Disclaimer: All characters belong to Stephenie Meyer. I own the plot.

AN:

This story is coming to an end and this chapter is middle part of the EPI. WARNING, to those of you who are following STARTING OVER, this part will contain minor spoilers. I hope you enjoy it and thank you for reading, following and commenting on this story.

First of all to my ever faithful Beta, Dazzled eyes22. I truly appreciate all that you do for me and your mad skills.

Thaigher Lillie, there is a lot to be said about you, but I am just not going to do that. However, huge, HUGE, thanks for your support on this brainfart.

Chartwilightmom, thank you for pre-reading and being the sweetheart that you are.

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Five Months Later

Epilogue II

The swanky apartment and plain white walls were bothering the hell out of me right now. It was just a reminder of how fucked up this was. Sure it was home, but right now, it didn't feel much like one. All the pictures of us were more like mocking my stupidity, while not offering the feeling that we belonged together.

Goddamn it.

I stared at my cell, while wanting to crush the fucking thing like my heart was slowly being crushed. It was like the scattering pieces were being teased apart like a wind picking up the ashes of a dying fire.

"You want me to say with you?" Edward asked. He slowly tugged at his tie, while undoing the top button of his shirt.

He had just come home from a cast party that Rose and Edward had attended together. She was working on a movie where Edward supplied the music. First off, she had slimmed down about fifteen pounds to fit into the character. I hated it. She was perfect the way she was. Besides that, filming had been rough and emotionally exhausting for her. She was playing a crack whore clawing her way through life and it was gut wrenching for her to get it right and authentic. I had been there for several days during filming when I wasn't at practice and she was unbelievable… almost too believable in the scenes that I saw. However, that was no excuse for what was happening now.

Rose and I shared an apartment with Edward and Bella and Alice and Jasper. It was a monstrosity of a home where we all had our rooms. Rose and I had the biggest one, whereas Alice and Jasper had a smaller, but two roomed place just down the hall. Edward and Bella were located at the far and very domestic end. For them, it was all about the kids these days.

"Nah, shit's cool," I answered. I couldn't even fucking look at him.

Edward hesitated. "I'm sorry to tell you this," he said morosely. "I know what she's like, Emmett."

"Like I don't?" I spat. I closed my eyes. "Sorry. I don't mean to take it out on you. It's not your fault." I smashed the heels of my palms into my eyes, as I tried to rub the burning sensation away.

"I kind of feel like it is," Edward's answer was barely a breath.

"It was her choice. She's a grown woman."

"I hope that you can give her the benefit of the doubt."

"Yeah, I hope so too." I finally managed to look up, hoping that I was strong enough not to crack in front of him. "I'd like to be alone," I choked out, fearing that I was about to start fucking crying in front of him.

Edward nodded. "Let me know if there is something that I can do."

I barely handled giving out a nod. At the sound of the door clicking shut, I sauntered over to the padded bench at the window. I took a moment to gaze down into the street below, before I got down to business. I needed to evaluate everything that I had running through my mind and what it all meant.

The happiness that I had foreseen for our life had vanished like smoke. I had been so goddamn naïve. At the five weeks mark of our marriage, we dodged a fucking bullet with breast cancer and I was sure our life was going to be perfect. I just hadn't figured that life's normal trivialities would get in the way of our happiness.

My chest ached.

One of the clearest memories that I had in my life was of Rose running to me, landing in my arms and calling me a SOB because she wasn't a carrier of that defective gene. We were safe. I remembered the swell of indestructible happiness and elation that followed that news. I remembered that time with my family and friends on that resort to painful detail and how freaking happy I was. I thought our lives lay at our feet.

Time begged to differ as my chest constricted with agony.

For the past month, things hadn't been the fun and the playful take on life, but had taken a tailspin into the abyss. I was fucking hung out to dry. We had fought over everything, like goddamn cats and dogs. It wasn't working out at all. Rose did nothing but show her teeth, snap at me, ignore me and shut me out. Tonight had proven to be the straw that broke the goddamn camel's back.

