Bring Him Home Chapter 38

I took a deep breath and straightened my clothes as I stood up from my desk ready to face Emmett. I knew it was going to be messy, Emmett was going to be steaming mad that someone had sent the clippings.

"Bella get out here, I need to speak to you" Emmett roared from the outer office.

For a second I wondered whose offices we were actually in but seeing as he was already annoyed I let the summons go.

"Hi Emmett, how are you?" stupid question I know but I'd decided to just act normally and stay calm.

"How am I? How the fuck do you think I am? Rosalie called me to tell me about your little delivery, luckily I was just downstairs. I can't believe someone would do this, Edward is going to go mad, shit this could cause him to run again"

With that Emmett collapsed into the couch with his head in his hands.

"Enough Emmett, come on," I said as I went and sat down next to him.

"Firstly, we are not going to tell Edward about this, he has enough on his plate today dealing with the Dean."

"Secondly, Jasper is already looking into the ‘who' but I have a good idea already so don't worry about that either".

"Finally, Edward won't run, he will deal with all this when we finally tell him because he is strong enough to cope with it now, have some faith in your brother and stop worrying"

Emmett looked up at me and smiled, the dimples that Rosalie goes on and on about making an appearance.

"I knew you were strong enough to deal with all this. Edward will be ok with you by his side, I can see that now".

He pulled me towards him and gave me a cuddle, all the time rocking me like I was a small child.

"Ok Emmett enough, now let's go and have a little chat shall we?" I said as I stood up and took hold of his hand to lead him into my office.

"No Bella, I can't, it's not my place. You need to let Edward tell you all about this" Emmett was already pulling away from me and shaking his head.

"OK but can't you just fill me in on a little bit of what happened, these headlines are quite horrific"

"I know they are, that is what triggered him running, he just couldn't see a way out, as well as trying to deal with Mom's death, but remember what my Dad said? There were no charges for him to face in the end, had he have stayed he would have known that as everything was cleared up pretty quickly"

"OK I'll wait but we have to keep him away from this office then, everyone here now knows what's in these clippings and I don't want anyone saying anything to him" I explained.

Emmett agreed with me and I spoke to everyone else and asked them to be mindful if Edward actually showed up at the office.

Just as everything was starting to quieten down Jasper could be heard shouting in Esme's office, before I could do anything Judy was off her chair, letter opener in hand to make sure Esme was ok. I followed her and found the three of them standing looking at Jasper's laptop. As I looked over Esme's shoulder I could see an image of her on the screen, she was crouching down by a wall while someone stood over her kicking her.

"What the hell is that?" I screamed as I tried to move Jasper out of the way.

"Bella it's ok, I'm ok" Esme said as she put her arms around me to calm me, "My attorney has sent these over so Jasper could look at them, it is the video footage we didn't use in the trial.

"Well Esme as much as I hate to admit it, these are dynamite, there is no way your ex husband could ever say he hasn't hurt you, this is undisputable."

"You haven't seen the worst one yet, I'm almost positive there was someone else there with him the last time he assaulted me, but my attorney could never prove it, maybe when you watch the footage you might find something we didn't see" Esme spoke so matter of fact about everything that it was hard to cope with what was in front of us.

"I'll look at the rest at home Esme, there is no need to go through them here" Jasper said as he started to power down his laptop.

"I'm going to call Mr Volturi as well, he needs to see this so he can draw his own conclusions about what he is trying to do" he added looking at Esme to make sure she was ok with it.

"I agree Jasper, call him and ask him to come here if you want, he needs to see this footage and the pictures and clippings" I said as I ushered Esme out of the office and back into the main room.

The rest of the day passed quietly as we all finally got back into work mode, but understandably it took a while for everyone to actually calm down. I tried to make sure everyone was ok but it was hard as all I could think about was Esme and also Edward. Even though he hadn't said he would call, I was hoping he would to let me know how he'd gone on at the University.

I was actually at home having a cup of coffee when Edward finally called, looking at the clock it was 8.30pm, so he had had a long day.

"Hi Edward, how are you?" I asked trying to sound as relaxed and normal as possible.

"I'm ok Bella, what's wrong, you sound weird?" he asked.

"I'm fine, to be honest I've been sitting here wondering whether to call you, I wanted to make sure today had gone ok" I hoped he would accept that as an explanation.

"It didn't go as I hoped but we have at least come to an agreement, can I come over and tell you?" he asked surprising me.

"Of course you can, I'm just sitting doing some work but nothing that can't wait, how long will you be?" I asked thinking I needed to get dressed, tidy round and do something with my hair.

"I'm actually downstairs in the foyer area, I hope you don't mind" he said.

"No of course not, come up" I said as I looked down at my pyjamas. I had a few seconds to get sorted but what was most important? Brush my hair, put my bra back on or change out of my pyjama shorts and into some legging? Deciding that I could scrape my hair up as I running to my bedroom, I dragged a pair of leggings over my shorts, and the bra stayed off.

I'd just got my hair into a messy knot as he knocked on the door, I didn't stop to check anything I just opened the door to let him in. He looked very tired and when he sat down on the couch he almost sagged into it.

"That bad a day?" I asked as I went to make him a drink.

"Coffee, tea, beer or hot chocolate" I asked as I walked into kitchen.

"I'd love a hot chocolate especially if you have some cream and marshmallows"

I did, so I made him up his drink and sat down next to him.

"Well I'm about to be a student again" he said as he put his head back and closed his eyes.

"A student, why?"

"The Dean thinks because I've been away for so long I need to re do my final year. The course work will be easy enough I think, I just need to get back into the mindset of studying. Luckily because of what happened the Dean is giving me a scholarship so Dad won't have to pay for it again, and I won't have to live in Halls either so that will make it easier." The information seemed to tumble out of his mouth, it was if he paused he wouldn't be able to finish what he was saying.

"You'll be fine, you shouldn't have a full load, is she allowing you to carry all your grades and everything through from your previous years?"

"Yes it will be like I've been on a long gap year, I'll just go in and pick up as if I've had a long holiday, I'll need to do some summer classes to catch up but other than that I just turn up for the new semester"

"Are you okay with that then, going back and picking everything up?"

"Alex my therapist thinks it will be good for me, he thinks it will help me get on with my life. I'm not so sure, but we'll just have to wait and see, I've decided to take each day as it comes and not to stress too much about everything."

"That is a great attitude, just see how things go, don't put too much pressure on yourself"

I sat back and left him to his thoughts for a moment, it was a big thing going back to college at 27 years old after 6 years away.

"Bella in the spirit of taking each day as it comes and getting on with my life can I ask you something?"

I looked at him and nodded.

"Would you like to go out on a date with me?"

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