A/N: I'm back! And I'm late. I know. But, really. I think you'll thank me, cause I've given you one less day to wait for the next update. Think of it that way. :-)

Both Riri and Chicklette went over this chapter because I was so nervous about it. I thank you both profusely. *hugs*

I'm issuing an actual warning here, people. The entire section after the chapter break involves somewhat upsetting subject matter. If you don't want to read it, just skip it, and I'll summarize what happens down at the bottom for you.

See you down there.


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My eyes closed as the sounds of twin guitars swirled around me.

Music was such a peaceful thing. Why did memories of my mother have to taint it? Shaking my head, I continued to strum the guitar in my hands with more force, determined to remember this moment as my own. Something I'd shared with Jasper and no one else.

Peeking through my lashes up at him, I saw his lips pulled into a half smirk as he carefully averted his gaze from mine. It seemed as if he were trying to not let his satisfaction show, but was failing miserably. I couldn't help the small tsk of laughter at seeing him studying the patterns on the tin ceiling above us as opposed to acknowledging the obvious: me playing guitar despite my earlier statement of saying I wouldn't.

Feeling a bit reckless and emboldened by that damn smirk, I closed my eyes once again and started to hum. The chair Jasper was sitting in creaked with his sudden movement, and I smiled at the sound of his surprise. Shocking him was a rather fun way to kill some time.

Coming to the end of the phrase, I switched up my fingers on the frets and turned my hums into lyrics. "... Jolene, I'm begging of you please don't take my man.

Your beauty is beyond compare with flaming locks of auburn hair, with ivory skin, and eyes of emerald green... You're not singing Jasper." I chanced a glance in his direction and had to hold back the bit of laughter that threatened to escape as I played. Jasper's face was priceless in that moment. All shock and awe with his slack-jaw and wide eyes.

"Sing or I'm stopping, Jasper," I said, replaying the bridge so he'd have another chance to pick up the next line. I had no idea where my bravado was coming from, but Jasper's fumbling fingers as he ran a hand through his too long hair before finding the correct chords made it worth it. He was flustered and not from the lack of alcohol in his system, but from being bullied by a girl. The natural social exchange looked good on him.

"Um shit," he cursed while trying to jump in, and I smiled at how the tables had turned. "Ah...a breath of spring, your voice is soft as summer rain, and I cannot compete with you, Jolene."

Jasper's voice echoed the years he spent pouring whiskey down his throat, with a rasp and a hint of grit behind the deep tones that curled around the words as he sang. I was almost late picking up the next line from watching him, but Jasper beat me to it, and together we tripped over the next few lyrics in an iffy harmony that soon blended with the heat in the air, tangling us in it's web.

Having kept my eyes focused on the strings for most of the song, so as not to see Jasper watching me, I let out a sigh of relief when the final chord hummed to a close. I'd felt compelled to not break the intangible connection that had been created during those few minutes, and the fear of that compulsion had my heart racing. Slumping in my chair, I looked up at Jasper through dazed eyes, needing to drink my tea to cool down, but not having the energy to reach over and pick up the damn glass.

"You're incredible," Jasper whispered out on an exhale, shocking me out of my stupor.

"Oh." I blinked, sitting up straight as the chair creaked. That did it. The spell broke, and with it went the comfort we'd found.

Jasper reached a hand out while fumbling for words before retracting it and scratching the back of his neck. "I...uh, sorry. I meant that your voice and your playing. Your playing and voice are incredible. Natural. Really, Bella..." he trailed off, looking pained and embarrassed, nothing like his normal cocky self.

Despite my own suddenly self-conscious feelings around him, I let a small laugh slip from my lips. Jasper's eyes shot up from their noncommittal spot on the kitchen table. He looked more confused than ever, it only endeared him to me more.

"Jasper, stop torturing yourself, it's okay," I said, trying to placate him.

An awkward bit of laughter left him, while he continued to rub the back of his neck. He didn't look any less pained, but he was trying.

"I don't want to ever make you uncomfortable, Bella."

His honesty shushed me up right quick. I didn't know how to respond to such a noble statement as that, but I nodded just the same.

Needing something to do, other than stare at the strange man in front of me before the air could thicken with even more uneasy tension, I picked up the glass of sweet tea that had been forgotten on the table and chugged the damn thing. The chill of the liquid made my head hurt and my throat almost burn, but it cooled me off and gave me an excuse to shut my eyes. The sight of Jasper being, dare I say, chivalrous in front of me was unnerving.

When I finished, Jasper too was drinking his tea, but his eyes had remained open, and his gaze was on me. Great.

"Would you like some more?" I asked. I didn't bother waiting for a reply before putting the guitar down, shoving back from my seat, and grabbing both our glasses. Luckily, Jasper had just come up for air, so I didn't have to worry about him spilling anything on his guitar.

