A/N: Thanks for your kind words of encouragement! Hope this chapter doesn't disappoint. Let me know!

Chapter 3

"Your move, Bella."

I stared down at the black and white board in front of me and scratched my chin. "Jake, remind me again why we're playing chess in the middle of a coffee shop?" I asked of my companion with a raised eyebrow.

"Because I found the board at home the other day and I want to play, and you're the only other person I know who knows how. Your move," came his matter-of-fact response.

I'd been friends with Jacob Black since the time we had both worked together in this very coffee shop, about five years ago. We had an odd sort of friendship. We didn't go to the movies together, we didn't go out to bars together and we didn't really know each other's friends or family. In fact, we had never met up outside of this establishment. Having said that, he was the only person I felt one-hundred percent comfortable around, one-hundred percent of the time. When one or other of us was feeling a bit shitty, we just made a phone call and seemed to gravitate towards each other without question.

I moved my Knight to g4 before lifting my coffee to my lips and taking a sip. He nodded his head slightly and studied the board for a moment before furrowing his brow in concentration. "So, how have you been, Bells? It's been a while," Jacob questioned, glancing at me fleetingly.

It really had been a while. Months actually. It might have been the longest stretch we had ever gone without seeing each other. It wasn't unusual for us to go for weeks at a time without any contact, but this time we had left it far too long. After the week I had just had, I felt like I really needed to see him.

"Fine, I guess. I'm having a minor problem with Rosalie but other than that…" I trailed off, noticing that he had moved his Bishop to b4.

"Rosalie? The blonde matchmaker with the big boobs?" He asked innocently.

I arched an eyebrow. "I never said she had big boobs."

He smirked and looked up at me from under his eyelashes. "In my head, she has big boobs." His confession made me laugh and I shook my head, staring at him incredulously. "How is the love life going by the way? Have you found your prince charming yet?" he inquired after I had calmed down again and I narrowed my eyes at him.

"Don't even start with me, Jacob Black!" If possible, his smirk got even bigger.

"Sorry, Ms. Swan. So, what's the problem with Rosalie?" He questioned, getting back to the point of the conversation.

"She's keeping something from me," I announced, moving my Rook to h5.

He looked at me with a slightly puzzled look on his face. "So, go talk to her," he said, as if the idea had never entered my own mind.

"I would, but she's been ignoring me for nearly three days. All I know is that it's something to do with her sister-in-law," I explained, fiddling with a sugar packet.

"If it's something to do with her sister-in-law then why is she ignoring you?"

"I don't know! And it's annoying the hell out of me!" I replied, perhaps a little bit too loudly, losing all sense of decorum. "Sorry," I mumbled a moment later, blushing slightly.

Jacob temporarily abandoned the chess game and sat back in his chair, tilting his head to the side with a curious expression on his tanned face. "I think I'm missing something here. What happened exactly?"

And so, I began to tell him about my eventful dinner a couple of days ago; about how Rose had treated Alice, about Alice's unexpected visit the next day and my surprise at seeing her there. When I had finished, Jacob proceeded to fold his arms across his chest and search my face with his dark, piercing eyes. After a brief moment, he leant forward again and I swear I saw a ghost of a smile on his face.

"Just go and talk to Rose. From what you've told me, you're bound to find out sooner or later. It might as well be sooner," he told me, tucking a strand of his long, jet-black hair behind his ear before concentrating on the board game again. "I must say, I'm quite interested in this Alice person," he added with a coy smile. "I mean, she shows up out of the blue, causing all this drama, and turns my normally placid friend into a nervous wreck," he finished, sneaking a glance at me.

I looked at him with a furrowed brow and he pointedly focused his eyes on the sugar packets I had unconsciously started to tear open and pour on the table. I immediately stopped what I was doing and tucked my hands under the table.

"What are you talking about? I hardly know Alice and she certainly doesn't make me nervous," I uttered, a bit defensively.

"You sure about that?" He stared me straight in the eye before turning his attention back to the chess board, smirking victoriously while moving his Queen to f7. "Checkmate."

"Rose!"

Still no answer.

"Come on, open the door!" I bellowed again.

I had come home from my morning with Jake and spent most of the early afternoon trying to think of the best way to approach Rosalie. Usually when she got like this, I treated her like a tarantula; don't annoy her and she won't annoy you. Nine times out of ten she would get over herself within a day or two and suddenly start behaving normally again, as if nothing happened. This time, however, I feared there would need to be some kind of a confrontation. Fuck. I really wasn't good at that.

