Another early post! I wasn't sure when/if I'd be online tomorrow, thanks to an incident where I live - so rather than leave you all hanging, I thought I'd update now. Sunday does remain the usual day (honest).

Thank you guys for all the reviews/favourites/alerts. We're nearly at 200 reviews which is amazing, and totally unexpected. So thank you all!

Thank you to KarenEC who pre-reads for me.

Disclaimer: I don't own anything.

To: Carlisle Cullen

From: Edward Masen

Carlisle,

Please.

Edward.

.

The man has emailed me pretty much every day for the last week. I haven't replied to any of them yet. I really don't know what to say. On top of everything else, he's in America, and I'm here. So it's not like anything could ever happen between us.

It's been a couple of weeks since our week away, and I'm still not quite sure what to make of everything.

My reaction to it is fucking ridiculous, for starters. I think I'm more annoyed at myself than I am at him. I knew it wasn't going to end well, and yet I let myself get carried away with the whole thing. I hate that I let him work his way into my head.

Garrett managed to wait for at least two days before reminding me that he had warned me it would happen. Fucker.

I had a meeting with Tanya on the Monday, which I managed to drag my hungover-self to. She was fine, though. She was happy that Masen was happy. Clearly he hadn't said anything to her about what had gone on, and for that I was grateful. She was willing to give me a few days off, to make up for the long assignment, but I wanted to work, I needed to keep busy.

Any time I wasn't working was filled with either Garrett – with or without alcohol – or visiting the kids. Esme was seriously pissed off that I had bailed on her Sunday night meal, and I've now been guilt-tripped into looking after the kids for their Easter holiday.

Most of my work is first thing in the morning or later at night, so Esme and I work around each other. It means neither of us have to take too much time off work.

My time with the kids is always good, even if they do exhaust me. Jared is nine, and at least he will sit down with a book and amuse himself. Seth, on the other hand, is still six, and while he's happy to watch a film, he needs entertaining the rest of the time.

We spend loads of time at museums and galleries. Jared is doing a holiday project on space, so we make sure a lot of what we do is geared towards that. I even take him stargazing one evening. It's not easy in London, but we see a few.

I've been so busy that even when I start receiving emails from Masen, I don't have time to reply. Not that I know what to say to him anyway.

He started off asking if he could explain. He wants to call me, and has been asking when I'm free to answer his call. My first reaction was to think he must be serious if he's willing to pay international call rates. Then I realised he throws money around like it's nothing, and I didn't feel so bad for not getting back to him. The messages became demanding after a while, he's obviously used to getting his own way. I ignored those, too.

His emails are getting more and more desperate, though. I don't really have any claim on him, and so I don't have a reason to be quite so annoyed at him.

I grab my phone to email him back to arrange a time for him to call me, and there is an email waiting for me.

To: Carlisle Cullen

From: Platinum Cars

Pickup at LHR 12:00, Saturday 17th April. Meet at arrivals. Name "Masen." Drop off at 45 Park Lane.

.

Oh, for fuck's sake.

~-DTD-~

April 17th comes around far too quickly for my liking.

Before I know it, I am standing at the arrivals gate with a trolley and a takeaway coffee – the trolley for his luggage and the coffee is for me.

I'm fairly sure Masen will be arriving on his own; we're usually informed if there will be more than one passenger. I haven't quite made up my mind whether that's a good or bad thing. Another person would provide a bit of a buffer, but it might also make it more awkward. At least if it's just me and Masen, everything that happened is out there, and we don't have to worry about keeping it quiet.

I tap out a constant rhythm on the handle of the trolley with my free hand. It's obviously pissing everyone else around me off, but I don't care. I need to expend my nervous energy somehow, and I'm sure they'd rather the incessant tapping, than me running up and down the arrivals hall.

Whenever I'm waiting for clients, it feels like their flights take forever to land, and then they spend ages getting through immigration and baggage claim. Especially Masen when he's alone.

Not this time.

He strides through the doors, spotting me immediately. He's not quite as confident as usual; the smile he gives me is shy. His hair seems wilder than usual, it definitely needs a cut. As he gets closer to me, I can see how tired his eyes look.

I'm a fucking idiot. He's just had a ten hour flight; he's probably just jet-lagged.

We don't talk as he hefts his bags onto the trolley – he only has a couple, it's not like him – and our silence continues as we walk to the car. I'm not about to make the first move, so I let the silence drag out as we get into the car.

