Chapter 11: Pleasures Remain, So Does The Pain

Disclaimer: Stephenie Meyer owns them and me because I love them so, so much. Frealz.

"Vows are spoken
To be broken
Feelings are intense
Words are trivial
Pleasures remain
So does the pain
Words are meaningless
And forgettable,"

-Enjoy the Silence, Depeche Mode

JPOV

There are not a whole lot of things that can throw me for a loop.

For instance, there are people who fuck trees. This is their fetish. Tree fuckers. Like...wouldn't you get sap on your...

The point is, not a whole lot of things throw me.

I was a mite perplexed when I looked around and noticed that Bella was missing from the crowd. I was just a tad befuddled when I got to the end of the song that he had specifically requested and Edward was not there for me to nod at. Somewhat worried, I finished our third song and went looking for them.

My mystification faded into complete fury when I rounded the corner of the restaurant and saw Edward had Bella pinned against the wall. She was crying.

No one makes my girl cry.

Brother or no, I was ready to start punching first and asking questions later when she got in between us. Edward took off while I was trying to figure out what was going on.

"Are you okay, darlin'? What happened? Was he trying to hurt you?" I asked, pulling her into the safety of my arms and checking her over to see if she'd been hurt.

I didn't want to think that Edward was capable of hurting Bella, but there weren't a terrible lot of reasons I could conjure that she would be crying. Bella wasn't a crier and I couldn't figure why else he would have her caged between his arms like that.

Bella shook her head. "I can't... I just need some time to gather my thoughts," she said, leaning into me and letting me wipe her tears away with my thumbs. "Please...I can't think clearly right now. Just please know he wasn't trying to hurt me."

Confused was an understatement but her eyes pleaded with me and I couldn't deny her anything - not tonight. Instead, I put my arms around her waist and held her tightly.

With her head resting on my chest her request was muffled. "Take me home?"

I kissed Bella's forehead and then her lips, hoping to comfort her because I still saw the tension written all over her face. Then I took her by the hand and led her to the car I had procured in the time she'd been gone.

The ride home was silent - mostly me wondering what she was thinking and what could possibly explain what I'd seen. Something wasn't adding up. Edward had seen Bella what? All of half an hour? Forty-five minutes before he'd taken off?

Whatever it was, I tried to shake it off. Bella would tell me soon enough.

Besides, I had other things on my mind. I hadn't seen my girl in over a month and I couldn't wait to show her our home. When Emmett and Rosalie had moved out here, they had taken all of my and Bella's stuff with them. I'd been working my ass off to get it all unpacked and set up so Bella would come back to a comfortable home.

Bella was still distracted as we got out of the car, but the minute she walked in the door she froze. "Whoa," she breathed, taking it all in.

Her stuff and my stuff. Our stuff. All cohabitational and such.

I wrapped my arms around her from behind, pulling her against me. "I wasn't sure if you would mind me making all the layout decisions, but I figured it would be nice to come home to unpacked boxes," I said, my lips against her ear. "We can always rearrange if you want."

Nudging her forward and into the house, I pointed out a little office space off the living room area. "Your desk and your computer are all set up in there. I figured it'd be a better bet than the bedroom if you want to get any work done...seeing as I'll always be here to distract you otherwise. And your books-"

I was cut off when she spun in my arms and she pulled my face down to hers. She was standing on her tiptoes so she could kiss me - hard and hungry. Suddenly I wasn't thinking about anything except how quickly I could get her out of her clothes. A month without making love to my beautiful woman was entirely too long.

Apparently, Bella was even more impatient than I was. She didn't bother getting undressed fully. She grabbed me by my shirt collar and pulled me toward the living room, walking backward as she was still attached to me at the lips. As she walked she kicked off her shoes and, with the help of my arms around her waist holding her steady, she kicked her way out of her jeans as well. By then, she'd dragged me to the couch. She had me unzipped and my jeans and boxers shoved down to my knees in seconds. She pushed me down on the couch and straddled me. She got me worked up and guided me inside her quickly.

Like I said, it'd been a month and I was downright ravenous for her.