Rose had left the cast party with Royce.

That fucker was not just anybody. He had lead in the movie that she was working on. He was the man who had made it his personal mission to annoy the fuck out of me. He was the bastard that repeatedly had his hands all over Rose during their pretty nasty and graphic scenes of sex, violence and general abuse when they were filming. He never ever shut up about it. He was the man that had abso-fucking-lutely no respect for me as her husband. If I wasn't against violence, he would be missing all his teeth right about now.

I sat down on the bench and hoped that perhaps, she would come home soon.

There was a gentle knock on the door.

"Come in," I said, while sounding so dejected that I depressed myself even more. Bella stuck her head in. The crestfallen look in her eyes said it all. "So Edward told you?"

She nodded. "I thought that you could use this." She moved forward holding out a squat glass almost filled to the rim with golden liquor.

"Jack?" I asked.

"Yep." She sat down next to me. "Do you know what you're going to do?"

"Nope." I took a sip and winced because I wasn't much of a drinker. "Just don't tell me that I deserve so much better or what a hooch or skank that she is for doing this to me."

"I wasn't going to say that."

"What were you going to say?" I asked curiously. Rose and Bella had a complicated relationship.

"I was going to say that being in love is a very scary thing. It makes us do stupid things sometimes. I didn't dare to hope back when I naively left Edward, but look at us, we got past the hurdle. So what I am trying to say is that I have hope for you now, Emmett." She paused. "Sometimes the hell that we have to walk through makes the heaven on the other side much sweeter."

"I don't really dare to keep my chin up now," I muttered, while staring into the golden alcohol.

"I understand that," she said. Those brown eyes were bottomless pits of empathy. She rested her hands on her swollen stomach. Yeah, look at them now. She was simply radiant. Her face was all round and happy and she had that glow about her. She moved her hand from her pregnant belly and patted my thigh a few times. "I'll give you some space. Edward and I are going to bed now, but come and wake me up if you want to talk."

I couldn't help, but smirk. "Is that safe?"

She groaned and rolled her eyes, but she didn't chasten me. "Just remember to keep your head cool. I'll hope for the best." She kissed my cheek. "Night, Emmett."

"Night, Bella."

I started nursing my Jack, just hating the rusty burn of the drink. I made it halfway though, before I couldn't stomach it anymore. Getting smashed wouldn't help me one damn bit.

I heard the soft feminine voices of Alice and Jasper outside my room as they passed. Their conversations were always soft filled with smiles and giggles. If it was like Bella said, they were also over the rut in their lives.

I leaned back against the cool window, while desperately hoping no one else would pay me a visit tonight. Right now, I wanted to be left alone and living with my sister and her wife and Edward and Bella seemed like a clogged toilet. God, how I wished this had gone down in L.A. and her house there. Then there wouldn't be an audience.

However, there was only one person that I wanted to have a conversation with right now. That would be my wife, Rose, who was possibly cheating on me. I twirled my phone in my hand, while letting my finger hover over the call button several minutes before I decided not to call.

Pain throbbed all the way into my bones.

I didn't understand. Why would she do this? I thought we had struck gold together, so why the hell would she ruin us with something as banal as going off to fuck some other guy? Was I that fucking horrible to be married to? Had I missed the plot so entirely that I imagined the chemistry and dynamics of our relationship? Was I deluding myself that the love that I felt so intensely every time my heart beat was nothing, but a hoax? Was I deranged thinking that our sex life belonged with the gods, but in fact, it was so pitiful awful that she had to go elsewhere for something better? Okay, I had to admit lately our sex life was… strange. In the beginning, it had been fun and playful and somewhat imaginative, but most importantly, it had been your garden varieties of soft and loving, hard and fast and quickies followed by nights of intimacy where we had all the time in the world to tease and pleasure each other. Lately… it was always the same. It was rough, almost like we were fighting. Somewhere along the way, we had left the playful side behind. Basically we had stopped making love and just fucked each other.