Masen climbs into the back, helping himself to a bottle of water, with a grateful smile at me in the mirror.

"I was hoping you still did this, the coffee was terrible on the flight."

When is anything ever up to his standards?

"It's only been four weeks; I haven't changed drastically in that space of time," I remind him.

He is quiet in response, concentrating on fastening his seatbelt instead. I wonder if he's changed drastically in the last four weeks.

We set off, the radio is playing louder than I would normally have it, but it's quiet enough that he can speak to me, if he wants to.

He stays quiet.

My heart is thumping like crazy, it's fucking ridiculous that he has any effect on me at all. Every time I glance in the mirror – to check the traffic behind me, nothing else... sort of – his green eyes are staring back at mine.

He still says nothing.

The journey takes the best part of an hour, and I'm surprised my heart doesn't give out; the tension in the car is almost unbearable. It's not until we're pulling up outside the hotel that he finally speaks.

"Have you got a client after this?"

I shake my head slowly. I can see where this is going already; part of me is intrigued as to what he wants to say, and the other part just wants to drop him off, put my right foot down, and get the hell out of here.

"Can you come up to my suite? We need to talk. Please?" He sounds completely broken, but I'm still not sure what to do for the best.

"Is that a good idea?" It really isn't a good idea. I don't know why I even asked.

"Well how else am I going to get you to speak to me? I've tried emailing you, and asking if I can call you. I don't know what else to do."

"I'm not sure –" I trail off.

"You don't have anyone else booked in. I could just book you for the weekend or something and reserve a hotel in Scotland. You'd have to talk to me then."

I spin round to face him, seeing red at his ridiculous idea.

"I'm not a whore. You can't just book me and use me however you please. It doesn't work like that."

He blanches at my statement.

"I didn't mean... fucking hell. I don't think you're a whore, Carlisle."

The doorman of the hotel chooses that moment to open Masen's door, obviously fed up of waiting for me to do it. Of course, it has to be the guy I fucking wave to, doesn't it? Guess he knows my name now. To his credit, he doesn't show a trace of emotion at what he just heard.

"Please?" Masen asks one last time. I know if I say no now, he won't push it. Not with other people around. He's right, though. We need to talk this one through.

"Okay. Just let me park the car."

He nods, "I'll wait for you in the lobby."

Once his bags are unloaded, I swing the car round to the car park. I don't know if I've done the right thing by agreeing, especially since we're going to be in his hotel room. It's not really a conversation for a public place, though. At least he books suites to stay in, so it's not like we will have to sit on the bed to argue it out.

I consider texting Garrett to get him on standby to phone me, in case I need a quick out from Masen's room. I decide against it, though. I can't complain Masen is being childish and then do that.

Unfortunately.

I step into the lobby and Masen is waiting there with a very uncomfortable-looking porter.

Taking a deep breath, I meet them. Here goes nothing.

~-DTD-~

"How was I supposed to know what you wanted from me? You said yourself you have one night stands, no relationships. I had no fucking idea where I stood with you."

We've been arguing over this for a good half-hour now; going over what happened without really talking about how it made us feel. I've been deliberately winding Masen up to try and get a bit more out of him. It's obviously worked. His last statement makes me pause in my tracks though; I never thought for a minute he wouldn't realise that this felt like more to me.

"Like what we had was just a one night thing, nothing more to it? Like we didn't hang out every evening? Like you weren't fucking texting me telling me you missed me the same night you decided you were straight after all? No one night stand I've ever had has felt the need to flaunt their next conquest in front of me the fucking day after."

I draw in a deep breath, ready to continue with my rant, but Masen jumps in.

"I'm sorry about that, I really am. I just freaked out."

His apology softens me a little. I'm still pissed off at him, though.

"So talk to me. Ask me how it felt when I realised I was gay. Tell me how you're fucking feeling. Don't go off and find a woman and try and fuck it out of your system. And definitely don't then parade the woman in front of me." I run my hand over my face. I'm so exhausted by all this already, and we've only scratched the surface.

"Look, Edward, maybe I should have made my feelings clearer, but don't forget you spent the entire week claiming that you weren't gay. That's hardly the ideal basis for me to ask you if you see anything more happening between us."

Sitting down on the couch, Masen rests his head in his hands for a second, before briefly looking back up at me.

"I was so fucking confused. I still am. I don't understand how you've flipped my world upside down. This isn't me, and I don't know how to react properly." His gaze fixes on the floor. He's definitely not used to this.

