Disclaimer: Twilight's not mine.

0

0

0

EPOV

"Can I get you anything else, Mr. Cullen? Another drink, perhaps?"

It was the fucking flight attendant again, leaning down into my face just a little too close, holding my gaze too long, too intently, and of course, flashing her cleavage at me…again.

I sighed and closed my eyes, effectively shutting her down.

"No, thank you." I said tersely.

She hadn't left me alone since we'd taken off from Rome. I knew she was angling for a session in the first class bathroom or some shit like that, but I was seriously not interested and I didn't know how many times I had to say it before she would just fucking leave me alone.

Not that she wasn't hot. And if this were six months ago, hell yeah, we'd be in the bathroom now doing God knows what. But that was six months ago and for better or for worse, I was not the same.

In that way, I suppose I was much better. No more random sex with flight attendants in airplane bathrooms. That had to be an improvement. The drinking, the drugs, the anonymous sex…it all stopped with Bella and hadn't started back up since she'd left. Not that it wasn't tempting. At first all I wanted to do was to get trashed and stay trashed for as long as humanly possible. I wanted to go get another Bugatti and finish what I'd started back when I broke my leg. Anything to stop the misery and escape.

But on my flight over to Italy, I'd made myself sit and think in spite of the pain I was in. I was on my way to meet with Martin Scorsese about my lead role in his new movie. It was by far the biggest thing that had ever happened in my career. I wasn't just back to where I'd been, I was far surpassing it. It would be stupid to throw everything away and sink back into dissipation because I lost Bella. It was because of her that I got it all back anyway. For her sake, I needed to hold it together professionally. I owed her that.

Yes, in terms of my career and my public behavior, I was definitely better. But in almost every other way, I was infinitely worse. After I spent a couple of weeks in Rome with Scorsese doing readings for the film, I just stayed on. It seemed easier to hide out in there than to face LA again. To face my empty house. To face Alice's wrath. To face Bella's screaming absence from my life.

I didn't enjoy Rome. Hell, I didn't even see it. Mostly I just lay on the bed in my hotel room, being miserable. I watched Italian daytime television. And since I didn't speak a word of Italian, that meant I spent weeks watching gibberish. But I stayed out of trouble and out of the limelight, and that was important right now. The public meltdown was in overdrive and the last thing I needed was the media dogging my every step, blowing up every order I placed for coffee into some hot and heavy affair with the barista. So I hid, and I mourned, and I felt lousy about myself, reliving every moment of my time with Bella, examining each juncture when I could have done it right and instead did it all wrong.

The hiding out in Rome had the unexpected benefit of throwing water on the worst of the public relations fire I'd created. Laurent had been right about that. I gave the media absolutely nothing to work with. The studio handling the Scorsese project had a moment of anxiety when the whole thing broke, but when I showed up promptly in Rome to work and I did nothing but work, they relaxed and the whole thing moved forward. In that respect, crisis averted.

I hid from everyone, including Alice. She called non-stop at first, and I let them go to voicemail. I just couldn't face her anger. I already felt bad enough on my own, I didn't need her to remind me that I was a completely worthless shit. I texted her to let her know that I was in Rome and that I was okay, but nothing personal. I would call her when I got home and hope that I could fix things with her then. It was the best I could do.

But I couldn't hide forever. Once word spread that I'd been signed to the Scorsese project, a flood of scripts and offers had come into Marc's office. I needed to go back and deal with my career, now that I had one again.

The plane began its descent into LA and I steeled myself, wondering what I would have to face now that I was back home. Watching the lights below us grow larger, I wondered if Bella was down there somewhere, and how she was doing. And against my will, I wondered if she was thinking about me, even a little.

0

0

0

The front gate buzzer pulled me away from my listless unpacking. I'd gotten no further than moving my toiletries out of the suitcase and into the bathroom. I was sorely tempted to just leave everything else for Maria to deal with.

I couldn't imagine who could be at the gate at this hour. Nobody knew I was back except Alice. I'd texted her from Rome just to let her know I was coming home. It might be her, which I both dreaded and looked forward to. I knew that conversation would be ugly and unpleasant, but I still missed her and I wanted to see her again. I just hoped we could get past this and she could forgive me. If I lost her, too….