My Bella liked to get her sex on. The word boring never entered our vocabulary when it came to fucking. That was one of the reasons I had been very surprised to find out that she was lukewarm to the idea of phone sex. I'd hinted quite suggestively at it, but she'd always found a way to dodge the issue.

I was disappointed to say the least but I didn't press the issue. First of all, I figured in the run of things, one month wasn't that long. It looked like we wouldn't be separated again in the foreseeable future as Billy Black seemed to want to keep her in Seattle and both of our families were here. And there weren't a whole lot of things, sexually speaking, that Bella was closed minded about, so I had to give her space if this was one of them.

In any event, Bella seemed more than eager to make it up to me now. She was riding me hard and fast and I wasn't going to last long at all.

There was something tingling at the back of my mind as she bounced on my lap. Something was just a little bit off. Yeah, Bella liked it rough and hot and frantic like this sometimes...but there was just something different. Her nails as they scraped at the nape of my neck and outside my shirt dug in just a little bit harder than usual. Her tongue, as it explored my mouth, was just a little more forceful. She would give little groans and whimpers that were just a little off. The rhythm at which she thrust her body against mine was not really passionate.

It was a lot like she was trying to prove something. We had fucked like that once before, and I hadn't enjoyed the look in her eyes afterward.

But she was so tight and warm and working me so quickly, it was hard to think about any of that. I kissed her back and held her tighter, letting my fingers grip her waist tightly. I thrust up into her, meeting her pace and whispered raggedly in her ear that I couldn't hold on.

I came hard...and for full seconds it was glorious.

Until I was able to form a coherent thought again.

Then I became aware of a hot moisture on my neck where her head was resting against me. I noticed the desperation with which she clung to me. Most horrifically of all, I heard the tell tale gasps and sniffles.

She was crying. The wetness that slid down my neck were tears.

"Bella?" I asked, running my hands up and down her back and trying to pull away so I could look at her. For a second she clung to me so tightly that I could hardly breathe. "What is it, doll? Did I hurt you? Please talk to me."

Crying is just ... not the reaction you want after hot sex. Any sex, really.

She didn't respond, just let out a muffled cry against my skin before she disentangled herself from me.

I watched Bella, my heart feeling heavy just at the set of her shoulders. She was...bowed. I didn't understand it. She walked to where her jeans lay on the floor and picked them up, pulling them back on with her back turned to me. "Bella?" I asked again, entirely out of my depth. She didn't do the silent girl thing the other guys had complained about - where they just expected you to know what was wrong, so I was at a loss as to what was going on.

Her head tilted backward as she stared at the ceiling for a moment, taking deep breaths and wiping away her tears. "I don't know how to say this," she whispered to no one.

"Whatever it is, darlin', you can tell me. You know that," I assured her, wondering if I should go to her.

Bella answered my question when she took a deep breath and turned around. She walked back to the couch and sat down, moving as slowly as if she were an old, old woman.

She sat in the seat furthest away from me on the couch.

She sniffled, obviously trying to keep her voice steady as she spoke. She was looking down, anywhere but at me.

"Do you remember when we first met…the morning after that first night? Do you remember I told you … why I trusted my instincts with you?" she asked her hands.

Of course I remembered that. The man she'd been with before Jacob; the one she'd lost because she didn't trust what she was feeling. I had tried to bring it up a few more times over the months we'd been together. Bella had revealed very little. Just that their time together was extremely brief and then he'd died. Since it was obviously something she didn't feel like she could explain, I had decided it was ridiculous to feel threatened by a dead man and had let the matter drop.

"I remember," I said simply. I reached over to take her hand but she backed away, curling further into the couch.

My stomach twisted, and I felt dread like a dead weight at my center. I wondered why it felt as though I was underneath a weight held up by a rope that was rapidly fraying; any second and the rope would snapped – and I'd be a pile of broken bones beneath it.

"He's not dead, Jasper," she whispered, finally.

I blinked at her. My mind was just blank. Then I remembered the wistfulness of her voice as she spoke about her emotional connection with this phantom man. How her feelings about me weren't as strong as her feelings about him.

How she didn't think anything could get stronger than that.

