Watching Her Chapter 48 - Prince Phillip

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Chapter 48 - Prince Phillip - Sleeping Beauty

"Edward, you're such a fucking idiot," I mutter as I hop over a large branch on the ground.

I have to be up in less than six hours and where am I? Besides very obviously not in my warm, comfortable bed not sleeping and risking being grounded before I even have a chance to go out with Bella.

Fuck me.

But I had to come. I couldn't not come. I just couldn't.

I curl my fingers around the notebook in my hand and breathe as I push my legs just a little faster, harder. My chest tightens, partly from exerting myself so quickly, but mostly it's because with each step I take, I get closer to her. She won't be outside; she doesn't even know I'm coming.

I laid in my bed after telling her good night and I tossed and turned for an hour before I couldn't take it anymore and now here I am, traveling the same path, in the same clothes, as I did that first night almost three months ago.

Under the same moon, under the same dark, inky sky filled with glittering stars playing hide and seek with the clouds that move silently with the gentle breeze, with the same sure footsteps over the same uneven, soggy ground, I move toward her.

Gotta admit, I never thought things would turn out like this though. Not in all my wildest dreams did I imagine that any of this would happen when I saw her the first time.

I've been back from camp for a week, and it's been the longest damn week of my entire life. Camp couldn't have gone any better for me, but by the time I was packed and waiting for my parents to pick me up so we could make the seven hour drive back to Forks from Eugene, the only thing I wanted to do was go home and see Bella. It was all I'd been able to think about. The extra week I spent in Oregon, even though I was without Emmett and Jasper, ended with the result I've been dreaming about and wanting … pushing myself for. When my name was announced as one of the twenty-two players picked for the Regional Team, it felt like this huge weight was lifted off my shoulders. I took a deep breath, and accepted handshakes and slaps on the back and tried to listen to things about schedules, and training, and traveling, but my mind was already back in Forks and on Bella.

For almost three months I'd fought every instinct I had and pushed away every inclination to throw caution to the wind and say fuck it to everything and march up to her front door, ring her doorbell, and kiss the ever-living shit out of her when she opened the door. As I stood in front of the dorms that I'd made my home for the past three weeks with my duffel bag and soccer bag at my feet, all I wanted to do was be home already so I could do just that.

Things didn't exactly work out that way though.

Not even a little bit.

Because while I was on my way back to Forks, Bella was on her way to Seattle to see Phil. I wanted to be mad at her, hell I was mad at her when she told me she was leaving, but it only lasted about a minute, probably less. Once I stopped being such an insensitive, whiny asshole, I realized how huge it was she was leaving her mother.

It wasn't just huge, it was Mt. Everest, Grand Canyon … Great Wall of China huge.

Gargantuan.

She's come so far, and is trying so hard, so the last thing she needed was me pouting, even though I really wanted to. From her texts and the phone call I got right before she left for Seattle, I'd gathered that Phil had wanted to spend some time with her before school started. I know it means so much to Bella that the lines of communication between the two of them are so much more open now, but I have to say, when she told me she was going to leave her mom, I asked her to repeat it … twice.

It probably shouldn't have surprised me.

She seemed to get stronger, braver every day I was gone. It was in the tone of her emails, the lightness of her text messages, and the happiness I heard in her voice when we talked on the phone. She grieved for her mom and missed her everyday and I didn't think that would ever change, but over the past almost month it was like a switch had been flipped and she was living again, trying again … finding herself again.

And I wanted her to do all those things with me, but I couldn't because she was going to be in Seattle until the weekend when Phil would come back with her so he was here for her first day of school.

I guess it turned out to be a good thing though, because as soon as I woke up Monday morning, I started going and didn't stop all week. School supply shopping, dentist appointment, haircut, pre-season soccer practice at school, a meeting with Principal Banner and the Student Council about what was expected of us on the first day of school, and a hundred other little things kept me busy all day, every day, so even if Bella had been here, we wouldn't have had any time to spend with each other anyway … and it's not like I could out of the blue say, 'hey, Mom and Dad, you know that new girl, Bella, that you told me to watch out for? Well, surprise, we already know each other' now could I?

Oh, but I heard plenty about her.

Way, way more than I wanted to, but I knew it would happen sooner or later.

During the meeting with Mr. Banner, Jessica and Angela went on and on about the new girl that was starting, wondering if she was going to be a stuck-up bitch or shy and sweet or somewhere in between. When Mom and I were in the Thriftway stopping to pick up some food for dinner I overheard Mrs. Newton in the checkout line clicking her tongue to the cashier about the poor girl with her invalid mother that had been hidden in Forks because of some scandal.

It took all I had not to tell the bitch to shut the fuck up about things she had no clue about.

All the guys on the soccer team wondered if the new girl was going to be hot and Mike and Garrett took bets on who could get her to go out with them first. That time it was Jasper that deftly moved between me and the douchebags so I didn't get benched before the season even started.

I wanted to kill them for talking about my Bella that way … of course they didn't know she was my Bella, no one did, but by the time the first bell rang tomorrow, all of Forks High damn sure would.

I didn't care if I had to find a bullhorn from somewhere and announce it to the whole fucking school, I would. I've been waiting for her for three months, I wasn't waiting one more fucking day.

So that's why, when I should be home sleeping, I'm instead running through the woods … to her, to let her know in no uncertain terms, I'm not waiting any longer.

Tomorrow … she's mine, and I'm not letting anything get in my way.
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