Sitting back, the impotence of the situation was making me absolutely livid. She had left with that fucking guy! He had the intelligence of a goddamn blow up doll.

Then, it hit me. That fucking lightning bolt that I keep trying to avoid snagged me right in the chest. That was the third time now. First time was the night we met and I fell hard for her. The second time was when Rose tested negative for the breast cancer gene. So now it was the third time. I knew exactly why she was doing this.

Rose was cornered.

What did a caged animal do when it was scared and trapped?

It lunged for the throat.

Rose was aiming for my throat doing what she learning knew how to do over years. It was her goddamn weapon, those fucking shutters going down and she was shutting me out. However, this was entirely different than throwing a candle holder at me.

Perhaps, I could still hope.

I picked up the phone again. This time my thumb didn't just hover, but I typed out a message.

Come home when you're ready.

Right now, I wasn't going to crowd her, nag her, bitch and moan about her forgetting to call back or being late for dinner. I realized that was all that I had been fucking doing over the past month. The more that I pushed, the more she pulled away. I would just let her be for now because one little shove would put her right in his arms.

Could I forgive that?

Would I want to forgive that?

Perhaps, I already had to forgive her.

For some reason, I wanted to be able to sleep and just slip into oblivion, so this wait didn't seem so long. It was beyond horrendous. Though, every breath took about three seconds and that simple task seemed like an eternity.

Later in the evening, the apartment was shrouded in absolute darkness, when I noticed the door handle slowly turning. All I could hear was my pulse in my ear. It was like thunder.

Closing the door behind her, she started to move awkwardly across the room with her heels clutched in her hand. I didn't speak. I just watched as she slipped into the bathroom. She was absolutely silent sneaking past me, not even noticing that I was sitting by the window following her with my eyes like some freaky stalker.

I tried to search for some kind of sign, some kind of signal that we had anything to salvage. There was nothing to see as she tip-toed away from me.

I felt like smashing my head through the window. That was probably a no go, based on the fact that we were thirty-three stories up. Glaring at the bathroom door and waiting for the courage to go deal with the fucking bad side that life had to offer, I couldn't escape the strange muddled noises coming from the bathroom. It sounded almost like a muffled scream.

Moving to hover just outside the bathroom something strange was definitely going on. There was no light coming from under the door. She would need light. Wouldn't she? I wasn't sure my brain was capable to digest any more drama tonight.

Soundlessly, I pushed the door open.

Rose was covered to the floor with her knees to her chest and absolutely trembling. Her fingers were curled around a towel she was biting down on so hard that her knuckles were white. She was crying hysterically and trying to muffle her screams.

Flicking the harsh fluorescent lights on, I saw her blink wildly, while trying to adapt to the brightness. My instincts screamed to slip to my knees, hold her and comfort her, but Edward telling me that he had seen her leave the party with Royce made me think again. The betrayal was screaming inside of me and raising my hackles.

Gently, she pulled the terry cloth from her mouth and her sobs started to quiet, while she started at me looming over her. Her lips were chapped, her lipstick smudged and mascara running down her face didn't really console me or give me hope.

I stood there like a goddamn moron not knowing what the hell to say.

Rose just stared up at me, looking utterly exhausted. "I guess you know." Her voice was absolutely broken.

I nodded.

How could you love someone so entirely, but hate her so much at the same time? It was really confusing.

It was silent.

No one spoke.

We just stared at each other.

I ached.

There was one question that I just couldn't ignore anymore. I was hurt, angry, betrayed and completely disarmed by her shattered face, as she looked up at me. "Do you still love me?" I asked bluntly.

She didn't answer, but her eyes welled with tears that spilled over without her even grimacing. It was like a faucet.

"Can you answer me, please?"

"Yes, I love you, Emmett." She cleared her throat, as she ran her tongue over her dry lips.

