Disclaimer: Stephanie Meyer owns all things Twilight; I just enjoy playing with her characters and pulling them out of their comfort zones. ;)

Chapter 13

Previously…

Bella's POV

As I put on my carefully selected semi-professional outfit of a gray knee length pencil skirt, pretty and comfortable suede gray pumps, and my light pink feminine blouse, I found myself thinking more about my airport meeting that my upcoming academic one. I was officially going to be meeting Masen, a man who intrigued me, engaged my mind, excelled at making me laugh, and had turned into a friend of sorts. After putting on a delicate necklace, I did one final mirror check before grabbing my things and rushing out the door, the butterflies in my stomach having absolutely nothing to do with my academic meeting. My question was, was I nervous because I was meeting Masen or because Edward was coming home?

Edward Masen's POV

As I sat in the USO lounge in LAX (Los Angeles Airport, CA) nursing the solitary beer I was allowing myself while waiting for my connecting flight to Santa Barbara, I mused on what had led me here. First and perhaps most importantly, I felt this driving need to see my adoptive family and the Swans. This was something I'd become accustomed to over the past couple months, but the need itself was relatively new. I took another chug of my beer, as I thought back…

*Flashback*

"MOM, just stop already, okay?!", my teenage self grouched, as I looked down into the face of the beautiful, delicate Elizabeth Masen. Her green eyes crinkled around the edges with the affectionate smile that she shone up at me from her classically elegant face and she reached up in yet another attempt to tame my wild copper hair that matched hers. I had hit a growth spurt this past year, and even though I was still a teenager at 16, I had my mother in height by a good 5 inches…and counting. I took a breath in, and tried again, this time without the tone. "It's never going to lay straight Mom, you KNOW that. Just let it do its thing. You need to get to your seat anyway, I'm about to go on." I rested my hands on her shoulders and gave her a little squeeze, sticking my tongue out at her like a kid before giving her a wink. "You don't want to miss a moment of my 'impeccably moving performance', do you?"

"Oh Lordy, I knew you were going to bring that up!" She snickered, something not a lot of women could pull off but something she did adorably (or so my Dad told her every time I'd ever heard it). "Just because someone from the local paper came to your recital and wrote a rave review doesn't mean that you're Mozart, young man, or that you're getting out of taking out the trash that I know for a fact is still in my kitchen; despite me vividly remembering to tell you to take it out before school this morning." Just then, I heard my name being called and I moved to release Mom's shoulders. She reached up once again, her slender, soft and cool hands framing my face. "My beautiful boy," she said, almost to herself. She gave me yet another smile full of maternal warmth and whispered up at me, "Knock'em dead, love." She released me and we each went our separate ways. As I walked out onto the stage of our local community theater, I felt the familiar nerves pop up. I did my formal bow to the audience, feeling awkward and gawky in my tux that was almost too small for my lanky frame. Gosh, but I hated playing for an audience. My mother had started me in lessons when I was a young boy, and before long I surpassed what she could teach me. She then found a colleague, through the university that she taught at, who agreed to hear me. After I'd played for her, Mrs. Prenot had immediately taken me under her wing and I'd excelled under her tutelage. Fast forward to now, and I was the youngest soloist being featured in the college's Winter Presentation of Music; and yes, being 16 and playing with people about 4 years older than me intimidated the hell out of me. I straightened from my bow, turned smartly, and walked over to the grand piano dominating the stage space. As I took a seat, I couldn't help but look across the piano to the last two seats in the front row directly across from me. I saw my Mom with her unmistakable look of pride and I watched as my father hurried into the seat next to her, arriving just in time. She shook her finger at him before he gave her his customary kiss hello, and slide his arm around her shoulders. They turned toward the staged as the unit they were, and my dad shot me a thumbs up. I caught myself breaking the solemnity of the moment with the small smile their usual antics brought to my mouth. I then took a deep breath, put my fingers to the keys, and played, letting the music sweep me up and out of myself until I felt the absolute peace that I derived from playing.

