Chapter 28 ~ Flawed Plan

Day Two, Part One

~ Sergeant Cullen ~

One.

Two.

Ten.

Fifteen.

I wasn’t sure how many rounds I’d shot off.  I was using the sound of the bullets flying and the jolts against my shoulder from the rifle as a way to block out the thoughts of Bella.

I could come with you.

Eyes that made a realization.

You don’t want me?

And the backlash of pain those thoughts and images brought on.

It’ll be as if you never existed.

Not that it was helping.

Then I felt it.

Jasper’s hand on my shoulder, requesting a moment of my time.

Not much startled me when I was in combat mode.  Not before my trip home, anyway.  But even though I knew where I was, knew it was Jasper, I couldn’t help but be reminded of other hands that used to settle themselves on my arms back in Napa, and the voice that would accompany them.

Hey.

I lowered my weapon and pushed the protective goggles up onto the top of my head.  “Sir?”

“Just seeing how things are coming along,” he said, taking a long stare out at the target I’d been battling with.  “Looks like you’re outta practice…”

Then he hesitated before adding, “Or maybe your mind is elsewhere.”

My defensive mechanisms went up and my reflexes kicked into gear. “Where else would it be, sir?”

Because there’s really no room for weakness in the Army.

He shrugged, then looked around at the other men who, although they were trying to act like they were minding their own business, you could tell they were straining themselves to listen to the conversation we were having.

It was easy to block them out.  We all looked the same in our fatigues of brown and…dark brown.

“Oh, I don’t know…” 

He left it hanging out there, like a ripe vine of…grapes to be picked.

Don’t second guess yourself.

I let my eyes shut tightly for a second or two before answering him.  “I’m where I’m supposed to be, sir,” I told him.  Even as I heard myself saying it, I wondered why I’d chosen those particular words.

Where I’ve chosen to be, didn’t sound right.  Neither did, Where I need to be…where I’m needed…

They all sounded just as wrong.

Cracked or…flawed, somehow.

I’m glad you came home, Ed.

“You sure about that?” I thought he asked me, interrupting my inner debate and it was like he was Carlisle for a moment…I could barely hear him over the popping of the rifles around us…and then he was back as my commanding officer, before I’d had a chance to process his words.

Stay.

“What?”

“Carry on then,” he said, ignoring my confusion…moving along the line to inspect the rest of my crew.

My chest tightened as I let Bella’s face appear in my mind for a moment.

The image started out with her smiling at me, laughing even.  Her eyes shined and her hair blew around her, but then it changed.   Suddenly the corners of her mouth dropped and her eyes looked pained.

Like at the bus station, again. “It’ll be as if you never existed.”

I pulled the goggles back down over my eyes and aimed for my target again.

Then shot the motherfuck out of it.

“What’s her name?”

It was Cheney.

His nose had been bandaged up since the previous day’s palm to the nose incident, and he was looking a little more sincere with his question this time.

I took a few more shots at the paper that hung roughly five hundred yards away before letting her name fall off of my lips. “Bella.”

I could see him nod in my peripheral.  “Nice name,” he told me.  “Wish I had a Bella.”

A few more shots.

“Why?  What difference would it make?”

“Well, I wouldn’t be here, that’s for sure,” he laughed.

And he was so matter of fact.  So…beyond the shadow of a doubt with his answer, it threw me off. 

Cheney, who I thought I’d pegged as a lifer.  Someone who’d spend every minute of every day devoted to the United States Army, wouldn’t think twice about giving it up for a Bella.

Where did that land me?

I mean, granted, had I not signed those papers…maybe…

But as it was, I didn’t even deserve her.

And even if I did, I had no idea if I’d ever see her again.  By the time I was out this time…provided I made it back, she’d be long gone and with who knows by then anyway.

I noticed my rifle hand had lowered at that thought.

Of her being with someone else…letting them into her heart….her soul….her….

“Fuck.”

“You okay, Sarge?”

I needed air…or water…something, I needed room to…I don’t know…hit something.  “I’m…”

Fine, I’d started to say but then, fine wasn’t gonna fly anymore.

I wasn’t fine.

I never would be.

And I had no one to blame but myself.

“Target practice is over!” I bellowed and, when my men asked where they should head to next, I told them to take a ten mile run.  That Cheney was the front man and I’d see them after.

I had to find a way to re-focus.

I wasn’t going to be any good out in the field like this.

Thinking about Bella, breathing Bella, envisioning killing Bella’s next lover. 

Back at the barracks, I felt like a caged animal.  Like I was gonna completely lose my shit if I didn’t find a way to contact her. 

To tell her…something.  Anything.

Because we’d be leaving in the morning and once our ride left, that was it.  And because I couldn’t handle thinking of leaving her without telling her I was a fucking idiot.  That had I had another chance, I wouldn’t have signed those papers.

That I was a lucky son of a bitch to have met her and had the opportunity to spend the single most best summer ever with her.

That I was lost without her.

And that I couldn’t function without her knowing that.

The only question was…where to start.

Alice.

Day Two, Part Two

~ Pie Girl ~

“I can’t stay here forever, Emmett,” I told my cousin as he attempted to convince me to take advantage of the Hales hospitality a little longer.

I folded some things, didn’t bother with others, and tried desperately to ignore the fact that some of my clothes still smelled like Edward.

“Well, where is it that you’re gonna go?”

“Home.”