Nevertheless, here I was, outside her house and shouting up in the direction of her open bedroom window. I could see her shadow moving against the walls and could hear her randomly turning on and off various pieces of electrical equipment, in a vain attempt to block out my voice.

"For God's sake, Rosalie, I know you're up there; I can hear the hairdryer! I'm not leaving until you let me in, so hurry up!" before the neighbours call the cops and report a crazy girl having a one way conversation with the sky, I added silently in my head. Emmett and Alice must not have been at home. If they had been, surely one of them would have come out to investigate all the commotion.

Finally, after nearly fifteen minutes of trying to get her attention, her face appeared at the window and an anxious look spread across her perfectly made-up features. We stared at each other for a moment before she finally relented and gave a curt nod, disappearing from sight. A few seconds passed before I heard the sound of her heels clicking down the hall, towards the front door. I saw the handle move and, finally, Rosalie was revealed to me and she looked… terrible.

She was paler than usual and looked like she hadn't had a decent night's sleep for days. My friend stood back and ushered me inside without saying a word, gesturing towards the living room. I made myself as comfortable as the situation would allow, on her two-seater couch.

"Do you want something to drink? I can get you-"

"No. I want to know what's going on and I want to know now," I replied in an even tone, cutting her off mid-sentence.

Rose sighed heavily and fell into the armchair opposite me. She ran a hand through her blonde tresses before looking over at me. "Don't judge me, Bella, please" she stated abruptly, in a pleading voice that I didn't hear very often. "Nobody was ever supposed to find out," she continued in a whisper, looking out the window. Jesus, did she kill someone?

A whole minute passed in silence and it was the longest minute of my life. Rosalie wasn't moving and I couldn't take it anymore. "Rose, please just tell me. I'm not going to hate you, I'm not going to disown you and I'm not-"

"I slept with Alice."

My mouth fell open. I think I would have been less shocked if she had killed someone.

The blonde bombshell in front of me was still staring out the window, her face unreadable. "It was a mistake; a one time thing, and I didn't even know she was Emmett's sister when it happened."

I stared at the woman in front of me, not really knowing what to say. What the fuck do you say to something like that? "I… umm… when?" I managed to stutter out.

"Nearly two years ago. It was before Emmett and I got married." As she spoke, Rose turned her head from the window to meet my gaze. I don't know what kind of look was on my face but I bet it wasn't flattering. "When I first met Emmett, Alice had just started college in Washington. Obviously, she was living away from home and she very rarely came back here to visit her family. By the time Emmett and I got engaged, I still had never met her. Not long after, Emmett told me his sister had just graduated and that she was back in New York." My friend stopped here for a moment and started to fiddle with the corner of the magazine that was resting on the arm of her chair.

"Anyway," she continued. "One night, about six months before the wedding, Emmett and I got into a really big fight and I stormed out and ended up in a bar. I got really, really drunk and that's when I met her. We started talking; that led to flirting and then… well, one thing led to another. The next morning, I was so ashamed of myself. All I could think about was how I had betrayed Emmett; and for what? One quick fuck with a sweet talking stranger. A female stranger..."

Rosalie shook her head, with a look on her face that made it clear she was still ashamed of herself for what happened. "I left before she woke up, thinking I would never see her again and I could just forget it had ever happened. I made up with Emmett and I thought that was it." She finished with a shrug of her shoulders. I ran my fingers through my chestnut mane as I sat on Rose's pristine couch in complete and utter disbelief. I had to restrain myself from pinching my arm to check if I was dreaming. I returned my attention to her, waiting for the big 'But.'

"Two days later, we were both invited to a big Cullen family dinner at Emmett's parents' house, so I could meet this sister I had heard so much about. When I walked into that house and saw her…" Rosalie hung her head, obviously remembering the scene in her head. "God, Bella, I felt like my world was collapsing around me and Alice looked completely horrified. We ignored each other for most of the night but just as Emmett and I were about to leave, she pulled me aside and basically called me a bitch and a whore and how I wasn't good enough for her brother. She even threatened to break us up; made a pretty good attempt at it, too. By this stage, Emmett had realised we despised each other and thought the reason was because his little sister didn't approve of me."

Oh God, Emmett. Rosalie had lied to him. And not just a little, white lie but a big, giant whale of a lie. How did he react when she… Shit, she did finally tell him, didn't she?

"Alice refused to go to the wedding and jumped on a plane to Borneo, or some fuckin' place, to do volunteer work. I didn't see or hear anything else from her until three days ago; the same day you met her in my kitchen," she summed up, with a tone of finality that made me think she wasn't going to say anymore on the subject.

