Disclaimer: I do not own anything publicly recognisable. Twilight belongs to Stephenie Meyer and real people belong to themselves.

Chapter 29: EPOV

Some people say that your life is defined by the choices you make and the actions you take; I would have to both agree and disagree. I think that life is defined by how you chose to react to something out of your control; to things that you would not have chosen to happen. What happened in Bella's trailer this morning wasn't exactly what I would have chosen to happen – or no, maybe that's not exactly it because goodness knows I couldn't have chosen anything else in that moment. No, what I mean was that I wouldn't have chosen that exact situation for what happened to take place. After having told Carmen just his morning that I was not mistaking fantasy with reality, I do something extremely suggestive of that with Bella. I was a god damn idiot. There was no other word to describe me at that very moment in time. After weeks and weeks of carefully – and sometimes forcefully – talking myself out of doing anything rash or stupid, I do something that could definitely be interpreted as both. I could see Rosalie's response if I told her the story of what had happened earlier today. There would be the characteristic eye roll, the disbelieving laughter and the use of the words 'bloody plonker' – in that exact sequence. Jasper would probably just shake his head in exasperation and pity, leaving me to feel like some loser who couldn't do anything right; not that this was too far from the truth anyway.

I threw my head back, banging it against the rather hard back of the sofa, but that was the point; maybe I could knock some sense into myself.

*

The word 'wow' had come out of my mouth before I could really think about what saying it might be taken to mean. I hadn't even really fully thought of the word before it was out there for Bella to hear and react to. The thing was, that was the only word to describe how I felt when I saw her sitting down in her trailer her hair loosely tied up with tendrils coming out at random places. She had her head bent, eyes studying the rather large collection of papers in front of her, her teeth worrying her lip absent-mindedly as she concentrated. Even though she had been made up to look much more like Kristen, what she was doing was so typically Bella that I couldn't see the character imposed onto her at all. Neither the carefree party-girl nor the heartbroken shell of a woman that Bella would portray throughout the course of the film would have been in a setting such as this one in front of me. But Bella would be; Bella had been many times before and thinking about the times we'd both been sitting much like this made me smile.

It must have been my good mood that made me lose control of my mouth and the word was uttered out before I could stop it. That was my excuse anyway and I was absolutely sticking to it.

Bella looked up and smiled up at me and again the same sentiment that had escaped my mouth before echoed in my head. If Carmen could see into my head right now she'd probably send someone to New York to 'keep me in line'. "Hey," Bella greeted, closing the script that she had been poring over just seconds before. "What did you say?"

I was both understandably relieved and inexplicably disappointed that she hadn't heard what I'd said, though I didn't want to examine my latter reaction too carefully. I had more pressing matters to attend to right now – like what I was going to say to her that wouldn't just be a repeat of what I'd just let slip. The only thing I could come up was some asinine comment about how she looked like her, but also different and how amazed I was at the transformation. You would have thought I didn't know what an actor was with my response and if I could have smacked myself in the head without attracting attention to the act, I would have done it.

Bella, however didn't seem to be holding my idiocy against me and she actually laughed whilst agreeing with me. "I thought the same thing when I saw you shoot earlier."

I was slightly horrified at the thought of her watching me shooting the scene; I thought she would have been busy with wardrobe or makeup or something. It didn't even cross my mind that she would have the time to actually watch me, but now that I knew she had, I was nervous as hell to find out what she actually thought about it, though I would never actually ask her. I didn't want her to feel like I was some needy amateur, always seeking her approval for everything I did. It wasn't like that anyway; I just...well, I wanted Bella to admire me? God that sounded so fucking ridiculous, but the girl was amazing at what we did and I didn't want her to feel like I would be the weak link in our partnership. I knew that Bella didn't actually think this and when we were acting together I didn't really have any of these thoughts, but her watching me acting on my own or with someone else was a different thing all together. She had chance to objectively judge me then and I absolutely did not want to be found lacking in Bella's eyes – in any way.