After my performance, which closed the annual Winter Presentation this year, I changed into my street clothes backstage. I exchanged fist bumps with some of the other guy performers in the dressing room, and was about to leave when Zeke stopped me. Zeke was my idol, since he was in the music program but was also the star quarterback for the college's football team. On top of all that, he was genuinely a good guy and took time to talk with everyone, help people out when they needed it, and all that included hanging out with me when I came to practice at the College that first couple times and no one talked to me. After telling me I did well, Zeke said the thing that any 16 boy would love to hear. He invited me to an afterparty/hang out at his family's house. I couldn't believe it. Zeke invited ME to a party, and there was bound to be hot college girls there! I embarrassed myself a little with how quickly I replied, stutter and all, my 'Yeah!' just a little too enthusiastic to be considered cool. We exchanged info and I told him I'd clear it with my parents and shoot him a text. As I walked out the back stage door, seeing my parents huddled in their winter coats to ward off the Chicago winter chill and watching as my Dad fished out his car keys and chucked them at me, I caught the keys in my hand and felt on top of the world.

*End Flashback*

How quickly things can change, I mused bitterly to myself, the burn of guilt and shame searing me even after all these years. My Dad had been teaching me how to drive and it would be the first time I was driving with both parents in the car. On the way home, I'd told them about Zeke's invitation and had inadvertently started a fight. My (sane) parents were worried about a 16 year old boy going to a college party, and I was vehemently against missing it. During the argument, things got heated as I argued and pushed for my way like the child I still was in so many ways. With my attention elsewhere, I'd accidentally sped up and as I went around a corner, I hit a patch of black ice on the road. I can still remember the sickening spinning and the helplessness of the wheel not responding, even with my dad reaching over the center console to try to get me to turn into the spin instead against it as my inexperience had me doing. My Dad had been stronger than me and wrestled the steering wheel from my frozen in fear, death grip and managed to bring us to a halt. After the sudden spinning, I remember it being so suddenly quiet and still, as if the world was holding its breath in the hush. I look across at my Dad, stammering out apologies and feeling his hand come down warm and reassuring on my shoulder as he asked if my mother was alright. I looked in the rearview mirror, my panic renewing. She was so small, what if she hit her head…when I made eye contact with her through the mirror and watched her reply she was fine, my eyes watered up in relief. Everyone was ok. Through my watery vision, I still looked at her through the mirror as she reached forward to put her hand on top of my Dad's on my shoulder, reassuring me. And I saw, as she and my father couldn't, the watery, squiggly glaring headlights of the big rig come around the corner right before it barreled into us.

My parents died that night because of my stupidity, my arrogance, my lack of control, and my inability to protect them by driving safe. To further compound my guilt, my parents hadn't been yelling at me like I deserved, but they'd tried to comforting me and strengthening me as they always had. I remember waking up in the hospital, frantic for that familiar touch, and being told by a tall blonde-haired man that I vaguely recalled from my childhood that I would never feel that touch again. My father and Carlisle Cullen had been friends since med school, the best of mates even when we lived half a country away from them. Both of my parents didn't have families, so my dad had written Carlisle into their will as my guardian in case anything happened to my parents. Yeah, I said will, and no my parents weren't paranoid. My father was the last living Masen, born from a dynasty of powerful business men, and despite my father not choosing to go into business like his forefathers, he did still inherit a stupid sum of money and property from them. Yup, you guessed it. I'm loaded. Surprised? Most people are. Usually when you have enough money to make it to the top twenty-five of Forbes' List, most people don't expect you to be a college dropout who joined the military to find an outlet for your anger issues.

I went to take another swig from my beer only to realize I'd drained it during my trip down my fucked up memory lane and was clutching the brown bottle tight enough to have a sizable crack start down its side. "Calm down, moron," I muttered to myself under my breath, "get your shit together already. You're acting like a fucking little girl." I blew out my next exhale as I watched my fingers relax on the bottle until I left it standing on the bar. It looked lonely. Fuck this. "Gimme another", I shot at the bartender who had been trying way too hard to get me to notice her and her obviously fake double D's until I shot her down. Now, she let out an affronted huff, as if me asking her to do her job was equal to me asking her to suck my dick in public. Whatever. As the cool new bottle hit my palm, I took a solid chug before figuring I might as well finish my sad little reminisce.