"Actually," he said, making me halt in my crusade to the fridge. "I should go."

I spun on my heel to face him. I didn't want him to leave. Was that what he thought?

Shit, I really didn't want him to go and that realization was somewhat troublesome to the small portion of my brain that focused on my self-preservation.

Jasper stood, moving both guitars to the wall before shoving his hands in his pockets and facing me again. "Don't want those to get wet," he said by way of explanation. I furrowed my brow at him and he gestured out the back door. It was raining. I hadn't noticed.

"Thank you, Bella, for the tea and your company. I'll leave you be now." Jasper's voice sounded foreign; too polite, too proper. He also walked out the front door instead of the back, which for reasons beyond my mental capacity bugged me. Guests walked out the front door, not Jasper. Jasper wasn't a guest, he was my...neighbor.

I shook my head. Whatever he was, he shouldn't have to walk out the front door just like anybody else would. God, why was I so focused on that?

Stalking across the living room, I pushed open the screen to watch him go. He jogged across the lawn to his porch before shaking out his wet hair like a shaggy dog would. His shirt was soaked and clung to him. The sight of it made me think the irrational thought that he must be cold, and that I should get him a towel.

"Ugh," I grunted before stepping back into my own home and hitting myself in the head with the heel of my palm, trying to get ahold of myself. Jasper wasn't a child, he could get his own damn towel if he needed it.

Two hours later the fact that Jasper had left so suddenly was still eating away at me. I was curled up on my sofa, having a staring contest with Loretta as I pondered what to do. I knew what I wanted, but the rest of me warred with that instinct, trying to get me to take the high road. What the high road was, however, I wasn't sure. I just knew that my instincts were telling me to go over to his house to sort it all out, while my conscience was pfft'ing at me left and right for being such a damn girl who analyzed things way too much.

Ten more minutes passed as Loretta blew bubbles at me from her little circular home and I bit my nails down to their quicks.

With a final sigh, I shoved off the sofa and darted to the front door to wrench it open. I was on my front porch before I realized that I needed shoes. Turning, I spotted my pair of galoshes by the door and was tugging them on when the sound of a screen slapping against a frame caught my ears. My head snapped up and looked out towards Rose's house.

"Dammit," I cursed as she walked down the steps with her head held high. The rain had stopped, and the sky had cleared enough to let the colors of dusk pierce the low hanging clouds. Rose was wearing a rather short day dress, with soft yellow flowers sprinkled throughout the pattern of the skirt and a long zipper that ran down the entire front. Seeing it had me thinking one thing: easy access.

I clenched my fists.

She walked across my lawn and past my porch without even glancing in my direction, her long blond hair swinging behind her as she went. My anger grew the closer she got to Jasper's house, wishing she'd just trip and hit her head hard enough on the ground to put herself in a coma already.

Surprised at my own thoughts, I took a step back from my somewhat aggressive position and breathed deep. Anger was a useless emotion, I told myself as I regressed further into the shadows of my porch. My left boot lay forgotten on the floorboards.

Rose raised her tan, slender fist and struck several loud raps on Jasper's door before standing demurely with her hands behind her back to wait. Jasper opened the door immediately, his face filled with anticipation. He had started to say something, but whatever it was, the words died in his throat the moment he realized who was in front him before his face turned into a scowl.

I slipped in between the two adirondack chairs and peeked my head out above one arm. Rose and Jasper's voices weren't carrying all too well above the wind that had replaced the rain, and I strained to follow what they were saying.

"What are you doing here?" Jasper asked, his jaw tight.

"I was lonely, thought I'd come over for a visit."

"Sorry to disappoint you, but I was just heading out." Jasper said, his eyes darting in the direction of my house. I flinched, thinking he might have seen me and ducked further down behind the chairs.

"Why head out? I've got the party right here," Rose purred lifting a bottle out of the bag she'd been carrying in her opposite hand. I hadn't noticed it during her trek across my lawn. Seeing the alcohol made me fume. I had been trying to hold back my anger but Rose was the fucking personification of temptation. Jasper had done so well in the past few weeks, and yet Rose had the damn audacity to stand there dangling single-malt in his face?

"Bitch," I breathed out as my fingers clenched around the arm of the chair in front of me. Jasper had been saying something to her while my blood boiled and I tried to focus on the words but the fact that I'd gotten so angry at the sight of her and the bottle scared me. I reminded myself that this wasn't my fight and that my anger would only turn into disappointment if I had to watch Jasper crack under the pressure.

I wouldn't watch that; I couldn't.

Standing up too fast, my back hit the chair behind me, causing it to scrape back on the floorboards and for me to cry out suddenly at the pain. I clamped my hand over my mouth the second I'd realized I'd made a sound, my eyes wide as they took in the scene of Jasper and Rose staring at me from his front porch.