"You watched us?" I couldn't look at her, for fear of seeing disappointment on her face.

"Angela and I both did," she confirmed.

It didn't really make me less anxious to know that someone else had been watching with her, but it didn't add any to the irrational fear I had about Bella watching me. I could feel myself running my hands through my hair and somewhere in the back of my mind I knew that someone would be pissed off that I was ruining Robert's carefully constructed hairstyle. (I had found out earlier that getting hair to look as if you hadn't done anything to it took a lot of time). However, that thought was barely formed before my mouth was once again forced to say some rather meaningless words so that Bella wouldn't see that I was actually a needy amateur pretending to be a real actor.

"Well it was either that or get more fake and plastic things stuck onto my body." Bella's reply caused me to look up from studying the pattern of the carpet lining her trailer for several reasons. Firstly, she had mentioned her body, which automatically caused me to sweep my eyes quickly over the subject of the sentence. Secondly, she was waving her hands around in front of her and batting her eyelashes in a ridiculously dramatic way that I had never seen Bella do before. Lastly I didn't actually understand her response to what I'd said because I didn't remember what I'd said; I hadn't been paying attention. It took me a while to figure out why her response would be coupled with the strange gestures and from there I could work out more or less what I'd said to her.

I nodded when I finally put it all together, confirming it for myself more than Bella. "Ah, I get it. Stuck between a rock and a hard place, huh?" Obviously she had thought that staying to watch the scene was the lesser of two evils and I could only hope that she still held that view after she'd witnessed the filming.

Bella laughed, agreeing with me. I couldn't help marvel at the sight of Bella relaxed, laughing and completely in her element; she seemed like she felt more at home on a movie set than anywhere else in the world. I guessed that she'd spent rather a good chunk of her life in trailers not too dissimilar to the one she was occupying now. Even with all the artificial 'enhancements' that she had complained about, Bella was all I could see as she moved over on the small sofa-type contraption and invited me inside with a comment about not biting.

Now I can't exactly blame a lack of thought for the next words out of my mouth because even though they were almost a reflex response to what she had said, I knew exactly what I was doing. The image of Bella biting her lip in a very different situation to what we had found ourselves in during any of the other times we'd hung out flashed in my mind and nothing but a freight train running over me could have stopped what I had to say right in that moment.

"Now don't go making rash declarations like that Bella," I resisted the urge to rake my eyes over her body because I didn't want to make it too obvious what was on my mind. "You never knew when the need will overtake you." Well, there goes the plan of not making my sexually explicit thoughts about my 19 year-old co-star too obvious. I don't even know why I try to come up with plans; I obviously suck at sticking to them.

The silence was absolute in the trailer. I held my breath waiting for Bella to do or say something that would give me a clue about how she had taken what had come out of my mouth. There was no way on earth that she didn't understand my meaning and there was little chance of her taking it as a joke. I guess both of us could have passed it off as a joke if my tone of voice didn't suggest that I was just a little more than serious. I knew Bella heard the difference from the teasing tone that both of us had employed earlier that morning; what I didn't know was how she would respond. Would she tell me that I was out of line? Would she ignore it? Would she slap me across the face and tell me to get out of her trailer? In my most rational state of mind, I would have completely rejected the last option because I knew that the whole thing with Bella wasn't just one sided on my end. However, the silence around us was stifling my ability to think like a rational human being and I was on the verge of laughing loudly and pretending like I didn't mean any of it serious; pretend like I didn't want Bella in the physical sense.

Then it hit me; there was complete silence in the space around us. There was no noise coming from me because I had stopped breathing in anticipation of an answer. But if there was no noise then I wasn't the only one to have stopped inhaling and exhaling. I looked at Bella closely and noticed that her chest wasn't moving up and down like normal and she had a somewhat glazed look in her eyes, which were directed forwards, but didn't seem to be taking anything in. Bella was reacting like she was affected by my words – and not in a negative way at all.

