Rosalie sat silently next to the window on the airplane, her hand absent mindedly resting on her stomach while tears rolled down her cheeks. She hoped no one would sit beside her on the long flight from Seattle to Greenville, she didn't want to have to explain why she was crying or that she was okay to a complete stranger. Rosalie was only nineteen and she was pregnant, on her way to live with her father and his new wife after her fiancée had cheated on her and left her for someone else shortly after they found out they were expecting. She leaned her head against the cool window in hopes of calming herself before someone actually did sit next to her.

She was left humiliated and alone, and about to raise a child on her own. Rosalie silently cursed her ex trying furiously to stop the tears. Thankfully the flight attendant came on over the intercom to announce they were taking off and she was still sitting by herself. Rosalie wiped the tears from her face and sat facing forward trying her hardest to not look back out the window at the life she was leaving behind, and her heart with it.

After a two hour layover in Dallas and another three hour flight, Rosalie finally landed in Greenville where her father was waiting for her. She saw him waiting for her at the bottom of the escalator, waving excitedly and opening his arms for her as she got to the bottom. Bethany rushed to him, flinging herself at him wrapping her own arms around him before a fresh round of tears came.

"It's going to be alright," he said smoothing her hair and planting a kiss on the top of her head. Rosalie had always been a daddy's girl, so to be here with him, pregnant and alone and heartbroken, seemed to be the best place for her. All of her friends back home must have known by now what had happened. Rosalie couldn't face them, it was too much for her.

"Glad you're here kiddo, now let's go get your bags," her dad released her and started in the direction of the baggage claim not waiting for Bethany to follow. He was always a man of few words, usually quiet, but he always seemed to know what his daughter needed and for that she was thankful.

Emmett looked out the window and watched as the ocean turned to land, leaning his head back in the seat with a sign of relief. He was finally home, after being gone for nine months in the hot desert that was Iraq. Another deployment down and he was home at last on his way to see his family. He was glad he had made it home in time for his little sister's graduation, she would be so surprised to see him. His mom would probably cry and hold on tight to him, not that he minded, he loved his mother. It had been nearly a year and a half since he had last seen his siblings and his parents and after everything he had just gone through, he just wanted to be at home with them. He shut his eyes tightly trying to hold back the memories of this last tour and the horrors he had seen. Emmett jolted when a hand touched his shoulder, looking up startled into the eyes of an equally shaken flight attendant.

"Sir, we are about to land, could you please put your tray up?"

Emmett nodded and did as he was asked before returning his gaze to out the window, silently watching the ground get closer and closer. Once he was able to leave the airplane and make his way in to the airport, he made his way towards the baggage claim. His friend was picking him up in Greenville and then they would drive northwest towards his home state. People pushed and shoved him around the different terminals without so much as an apology, he didn't seem to care though. No one knew what he had done, what he had to endure serving his country, and he preferred it that way.

"Emmett!"

Emmett whipped his head around, eyes scanning the crowd for his friend Justin. It was a fraction of a second before they found him, Justin was hard to miss. His friend stood just two inches taller than his own six-foot frame. They had both played high school football together before Emmett had left to join the army and Justin got a scholarship to play college ball for Clemson.

"Justin!"

Emmett made his way over to his friend and hugged quickly, each patting the other on the back hard in a show of masculinity.

"You look like hell," Justin observed as Emmett let go and started heading towards the baggage claim area to retrieve his bags. Emmett chuckled lowly shaking his head at his friend.

"You would too after a sixteen hour flight."

Justin barked out a laugh, "I suppose you're right."

Emmett should have been watching where he was going, but his mind had wandered again tuning Justin out as he rambled on about the route they were going to take to go back home. He didn't see the five-foot-seven blonde who could have easily been mistaken for a super model that he literally just ran in to. He grabbed a hold of her arms to steady her before he completely knocked her over. Her eyes snapped up to meet his, and what he saw hit him to his very core. It was the same as his own, a lost soul torn by heart ache and grief-a perfect reflection of his own anguish. He didn't get a chance to apologize before an older gentleman called her name and she looked in his direction, all the noise seemed to be just that noise as he held his breath trying to form a sentence or some sort of apology. However, she mumbled one of her own and stepped around him leaving him standing there looking like a complete idiot in the middle of baggage claim in the Greenville airport.

