Falling To The Sun | B. Swan + E. Cullen

quinze

The apartment was daunting as the cab pulled up and Roman hesitated as she handed over the needed amount, debating if she should have him take her somewhere else instead.

Marnie's truck was parked across the street and she sighs, climbing from the back. She didn't want to deal with this right now, not when she was travel-worn and emotionally spent.

What she wanted was to disappear into the woods for a few hours, hiding away as the silence in the trees fixed everything right up.

It was the one space, the one constant, that she had always known.

It wasn't fair that safety and comfort had been robbed from her.

Lucky that she had her key, she lets herself in silently, praying her mother won't notice — or maybe she wants her to notice so that maybe the woman would be forced to parent her properly. She didn't want to ground herself.

It wasn't that Marnie was a bad mom, Roman reminds herself, she was just distant.

The house smells heavily of cigarettes and she curls her noise, biting back a scathing remark about the freezing temperature. The kitchen window was left open. A full ashtray was on the counter.

She couldn't remember the last time her mother had smoked, let alone this much.

"Roman? Is that you?" A figure jumps from the couch, her mothers figure striking as it launches at her.

The taller woman curls around her, embrace painful, and she's vaguely aware that her shoulders shake with tears.

Marnie smells of stale coffee and cigarettes.

Roman swallows thickly. "Mom?"

"I had no clue if you were coming back!" she cries. "Where did you go?"

She curls into her mother. "Do you really want to know?"

The woman pulls back, looking her over with bloodshot eyes. Her mothers' hair was in tangles at the nape of her neck. She was in one of dad's old t-shirts. It didn't look right.

"Tell me everything."

And so she did, all that she could, from the very beginning. It started when the Cullens came to Forks and Roman couldn't stop thinking about Edward, how her heart used to sing and soar at the sight of him. She was sure to stress how much of a coward she was.

She spoke of Bella Swan, the stunning, shy new-girl that was too pretty to be allowed that made her sick to her stomach with butterflies.

"I love them both, mom, more than anything in the world," she says, stressing the words as much as she can before she bulldozers over herself again.

It's a mess of emotions and jumping from one story to another, biting back tears as they threatened to overtake her -- fighting to get everything out until she was rambling over herself as she spread onto her hate of her father for never being there, for hating her for no reason, her upset that Marnie doesn't spend time with her.

How the forest is no longer safe and she's terrified of her favourite place.

Roman speaks until her mouth is dry and her throat sore. Maybe she would regret it later when she had time to think, but it was so nice to just say all the words aloud so that she can hear for herself how stupid she sounds.

It's easy to see what she has to do after that.

And she wasn't going to run away again.

It doesn't hit her that she had metaphorically split her guts to her mother until she was done.