I bit my fingers, covering up the pitiful whimper of being caught and darted inside as fast as I could. Slamming the door behind me, I locked it and turned, sliding down until I hit the floor with a pathetic thud. My back burned from where it hit the chair and my eyes stung with the prickling of tears threatening to spill over. I shook my head and clamped my eyes shut, refusing to cry.

The image of Rose tempting Jasper with more than just liquor was a persistent pest in my mind, even as I tried to push it away. It reminded me too much of my own mother and her pitiful attempts at seducing the many men I'd seen her fawn over while growing up. Each time a new one came through the door, I would hide in a far corner of our house, covering my ears from the noise, wondering which one, if any, were my father. Hoping that maybe the man she brought home that night or the next would be more than just a warm body to her.

Hope, like anger, was useless emotion. I had hoped that one of those men would help my mother exorcise her demons, but they all just seemed to add to them...and mine. I should have learned then. Hoping Jasper wouldn't relapse was more of a pipe dream than I'd ever imagined.

Stopping that train of thought, I reminded my sad little self that he hadn't accepted the bottle from Rose's hand. He hadn't done anything except see me spying on them like a pathetic voyeur.

With a groan, I fell to the side and curled up in a ball on the floor. Loretta was staring at me from her perch on the bookshelf, and I locked onto her beady eyes, challenging her to another staring contest. I needed the distraction. The lazy bubbles she created with her tail and little "o" mouth soothed me the best they could as I held myself together with nothing but my own hands and will.

When my eyelids drooped and Loretta's red and blue fins turned to swirls of black, I didn't question it. I fell into the darkness, whole.

. . .

"Bella...Bella!" I woke up with a start. My mother was calling my name.

Uncurling myself from the ball I'd fallen asleep in, I stepped out of my bedroom and walked down the hall, smelling alcohol, sweat and heady musk. The air was ripe with the stench that normally permiated the house after men visited my mother. I'd come to dread it and the associations it brought forth in my memory.

"Bella!" She screamed again, this time accompanied with a loud thud and a moan that made my stomach drop. There was a grunt of a man's voice and heavy footfalls in the kitchen.

My mother wasn't alone.

Darting into my mother's bedroom, I grabbed the phone off the bedside table and dialed the numbers 911 on autopilot. Whoever was getting thrown around out there wasn't enjoying it and my mother's screams were becoming louder by the second. Panic tore through me. I shook violently as a deep voice bellowed for her to shut up and my hands started to rattle the receiver as I held it to my mouth, praying they'd pick up soon.

A woman answered on the third ring, her voice professional and emotionless. I whimpered into the phone, trying to keep my words low and steady as I told her that someone was in my house attacking my mother. The woman's voice cut through my panic with sharp assurance as the sounds of typing started up rapid fire in the background.

"Where are you in the house?" she asked.

"Bedroom."

"Where's your mother?"

"Kitchen."

"Police are on their way. I'm going to stay on the line with you. Can you lock yourself in the bathroom?"

"No." Not without being heard or seen. I could barely get out the syllable as another scream ripped through the air followed by a man's cry. My mother was fighting back apparently. The woman heard it and her voice turned deadly as a knife's blade.

"Hide."

Scrambling on all fours, I wedged myself underneath my mother's bed as best I could, bringing the phone with me. Footfalls were coming closer to the room as I tucked myself up into a protective ball, cradling the phone in my hands like a lifeline. The door to the bedroom slammed open the next second and I stifled a squeal behind my hand. It wouldn't have mattered, the amount of noise created by my mother's limp body being dragged to the bed and the man's grunts as he carried her, covered up even my own sniffles as the tears started.

A sag on the mattress above me caused me to shove back further, away from the bow of the bed. The man's boots were directly in front of me and I listened with horror as the sounds of a belt buckle being unlatched and a zipper being drawn down hit the air.

The slow rasp of the metal teeth unlocking one by one was like a deadly countdown in my head.

My mother made no noise as the man mounted the bed, his boots disappearing from my view and I slammed my eyes shut and my shoved my hands over my ears, desperate to make time stop. Shaking and sobbing with silent tears I tried to cut out the noise above me, not knowing what to do or where to run when the bed started to squeak with movement.

At the first sounds of the sirens, I screamed.

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A/N: Hello again. To those of you who skipped that last section, it was a flashback to Bella's home life with her mother. There was an incident with a man her mother had brought home who got too rough with her, and Bella had to call 911 and hide under the bed, waiting for the cops to come while hearing everything that happened. Needless to say, it wasn't a pleasant evening.

As for the rest of y'all, would you like a hug? Maybe a cupcake or a puppy? I'm sorry for the angst. I promise resolution next chapter.

*runs away to hide*