"He found you?" I asked, clenching my fist unconsciously. The instinct to protect what was mine was strong – confusing, as it had no target – but strong.

Bella looked up finally, and her eyes were pleading – just so full of sadness and turmoil that I simultaneously wanted to comfort her and wanted to run because I knew, from her expression, this was about to get a hell of a lot worse. "He didn't find me. I… Jasper I swear I didn't know. Neither of us knew. How could we?"

"You're not making any sense, Bella," I said, struggling to keep my tone even.

She took a deep breath, trying to hold back the tears that I could see shining in her eyes. "Neither of us knew the other was alive…until I stepped foot in your parents' house." The last few words were nothing more than a whisper I could barely hear. She waited, biting her lip as the words sunk in.

When realization came, I stood up as if I'd been burned. "Edward? I don't… you didn't…." I shook my head, trying to form a coherent thought. "But you didn't know him. At the house. You didn't know him."

She stood and stepped toward me, but I stepped back, reeling. She wrapped her arms around her middle. "We didn't know how to react. We didn't know what to say."

"Jesus," I muttered, because I didn't think she was aware she was speaking for both her and Edward. "You never said anything. How could you not say anything?" I stumbled, still trying to fully grasp the situation. "He hasn't…he didn't…."

"I didn't know what to say. I don't know what to say."

"Anything, Bella!" I snapped at her. "Anything is better than nothing. Anything is better than just letting me sit here like a g'damned fool."

"We didn't know what to do or what to say without hurting you," she responded, looking like she was only barely keeping her tears at bay.

"We?" I repeated, calling her on it this time. "You're a we? How do you know what Edward wants? He was out of here like a shot that day."

When she dropped her eyes I knew I wasn't going to like the answer, but she had apparently decided that full disclosure was the best option at this point. Little late for it. "He's told me," she said quietly.

That was a sucker punch to the gut as I realized the only way he could have told her was if they'd been alone together - outside my presence. "Told you? What…you've been talking to him?"

"Once in person. I went to see him that Saturday before I left. I ... I didn't want him to avoid you because of me." She sounded so broken that my heart panged.

"Is that all?" I asked through gritted teeth, trying to calm down. There was no way I could be rational when I was defensive and offensive and mad as hell all at once.

The silence that followed my question threw calm out the window. "We've talked online," she admitted.

"Well, isn't that just precious," I muttered, my voice dripping with sarcasm.

She looked up, obviously hurt, but fuck it all, I was hurting too. "Jasper-" she started.

"No," I interrupted. "All this time and you two have been talking behind my back?"

"It wasn't like that," she said, a hint of desperation to her tone. "We couldn't… How could we ignore each other? This is so confusing, and I can't just walk away from him… Go back to pretending he doesn't exist. He's your brother."

She sounded so lost and I knew I had to try to keep calm. The situation was not going to get better with me screaming at her. I didn't want to yell at her.

I sat back on the couch, leaning my elbow on my knee and my head on my hand. Too many thoughts and questions were fighting to come out.

One seemed pretty fucking important though. "What you said before…that first morning…what you said about your feelings for him – is that still true?" My voice sounded raspy - probably because my throat felt so damn tight.

My question was met with silence again and I felt physically sick. I heard Bella take a shuddering breath and knew she had lost her battle against her tears. She answered me then, though I had already guessed what she was about to say. "Yes."

Though it was a purely masochistic on my part, I had to know. "Are you in love with my brother?"

She whimpered softly; a sound that purely broke my heart. "Yes," she whispered.

I stared at my feet, trying to breathe though it honestly felt like an invisible fist had a strangle hold on my lungs and it was squeezing, squeezing, squeezing.

"Nothing's changed about the way I feel about you," Bella said fervently. "I'm still in love with you."

"But not as much as Edward," I said bitterly.

I felt her approach more than anything and I stood again, backing up. I felt like her touch might physically burn me. I couldn't feel her right now. She looked at me with those big, brown eyes full of tears. "Nothing's changed-" she started again, but I cut her off.

"Everything's changed, Bella. How can you…" I shook my head, running my hand through my hair and gripping. "Is that why you were crying when we… were you thinking about him?"