I stood slowly and walked over to the window, with my back to my best friend. I had known Rosalie since I was twenty-two years old when I had moved in across the street from her. I had known her when she was still Rosalie Hale and I was there when she met Emmett for the first time. I was there for all the highs and lows of their engagement and I couldn't believe she had kept this kind of secret. Looking back, I remember her occasional bouts of odd behaviour after they were betrothed, but she always passed it off as normal pre-wedding jitters; for both her and Emmett.

Emmett. I turned around to face Rose, preparing myself to ask a question I was sure I already knew the answer to.

"Emmett doesn't know, does he?" I asked plainly, in a voice that didn't sound like my own. She looked at me sadly and shook her head to confirm my suspicions, before holding her head in her hands. "He thinks it's just a mutual hatred that can be fixed if we spend some time together. That's why he invited her to stay with us," she mumbled into her hands.

Oh, this is bad. This is so very, very bad.

"I know he spoke to you and asked you to help, Bella, and I'm sorry that you've been dragged into this," she added, almost as an after thought. Emmett had asked for my help the other night at dinner and, idiot that I am, I had silently agreed that I would.

"What about Alice? Aren't you afraid she'll tell him?" I asked, curiously.

"No," she replied, with more confidence than I would have had in this situation. "If she was going to tell him, she would have done it by now. She would have done it before the wedding."

I furrowed my brow in thought. "Why didn't she tell him before the wedding? Surely, if she was trying to break you two up, that would have been all the ammunition she needed."

Rose shrugged. "Probably for the same reason I didn't. She didn't want to hurt him over a mistake; something that meant nothing to either of us." She had lowered her head again and had started playing with the hem of her shirt. I sighed and tilted my head to the side before making my over to sit on the arm of her chair.

"Shit, Rose," I breathed out. "Why didn't you ever tell me any of this?"

She raised an incredulous eyebrow at me. "It's not exactly the kind of thing that comes up in civilised conversation, Bella."

I smiled then, sensing an opportunity to lighten the mood. "Since when do we have civilised conversations?"

My attempts weren't completely in vain as she tried her best to force a small smile. My best friend then shifted herself so that she was leaning her head again me. "I'm already ashamed of myself, Bella, and I was afraid of what you'd think of me," she said, just above a whisper, and I heard her voice falter. I looked down and could see unshed tears in her greenish-blue eyes.

"Oh, Rose," I cooed, placing an arm around her shoulder and pulling her slightly closer. Her tears fell then and it took a few minutes before she pulled back and looked me straight in the eye.

"I love my husband more than anything in this world. He can never find out about this, Bella, it would kill him. Please, promise me you'll never tell him." Her eyes burned with fear and quiet desperation and I felt very uncomfortable. This was one gigantic, shit heap of a situation and I wanted nothing more than to stay the hell out of it. But it was too late for that…

"Please, Bella."

The next morning saw me sitting in the driver's seat of my antique Chevy Pick-up truck, outside my house, trying (yet again) to start her up. "Son of a mother fuck," I groaned, before banging my head repeatedly against the steering wheel. A tapping noise at the passenger window startled me and I turned my head to see Emmett's beaming face smiling in at me. Perfect.

"Need some help, little lady?" he asked, already walking round and popping the hood. I took a deep breath and prayed I wouldn't say anything stupid as I exited the vehicle to stand beside him.

"Morning, Em. How's things?" I asked pleasantly.

He turned his head to look at me and he had and flashed a thankful smile. "Things are great, thanks to you."

Huh?

"I know you spoke to Rosie yesterday. I don't know what you said, but something's changed. The glaring has stopped for a start. I mean, they're not exactly talking. but the glaring, Bells! It's stopped! Do you have any idea how much of a step forward that is?" He sounded ecstatic and thought I was the reason behind this miraculous breakthrough. I realised then that my mouth was hanging open and I quickly shut it.

"Umm… wow, Em, that's…"

"All thanks to you," he finished for me. I swallowed hard. "I love them both, so much, and all I want is for them to get along. It's all I've ever wanted. Thank you Bella."

He pulled me into a tight embrace and after a few seconds, I managed to lift my arms so they were placed awkwardly around his waist. My heart was silently breaking for the giant goof-ball hugging me and I could feel tears prickling behind my eyes. As I successfully blinked them away, I glanced across the street at Rose and Emmett's house and saw a tiny woman with black, spiky hair watching us from the window. Alice raised one hand in a half-hearted wave which I returned, much the same way, while still holding onto her brother. The sadness on her face, I'm quite sure, mirrored my own and I'm certain we were thinking the same thing, albeit for very different reasons:

How could I possibly keep this from him?