Suddenly air rushed into my lungs and I grinned so widely that I was sure my face would split open. It definitely wasn't one sided. I took her invitation to come in and perched myself just beyond where her feet were, picking up the script that she had discarded only a few minutes before and pretending to be studying it as I waited for her to take the lead about where the conversation should go now; I would follow however she chose to handle the situation.

"You really were great in that scene," she croaked out a few moments after I had sat down. I tried to hide the smirk that formed at the fact that she still hadn't fully recovered from what I'd said. Any man who tells you that it's not the biggest ego boost in the world to know that you can render a woman incoherent with well-spoken words is a fucking liar; it felt fantastic.

However, I didn't know what to think or feel about Bella choosing to pretend like the whole exchange never happened. I was kind of relieved because she wasn't asking any questions I was uncomfortable giving answers to, but I was also kind of disappointed because I was curious to see where it could have led. I lifted my head to look at her, wondering if I could somehow get a hint of the things she wasn't saying. She was looking at me herself, her eyes a flurry of confusion and a variety of other emotions that were too quickly passing for me to really read. I didn't know what I was looking for in her gaze, but whatever it was I found it because I could feel myself relaxing a little, almost breathing a sigh of relief, though from what, I didn't yet know.

It was I who broke eye contact first, looking at something just over her shoulder as I thanked her for her praise. "I was kind of nervous about all the close-ups that Sue said she was going to shoot," I confessed to her, allowing our conversation to stay on much safer, less demanding topics. "There's really no hiding when you're the only thing in the frame of the shot."

"You didn't need to hide Edward," she assured me and I felt her shift slightly as she spoke so that her legs were no longer between us, but dangling off the side of the sofa instead. "You nailed it in both the takes that I watched." Her tone and her expression were so sincere that I couldn't doubt she actually thought exactly what she'd voiced. It made me embarrassingly happy that she really thought I had done a good job because even though she was younger than me in terms of life experience, in the business, her career was light years ahead of mine.

"Thanks," I repeated, having nothing else to say that could encompass what I was really feeling right then. I asked her if she was prepared for the big scene that we had to shoot in just a few minutes, trying to find a way to avoid gushing about how happy I was that she really thought I had put in a good performance; I didn't want to turn her off by acting like the biggest loser on the planet just when we seemed to be getting somewhere beyond the limits of friendship.

"As ready as I can be," she replied. "You?"

I was nervous as hell actually, but then that wouldn't have been news to her and really, I didn't want to spend more time with her trying to boost my, admittedly, very fragile ego. There was, however, an added reason for me to be nervous about this particular scene; I was expected to actually compose the musical background/ introduction to the scene. I had only been aware of their wish for me to do this for about four days, all of which were spent in my trying to get them to change their mind. I sort of mentioned my concern to Bella without going into the details of how I had been trying to find a way out of the arrangement.

"Have you already written it?" she asked, even though she spent enough time with me to guess that I hadn't. Bella had been the first person I told when they asked me to do it, but unlike me she had been completely excited about the prospect.

"I'm just going to wing it," my voice and my words were nonchalant, which were a complete contrast to what I was actually feeling and I think Bella probably suspected as much. I went on to explain to her what conditions I needed to actually be able to write something that would do the mood of the scene justice.

Bella, as ever, was trying to instil me with confidence in my own abilities; something that she must have been getting sick of. Honestly, even I was getting sick of all the self-doubt that I seemed to pour out in her presence when we were talking about anything to do with work; it was a wonder that Bella still spoke to me.

"It's not really finding the music that I'm dubious about," I tried to explain, trying to tell her that it wasn't my ability to play that had me worried. It wasn't even really about my ability to write a good piece of music; I'd been playing and composing for years. It was the raw feel of the music that I was worried about. In order to really play something that portrayed an emotion that someone had felt, one needs to have felt the same thing. Anyone with enough musical training and background knows the difference between a composer playing a piece and someone who had been taught to play a piece – the nuances and accents were different because people interpret music differently. The thing was, I didn't want this piece of music to jar with anything else in the film and though a lot of people probably wouldn't have noticed, as a fan of Robert's music myself, I would have noticed.

