Part Two

EasyFresh Out The Slammer

You tell me that you'd rather fight

Than spend a single peaceful night

With somebody else

~ Camila Cabello, Easy

Years of labor, locks, and ceilings

In the shade of how he was feeling

But it's gonna be alright, I did my time

~ Taylor Swift, Fresh Out The Slammer

ten.

Edward's POV

I hadn't been on a first date since I was seventeen. I took Irina to a movie. We fooled around in the back seat of my car in the parking lot. A few months later she sat me down in my bedroom and told me she was pregnant.

I was well aware my dating skills were rusty. Rusted over, locked shut, and unused for the last sixteen years. The few times I had given in and gone after a woman or two the last few years, it was hardly dating. They were one, sometimes two night stands that, while offering me a release, usually left me more frustrated than before.

Even as a teenager, I wasn't interested in random hookups. I asked Irina out because I liked her. Enough to marry her and start a family and live happily ever after, obviously not. But I didn't know it at the time.

My parents had always had an excellent relationship. Always set a nearly impossible example of a couple that loved, respected, and protected one another. Sure they fought, my mother was excellent at giving my father the silent treatment. But it was never over anything catastrophic. They always made up. Always stood by each other's side.

Looking back, it was probably why I assumed marrying Irina and sticking things out with the kids was what I had to do. It wasn't something I put a lot of thought in. It was just something I felt like had to happen. Was expected to happen.

I regretted the marriage a lot over the last few years because I had started wanting more. I didn't want random women in my bed. I wanted a partner. Someone to talk to. Someone to spoil. Someone to cook dinner for. Someone I knew I would never be able to have as long as that noose of a wedding ring was stuck on my finger.

And I was right. I had thought, for just a moment, that maybe I could have my cake and eat it too. Maybe I could have that person–that one person I knew I couldn't live without–and keep things easy for my kids. Keep access to my kids without putting them through a legal battle.

It was impossible. I knew that now, and deep down I probably knew it then. Even before those big brown eyes looked up at me and apologized for falling in love with me.

As if I hadn't been wrapped around her finger from nearly the moment I met her.

But my dating skills were rusty. Non-existent, really.

Thankfully the florist took pity on me.

"Can I help you find something, sir?" the aging woman came around the counter and asked, patting her hands dry on the flowered apron around her waist.

I nodded, still eying the wall of bouquets. "What flowers say, I'd like you to be my wife one day?"

She beamed over at me. "Proposing?"

"Technically? It's our first date. But I'm not going to mess things up this time."

Maybe it was presumptuous of me. I was excellent at messing things up when they mattered, but that feeling in my gut that followed Bella around… it was still there. Still telling me she was mine and was always supposed to be.

Some men might have thought the snorted laughs or unexplained skittishness or bluntness were unappealing. But they were so ingrained in who Bella was. Some for the unfortunate reasons behind her childhood, and some just because that was who she was.

Like the way she couldn't help but squirm when I wrapped an arm around her waist and led her to the car. It was an adorable little reminder that this was all as new to her as it was to me.

I opened the door for her, but kept my arm around her waist. "Hey," I muttered, getting her attention. "You look beautiful."

Her cheeks flushed a lovely shade of pink. I repressed the urge to feel the warmth against my lips, even for a moment. "Thank you."

Giving her a comforting smile, I helped her into the car. By the time I sat beside her, the blush had faded and her eyes warily studied the car. "You don't have to look so petrified. I don't bite."

Without missing a beat she blurted out, "Yes, you do."

I beamed over at her, chuckling and grabbing her hand to press a kiss to her wrist. That was it. How I knew she was supposed to be mine. She just… fit. A missing puzzle piece. "Oh, I've missed you."

Maybe I was just as naive as I had been when I was seventeen and assumed marrying Irina was the right thing to do, or maybe I was just so fucking gone for the woman beside me that I had no other choice, but by the time I slid my jacket over her shoulders as she shivered and meticulously studied all thirty-two flavors of ice cream Gio had, I knew I was done for.

I knew on paper we shouldn't last. She was twelve years younger than me, technically my employee, and I wasn't even technically divorced yet.

But I knew.

When she chided me for buying her a scoop of every flavor of ice cream and when she told me she liked our original first kiss as much as the hesitant one I allowed myself to give her in that corner booth.

For once in my life, I felt at peace. Exactly where I was supposed to be.

So I might have gone overboard. Bought her a hat to wear on the hike I would take her on in the near future and kept a hand on her at all times as I drove us back to her house.

I would enjoy the dating process, I decided. Take her out to dinner whenever I could and call her my girlfriend just to see that cute little blush flush her cheeks. Because one day she would be my wife. I'd buy us a house and get down on one knee and watch her walk down the aisle toward me.

I had a lot of things to make up for until then, though.

"Thank you for your coat," she sighed, reluctantly sliding it off of her shoulders and handing it to me.

I folded it across my arm. "Anytime."

"And dinner. And the hat," she smiled, straightening it on her head. I was nearly certain she had never worn a cap in her life, but she looked goddamn adorable in it.

I wrapped my arms around her waist, gently pressing her into the door as I leaned over her. "God, you're cute."

It was intended to be a chaste kiss, but quickly turned into much more. Her mouth opened up to me with a gasp and I relished the taste of her combined with the sugar from the ice cream and got distracted by the fingers knotted in my hair.

"Do you want to come inside?"

I brushed my lips down her neck. "Not tonight, love."

She tensed against me immediately.

"I want to do this right, Bella. The next time I make you mine I want to know I love you. I want the scared look on your face when I say those words to disappear. I haven't earned a lot of things in my life, but I know I need to earn your trust and the right to call you mine."

I wanted her, there was no doubt about it. I had a plethora of memories of her in my bed and plenty more fantasies I couldn't wait to make reality.

But, I would do this right. For once, I'd do it right.

"Can I get one more kiss, then?" she mumbled.

I happily indulged.

A/N: Beta'd by CullenCherries