"Then I don't understand. I don't understand why you would do something so low as to fucking cheat on me. I get that I've been annoying as fuck lately, that I'm grating your nerves and your work is pulling you to bits at the moment, but how the hell could you just go out and fuck someone?"

Her answer fell immediately. "Because it's easier to lose you than it is to fight for you. If I don't have you then I have nothing to lose and I don't have to be scared. It's quite simple really."

I gnashed my teeth. "So you let this happen because I didn't tire of you or toss you to the curb? Is that it?"

"Pretty much, yeah. I'm a vain bitch." She shrugged, before wiping her face.

I crouched down and squatted in front of her. "Rose, I'll ask you only once." I was probably downright insane, but the way her tears ran freely, I couldn't stop but hope. "Do you want this to work out or do you want to cut your losses and live with your obscure sense of safety?"

That fountain of tears started up again. "I don't know how to be a wife, Emmett. I've tried telling you this." She snorted.

"You don't need to be a wife. You need to be Rosalie Hale and you need to get some goddamn help. With that said, do you want to us to try to work it out?" I hadn't really considered that Rose needed help, but the words slipping out made it crystal clear. I couldn't save her like I had been trying to. No matter how hard I worked to fix her, I would always lose. She was the one who needed to do the work. I couldn't do it for her.

"I want to try." She sniveled.

I sank to my knees. My entire body crumbled like a sack of potatoes when I realized that I was trying to hold my body together. "Then the games have to stop now. I can't keep doing this stupid game of back and forth with you. I try to be good for you, but all you do is push me away." I spoke into the bathroom floor because right now, my head felt too heavy to hold upright.

"It's all I know how to do, Emmett. I'm terrified to get hurt because every time that I have something to lose, it's gone as soon as I start to care. That's how my life is."

"You know what, Rose? That is a perfect way of going through your life without getting to experience any of the good things. You throw what you love away, before you learn a way to keep it."

"Yeah, well I'm a fucking coward," she scoffed.

"No, you just got one hell of a coping mechanism." I tried to smile, but I was sure that it was a pretty weak attempt.

Rose looked down, while running her hands over her shins repeatedly. "So what now?"

I swallowed dryly. "You tell me what happened tonight." I demanded. I tried to not sound so cold, but underneath it all, I was furious.

Her eyes shot up to me, wide and disbelieving. "You want to know that?"

"For some obscene reason, I need to know what happened. I don't want to go around having to imagine shit because I have a fucking vivid imagination." I paused. "Did you have sex with him?"

"I guess that depends on your definition of sex," she answered wryly. Her eyes escaped to focus on something behind my head.

I groaned. "Just fucking tell it like it is, Rose." My chest felt too tight for my body right now, like I was being confined into a straightjacket.

She laughed humorlessly. "Well, aren't you the masochist? You want all the nitty gritty?" I nodded slowly, making a promise to myself to stay absolutely calm. "Okay. We went to his hotel room, got naked and kissed. We touched a bit and… that's where it stopped."

I gave out a strange humorless guffaw. "Don't fucking lie to me, Rose. You're like a junkie when it comes to sex. There was no way that you just stopped. Tell me what happened."

"You happened, Emmett." She spat defiantly. "He was basically rolling on a fucking condom when my phone went off with your text. After that…" she shrugged. "I realized what a bitch that I'd turned into so pushed him off me, grabbed my shit and left."

I narrowed my eyes at her. "I sent that fucking text hours ago."

She lifted her one foot to my line of sight, but I ignored it. "Yeah, well, I have been walking around for hours trying to grow the balls to go home to you. I was going to tell you what happened, even if you didn't know." Her voice was small. "By the way, how do you know?" She asked carefully.

"Edward saw you."

"So that was why he tried to call me," she said quietly. "Why aren't you kicking me out or calling me a cheating slut or a whore?"