"So talk to me, don't flip out on me and make me feel like shit in the process." I sit on the opposite end of the couch to him, keeping us a respectable distance apart.

"I tried. I emailed and emailed, but you wouldn't respond."

Lifting his head, he looks right at me, and I can see the pain in his eyes. I really shouldn't have ignored him the way I did; we're not teenagers.

"I'm sorry. Honestly I am. I thought you just wanted to make sure I wasn't going to tell anyone or something." I really couldn't have dealt with him begging me not to out him. To have insinuated that I would shove him out of the closet just because I was angry would have annoyed me no end.

"No, I just wanted to figure out where we stood. But I guess I can't blame you for ignoring me. I'm not used to it, though. People normally do exactly what I tell them to do." He shrugs a little as he talks, having the decency to be a little embarrassed at expecting compliance from everyone he meets.

The fact that people jump to please him doesn't surprise me in the least. His embarrassment does, however, and it softens me further.

"I'm not famed for wanting to follow orders," I admit. "I don't mind when it's part of my job, but I don't like putting my feelings aside completely. Especially after what you did."

It all goes quiet. We're sort of running in circles around the same issues now, and there's no point. He's sorry, I'm sorry. We still haven't moved forward.

I need some distance from him. "I should probably get going. You've probably got a load of work to be doing anyway."

I start to stand up, and Masen's hand shoots out to rest on my knee, imploring me to stay seated.

"I'm not here on business."

"What?" I don't understand what he means, and why he's telling me this. His hand is distracting me, and I'm torn as to whether or not to move away from it.

"I'm not here on business. I only came over to see you. I fly back tomorrow morning."

I forget that I was ever thinking about moving his hand, as I sink back into my seat and digest his words.

"Why did you want to see me?"

If he says for sex, I'm going to punch him in the fucking face.

"I needed to explain. I'm still really confused about... well... everything, but I know what I did was awful. Even if I haven't shown it, I really like you. We had a good time before I fucked up."

He hasn't looked at me once during his little speech, and I'm glad. He's not the only one who's confused, but I'm imagining it's for very different reasons.

"Yeah, we did. But you're still insistent that you're not gay, and as I recall, that was also a major part of that week."

He coughs a little. His face is pink and if this conversation wasn't so fucking bizarre I would laugh at his responses.

"I might not be quite as insistent now," he admits.

Well, that's something at least.

"What prompted the change of heart?"

He laughs. "Apart from enjoying sex with you?"

"Apart from that, yeah." What happened between us was more than just sex, for starters.

"I don't know, really. I just felt terrible after I left. It took me ages to figure out why, and I haven't completely wrapped my head around it yet. All I knew was I had to speak to you, somehow."

"So what do you see happening now, then?" I ask. Nothing matters in all his talk if he doesn't have a plan for going forward. I refuse to hang around on an off-chance.

He looks up at me, confusion written all over his face.

"Right now, Edward, you're firmly in the closet and we live on different continents. You visit once every couple of months, you spend the whole time working, and I definitely can't afford a trip to America any time soon. The way we both reacted to what happened tends to suggest something casual isn't really on the table for us. So what the fuck do we do?"

I didn't really mean to lay it all out like that, but at least he knows what we're contending with here. I'm not sure where his head has been over the last few weeks, but judging by the look on his face, he hasn't really thought things through. Well, not in quite the detail I have, anyway.

I take pity on him.

"Look, I'm not saying you need to have all this figured out right now. You do need to have some idea of what you're getting yourself into, though. I'm not willing to be strung along while you fly in every now and then. I'm not going to be anyone's secret. We both deserve a better life than that."

It might be slightly hypocritical of me to expect him to not keep me a secret. I can't imagine what Tanya would do if she found out what was going on.

I amend my statement, a little.

"You don't need to take out a full page spread in the newspaper to announce anything. I even understand if you don't want to flaunt things at work. But your family and friends? If you want something serious then I guess they will need to know sooner rather than later."

Edward nods, and sits back on the sofa. His hand falls away from my leg and I immediately miss the warmth it provided.

He is quiet for a while, and I stand up, getting myself a soft drink from his mini-bar. I consider turning the TV on, just for a bit of background noise, but he finally speaks.

"I think you're right, I do need to take a bit more time to think this over properly."

I'm not sure if I wanted to hear that or not.

"That week, everything was so clear, Carlisle. Even when I was working and away from you, I knew what I wanted. I mean, I was confused but even so, I still wanted to explore things with you. But then on that night out, everyone was talking about women. They were inviting girls to the table, and I just freaked out. Lauren was there, and she wanted me. It was expected and it was easy."