"Emmett, you okay?" Justin waved a hand in front of his Emmett's face.

"Yeah, I'm fine," he replied absently.

"Really? Because you almost knocked that girl over and you didn't even apologize, you just kept staring at her with your mouth open. She probably thinks you're some sort of freak," Justin teased him. Emmett glared at his friend before grinning wickedly and giving his friend a hard shove sending him falling backwards over some suitcases that had been left lying next to an older couple. He reached down and helped Justin to his feet apologizing for his friend's clumsiness trying hard not to laugh.

Emmett turned around glancing in the direction the girl had taken, but she was nowhere to be seen. Turning bam to his friend they made their way to the baggage claim and before long all thoughts of the girl he almost fell on were gone.

Rosalie shut her dad's cell phone after informing her ex-sister-in-law, or who should have been, that she had landed safely in Greenville. Rosalie glanced at herself in the rearview mirror after handing her dad his cell phone back and noted the dark circles under eyes. She looked as exhausted as she felt and thought in horror back to the guy who saved her from surely a bruised tailbone in the airport and thought to herself that he was probably staring at her because she was such a mess.

'Add mortification to the long list of things I'm feeling,' she thought to herself mentally groaning. Her dad and his new wife chatted away in the front seat about how wonderful the town they lived in was and all the things they wanted to do.

"We do need to go over some guidelines while you're here."

Rosalie's gaze snapped towards the front seat at her dad's new wife, "Guidelines?"

"Yes, well more like rules, there are certain expectations that you are to meet in order to stay with us," her dad replied as they continued driving past colonial style houses going further and further away from the city.

Rosalie's face turned hot, of course this would happen. The tears stung hot and wild at her eyes threatening to fall while the lump in her throat threatened to cut off her air supply. Of course this would happen when she had nowhere else to go. She was having a child and being treated like one. Her hand went to her stomach as she curled her feet up underneath her on the seat while they continued to drive and her step mom continued to ramble on and point things out that Rosalie didn't really care about or care to know about, but she was raised to be polite and feigned interest at what this annoying woman had to say.

After what seemed like an eternity to a very tired, pregnant, and depressed Rosalie, they finally pulled up to a quaint two story house.

"We didn't have much time to plan or to get a room together, so what we have is a bunch of knickknacks for furniture," her dad explained as she followed them up the stairs to the second story. Rosalie was so tired she hadn't even bothered to look around the first floor, she just wanted to crawl into bed and sleep for a while. Her dad opened the roam to reveal a cream colored four poster bed with a pink and white picnic checkered bed set, a matching dresser, a brown small desk with her old computer on it in the corner and a white bookshelf at the end of the bed.

"Our room is right here," he pointed down the hall a mere six feet from her door. "The bathroom is this door across from your room, my study is that room in between and the television room is the door next to yours."

Rosalie stood there silently taking everything in as her heart shattered in her chest and a feeling of helplessness threatened to overwhelm her. Her dad squeezed her awkwardly before mentioning something about her being tired and saying he'll be back up in an hour to wake her up for lunch. Rosalie barely heard him as she crawled into the offending pink bed sheets and curled herself into the fetal position before allowing the tears to fall that lead her into a restless sleep.

Justin threw Emmett's bag in the trunk of his beat up Nissan before unlocking the rest of the car and motioning for Emmett to get in. Emmett rolled his eyes at his friend who had always been more of a control freak than he had been. Even though Emmett used to be like that, the army had changed him in some ways. He learned to take things more in stride and that he wasn't always in control anymore. Though controlling his anger and temper had always been something he strived to achieve since before he left for the army, Emmett knew he was a little more laid back than his friend was.

Justin turned the key in the ignition and put the car in reverse, backing out of the parking space. He didn't see the car behind him, but luckily the other driver did and landed on its horn. Justin slammed on his brakes, and the combination of the two sent Emmett into cold sweats and a flashback.

The air surrounding him was hot and sticky inside the hummer. Emmett drove while Johnson sat shotgun, and Chambers and Gabriel sat in the back. They were laughing about something following their convoy as it drove from one small town to the next, the names blending into one when the hummer in front of them suddenly flipped skyward with a huge explosion. Emmett veered left off the road, hitting a roadside bomb sending their vehicle sideways. When it landed the horn was blaring and he couldn't hear anything else but that sound.