"One, you would know more choice words than I would. Two, calling you a cheating slut or a whore wouldn't help me one bit. Yelling at you only makes things worse and you pull away from me, when I do. I think the past month of fighting can attest to that."

"Yeah," she mused. "I'm so sorry, Emmett."

"So am I." I paused, while resting my elbows on my knees and gripping my hair. Words just seemed to multiply in my head and spilled over without a filter. It was like my entire system was malfunctioning. I just stopped trying to hold anything back. "Rose, I am extremely hurt. I feel betrayed. I am pissed off. I'm beyond disappointed. You tore my fucking heart out, but I still love you. I'll always love you. I believe and I need to believe that we can move past this, but for us to stay together, you need to stop fucking pushing me away. You have to stop fighting me every step of the way. I promise that I'll stop being so needy and clingy and let you have your space, but we need to work together.

"I'm tired of this. I'm tired of the fighting and bickering. I'm tired of trying to avoid pissing you off all the time. I'm tired of the games. I'm tired of the fucking emotionless sex. I miss making love to you and how it used to be between us.

"I want you to be happy. I want to be happy. I believe that can be achieved, if you stop being scared. I know the loss of your mom is what is causing this reflex to keep me at an arm's length. I am so sorry that you lost your mom, but I wish you could see beyond that. I wish you could see me for me and that I am here for you always. I don't know how to prove to you that you're the only woman that I want. Basically, I am at wit's end and I'm fucking sick of it."

I hadn't noticed the faucet had been turned on again. Her face was absolutely soaked with tears, while she stared at me like a deer in the headlights. "I think that you just did." She suddenly leaned forward, while throwing her arms around my neck. "I'm unfaithful to you and here you sit being the bigger man. God, Emmett, I don't deserve you."

I almost had to snicker… yeah, I was bigger than that fucking spaz Royce. However, I didn't say anything. I just hugged her back. Even through my anger and betrayal, it felt incredible to hold her. Her skin was awfully cold, and she was a bit scrawny from the weight loss for the movie, but it was nice to put my arms around to warm her up."

Rose winced, while shifting uncomfortably.

"Are you hurt…?" I was about to say precious, but right now, I just couldn't call her that.

"I may have stepped on a few shards of glass… or ten," she whispered into my chest.

"What?" I spat and pulled back. She tipped back on her ass holding up her foot again. Now, I got it. "What the hell did you do to yourself?"

"I walked half of New York without my shoes on."

"I'd say." I gasped when I saw how tortured here soles were and bleeding all over the place. I got up and turned the water on in the tub. Rose stared at me, quite confused. I was so tired that I couldn't see straight, but for some obscure reason, I still needed to take care of my wife. "Get in the tub, while I find some tweezers and some iodine."

I spent the time until dawn sitting on the lip of the tub picking out bits of glass and rubble from the cuts on her feet, while we talked. It actually felt nice and for once, Rose was my soft and vulnerable girl again.

"You think that I need therapy?" She asked and winced, as I carefully pulled out a large shard.

"I don't fucking know. Maybe I need therapy, but I think it couldn't hurt to talk to someone to make sure all your ducks are in a row." I splashed some iodine on a cotton ball dabbing it on her heel. She probably should get these cuts checked out by a doctor.

"Neither your nor my ducks have ever been in a row, Emmett."

"I know, precious. We're should probably both claim insanity and leave it at that." Her foot slipped off my thigh submerging in the water again.

"Yeah, you're insane for loving me." She snickered, but her eyes were hopeful.

"Yeah, well you're fucking mental for daring me to marry you. Look where that got you."

"Says he who took the challenge." She paused for a moment, while running her hands over the surface of the water. Her eyes welled with tears. "I do love you, Emmett. More than I can tell you."

oooooOOOOooooo

… To be continued.

Additional INFO:

If you are interested in the story about Alice and Jasper check out FOUR WEEKS

If you want to know more about Bella and Edward read STARTING OVER

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