Bella was thoughtful for a moment as I struggled to express what I was actually worried about. She seemed as if she was thinking of a way to help me solve my problem, which she probably was because that was the kind of person she was. Really, it was kind of the way our relationship worked; she helped me out with my professional demons and I tried my best to put her personal ones into perspective. We really were quite a pair, Bella and I. That thought made me smile even though it probably shouldn't have.

"I take it you've never loved someone so much that you thought you'd die without them?" she asked. It was unusual for her to allude to my previous relationships, just as I never brought Jacob up unless she had mentioned him first.

I shook my head. I guess in most normal definitions of the word, I had been in love with Claire; we shared a life together, of course I loved her. However if I compared how I felt about Claire – even during the exciting infancy of our relationship – with how Robert had been described to feel about Kristen, it was nothing; it paled in comparison. I enjoyed being with Claire and at some point in time I could see some sort of future with her, but I could also see my life carrying on without her – as I was proving. There was no obsessive need to have her with me always; no all-consuming passion and desire that blocked reason and logic to the point of having to question my mental stability.

"I thought I'd been in love before, but really what I experienced and what I'm sort of experiencing now," there was an infinitesimal pause in my words that should not have been there, but somehow was. I swallowed, my eyes flicking over to where Bella was sitting down, listening to me seemingly having not noticed the silent space that words should have occupied. Good. "...through these characters, are worlds apart."

Some small part of my mind was screaming at me about the fact that I had stopped speaking before I qualified that I was actually talking about the characters that were in the movie, but I tried like hell to ignore it. It wasn't easy because the voice was extremely loud and waking up other parts of my consciousness with the possibility that I hadn't actually been talking just about the character that I was playing.

Bella was saying something about agreeing with me, but I wasn't really listening because my mind was occupied in a war with itself. What the hell did that pause mean? Did I just want to take a breath before carrying on with the rest of that perfectly innocuous sentence? That must have been it because there was no way that I was telling Bella that I hadn't felt with my previous girlfriend of three years a fraction of what I felt when I was around her; no damn way. I couldn't even get to grips with the fact that I'd even thought about it – even if it was only momentarily; I wouldn't be able to actually handle the possibility of her finding out what had passed through my mind a few seconds ago.

"Well then what's the worst loss you've ever had?" Bella's serious question brought me back from the rambling conversation I'd been having with myself in my own head. It took me a while to snap my mind back to the conversation we'd been having (not for the first time in the last ten minutes), but when I finally understood what she was trying to get out of me, I instantly flashed back to being sixteen and watching my Mom getting taken away by strangers. However, Bella obviously didn't expect me to actually give her an answer because she was speaking again before I'd even had time to think.

"You said yourself that Rob feels like he's not only lost her, but lost the very foundations of himself and what he believes in," Bella repeated to me. "You identify with the feeling so well when you're acting Edward, like you know exactly where that place is."

That was because I did. I could definitely identify with feeling like everything you thought knew was wrong; like everything in your life had been a complete and utter farce. I could identify with that general feeling of loss, but not the specific feeling of having your heart wrenched out of your chest. I couldn't express how it felt to have the very thing that defined love for you taken away, not with notes. Everyone's experienced a piece of music that really speaks to them; that takes them back to a specific point in their lives so clearly it was almost as if they had gone back in time. Music that does that speaks to the emotions and the memories that you associate with that specific time and it does that because the person who wrote the piece had been in the same place – metaphorically speaking of course.

I tried to express this to Bella, but probably just came out sounding like a god damn music elitist or something. Maybe I was over-thinking this whole thing, but I didn't want this to stand out from the rest of the music in the film. The story was as much about Robert's music as it was about the love that he and Kristen shared; each was a different part of the entire person.