After I was released from the hospital, Carlisle told me that I'd be going home with him to some place called Forks. Gone was the teen that had been the apple of my parent's eyes and their greatest pride, in his place a sullen, angry and lost boy. I promptly treated Carlisle to the silent treatment the whole way to my new "home", only speaking when necessary. I treated my time with the Cullens as a prison sentence. I acted out, stole things, broke their trust over and over again, until they granted my wish to be sent away to school. I couldn't take their kindness, couldn't see how close their family was without being reminded of all I'd lost. I got to military school and they kicked my ass. The regime was exactly what I needed, a set schedule of expectations and monotony that I could lose myself in. I rushed through my classes, graduating at 17. I then went "home" to the Cullens for that summer before going to College, holding myself carefully apart from them and treating them only with icy politeness. College was where shit spiraled out of control. I'd never dealt with my parent's deaths fully and I became self-destructive, fucking almost anything female that moved (and let me) to get out of my head, drinking until I blacked out, doing what drugs I could find to escape into a high that always led to a worse low when I was thrust mentally kicking and screaming back into my pathetic reality. I was supposed to get my inheritance at 18, but with all of my destructive behavior and my eventual arrest and expulsion from college, Carlisle got the courts to hold my inheritance in trust until I was 24.

I'll never forget our conversation on the way home from the airport. I'd flown in, thinking I was tough shit and that College could go fuck itself for all I cared. I was only staying long enough to collect my inheritance from Carlisle, who was the executor of my father's will, and then blowing out of the fucking hick town of Forks, Washington. I had essentially unlimited funding and a world full of destruction to wreak on myself. About halfway home from the airport, Carlisle pulled over and informed me that he'd blocked me from my inheritance for another 5 years. As he told me this, he reached out and put his hand on my shoulder to try and get across his concern, I assume. I went ballistic. I had a strict no touching policy for the Cullens, and Carlisle inadvertently touched me just like my father used to. Still high from what I'd snorted in the airplane bathroom, I poured all of my self-loathing and revulsion out on him after ripping his hand from my shoulder and storming out of the car. I belittled him, his family, his life, his choices…I called him every single loathsome thing I felt about myself. By the end of it, I was sobbing like a child. Carlisle stood there and took it. Carlisle was a man much like my father, and he knew even when I didn't that I was unable to deal with my own pain so I was projecting it all over him like a dick. He gave me a choice. Right there, out in the snow on the side of the highway, a couple feet from the 'Welcome to Forks!' sign. He told me he refused to bring me home to the family like I was. Even after all the shit I'd dumped on him, he didn't say 'my' family, he said 'the family' like I was still a vital part of something that I'd been bucking ever since I'd woken up in the godforsaken hospital. He told me that I could take the $20,000 he'd wire into my account and go snort, drink, and fuck myself to death. He told me that he hated that option and that I'd be wasting my second chance at life. I didn't give a fuck. I was about to agree and get the hell out and away, it didn't matter where just as long as it was away from this man that looked at me as if he wanted to take all of my pain away and into himself. I opened my mouth but before I could form words Carlisle said, "Your parents would be so disappointed in you, Edward Masen. The man you're becoming wouldn't even be able to meet your Mother's eyes in shame and your Father would want to beat the shit out of you until you came to your senses, like I want to."

I remember staring at him in utter shock. We never talked about my parents. I refused, a very obvious sign of my blatant inability to cope. I opened my mouth to spew some more bullshit and found I couldn't speak. What he said cut me to the bone, and I felt like I was figuratively once again bleeding in the snow on the side of a fucking highway. Carlisle pressed his advantage and gave me the other of my two options, saying, "Or. You could agree to be dropped off at a rehab facility I know where you can detox and we can work on fashioning you into the man your parents raised you to be. You choose, son." Kneeling there in the snow, I made the only decision that would let me be able to finally look in the mirror again and see my father's eyes and mother's hair in my reflection without feeling like I wanted to die. Suddenly feeling centuries old, I got to my feet, looked Carlisle in the eye, and croaked out four words: "Help me fix myself".

After rehab (during which Esme and Carlisle let Emmett and Alice think I was still away at College) and my subsequent massive psych overhaul from a team of shrinks that I detested, I entered the world again, sober and without an anchor. Craving the feeling of belonging from my year of military school, I walked from the rehab center to the nearest enlistment office and enlisted in the Army. Best decision of my life, though I'm pretty sure I disappointed Carlisle and Esme with that one. I became a medic and a leader, and found a way to fashion myself into a man that I could respect even if I still didn't like myself more than half the time. While the Army and being enlisted definitely finished rubbed off my rich boy shine and taking sand paper to my smooth edges, I took pride in my work and in my ability to help lead my men; my manners and language taking a hit didn't really phase me one way or another.

