A/N: *All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of Stephenie Meyer. I own nothing but an over-active imagination and some life experiences that desperately needed purging. No copyright infringement is intended.*


Chapter Two

Rose & Wine

RPOV

Buzz, buzz.

My phone wiggled across the night table on the opposite side of the bed.

"Emmett, grab my phone, babe," I asked as his hot lips trailed wet kisses between my breasts.

He absently reached over and palmed the cell phone. "I'd rather you wrap your hand around my cock and never mind this damned phone." He placed the offending item in my waiting hand.

I looked down at him, his face resting on my cleavage and shot him my million dollar smile. "Thank you," I muttered as I checked the message that had just been sent. "Ahh, shit!" I sat up, pushing Emmett's big head to the side, hearing him grunt in frustration. Oh well big boy, deal.

"'Ahh, shit', what?" he huffed, sitting himself up and folding his arm's cross his massive chest, an equally massive pout on his face.

"Bella just sent me an IM," I replied, my voice was a tad tight.

"And?"

"She wants to know if I think Mike's gay?" I didn't mean for it to come out sounding like a question, but my concern for my friend kind of took over. My voice rose of its own volition. It was Emmett's chuckle that sent my head whipping around and my eyes set to glare.

"Now she's asking if he's gay? Wow, talk about slow on the up-take. The day I met that idiot I knew he was a member of the Rainbow Brite Brigade."

I wound up and smacked his arm, hard. Pink welt marks immediately began to take form on the surface of his skin, and I almost felt bad for hitting him –almost.

"Emmett McCarty!" He'd do well to rein that shit in if he knew what was best for him.

"What? What self-respecting straight man with a wife like Bella works the hours he works? Seriously, Rose." His voice was contrite and his stupid face matched the tone perfectly.

Dumbass.

For a moment I got lost in thought, contemplating what he'd said. What he'd implied.

Watching Mike open the door for Bella, she looked red-hot, but his eyes were scanning the room, never once touching on her.

Emmett's eyes were always firmly planted on my ass every chance he got. He was always perusing my body. I'd never seen Mike make such a move. That thought lead to others.

He never holds her close the way Emmett always does with me.

Even their wedding night, four years ago, he was content to chat it up with friends and family. I think they danced together twice. Bella avoided the dance floor much of the evening, but mostly out of fear that she'd fall and make a fool out of herself. But still, they spent most of the night on opposite sides of the room.

Such a vast contrast to my own wedding two years ago. We couldn't keep our hands off each other. In fact any wedding I'd been to had been much the same; the bride and groom unwilling to separate.

My heart dove into my stomach as an answer to my dear friend's question began to formulate. I typed out my response:

Pick up the phone. We need to talk.

BPOV

"Rose?" My voice squeaked as I answered the phone.

"Bella, why are you asking me that question all of a sudden? Are you serious?"

She didn't sound incredulous or confused, she sounded resigned, and that made my knees shake. They nearly gave way. I plopped back down into the black leather office chair. It exhaled loudly, matching the huff that escaped me. Had the situation been different, I probably would have found it a little comical, but right now it just grated on my nerves.

"Of course I'm fucking serious, Rose!" I all but shouted into my phone.

"Okay, okay, easy on the F-bombs, Bells. What happened to make you question Mike now?"

Her question caught me up just a little. 'Question Mike now.'

Now.

Obviously she was seeing a much bigger picture than I was.

"A website I saw on our computer. Reallybeautifulmen (.) com," I explained.

"And you think he's visited that site?"

I swallowed hard and tears prickled my eyes. "Yes," I whispered. I explained about the history and how none of the other websites listed were random. She listened attentively, hmm'ing and huh-uh'ing whenever it was appropriate.

"Rose, you never answered my initial question." Though I was afraid to hear the answer, I waited with bated breath.

"Yes, Bella, I think your husband might be gay."

My heart felt like a lead weight as it plummeted down into my stomach. I dropped the phone and ran for the bathroom, again. Luckily there was nothing left to dispel, so what ensued was a series of full body dry heaves. Not exactly pleasant, but definitely an upgrade from the full on puking I'd already dealt with.

Once my body stopped shaking, and I could lift myself from the floor, I stumbled back to the office. My bare feet slapped against the polished hardwood floor. I heard the sound of the disconnected call and the beeping interspersed with an annoying women's voice telling me to 'please hang up and try your call again.'