"Be him!" Bella's sudden instruction made me start a little, directing my attention back on her instead of the circles that I was taking around myself. "Don't imagine yourself in his shoes – wear them. Don't identify with his motions using your own life experiences – live his. Don't act like you're Robert, just be him."

I was confused by what she was saying; I couldn't just be someone. It may have seemed like the most simple and obvious answer in the world, but the practicalities of carrying it out were anything but. I opened my mouth to ask her just how she proposed I implemented her advice, but Bella was on a roll and she just kept talking, her eyes shining with conviction.

"When you look at me, don't think that I'm your friend Bella acting like the woman that your character is supposed to be in love with. Look at me and see the woman you are incomprehensibly in love with; the woman that you would lay your life down for and that would lay down her life for you." Bella's voice was full of passion and belief, pressing me to take her advice, to follow her instructions. Her face was alight with victory, as if she thought that she had finally given me the key to solving my problem and she was damn proud of herself for doing so.

And maybe she had; because when I looked at Bella right then I could absolutely empathise with the feeling of being mesmerised by someone's mere presence. Bella – with her eyes bright, her cheeks flushed and passion almost radiating from her – was a sight to behold. I had absolutely no problem in looking at her through the eyes of an enamoured man. I swallowed thickly as she moved closer to me, her still brown eyes locking with mine.

"Look into my eyes and see that I am so deeply in love with you that I can't even remember who I was or what my life was like before you became a part of it." Bella's voice had dropped almost to a whisper and her face was mere inches from mine. I could feel her breath on my face and my eyes didn't know whether to keep looking into hers or flick down to her mouth so that I could see her lips move to form the words that were giving me permission to do something I probably shouldn't do.

"Don't think about it Edward, just feel it."

My body was moving to cover the already small space between us before I could even fully comprehend what she said; before I could even second-guess what I was about to do. One moment I was looking into Bella's eyes as she tried to convince me of her method of finding the right music and the next, everything that we'd been speaking of had disappeared. One moment I could feel Bella's breath on my skin and the next I was sharing it; mixing it with my own.

*

Well, I had definitely taken her words to heart.

Fuck.

I didn't know what the hell came over me. Well no, that's a complete lie. What came over me was the fact that I was a man who had been attracted to the woman in front of him since her first met her. What came over me was the fact that I was sick of fighting against myself – against whatever was happening with Bella. What came over me was the acute need to just let everything go and feel.

Maybe I wouldn't have felt so fucking terrible about the whole thing if it had ended naturally and Bella and I had time to talk about it after (however awkward that was guaranteed to have been). It would have been infinitely better, I'm sure, than having someone from the crew interrupt us by knocking on Bella's trailer door quite vigorously and shouting that we had to be on set to film stat. We just about had time to pull ourselves apart, smooth down our clothes and run our hands through our hair so that it didn't look like we'd been making out when we were supposed to have been getting ready to shoot. Still, if anyone had observed the way we walked beside each other to the location we were shooting the scene, they would have probably guessed that something had happened. Bella and I were walking side by side trying to not touch but not moving far enough away from each other to be completely sure that we wouldn't.

The entire time we were walking, I was racking my brain for something – anything – to say to her. I wanted to explain to her why I'd done what I'd done, but all I could think of to say was that I'd done it because I had been wanting to for longer than I was willing to admit – even to myself. I couldn't apologise for doing it because I wasn't sorry I'd done it, not when I finally got to experience what it was like to kiss Bella; not Bella as someone else, but just Bella. It was a heady experience that I didn't want to apologise or excuse away, but nor did I want to put a strain on our friendship. I'd screwed myself over – totally and completely – but I couldn't find it in myself to wish that it had never happened at all. How could I when it had been so much more than I had expected.

