Between the Perennial Blooms || Paul Lahote

Fifty Two | Orchid

"When he embraced her, He spurned the rest of the world. And he was satisfied with this small place — in her arms."
—Hassan Najmi | 'A Small Place'

• • •

"You almost can't tell there were ever any bruises," Paul murmured about a week later after they'd gotten home from yet another visit to Dr. Henshaw's office. He gently brushed his fingers in a feather-light touch across Bailey's ribs and frowned at the memory of the dark myriad of colors that had once plagued the skin there.

In response, Bailey sighed and slipped down further into the bubbles of her bath. "They barely hurt anymore. Just some tenderness when I take really deep breaths or- or move the wrong way."

"And your leg?" Paul asked her, lowering his hand to brush his fingertips across the marred, roughened skin of her left leg that just couldn't seem to catch a break. "Does it still hurt to bend it?"

Bailey hummed. "Not really. Physical therapy has been helping. They make me do these exercises to work the muscle so it doesn't get weaker than my right leg and I- I can almost put all of my weight on it now."

"That's good baby," Paul commended her as he cupped his hand around the shoulder the doctors had forcefully popped back into socket after Riley had yanked her away from Bella all those weeks ago atop the cliff. His hand followed a path down the length of her arm and lingered on the faint scar lining her forearm that she'd gotten from the first time they'd met. Her body was riddled with so many scars — both big and small — and littered with so much pain and so many memories that Paul couldn't help but think of her like a map of time: some scars fresher than the others, some bruises fading and some turning black, skin bearing the mark of the things she'd been through and experienced. It saddened him to think that before she had come to Forks and learned about the secrets the town hid, she'd had a near perfect complexion. Now she'd been to the hospital three times in the last year and had cried more tears in that small timespan than she probably ever had in her entire life combined. Such was the consequence, Paul supposed with a frown, of being the Imprint of a boy like him.

But he would never find it in himself to regret it no matter what horrible thing came their way.

"My mother is coming into town soon."

Paul heard the underlying wariness in her tone. He didn't know exactly what it was that had happened between them but from what he'd gathered from small snippets of conversations here and there was that Reneé Dwyer wasn't the most maternal figure out there — at least, not when it came to Bailey that is. Part of him wondered how that could be when Bella clearly adored her mother and had turned out fine despite being raised by her, as loathed as he was to admit it. But from the first moment Paul had met the Swan sisters he'd decided that the Swan family was a strange one and the dynamics of their individual relationships even stranger. Because Bailey and Bella were total opposites and from what he'd gathered, Charlie and Reneé were too. But each and every one of them would still do ridiculous things for one another and though they fought and argued, they loved each other enough in their own ways to always came back to one another in the end. Paul didn't really understand it but he supposed that was only natural considering the family he'd grown up with: an absentee mom and a drunk, deadbeat father. Fate has never really cared for us, has it? He thought to himself as he watched Bailey run her fingers through the bubbles in the bath water. But then the little voice in the back of his head that always reminded him of the truth whispered its disagreement and it made him change his mind. Fate brought the two of you together, didn't it? And he decided that fate must've loved him something fierce because it had given him the best thing he could've ever asked for.