I picked up the phone and crushed my finger down on the end button. Looking back to the computer screen before shutting down MSN, I noticed a new IM from Rose.

I'm on my way. I've got a bottle of wine with your name on it.

I went back to the phone and dialed the staff hot-line at work to inform my team that I would not be in tomorrow. I sauntered down the stairs to the living room where I collapsed to my comfy couch and waited. Ten minutes later the doorbell rang, startling me from my revelry. I shuffled over to the front door, looking every bit the zombie I fucking felt like.

I scanned the front porch and quirked an eye brow in Rose's direction. "What, no Emmett?"

"Nope, left him at home with a serious case of blue balls that he'd like me to thank you for," she said, stepping forward and raising the bottle of wine like an offering.

I side-stepped to allow her past. She kicked off her sparkly red heels and flitted down the hall.

"What, are you fucking Dorothy?" I gazed pointedly at the red pumps.

"Nah, I can't sing to save my life. Now get us two glasses, bitch." Her bell tone voice carried down the hall, toward the kitchen that she was quickly headed for.

RPOV

Holy fucking Hanna she looks like crap! I headed down the hall, Bella shuffled close behind. She retrieved two wine glasses, placing one in front of me and the other at the seat across the table from me, then spun around and snagged a bag of nachos that had been neatly tucked into the corner of the cupboard she'd grabbed them from. "Nachos and red wine, classy," I snorted.

"I figure if I'm going for a three-peat then the wine coming back won't be so bad if it's got a little substance to it."

"I figured when I heard the phone drop that you'd high tailed it to the bathroom. So that was the second time you yacked?" She nodded and lowered herself to the chair and drove a chip into her mouth. We sat there quiet for a bit before she broke the silence. I knew she just needed time to work up to talking. I wasn't going to push.

"Are you going to pour the wine, Rose, or is it just for show?"

My, my, someone sure is snarky tonight. Although, if I'd just figured out Emmett was staring in his very own Broke Back fantasies, I'd be a little fucking snarky too. So, I shut my mouth and poured the wine.

"Mike working late?" I asked in an attempt to get the conversation going.

"No. He's at a buyer's convention thing. Two days. He'll be back tomorrow night," she explained, and I couldn't help but note the lack of care in her voice. She sounded dead, fucking looked it too. Bella had always been a pasty little thing, naturally pale, but now she looked deathly white. Like something had drained the life from her.

"Oh..."

"So, I married a gay man..." And with that, I nearly spat out my mouthful of wine.

I recollected myself and look her in the eye. "Bella, are you sure he is gay?"

"No. Yes... Shit! I don't know, Rose," she stammered, shaking her head. "Why would he marry me if he were? Why would he waste so much time on me if I weren't what he needed, what he wanted?"

"I don't have answers to those questions, Bella, but what made you ask me?" I asked, trying to draw the answers out of her.

"When I saw the website it was like something inside of me clicked. And as very, very much as I'd like to deny it... it sounds right. Like the truth." She ran her hand through her beautiful mahogany hair.

As much as she'd said she'd longed for my golden tresses, I envied her long brown locks. Grass is always greener, and all that shit

I wanted to help her navigate her way though this, so I asked, "What made it feel true?" I knew she knew what I was up to. She took some of the same courses I did, and this was counselling at its most basic.

"Rose, there's so much you don't know about our relationship," she said with such a sad voice that I couldn't help but reach out and take hold of her hand.

She smiled weakly at me and began. "Did you know that it was two days after our wedding before we'd finally had sex? Did you know that the whole we time were dating he barely touched me?" I shook my head in answer and in sheer shock.

She continued her rant, her words tumbling over each other, like she couldn't get it out fast enough. "When we make love, he makes me go up stairs to the bedroom and wait for him. Ten, sometimes fifteen minutes later he comes in, turns out the lights, and climbs on. A good half of the time I end up sore, dissatisfied and sometimes bleeding. No foreplay, just dry boring sex in the dark."

My eyes brimmed over with tears for my friend. I wanted nothing more in that moment than to skin Mike alive! How could he treat her like that and think that it's okay? "Oh, Bella, I'm so sorry. I had no idea."

'Cause had I known I would have happily held him down while Emmett beat the snot out of him. Gay or not that was no way to handle your wife.

"How could you be expected to know when I said nothing, Rose? You're not a mind reader." Her voice was even and rather matter-of-fact. It was a little disconcerting to be honest.