I had thought about what it would be like to kiss Bella outside of a scene before and I always figured it would be pretty much like it was kissing her when I was Robert, but I was so very wrong. Everything was different; not just the fact that we weren't being watched by at least a dozen people. There's always a level of awareness of what you're doing when you're doing a scene with someone; there has to be. You both have to be aware of where your hands go, of where the camera is capturing the scene from, of which way to tilt your head or how to make it look as if you're doing a lot more than you actually are. When I kissed Bella in her trailer, the only thing that I was aware of was the fact that it was Bella. Finally, after weeks of being close enough so that I could get a small preview as to what this moment would be like, I was living it and it was so much more. More than what, I didn't know; it was just more.

I kissed Bella without abandon and the best thing was that she had been kissing me back. There wasn't a single moment during the time our lips were interlocked that she had been unresponsive. As soon as my mouth touched the soft, plump pink of hers, she had moved with me. There was nothing going through my head the whole time apart from the word finally. It wasn't until after, when we had been interrupted and I finally regained use of my brain that I could have used every single clichéd word under the sun to describe what I felt and none of them would still have been enough. It wasn't electricity, it wasn't fire, and it wasn't a blinding realisation that this was what we should have been doing the entire time. What it was, was like looking out over a cliff into the ocean just before you dive in; there was a certain sense of calm and peace before the chaos and the adrenaline. It was an amazing feeling – one that makes you understand the very essence of life whilst never really being able to put words to it.

However with the regaining of my mental faculties, I also regained the ability to worry about what the hell this now meant. I'd kissed her and she'd kissed me back, but was she just caught up in the moment? Was it just a knee-jerk reaction to our close proximity, our familiarity and her own excitement in the moment? I didn't want to think that it was and I was almost certain that it wasn't, but I couldn't be sure and this was the only thing wrong with the entire situation. I had thought that when Bella and I really kissed for the first time, some of the ambiguous nature of our relationship would have been cleared up, but that wasn't the case. I still hadn't really told her that I wanted more than friendship from her – for us. She still hadn't really confirmed that she wanted the same thing and what was more she was still technically in a relationship.

She still technically had a boyfriend. A boyfriend that she had been in a relationship with for years and who she had known for longer still. A boyfriend that she had a hard time even taking a break from.

The logical part of me remembered that Bella was having doubts about her relationship. She had all but confessed that she hadn't loved Jacob like maybe he loved her or she should have loved him. It was only earlier today that she had said she'd never loved someone with as much passion and devotion as the characters in the movie. But that didn't mean she didn't still love him. Of course she loved him; she'd said so herself. She was still in a quasi-relationship with a guy who wasn't a jerk and I'd all but forced myself on her this afternoon when she was trying to help me.

God I was such a screw up!

"If I have to see you hit yourself like that again, I'm going to assume that you want to be hit and I'll join in," Rosalie's voice broke through my self-recrimination.

I opened my eyes to find my best friend standing over me, her face a mixture of amusement, concern and confusion. I moved so that I was no longer seeing her upside down, but she was also in transit, finally settling herself into the chair on my right.

"I take it shooting didn't go too well today?" Rosalie guessed.

"Huh?" I said stupidly because apparently thinking about the whole Bella situation had pushed the major motion picture that we were shooting to the back of my head.

Rosalie looked at me like with a frankly bewildered expression on her face. "Er, the Hollywood film that you're starring in," she explained slowly, as if she were talking to a particularly slow child. "You know, the reason that you're in New York right now."

I shook my head to clear it of the memory of the tentative touch of Bella's tongue against my own. I couldn't focus on the conversation when my thoughts were going from reliving the kiss I'd shared with Bella to listing all the reasons why I shouldn't have kissed Bella yet. "Filming was fine Rose," I said. "Great, actually."

"And yet you sound like I've just asked you about the state of the economy in California."

"It's nothing," I told her. "I'm just distracted."

"By something, I'm guessing," Rosalie persisted.

I let out a long, frustrated breath, knowing that I was going to tell Rose. I needed to talk to someone about it and if I couldn't talk to my best friend, there was no one else I could talk to. Besides, Rosalie would give me some desperately needed advice.

