my lips brushed against his smooth cheek. In response, Edward's arms tightened around me, not uncomfortably or painfully, just in a way that protected me.

*_*_*_*_*

"It's just you, me and Carlisle in the house, Bella," Edward informed, sitting with his legs on the bed at my right side. Needless to say, Edward's arm was tucked under me as my nausea began to crawl up to my throat.