However, this deployment, I'd worked on touching. Which sounds pathetic even when I think about it, but not only did I have to work at it, I had to work at it hard; my own personal reenactment of Sisyphus and his damn massive boulder. I'd let friends clap me on the back or shoulder, exchanged a couple hugs with female comrades, and been a shoulder for my friends to cry on when they needed it. I still fought revulsion at first with physical contact, but my shrink kept reminded me about learned behaviors and my need to stop letting my issues with touching warp me. I then, uncouthly as Esme would say, and as crassly as possible told my shrink that I didn't have any problem with touching when it was girls bouncing on or sucking my dick. He reiterated that I needed to limit my excesses (what he called my urges to drink and fuck 'excessively' to overcompensate for my need to do blow) so that they are outlets but not emotional crutches. Blah blah blah bullshit. The guy's name was Alvin, but I called him Alfred because he reminded me of Michael Gough's character in Batman & Robin: elderly, calm, and with the patience of Job. Despite my tendency to give him shit, Alfred was good and after years of seeing him, he was one of the few people I trusted completely…but damn that man was a complete buzz kill and impossible to get a rise out of.

Anyway, I missed the family. Despite all of my walls and everything I'd put them through, the Cullens remained. Even if I didn't and don't think I ever could love them quite like I loved my parents, I respected them immensely. I was determined to show them the progress I'd made. And, if I was being honest with myself, I was determined to re-meet this Ms. Isabella Cullen who had become my new drug of choice with her humor and character that brought a glimmer of something…more into my carefully structured life. I wasn't sure what the more was, but damned if I wasn't going to find out. I finally heard my flight being called over the overhead, so I threw a couple dollars down on the bar—with an extra $20 tip because I'd been a bit of a dick to Ms. Double D behind the bar—and walked over to my gate. After the stupid wait in line and check in, they bumped me to first class for my "service". This was a bit of a sore-spot for me, because while yes I was inadvertently protecting them through my actions, I joined the military for selfish reasons, and I'd stayed in because the ability to protect filled my need to protect those around me since I'd been unable to…whatever. Anyway, they didn't need to deal with my bullshit so I thanked them (politely even), and sat in my seat. As everyone else filed in down the rows, I pulled out my cell and pulled up the last email from Isabella. It contained only two lines, with the first being confirmation that she read my flight info and the second line said merely: Travel safe, be well, and see you soon. I reread the line for the tenth time, before pulling up a reply email and typing back just a few words.

Isabella,

I'm working on it. See you soon.

Masen

I hit send as the flight attendants told everyone to turn off their phones. I put in my headphones, turned on some music, and as the plane's engines roared to life, I mentally added the one word that the email was missing from my mantra: "I'm working on it, babygirl. See you soon." The plane took off with the soldier dressed in fatigues in seat 2B seemingly grinning at absolutely nothing and setting the hearts of the flight attendants to thumping.

*A/N: *sniffles* Okay y'all, you still with me? Breathe everyone (including me). Whoo-sahh. Why would he do this to us?! As if Edward didn't have a strong enough following already with his rugged soldier-ness, let's throw in the mother of all wounded/lost boy syndromes and how he's fighting to overcome, persevere, and continue to grow from his rock bottom. My darn heart, y'all. Family is everything and the loss of one so devastating…Our Edward glossed over much of it, but hopefully that pang in your heart for him hit you just right. Edward wouldn't be this story's Edward without his life changing angst.

Next chapter is going to be The Showdown. How is everyone going to react? How is Bells going to take it? How is Edward going to explain without looking like a manipulative arse?! Is Bells going to honor his request for a just the two of them lunch/dinner? Would you, dear readers? Let me know. Theories, opinions, reviews, tons of love…y'all are old hats at this and know the gist by now. ;)

This is the last chapter in my massive 5 chapter upload. Yes, I know that I'm horribly slow at updating. Yes, I KNOW it is beyond frustrating, and as a fellow reader it drives me crazy when authors have no upload schedule. BUT! I am in the last grueling months of nursing school and I don't want to make promises to y'all that I can't keep. Therefore, I will continue to update when I can. It might be months and then a massive upload, it might be a chapter a month, etc. However, I promise I'm working on it and thinking of y'all; I sneak away to Dear Soldier-land when I can. As always, thank you for your interest, feedback, and your willingness to follow the story. It truly thrills and fulfills me. So, with that, I will see y'all in the next chapter!

~Lovingly yours, Starryeyedauthor