Chapter Eighteen

She watched as Bella sealed the cap on the tiny tubes of blood, and set them down next to Emmett’s. They’d been seeing the other side of the Practice all morning… having tests run in the consultation room like any other patients. It felt different, detached, almost daunting sitting on the other side of the desk, lying on the exam table, your blood filling up a test tube rather than someone else’s. But Bella was there, smiling encouragingly at them.

“There are so many reasons why this might not be happening for you right now.” She said in her newly-qualified-and-loving-every-minute-of-it fertility specialist voice, “And some of them are so easily treatable you could be laughing this time next week. And there are others that are more serious, but nothing that should make you give up hope… there are some many more ways to start a family now…”

Rosalie tried her best to give Bella a tolerant smile, but for some reason everything she’d said to her in the past half hour had irritated her. It wasn’t the unnecessary smile, the constant encouragement. It wasn’t even what she was saying, per se. It was the constant nagging thought at the back of her mind that Bella couldn’t possibly have a clue what they were both going through, Renesmee having been conceived so easily she was accidental, and everything having flowed on from that like it was the most effortless thing in the world. She couldn’t possibly understand how you could wake up every morning thinking that it was your fault a baby wouldn’t grow inside you, that it was something you were doing wrong in what you ate, how you exercised, when you had sex…. Everything had become calculated, judged, trying to maximise chances. The pair of them had been like a bloody factory or something these past weeks, and although the sex was still good… Rosalie couldn’t understand how with Emmett the sex would ever not be good… but all spontaneity had been lost. The romance element was fading, despite desperate attempts to keep the fire burning.

But his hand was in hers now, and she knew that their love was as strong as ever. She would never, as long as she lived, completely come to terms with what had happened in her past, but she knew now, when she was in the right mood, and she was feeling particularly reflective, that maybe, had she not been so broken and so alone when she met Emmett, their relationship wouldn’t have been quite as strong, quite as perfect as it was now. She’d leant on him so far she’d worried she’d broken him, but he’d bounced her right back up among normal people, finally thrown her back into a normal life, and she wasn’t sure anyone else would ever have been able to do that for her. And then, just lately, when he’d needed the same treatment, when he’d needed to be the one doing the leaning, she’d stood there beside him, for the first time in her life, solid as a rock, and everything had turned out just fine. It was the first time she’d ever truly believed that she brought as much to the relationship as he did. That he needed her just as much as she needed him.

By the time she walked out of the consultation room, hand in hand with her husband, she had forgotten her annoyance with her best friend. Finally, they were on the road to somewhere, somehow, and although nothing was definite, nothing was fixed… they had started something, started trying to fix this, and there was hope again. She gave Bella a generous smile before kissing Emmett and walking to her office to start her work for the day, checking her calendar for patients.

What she realised then, with a pang of something, regret mixed with relief, maybe, that this was the first year that she hadn’t woken up in the morning knowing what date it was. When she hadn’t cried to herself in the bathroom, hiding herself from Emmett, who was still soundly sleeping in their bed. This morning she’d woken with a purpose… they were going to take control; they were going to have a baby, whatever it took, and this morning that thought had stopped her from descending into the usual horror and nausea that this day brought her.

It wasn’t even the anniversary of her attack… she had long since stopped counting that day. This day had been much worse, as she’d managed to move on with her life, forget what Royce and the others had done to her, forget the looks on their faces, the feeling of their hands on her… she would never be distanced from in completely, but, by comparison, she was pretty darn far away now. And she could put 90% of that down to love, down to Emmett, but one measly fraction of it – that was her. Her own strength, her own hope, the fact that she had sat down in front of Royce King and spoken to him without the breath being knocked from her body, without the fear rising inside her. She had looked him in the eye and she had made it clear that he wasn’t going to have any hold over her anymore. So it wasn’t that day that hurt her. She had, as well as she could, as well as she had to, forgiven him for what he had done to her. Somehow. Maybe forgiven wasn’t the word, but she had come to terms with it. It wasn’t a part of who she was anymore. But she could never forgive him for what he had done to Chelsea Waltham, the girl who looked slightly like her with the big, sad eyes and the face that would never smile again.

That was the day it was today. The day Chelsea Waltham had become the second Rosalie, because Rosalie had gotten away. She’d hurt about Chelsea’s death for a lot longer than she’d hurt about her own attack, she hadn’t been able to help thinking that had she reported them all at her turn, he wouldn’t have had the opportunity to kill another girl. But the past was the past, if there was one thing her terrible experience had taught her it was that, and nothing about what had happened to either her or Chelsea was ever going to change. She just had to get used to it.

She remembered the morning in college she’d woken up, in her last year, and she’d known that it was time to face up to everything. She remembered how she’d managed to tell Emmett whilst still keeping her voice steady, how she’d calmly found their home number and dialled it, her hand on the phone shaking, the other clasped tight in her fiancé’s. But the moment a voice had answered, a voice announcing the name of Chelsea’s sister, she’d nodded at Emmett and he’d left the room, knowing that she needed space for this.

Annabelle Waltham hadn’t been at all like she expected. She remembered her shaky announcement on the phone, “My name is Rosalie Hale, and I… I was a victim of the same people that killed… that killed your sister…” and she remembered expecting to hear somewhere between a dialling tone and shouting. But Annabelle Waltham, her voice thick with tears, had wanted to talk. And had wanted to meet her.

They’d met in a small coffee bar in the local town, and part of Rosalie had been grateful that Annabelle didn’t look anything like the pictures of her sister. She was equally pretty, and equally happy-looking, but in a tall, red haired way, with bright blue eyes. A few minutes into the conversation and Rosalie realised why this was – Annabelle had been adopted when Mr and Mrs Waltham had thought they couldn’t have children, Chelsea had been a surprise two years later. Annabelle felt that, ever since Chelsea had died, her parents had begun to realise having an adopted child wasn’t quite the same, and that they resented her for being the one still alive over their only real daughter. Her eyes had filled with tears and across the little table in the coffee shop window Rosalie had taken her hand and comforted her – and that was the moment she realised that Annabelle needed to talk to her as much as she needed to talk to Annabelle.

It hadn’t taken long for the real matter to come out – Rosalie’s fear that if she had reported them, they wouldn’t have been able to hurt Chelsea. Annabelle gave her a bitter smile, and told her that as a third year law student she knew that these things weren’t straight cut anyway, and that she didn’t blame her… and Rosalie found suddenly each breath was easier to take. She’d smiled, and when they’d parted they’d hugged and exchanged cell phone numbers… and they’d become each other’s shoulder to cry on over the next months.

So when the phone rang then, she knew who it would be. She knew without even looking at the caller ID that Annabelle was ringing her on this day, and she sunk into her chair and answered, the breathing still coming easily, what came from her friend’s forgiveness.

A/N: A review, if you please? ;)