𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 / 𝐈𝐕.

VIII.

brittle

THE DAYS begin to bleed together in my mind, the weeks shifting in front of my eyes along with my body that grows and swells. Late September has blown in the cold, and I can never seem to feel warm anymore. No amount of layers can settle the chill in my bones.

I shift under the T-shirt quilt Mom gifted me, trying to find a bundle of warmth as I try to sleep later into the afternoon. The day has been filled with stress as the Cullens continue to wait with bated breath for Alice and Jasper's return and wait to see if Sam will turn against his tentative offer of peace. No amount of Edward promising me that everything will be alright keeps me from feeling the anxiety that covers the house.

The phone rings somewhere in the room, I don't answer. Instead, I bury my face closer to the pillow and hope the caller will get a hint. But it keeps ringing through my sensitive ears and I'm brought to the reality that my mother and friends are still reaching out thinking I'm having the time of my life at university.

So I stir, feeling blindly along the nightstand until I clasp the phone and bring it to my gaze. Fuck. A sharp inhale is taken when I see whose calling, I have to compose myself and remember the story I'm telling.

"Hello?" My voice is timid and quiet as it barely leaves my mouth.

"Heather? Is that you? I barely recognized your voice, you sound so different." Mom's tone is so different from mine, she sounds content on the other side of the line. I try to remember what Carlisle had said about her behavior at work, but cannot for the life of me even remember what I ate for breakfast this morning.

"It's the cold, my allergies are bad." I lie, the tone shifting again to strained as I pull myself to a sitting position. Which causes the blanket to slide down my body, falling past the small bump that always takes my attention.

"Is it bad up there? We just had our first gust of cold come through Forks. I broke out a sweater on Sunday." She chuckles.

"Uh yeah, it's frigid for September." My left hand curls up over the swell. The only place where my body feels warm to the touch.

"What's going on with your classes? Made any friends? You cut the call short last time." Mom curiously asks, so blissfully unaware as she and I play through a rehearsed story. Where I continue to suffer through this play pretend while it suffocates me and fogs up my mind. How many more calls can I survive without letting the truth slip up? What if my exhaustion causes me to put her in harm's way?

Alaska was supposed to be what severed me from her and the world of the living. Yet here I am with her on the phone, unsure of when this will end.

"Heather?"

"I'm sorry, Mom. I've just got a lot on my mind." I sigh out, smoothing out my furrowed brows trying to coax myself to calm down.

But a chill through my brittle bones causes me to jolt, tumbling back into a paranoid state of awareness. My eyes dart around the empty room as she rambles on the line, trying her best to offer me solutions for my troubles. However effective Mom's advice is, it streams into one ear out another as I stand and pace the room in a tight circle.

"Thanks for that, Mom." I eventually force out, stopping my paces as I stare at a picture of me and Edward at my seventeenth birthday over a year ago. That version of Heather has the same blissful look that fills my mother's voice. It stings, tugging at my skin even after I set the photo down. "But I'm just missing home, missing Forks."

Long gone after my days of driving without a cause down the winding roads, no impromptu parties and family dinners. Just the tense, cold of the Cullens' residence that feels more like a furniture showroom than a home. Everything seems to lack the warmth and familiarity of my life before.

"Oh, I know, Heather. It'll be December before you know it, and we'll have Christmas like we always do." She tries to offer some solace, but it just turns into despair. I try not to cry for the fifth time this week, wiping away any moisture that clings to my lashes. If only autumn wasn't such a brutal time of year, if only the freeze didn't stunt my hope.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

"Is everything alright?" The door slowly creaks open, revealing Edward. I nod, my face turned from his sight while I try to compose myself after the call. The phone has been buried deep in the side table, with the ringer off to save me from another painful and narrowly avoided confrontation.

"I'm so tired of lying. Leaving was supposed to save me from the endless string of lies. But here we are, she still calls weekly, and every time it's like I'm walking on broken glass. Waiting for me to get cut up and mess up. For everything to go to shit." I admit to him.

Edward crosses the room, sinking onto the bed next to me. He pulls me in close, wrapping his arms around my figure. "I know, I might've never had to lie to my loved ones but spending all these years in society masquerading as a human, I'm always expecting it to fall apart. When you came into my mind, you threw off my guard and no matter how much I told myself not to, I let you in. Let you close. But had I made a mistake with anyone else, it would've killed me."

"It nearly did," I poorly chuckle, looking at him with a shared adoration.

"Yes. But now, it's bringing me back to life. You brought me back to life." He nods, his palm passing over the bump. "I love you so much, Heather. I'd never want anyone else to be the one I get to experience this with. No one else would do."