I hit the button for the intercom. The voice that came back at me was the last one I ever expected to hear.

"It's Jasper."

What. The. Fuck?

I didn't respond on the intercom, I just buzzed him through the gate and waited by the front door as he made his way down the drive. I heard his car door and opened the front door to meet him.

He stopped on the front step, a few feet away from me, just staring. And I stared back. I couldn't imagine what the hell had brought him here, of all people.

He finally inhaled deeply, like he was steeling himself, and he spoke.

"Explain it to me. What she saw that night. Explain what happened."

"What? Why the hell do you want to know? And why should I tell you?" If I was puzzled before, now I was absolutely baffled. And annoyed. How dare he come here and confront me about shit that was none of his business.

Jasper exhaled in frustration, started to say something, then stopped himself, squeezing his eyes shut. He didn't want to be here, talking to me about this, that much was absolutely clear from his body language. Mine wasn't much better, arms crossed tightly over my chest, chin up, eyes narrowed. Well, at least we were on the same page about that.

"Jesus, just tell me. I have to know if I'm gonna…." He trailed off, then started again on another tack, "Because Alice is completely ripped up about this and she's at me constantly telling me there was no way you would have done what it looked like you did and that…"

"Wait a minute. Alice?" Alice? What the hell did she have to do with this?

"Yeah. She's been really upset and she's defending you to me like crazy and if what she says is true…"

"Why have you been talking to Alice?" How did he even know Alice outside of Bella? And Bella's been away for six weeks.

Jasper just stared at me for a long moment, like I was speaking a foreign language.

"Shit. You still don't know?" he finally said.

"Know what?"

"I know you haven't been talking to Alice, but when it hit the media, I figured…"

"What about Alice?" I snapped.

"Me and Alice. We're…you know…together," he finally spit out awkwardly with a shrug of his shoulders.

The word just hung there between us. Together. Jasper and Alice. Together. My brain wheeled wildly while I tried to process that piece of information. And then my brain just fucking shut down and my vision went red and the next thing I knew my fist was connecting with Jasper's jaw with a loud and satisfying crack.

"Fuck!" he cried out, his head snapping back as he staggered backwards. His hand shot up to his jaw. I lurched forward, maybe I was about to deck him again, I wasn't really thinking, just acting on some wild animal impulse to end him.

"Are you fucking crazy? What the fuck did you do that for?" Jasper was shouting.

"How could you do that to her? Alice is her friend!" I hardly recognized my own voice, it was nothing but a low growl.

"Friends with who? What the fuck are you talking about?"

Jasper had retreated a step when I first hit him, but he'd gone no farther and he looked like he was going to square off and hit me back, which was just fine with me. He was a little taller than me and I was distantly aware that I only knew how to fight in movies, which is all fake, and he grew up with Emmett, so he could probably do some serious damage. But I didn't fucking care. Let him do his worst.

"She's friends with Bella! How could you do that to Bella?"

"Do what to Bella? What the hell are you talking about?"

"You and Bella! What the fuck do you think?"

"What about me and Bella?"

I just stared at him a minute, still glowering. How could he not know what I was talking about? Slowly, Jasper's expression began to change. His eyes grew wide, he lost his aggressive stance.

"Are you telling me….did you think that Bella and I had some kind of…?"

"Yeah. You were together the night I met you."

"What?" He looked genuinely baffled and I suddenly got the feeling he really did have no idea what I was talking about.

"When you came to get her. You were together."

"Fuck," Jasper breathed out heavily. His face fell. "Really? You really believed that? Fuck."

"Well how about you fucking set me straight since there seems to be a hell of a lot I don't know?"

Jasper turned and cast his unseeing gaze up the drive while he dragged a hand through his hair. He exhaled heavily and turned back to face me.

"I've never been with Bella. Not ever."

