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

quatorze

Roman has always been terrible at finding the right words to say to Marnie. Here's the thing: they were never really close, that special mother-daughter bond that they were supposed to have had fizzled away someday like it was nothing and neither of them had noticed until they thought it was too late. It was a mutual thing, a mutual understanding, but it still hurt her all that time because, well, Roman was one of those people that loved so much, too much, and with everything that she had.

Running into her apartment, grabbing her passport from the top drawer at the far left of the kitchen all while giving her mother a rambled, hasty explanation of what was going on, and then leaving without Marnie saying a single thing had hurt a lot. Terribly.

Parents were supposed to care, it was part of the job they signed up for.

She hoped it was because of the shock. That somehow she had startled her mother into such a daze that she couldn't find the words to say or maybe it was all the leftover emotions from the death of a family friend that made her reaction time sluggish.

But she should have at least gotten a concerned phonecall.

Roman blamed all of this on her dad. This was his fault even if she didn't know how yet.

He should've just been here.

In fact, it was terrible that Roman barely knew a thing about her father when he was still technically in the picture. He has still Marnie's husband. He still called and sent letters, but just never to her.

Some primal, instinctive part of her knew that he didn't want her as a child and that he would rather just forget that she exist. She had stopped wondering what she had done wrong a long time ago, but that wasn't going to stop her from blaming her problems on him if she could — and if the situation with Marnie was anything to go by, it was his fault.

Still, seated against the window of the plane as Bella slept fitfully against her shoulder, she had to wonder if this was how things were going to be until she finally moved out.

They needed to talk and Roman loved saying that, it seemed, but she had never actually summoned the courage to go through with it. She had so many people she had to sit down and honestly discuss things with but she had never actually done so — aside from Emily, but somehow that didn't feel quite right to her because it was the other woman that did all the talking and still Roman had never quite gotten to say what she wanted.

How was she supposed to tell someone to there face that something they had done, something they had based there whole life around, didn't sit right with you? That it was fundamentally wrong if it wasn't for the supernatural aspect of it.

Roman had never been the confrontational type unless she had to. She was a procrastinator at heart, the kind of girl to push things aside until they could no longer be ignore. She was a floater, always willing to do her own thing.

Talking to Marnie about their relationship scared the shit out of her. Talking to Bella about there relationship scared the shit out of her.

And sure, she was brave when it counts. She had to be.

She was also happy most of the time, optimistic, but that didn't mean she wasn't the sort to beat down on herself when she was uncertain.

Roman was uncertain a lot lately.

That was going to change. She was going to make it change.

Bella was asleep. She could feel the steady rise and fall of her chest with each breath. It was a bit of a relief, really, because how else was she supposed to gather the courage to speak to Alice alone?