"Emmett, Emmett!"

Emmett's eyes snapped to Justin's face and finally his brain caught up to where he was. In Justin's car, in the parking lot at the airport in Greenville, South Carolina. Not in a destroyed jeep in the middle of the desert in Iraq.

"Are you okay?"

Emmett wiped his sweaty palms on his jeans before flashing Justin a smile, "Yeah man, I'm fine. Let's get going we want to make Louisville by tonight."

Justin's brow furrowed only slightly as he stared at his friend for a moment before turning around to watch behind him as he started backing out again.

Rosalie woke up with a start, it was too hot in her room she still wasn't used to the humid weather that South Carolina had to offer in the beginning of July. Her clothes stuck to her in unimaginable uncomfortable ways. Even though the air conditioner was clearly running, it was still too hot for Rosalie. She got up in search of her dad and step mom, groggily wandering down the stairs to the first story. Finally taking in her surroundings now that she was semi awake and in search of something to drink, Rosalie noticed when she got to the bottom of the stairs that the living room was off to her left, the front door was in front of her, to her immediate right was the kitchen and off of the front door to the right was the dining room.

She searched the black and white kitchen cabinets for a glass to get some water since all her parents seem to have in the fridge was milk and she was horribly lactose intolerant. Her step mom came in to the kitchen removing a pair of garden gloves and setting them on the table. She said something to Rosalie, who still wasn't fully awake as she gulped down the cool refreshing water that still somehow managed to upset her stomach.

"Sorry?"

Her step mom sighed exasperated, "I said you should come outside it's a beautiful day out and you shouldn't be spending it inside."

Rosalie scrunched up her face in disapproval, the weighed down feeling she was already feeling got heavier at the thought of going outside in to the heat, "I really don't want to. I'm more of a cool weather person and the heat gives me horrible migraines."

Her step mom rolled her eyes at her, "Whatever you say princess."

She snatched the gloves off of the kitchen table and stormed out of the house, slamming the door behind her leaving behind a puzzled Rosalie wondering as to what she could have possibly done to offend this woman who had taken her father across the country from her a few months ago when she had needed him most. If anything she should be offended herself!

Rosalie sighed heavily opening the dishwasher and putting the glass inside, shutting it softly as she made her way back upstairs to her room. This was going to be a very long pregnancy.

"Can you please keep your eyes on the road and let me navigate?" Emmett reached for the steering wheel bringing the Nissan back into their lane before it drifted in to oncoming traffic.

"I can read a map you know," Justin scoffed between glancing up from the map to the road and back again.

"You're going to get us killed before we even make it to Kentucky!" Emmett snatched the map from Justin's hands. "Pay attention to the road!"

While Emmett was looking at the map and the freeway signs to determine where exactly Justin had taken them, he eyes were off of Justin thus giving Justin the opportunity to throw a bag of chips at Emmett's head.

Emmett glared at Justin from the passenger seat, "Really?"

"What? I didn't do anything," Justin tried to act nonchalant, but the corners of his mouth turned upwards giving away the telltale sign of a smile.

Emmett couldn't help it, he threw the bag of chips back at Justin's head.

"Hey don't distract the driver!"

Emmett laughed getting back to the map. His visit with his family would be short, so they were pushing trying to get to Michigan by tomorrow night. He needed to see his family though before he had to report for duty at his next location; Fort Hood in Killeen, Texas.

"We need to talk kiddo," Rosalie's dad entered the kitchen where she was cooking dinner for everyone with using just what was in the house since her step mom told her they weren't going to be running to the store for whenever they needed something to complete a meal, she would just have to make do.

"About what?"

"About our guidelines for you living here," her dad took a seat at the kitchen table. Her step mom smiled smugly from her perch next to him as Rosalie continued to cook the hamburger meat for their dinner.

"Okay, shoot," Rosalie replied hesitantly, eyeing her step mom warily. What was she playing at? Some sort of power control?

"You have an eight o'clock curfew unless you are working, in which case you are to come straight home from work is that understood?" Rosalie nodded her head, she could feel her cheeks burning.

"We are going to take you tomorrow to sign up college courses and you're going to do chores around the house, you're not staying here for free."

Rosalie turned back around towards the stove after nodding her head slowly in agreement, her face hot with irritation. This was her life now.