"But what about that night? And the way she is with you…"

"You and your dickhead friend were freaking her out that night. So I played it up a little to get you to back off. I had no idea that we'd ever see you again. And the way we are…I don't know…Christ, we've known each other since we were kids. She's like my sister."

I said nothing, I just stared at him and processed.

"Dude," he continued with more force, hands raised in front of him for emphasis, "I swear. Not ever. Not once. Not even close. I've bought her tampons, for Chrissake! It's never been like that."

"Okay, okay. I got it," I finally said, thinking back on all the time I wasted being jealous of a phantom. I ran my hands through my hair in frustration.

"Please don't tell me you thought that while you were with her," Jasper said, with more edge to his voice.

"No... no, I figured it was over by the time she and I…." I couldn't even finish talking about it, so I changed the subject, "So you and Alice, huh? Why didn't Alice tell me?"

"Because you hate me. She thought you'd be pissed," Jasper reached up and rubbed his jaw where I'd decked him, "God knows why she was worried about that."

"I hated you because of Bella," I snapped.

"Yeah, I'm figuring that out now," he sighed, then he shook his head, closed his eyes and chuckled softly.

"So," I said, losing my fucking patience with him, "you want to tell me why you're really here? Because I'm guessing you didn't come to tell me about Alice."

"I told you. I want to know what happened that night."

"Why?"

"You tell me first." Jasper crossed his arms over his chest. Stupid, stubborn, arrogant bastard. I still hate him, Bella or not.

"You'd better come in," I said, stepping back and waving him past me. We were still standing in front of my open front door, having this whole standoff on the front steps.

He hesitated for just a moment and then brushed past me into the entryway. He stopped there, arms crossed over his chest again, inside but making no move to get comfortable.

"Nothing happened that night," I said abruptly, "I was drunk, beyond drunk, which is a shitty excuse, I know, but it's true. I was blacked out for most of it. But Vicki swears nothing happened. I knew her from a long time ago, she came on to me, she kissed me, I tried to leave, but I was too fucked up. So she got me in a cab and dropped me at home. I woke up alone that morning."

Jasper said nothing for a long moment, he just looked at me.

"That's it?"

"Yeah, that's exactly what happened," I sighed.

"So, yeah it was stupid getting that wasted, but you didn't actually sleep with her. It sounds like you didn't do anything. Why didn't you try to explain it to Bells? You just vanished."

I sighed and rubbed the back of my neck. I so didn't want to go into this with Jasper, of all people. But he didn't really seem to want to go into it either and yet, he was here to do just that. I sensed this was important in some way, so I sucked up my discomfort, the dislike I had for him, and pushed on through.

"I came to her hotel, the day she left. I saw her in the hallway with you."

"Please tell me you didn't think…."

"No. At least not then. But I thought you might, someday. If I stayed out of the way. And I thought you were better for her than me. I was feeling really fucking miserable about what I'd done. That she'd seen that, that James had messed with her at the club. It should have been me there taking care of her, not Seth. But I was in the back, too wasted to move, getting felt up by some desperate starlet. She's better off without me," the disgust in my voice surprised even me and I'd been living with it for six weeks. "Look what I've done to her life," I continued, "all the paparazzi and shit…none of that would have happened to her if not for me."

Jasper stared at me for a long minute. It felt like an hour. I'd just laid my inner fears and insecurities bare to a guy I hate and I could see him turning it over in his mind, judging me. I shifted nervously under his intense blue gaze.

"Alice says you love her," he finally said.

There was no point in denying it so I just nodded tightly, "I do."

Finally I just couldn't take it anymore. I spilled my guts for him, he needed to do the same for me. "Jasper, just fucking tell me why you came here. Is she okay?"

He gave me another of those endless stares before he slowly shook his head.

"No," he said on his exhale, "no, she's not okay."

"What's wrong with her?" my voice was tight, my heart beating fast. If something had happened to her it would have been in the news, I would have heard. Wouldn't I?

Jasper finally looked away from me and his face contorted in anguish. "She's broken herself to pieces for us," he said softly.

"What do you mean?"