"I didn't want to be."

The anger was starting to rise again, and I was almost glad. I preferred it to the pain I couldn't do anything about. "But you were thinking of him. You wanted it to be him," I accused.

"No!" she raised her voice for the first time. "I wanted to be with you. Only you. I've missed you so much this month."

I scoffed. "Is that what you talked about with him? How much you missed me?" I asked derisively.

She stared at me, incredulous. "We talked. It was just talking."

"About what? Huh? This fucking love at first sight bullshit? Whatever little bit of time you spent with him that somehow makes him better than everything and everyone else? You know me, Bella. You can trust me. That means nothing?" Both my fists were clenched at my sides now and fury was building in me fast.

"Of course it means something. It means everything!" She shouted back. "Jasper. I'm here. I'm not with him. I can't... what I feel for him...I can't turn it off. I've tried... I'm trying..."

She stumbled for the right words but she couldn't explain. She really didn't need to.

Her love for me had grown from a mutual attraction that first day into a deeper, more mature love as our relationship progressed.

Her love for Edward just was.

"I have to get out of here." I thought it at the same time I said it, and was in motion in the next second.

"Please don't go," she said, her voice again dropping down to a whisper.

I lingered with my hand on the doorknob because a huge part of me wanted to turn around, take her in my arms and make her forget that my brother even existed. I wanted to go back to where we had been just an hour before when I'd been so, so happy to have her home after month apart.

But how could I ever touch her again and not wonder if it was Edward who she was thinking about? An hour ago I'd been an ignorant, lovesick asshole with the wool pulled over my eyes. An hour ago I'd been living a life I didn't know was a fantasy.

"Bella…answer me straight. Who contacted who first when you were in Texas," I asked, my voice low and even. I didn't turn around to look at her.

"H-He found me on Facebook, but-"

I didn't hear what else she was going to say because I was already out the door. My anger was out of control now and I needed some place to direct it. In a way, I could understand what was she was trying to say. I had no idea what to think and no idea how to make it right, if it even could be made right.

When I got to the car I sat in silence for a few seconds, trying to think clearly. I knew I didn't have the full story and part of me knew better than to go off, half-cocked, before I really understood what was going on. Still, that logical part of me was no more than a tinny voice in the back of my mind and he just wasn't in control of my actions at the moment.

Here's the thing – I was a fighter. If I wanted something, I worked for it – just like I'd worked my ass off in my relationship with Bella. It hadn't always been easy, as new as I was to the whole business of relationships.

If something threatened me and mine, I fought it. Just like those guys back when I was in college who I'd found trying to hurt a defenseless young girl for no other reason than their own pleasure. Just like when I'd heard those medics talking about how I wasn't going to make it and I'd fought tooth and nail to open my eyes again. It would have been easy to walk away. It would have been easy to let the darkness take me away from all the pain I was in.

There was nothing tangible for me to fight here. What could I do to change the way Bella felt?

I was furious and I needed somewhere to direct that fury.

With a kind of finality, I started the car and peeled out of the driveway a lot faster than I should have.

I was imagining all kinds of scenarios, but the one that kept on popping into my head was an image of my brother.

My brother had always been something of a charmer, with a natural gift for words and a nature that just drew people – womenfolk especially – in.

I could imagine, if he wanted Bella and she belonged to me, that he would innocently talk with her online, charming the hell out of her without her realizing it.

Maybe he thought he had the right since he technically knew her first.

Yeah, I got that neither of them could help what they felt, but they were both well in control of their actions. In my state I just couldn't figure any reason that could justify how Edward has pursued her when he knew she was with me.

This was a definite head or gut moment if ever I'd seen one. That was what we called it - Emmett, Riley, Garrett, Peter, and me had named it that. There were rules to play by. Any guy knew it. Every guy knew it. One of the biggest rules was that you never messed with a friend's girl. Didn't matter how deep you were or what the circumstances, if you messed with a girl who was, in whatever way, tied to your friend, you were subject to the rules of The Last Boy Scout. Head or gut - if you did the deed you got to decide where you were taking the punch and no one else was going to step in to save your ass when you were getting what was coming to you.