She peered up at me from her wine glass, her eyes were the very picture of sadness and hurt. But what was worse was that hint of betrayal I so clearly recognized there, swimming just beneath the depths of her milk chocolate eyes. This was going to destroy her.

"You know when we were dating... At first I thought that maybe my not being a virgin intimidated him or something. That maybe that was why he'd held back with me. When I asked him, he always said it never bothered him in the least. He said he just wanted to take it slow, so I dropped it."

From what I knew of the Mike Newton and Bella Swan story, they met in high school when she'd moved from Phoenix to Forks, Washington after her mother remarried. Apparently Phil, the new step-dad, travelled a lot for work coaching a minor league baseball team.

Bella was seventeen and the talk of the town. In an effort to make her feel a little less lonely and ease the transition, Charlie, Bella's police chief father, re-introduced her to Jacob Black. The Black family were old family friends that Bella had spent some of her summers with growing up. Bella and Jake became close, fast. They dated for a few months and a couple of months after her eighteenth birthday Bella handed him her V-Card. A culmination of raging teenage hormones and convenience, as Bella once put it. They realized soon after that they were much better as friends, and they parted ways on very amicable terms. In fact they still talk on a regular basis. He was at their wedding with his then girlfriend, Leah.

About a month later, Mike asked Bella out and they'd been together ever since; which brought me to my next question. "Bella, had Mike had any other girlfriends before you?"

"Um, yeah... Jessica Stanley. She adored Mike and followed him around like puppy. It was a short relationship and I always got the feeling that he was just humouring her. Jessica was kind of a vapid little thing. Intellectual conversation was not her forte. Great source of town gossip, though."

I contemplated and carefully constructed my next sentence. "Bella, why did you stay with him if he wasn't giving you what you needed?"

She released a heavy sign and shoved another chip her mouth before answering me. "Out of respect and love for him. He'd explained once, when I'd tried to talk to him about our sex life - or rather, lack thereof – that he was raised a certain way. And that sex before marriage was not an option for him. I'd met his family at this point and they definitely seemed to be pretty firmly planted in their Catholic faith. I took it at face value and never brought it up again. Because, Rose, had the rosary been in the other hand, I would have expected nothing less from him. I loved him. I would have done anything for him."

I wasn't sure if she realized the slip into past tense, but I wasn't about to point it out.

Knowing what I'd did about Bella, I knew this was nothing but the truth. She deeply cared for, respected, and loved those that found their way into her life. There was little she wouldn't do for them if it were in her power to do so. One of the many reasons I loved the shit out of this woman.

"I understand that." And truly I did. I thought about Emmett and what I'd expect of him if I'd asked the same, if I'd asked him to wait for me. I knew beyond a doubt that I'd be willing had he asked. No questions asked; I would wait.

"Rose..." Her voice was as soft as a whisper and sounded so downtrodden that I set the glass back down before it had even reached my lips. "He never finishes." Suddenly she broke into loud sobs. Chest heaving, tears running down in salty torrents, she was a mess.

BPOV

With her arms wrapped around me in a tight embrace, she ran her fingers through my hair whispering soft, soothing words in my ear. A few moments later I could feel the air move in and out of my lungs again in even pulls. She pulled her chair closer and we sat knee to knee.

"He never finishes? Ever?" Rose asked.

I knew she wasn't trying to be a nosy bitch, and I knew she was trying to draw it all out of me. Leach it like some sick poison from my veins.

"No, never. What's wrong with me, Rose? Victoria's Secret is making a fucking killing off of me, yet I can't even entice my husband into bed! I can't make him cum. Hell, I can't even get pregnant! Such basic human functions and I'm incapable of even that!" Abruptly, I was so enraged I threw the wine glass against the far wall of the kitchen, sending tiny shards of glass careening across the dark brown tiles. In the same moment I heard Rose suck in a sharp breath. Her glorious face turned into a twisted, sad grimace, and her hands moved over her mouth.

"OH MY GOD. Is that why you did all those fertility drugs and those goddamned IUI's? The chances of Mike getting you pregnant were...not if he wasn't..." Rose was at a loss for words as it all finally clicked into place in her head.

And I felt like I'd lost my mind.

I nodded. "But none of it worked, Rose. Five IUI's and nothing, it can't have been just him. Not after all that." When I thought about everything I went through over the last two years; the hormone injections, wicked mood swings. The ridiculously vivid dreams, the disappointment, and the near crushing depression every time the procedure failed. An anger wormed inside of me, and it was solid and hot and it burned low in my belly.