"All this shit, she did it for us. They told her she had to get out front and take the lead, so she did it," he was rushing the words out now that the floodgates had opened, "They wanted her in this twisted set up with you so she did it. She asked us all what we though, if any one of us had told her not to, she never would have done it. She didn't want to do it. But we told her it was okay and so she said yes. The personal stuff with you is what's really ended her, but if she hadn't agreed to the set up in the first place you never would have gotten a crack at her, and none of this would have happened. And we told her to do it. That song? She didn't want that on the album. It was way too personal for her, it meant too much to her. But I pushed her, I made her ask you, and now she can't even look at our first CD and her personal shit is all over the radio. And now what? She's lost every shred of a normal life, she's hounded night and day by the media and the fucking paparazzi. Her whole life is spent hiding in the back of some limo or in some hotel room. She's like some fucking circus animal. She lives her life in a cage until we drag her out and shove her on stage to do her thing, then it's back to the cage till the next time. I mean, what the fuck kind of existence is that?"

Jasper paused to draw breath and I could see how upset he was. What he was telling me was killing him. And in that moment, I began to hate him a little less.

"The album sales are through the roof," he continued, "and when they send the sales figures over, I can't even fucking look at them. Because we paid for that success with Bella. I can't undo the rest. I can't make her anonymous again. I can't get her privacy back, I can't make them stop hounding her. But you…" he trailed off and turned his head to stare hard at me again, his eyes intense and glistening, the muscles in his jaw working, as if making up his mind about something monumental. "If Alice is right about you…if you didn't fuck around on her, if you love her….then maybe I could give her back you."

He quit talking, looking spent. I was speechless, just trying to absorb everything he'd said, his raw pain while he'd said it. Yes, there was never anything romantic between them, I could see that now. But there was no denying he loved her, the same as Emmett did. And seeing her in pain was killing him. Suddenly I was sure I didn't hate him anymore.

And she was in pain. Because of me. I'd spent so long unsure if she felt anything at all for me, thinking that she had been just fine when I walked away, that she was better off without me. But according to Jasper, that wasn't the case. She was just as broken as I was.

"Does she…" I had to stop and close my eyes and clear my throat before I could continue, "Are you sure it's me she wants?"

Jasper looked at me, dumbfounded, "You're kidding, right? When that shit went down, she was shattered. She still is shattered. For you."

I felt lightheaded and sick, elation swamped with misery, and all of it tinged with panic and desperation. There had to be a new name for tangled, fucked up feelings like this. I had to find her, talk to her, beg her, whatever it took. She had to let me back in, she had to let me try.

"Where is she? Did she come back with you?"

He shook his head, "No, she stayed on a few days in Seattle to hang with Jake."

"Jake? Jacob Black? Her ex?" Fuck, that was all I needed now.

Jasper looked surprised that I knew who he was but he nodded, "Don't go flipping out, though. Jake's a friend. Yeah, they used to be together and I'm pretty sure Jake's still carrying a torch, but that ship has sailed for her. Believe me, I wish he still had a shot with her, but right now, there's nobody in her head but you. "

"I have to talk to her," I muttered, intense and single-minded. I felt practically panicky with the impulse to find her. I wouldn't rest until I did.

He nodded, his lips tight, "She flies in tomorrow morning. She's going to her place. That's all I'm giving you. You have to do the rest."

I nodded soberly. It was enough. I would do whatever it took for the rest of my life if I could just fix this.

Jasper said nothing else, he just turned and headed for the front door. He had his hand on the doorknob, then paused to look back at me.

"And call Alice. She's beside herself worrying about you."

"Yeah, I will," I said quietly. I wondered if I should say thanks. Was that appropriate in a bizarre situation like this? First I had to fix it. If I could fix it, I'd thank him later. Besides, Jasper didn't look like he wanted to hang around for my thanks. He'd done what he came to do and now he looked positively desperate to escape. That was fine with me. Because I had a whole lot of thinking to do tonight.

Jasper jogged down the front steps and hopped into his car. I closed the front door and leaned my head against it, listening to his car recede down the drive.

Tomorrow.

Tomorrow I would see her. And I would try.