Except I didn't give Edward a choice. I just walked back into that bar, right up to him and punched him in the face, knocking him right off his barstool.

Because he wasn't merely a friend. He was my brother; my blood. And this wasn't some random lay. This was my girlfriend whom I'd had a great life with and a great life ahead of me up until I'd had to hear that she was in love with him.

For the first time, I understood how men in the Civil War could fight – brother against brother. In that moment, I wasn't remembering the way he had toddled after me when he was three and I was six. I wasn't remembering sitting cross-legged, side by side as we played video games. I wasn't remembering when I'd kissed a girl for the first time in high school and it was him I told afterward.

All I saw was the man who was threatening my way of life – and everything I held dear to me. So I was prepared for him to jump up and come at me, but he didn't. He just stayed there on the floor, propped up on his elbows with a trickle of blood coming from his lips.

He looked so damn defeated that it only pissed me off more. This was not what I wanted. I wanted a fight.

I took a step forward – I don't know, maybe I was going to hit him again, but suddenly I felt a strong hand on my arm, holding be back with a firm grip. I looked to the side and was aware that a bleary-eyed Emmett had run over. Rosalie was right behind him. "Jasper, what the hell?" Emmett asked. "What's going on?"

"What's going on is that Bella is in love with this asshole," I said, trying to yank my arm away. Fuck it all, Emmett was a strong motherfucker.

"What?" He and Rosalie exclaimed at the same time.

I ignored them, glaring down at Edward instead. "You think you can just walk in and take everything away from me, you have another thing coming."

He finally moved then, getting to his feet slowly and shrugging off the little bartender girl that had put her hands on his shoulders. I wasn't looking at her, I was just watching him. His eyes never left mine and never lost that defeated expression. "Don't you get it, Jasper?" he said, his voice, like the rest of him, just crushed. "I'm not fighting you for her. You win. If it's you she wants, I'm not going to argue it."

I scoffed - a bitter sound. "Whatever she wants right? Because you love her," I asked scathingly.

Edward looked down at his feet. "I do," he said simply.

I didn't know what to do with that.

Before I even realized what I was doing, I'd spun around, finally ripping myself out of Emmett's grip, and I was back out the door in seconds, ignoring the stares and muttering from the bar's few other patrons. Emmett and Rosalie were on my heels.

"Dude? Are you..." Luckily for him, Emmett stopped himself before he asked a very stupid question. Alright was the furthest from what I was at that moment. "What the hell, man?" he said helplessly.

Rosalie was a little more coherent. Too fucking coherent, really. "They're in love? How the hell? He's been here with you. I didn't even think they really knew each other at all. What. The. Fuck."

"Rosalie, shut the hell up!" I yelled. I growled in frustration, rubbing my eyes with the palm of my hand. "They knew each other. Before. Before me. I don't know. None of it fucking makes sense except that she loves him."

Saying those words was like stabbing myself with a razor sharp icicle. It was all sharp, freezing cold pain.

Without much more an explanation I started walking again, needing to be away from here or I was going to go back in there and get myself arrested - which was absolutely the last thing I needed on a night that had gone as far south as this one had.

"Where are you going?" Rosalie asked, jogging to keep up with me.

"My parent's house," I said, having not even realized I was thinking it until the words were coming out of my mouth. I felt so fucking disoriented - like the whole world was off kilter. How did this happen?

"You're going to Forks? Jasper, it's midnight," Rosalie put a restraining hand on my arm.

Knowing full well I was blowing up at the wrong person didn't stop me. "I can't stay here, Rose. Where the hell am I going to go? I can't go back home - I need to calm the fuck down. Your house is our house. There's no where else. Fuck!" I kicked my car hard, frustration climbing. "I can't fucking think right now."

"Okay," Rosalie said, suddenly soothing. She knew when it was pointless to try to talk me out of something.

I took a deep breath, trying to focus just long enough to stop being a prick to people who didn't deserve it. Emmett had caught up with us by then and was standing with his hands on Rosalie's shoulders, looking at me like he was at a total loss.