I was willing to do it all for him, because I loved him. I wanted a family with him.

Then it occurred to me, that every verb in that thought was past tense. Loved. Wanted. Something inside of me had already flipped the kill switch. Even though the theory was unsubstantiated at this point, something in me, some deep part of me knew all this to be true.

"Rose, he's hiding things from me. Big things. I want to know what he does on that computer when I'm not around. What is it he doesn't want me to see?"

The idea of seeing what my husband was up to and knowing the truth beyond the shadow of a doubt, was both maddening and intriguing all at once. I bit down on my lower lip and my knee began to bounce.

"Well, I can call Em... See what he can do for you."

I nodded. Emmett was a computer whiz. He worked as a video game designer and was no slouch when it came to current software.

I watched Rose dial his number and I rose from my chair to get the vacuum. I carefully made my way to the closet, tip toeing over the broken glass. I was forever grateful for the fantastic wet/dry vacuum my father had purchased as a house warming gift when we bought the house. In my constant state of clumsiness, I was forever breaking and spilling things. To say the machine got a good work out was a serious understatement. When I finished cleaning up the mess, Rose informed me that she'd called into work for tomorrow as well. I glanced at the clock. Midnight, holy crap.

With a new glass, Rose and I properly tucked into the wine and by the time Emmett arrived she'd done a nice job of distracting me. I was even laughing a little. Emmett dropped an overnight bag for Rose at her feet and planted a kiss on the crown of her golden head. "Okay, Bella Bear, lead the way." He made a grand sweeping gesture with his hand and I took off toward the office.

A few strokes and a couple of clicks later and Em was downloading something called ReFrog. He spun in the chair and looked up at my obviously confused face. "Okay, so this is a key logger. Have you ever heard of that before?" he asked, turning from side to side in the chair. Rose stood behind him and her hands gripped his giant shoulders.

I shook my head. "Nope," I said, popping the P.

"Alright, key loggers are like silent little super spies. It records everything you do on your computer and saves the data for you to review. Key loggers record key strokes, take screen shots, and log a bunch of other data like currently running programs, maintenance tasks and stuff like that. The best part of the whole thing is," -he quirked an eye brow and rubbed his hands together like maniacal fool- "it's invisible."

"Huh? If it's invisible how am I supposed to find it to access the data?"

"It's accessed by a series of key strokes. Hot keys they call them. Once the program is finished downloading, it will send you an email to tell you what hot keys open the program. Then you set up a password so even if by some freak chance Mike happens to hit all those keys, in the right order, he'd still need a password to open the program. If you mess up the password more than three times it locks you out, and you'll need to contact the company to reset the password." He finished, turning back to the screen. The download was complete and Emmett navigated to my Gmail account and pushed away from the keyboard so that I could type in my password. Sure enough sitting there in my in-box was: ReFrog Access Code. I opened the email and memorized the three keys then deleted it.

"You sure you've got it, Bells?" Emmett asked.

"Yep. Like a steel trap," I said, tapping my temple. I'd always had a pretty great memory. I wasn't worried about forgetting the keys.

Rose chuckled. "It's true. Ask her what her locker number was in the tenth grade, bet she knows."

I threw her a knowing smirk. "Of course I do. Number two-hundred and thirteen, west hall, yellow, next to the insufferable Lauren Mallory."

They both burst out laughing. "Told you so," Rose managed between chortles.

Emmett spent the next hour showing me how to use the program and how to set up the personal preferences. Screen shots and key strokes would provide the most accurate overview, according to Emmett. It was just after two in the morning when Emmett kissed his beautiful wife goodbye and headed home.

Soon enough I'd have answers. Whether or not I was ready to deal with the outcome was another story all together. The prospect of taking action terrified me to no end. One click of that tiny, insignificant mouse and it could all come crashing down.


End Notes:

Yes, ReFrog is a real product, one that I of course do not own the rights to, but have used.

Thanks to all that have continued to read, and feel free to review, tell me what you thought of Rose's POV's in this one.

Also, if you're interested I've got a recommendation I'd like to toss out there, The Diva Diaries by KiyaRaven. It pivots back and forth in time, told from Bella's POV. Edward's got trust issues; Bella manages to break down his walls, if only a little. But of course Edward messes it all up. Years later they meet again, Bella's a bitter version of who she used to be. Can she ever forgive Edward for what he did? Read it and find out.