“What?  You can’t…go backwards, Bell, not after all…”

“I’m not moving home, Emmett, I’m going home…I have to…there’s stuff I need to finish up, things I need to have moved…”

I was moving without thinking at that point.

Gathering my papers, pulling up sites on my laptop to find decent prices on flights back to Chicago…then to San Francisco…

“Bells.”

“What?  I can’t just sit here, right?”

He just stared at me with something that looked suspiciously like pity to me.

“What am I…gonna sit around and feel sorry for myself for the rest of my life, Emmett?  I have a career to get back to…now that he’s…” I stopped.

Then I pulled myself out of the hole again. “That its’…we’re…” I shook my head. “I just need to go.”

“You’re not okay, Bells, I can see it in your face.”

I laughed.

Or, tried to.

“Emmett, I’m fine,” and then a flashback of Edward saying that exact same thing the day of Carlisle’s funeral…and I swallowed, losing myself in thoughts again. 

“Bells?”

I snapped out of it. “Fine,” I smiled, wishing Edward was there right at that moment.

So I could smack the shit out of him.

My cousin sighed and stood there for another few minutes, trying to wait me out of my too hyper for words mood.  He finally left and I started gathering all the things I would be taking with me on the plane.

My camera.  That still had photos of the Cullen Vineyard in it.

A shirt that belonged to Edward.  I’d “borrowed” it one night, although it didn’t stay on long.  I smiled at that memory for a moment, then I threw the shirt into a pile of dirty clothes I needed to wash.

A few more necessities and then, unexpectedly, I came to the bottle Edward had made me.

The one with the Swan on it and I fell back onto bed, sitting there, staring at it, remembering his kiss that day, holding me tight.

I couldn’t have been imagining it…what we had, what he felt.

It was there.

I knew it was.

And as I stared at that bottle, I went from resignation….to empty….to angry.  And the more I stared at it, the angrier I got.

Then I stood up, took a good look at myself in the mirror…and threw that bottle at myself as hard as I could.

I watched the bottle shatter…the mirror break into pieces that merged with the glass from the bottle and all of it fell to the floor.

“What do you know?” I said.  “It does make things a little better.”  Remembering Edward’s breakdown and all of the bottles he’d destroyed of Carlisle’s life.

Then I felt my chest heave a few times and I had to cover my mouth to stop the sounds from coming out of me.

The pain and fear.  The missing him.  The hating him.

The loving him.

I flew to the pile of glass and started picking the pieces out of it that I knew went to my bottle, trying to salvage them.

Maybe put them back together.

I don’t know.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…” I was whispering to them.

To Edward.

Emmett flew into the room when he’d heard the sound of the crash and, when he saw me sitting there on the floor like a heap of helplessness, he came and sat down next to me, grabbing my hands.

That was when I saw the blood.

My hands began to shake as I heard my name coming from him.

But only vaguely.

“Bells…stop…stop it!” he was saying and I didn’t know what he was referring to when I just let myself fall into him.  Into his chest and his arms were around me and I just couldn’t hold it in anymore.

He let me stay there, like that, for I don’t know how long before I heard him whisper, “I saw Alice yesterday.”

He was petting my hair and wiping my face clean of tears and I let him.

I couldn’t move.

Couldn’t move.

“I don’t even know if you wanna know but…she says he’s deploying tomorrow.”

I nodded against him, eyes closed, wishing for a way for time to move backwards.

To take back those last minutes with him.

Rose entered then with bandages and cleaned my hands for me.  Then she swept up the broken glass and I told her to tell her mom that I promised to pay for the mirror.

“Worry about yourself first, Bella,” she told me. “Mirrors are replaceable for Christ’s sake…people aren’t.”

She smiled and left with her dust pan full of shattered wine bottle and I heard her words again.

People aren’t.

I wiped my nose on my sleeve and looked around at the mess I’d created somehow.

Then caught a reflection of my broken self in the parts of the mirror that still clung to the wall. 

It wasn’t me.

I didn’t know that girl.  The one crying, feeling lost and helpless, not knowing what to do.

Then I got myself up, sat down onto the bed again and opened my laptop.  I found the best rates for a flight that would take me directly to Chicago, so that I could arrange to have my things shipped over to San Francisco.

But as my hand guided the mouse to click on the buy tickets link, my eyes found another flight, just below it.

Same airline, different destination.  A layover.

She says he’s deploying tomorrow.

I kept raising my finger to click that stupid mouse but my eyes kept drifting downward.

Napa, California to Columbus, Georgia.

“Haven’t we made a big enough ass of ourselves, Bella?” I asked my other self, sniffling the last few sniffles that were left in my nose.

He deserves to know you don’t hate him, at least.

Tap. Tap. Tap, went my finger, lightly, against the mouse buttons.

Thump. Thump. Thump, went my heartbeat inside of my chest.

“I could always call him…Alice knows Jasper’s direct number.”

I started to buy my tickets, again.

True, but what if he doesn’t take your call?  What if he thinks you’re only calling to push the knife in a little further?

“He wouldn’t think that of me…he knows me.”

I lifted my finger, again.

Does he?

My foot bounced against the floor boards.

“Does it matter?”

I guess that’s the ten million dollar question, isn’t it, Isabella Marie Swan?

Does it matter?

Once I answered that question, I knew what to do…or, where to go and I’d barely printed my boarding pass before I’d hollered one last goodbye to Emmett and the Hales. Then I was out the door, ready to go make my life what I needed it to be.

As the person I knew I was.

A/N: Flawed wines are poorly made and show mistakes.