Well, that fucking made two of us.

"I'll call you tomorrow okay? I just... I need to think...or not think. I just-"

"It's okay," Rosalie assured me. "Go. The drive will probably help."

I just nodded and slipped into my car, getting the hell out of there.

As I hit the open road I tried to sort out what I was feeling - and even if I was doing the right thing by going to my parents. It was an almost primal need to be in the home I'd spent most of my teen years in.

As I drove I tried to process how my world had turned on end.

My brother had never been my enemy in any way, shape, or form. When we were little and he followed me everywhere, I adored him. When we were a little older and more equal, he was my best friend and constant playmate. Even when I got to high school and my interests really started taking shape, we still felt like friends, and I shared all my experiences with him before anyone else.

It wasn't always easy. Edward had always been just a little bit better than me at - well, everything. I played guitar and piano - but it was him who was some sort of prodigy. I liked to horse around and was good at most sports - he was the one on the sports teams at school. I got great grades in science - he had prize winning projects at the science fair. Mom and Dad were forever going to one of his events.

But even though on some level I acknowledged that I would have loved some of that attention, I was always happy for him. I was in the audience at his recitals. I was on the sidelines at his games. I was proud of him. Always.

Fuck. I didn't want to be in his damned shadow anymore. Not now - not for this.

I was so fucking confused and hurt. I knew there were some serious gaps in my knowledge I needed to fill before I could figure out what side was up, but one fact kept on slapping me in the face. Again and again.

My girlfriend was in love with my brother.

Everything made sense and nothing made sense all at once. Edward's attitude toward me this last month - how he couldn't look me in the eye sometimes; how he'd snap at me for the weirdest things. The way he snapped at me when we went to Mom and Dad's for Christmas.

Even Bella's unwillingness to talk dirty over the phone made sense.

Fuck it all.

My girlfriend was in love with my brother.

She always had been.

Edward had seen me off and on for a month, all the while knowing he was in love with my girl.

Bella had talked to me nearly every night, never bothering to mention that she was talking to Edward the whole time.

Edward, who, by the way, she had intense feelings for.

Because Bella and I - we were very much in love. Overwhelmingly so.

But apparently, what she felt for Edward was stronger than that.

Jesus Christ. What was I supposed to do with that?

It was just past four in the morning when I got to my parent's house. I walked in, being as quiet as possible. I reached the stairs and trudged up them feeling like an old man. I was so fucking tired...and tired of thinking...and tired of aching. I just wanted to turn it off for a few hours.

I had hoped I was being quiet enough that my parents hadn't heard, but as I passed by their room to get to mine, their door opened. Mom was blinking at me blearily but she must have seen the look on my face because the weariness was instantly replaced by worry. "Jasper, baby? What's going on? What's wrong?"

Dad appeared behind her, and my eyes automatically went to his face. The concern there was obvious but there was something missing. Surprise. Confusion

"You knew," I said to him, my voice sounding monotone and lifeless to my ears. I felt too tired for any emotion.

"Just the past week," he admitted gently, his voice apologetic. "Jasper, your brother-"

"Don't," I cut him off, my voice sharper than it had been a moment before. I wanted to be pissed at him but I didn't have the energy left to be angrier than I already was. "I just want to go to sleep."

Mom opened her mouth to protest, looking between Dad and me, but he wrapped an arm around her waist. He nodded at me, his eyes full of a sympathy I didn't want to see. "We'll be here when you wake up," he promised.

I didn't know just how much that was supposed to comfort me considering he'd kept Edward's secret. Maybe it was lucky that I didn't have the strength to think about it at that point. I just nodded at my parents and continued down the hall to my room.

It was a mercy that I was too exhausted to think anymore, and I fell asleep almost instantly.

A/N: First of all – I'm in love with jadedandboring. Totes. For serial. Zomg. Thank you for the beta work darl. MWAH.

Secondly – this chapter was ridiculously hard to write. I hated putting Jasper through what I did. I'm sorry.

Join us on the forum, will you? I'm kind of anxious to hear what y'all are thinking.

Also – it ain't over yet. Not by a long shot.