I definitely didn't want to hear that.

"It was like I had something to prove; like they knew what had happened while I was away." His eyes are fixed on mine while he speaks and even though I hate what he's talking about, I want to hug him.

"I can see where you're coming from," I admit. "I guess when I was still coming to terms with being gay, I made some stupid choices."

Edward smiles gratefully at me.

"It doesn't exactly forgive what happened the next day, though. If you want a relationship with me, any game playing needs to stop. I hate it."

I finish my drink and leave the glass in the kitchen, moving to sit next to him again.

"I get that you need time, and that's fine. I'm not going to promise I will sit here and be an angel while you're figuring stuff out, though." That's probably a dickhead thing to say, but I don't care. He could take months to work through his feelings. I'm not a fucking monk.

"You can email or call me whenever you need, though. I will reply as soon as I can."

I do want to make this work with him, if possible. He acted like such a fucking idiot, but we had a fun week before that. I don't want to string him up because of one mistake.

Edward nods, and I grab his hand with mine, giving it a squeeze.

"You'll be fine. Even if you decide a relationship isn't what you want, I'm still happy to have a friendship with you."

"Thanks, Carlisle. I just need to figure out how it would work, I guess." He laughs dryly. "It could take a while. It's a pretty big ocean we need to work around."

I'm pretty sure it's not just the Atlantic he's talking about. Either way, he's right, it's fucking massive.

His hand is firmly clasped in mine as I stand up to leave.

I don't drop it.

At the door he pulls me back to face him.

"I tried to book you," he says, cringing at his language, no doubt remembering the "whore" conversation we had earlier. I know I am. "No... I mean... I tried to ask for you to drive me back to the airport tomorrow, but Tanya said you weren't available?"

I shake my head. "I've got my nephews tomorrow, while my sister works."

Now I also need to schedule Garrett in for after that. He's going to want to beat me over the head with something for even speaking to Edward again. I might as well get it over with when I already have a headache from the boys.

Edward nods, a slight smile on his face. "Oh right. I wasn't too pissed because you were working today. I figured if she said no to both, then we might have a problem."

I laugh.

"Tanya would do absolutely anything to keep your custom. She would probably babysit the boys for me while I picked you up, if she thought it would help."

A look spreads across Edward's face, and I roll my eyes.

"Don't even think about it. I need to spend some time with my nephews." He looks abashed, and I run my thumb over his pink-stained cheek. "It was a nice thought. But no."

I go to open the door, and he stops me once again.

"Can I kiss you?"

I'm sure my surprise is plainly written on my face, and he qualifies his question.

"Just in case... I want to feel how I felt with you again. Sometimes I wonder if I'm exaggerating it all in my mind."

No pressure then.

I nod, and he dips his head slightly to capture my lips. It's not a hugely passionate kiss, he is tentative, and I am aware that I really shouldn't start anything I won't want to stop.

It's still fucking brilliant, though.

He pulls back, and I grin, raising an eyebrow in question.

"Definitely no exaggeration. Fuck."

A smile graces his face, and I pull him into a hug. His arms wrap around me immediately, holding me so tightly it's almost a struggle to pull in enough air to speak.

"You can email me, or text, or anything, whenever you need, okay?"

My hand is playing in the hair at the nape of his neck, while he buries his head into my shoulder. I feel him nod, and start to untangle us.

He leans against the wall as I leave, looking deliciously rumpled.

"Bye, Carlisle. Drive safe."

I laugh. "You know my driving is amazing. Bye, Edward. Take care, okay?"

He nods, and I turn away, satisfied with how things have gone.

Chancing a glance back as I wait for the lift, I see him leaning against the door jamb. He gives me a shy wave and heads back into his suite.

I text Garrett immediately. I'm surprised he hasn't been blowing up my phone already; he knew what was happening today.

"Fancy coming over tomorrow night? I'll cook. You bring beer."

His reply is instant.

"Fuck making plans. What happened with Masen? Or was he buried so deep in the closet you couldn't even find him?"

Tomorrow is going to be interesting. I can feel it now.

"Jesus, Gar, lots happened. I will tell you tomorrow."

"You're such a tease, Carlisle - I bet that's how you get all the girls. Fine, tomorrow it is. I will bring beer, and a sledgehammer to beat you round the head with. I've got a feeling it'll be needed."