"I kissed Bella." I said plainly, watching her face carefully for any sort of reaction.

The only thing about Rosalie's expression that indicated she had heard me was her widened eyes. "And?" she probed, not really understanding why I was trying to literally knock some sense into myself when she'd walked in.

"And we got interrupted and spent the rest of our time together being with other people, being other people, not talking about it," I explained. "And she still has a god damn boyfriend."

"Only in the technical sense," Rosalie interjected.

"A technical boyfriend is still a boyfriend Rosalie." I made a noise that was a cross between a groan and snort. I just didn't know what the hell I was going to do. I wanted to talk to Bella, but I had no idea what to actually say. I thought we would have the drive back to the apartment to talk alone, but Alice had asked her to stay after our last scene together and I hadn't spoken to her since; I had no idea whether she was even back at her apartment.

"What do you want from her Ed?" Rosalie asked, bringing up the hard issues like only she could.

I shrugged, but then caught Rosalie's sceptical gaze and raised eyebrow and just told her the truth. I really wanted Bella. It was as simple as that. I really thought that Bella and I could be great together. I spent the entire day with the woman and I still wanted to spend more time with her. She made me laugh, made my head spin, left me feeling totally confused and frustrated, but any time I was around her I was happy. Being around Bella left me with a feeling of clarity and contentment that I hadn't found even when I was searching for it half way across the world. All the decisions I'd made in my life, bad or good, didn't seem to weight on me as much because it had gotten me to a point in my life where I'd met a girl who just got it. Whatever the hell it was about me to get, Bella understood it in a way that even I couldn't and really wasn't that what everyone was looking for? Didn't people spend their lives wishing that someone just understood all the things about themselves that they couldn't? I wouldn't be so cliché as to say that I felt as if Bella completed me; it wasn't like that. It was just that with her I saw myself as other people saw me, not as I saw myself.

Yet as simple as my wanting Bella was; as black and white as it all seemed, there were so many shades of grey in between that it was masking the simplicity. In an ideal world, I would make up my mind to win the girl, she would run into my arms and the credits would roll as we rode off into the sunset together. But real life didn't work that way. There were other things to consider besides how I felt about her or how I thought she may have felt about me in return and it was those things that were echoing around in my head, mocking me for the rashness that I had displayed earlier in the day.

"Edward?" Rosalie asked again after I hadn't answered her.

"I don't know Rose," I told her. "Right now I just want to be able to talk to her and see whether or not I've completely fucked this whole thing up before it could even get off the ground."

Rosalie shook her head. "If she didn't slap you, punch you and knee you when you kissed her I'm willing to put money on the fact that you haven't fucked anything up. I know I say this a lot and it may have lost all meaning by now, but you really need to stop giving yourself such a hard time."

I nodded, though we both knew that I wouldn't stop thinking about what had happened and berating myself for letting the situation get out of hand. Rose started asking me questions about the shoot, but I could barely give her one word answers because my mind was so wholly occupied with something else. Finally, after trying to pull a conversation out of me for ten minutes, Rosalie gave up and went into her bedroom (because really, she'd been staying there longer than I had), leaving me to sit alone without anything to distract me from the very loud conflict happening in my head.

*

BPOV

Overwhelming guilt was bearing down upon me like a living, breathing entity and I couldn't get away from it. To some extent I welcomed it because it was the least I deserved for not feeling the right kind of guilt. I was kind of happy that I was at least exchanging one form of guilt for another instead of not feeling any at all because that meant I wasn't too bad of a person right? Oh fuck, who the hell was I kidding? I was sitting across from a friend of mine who I'd been lying to for at least a couple of weeks, not really being able to think about anything apart from the fact that only hours before, I was kissing Edward Cullen. I had both kissed Edward already and yet never kissed Edward before late this morning and I was torn whether being happy that it happened or horrified that it had. Right now, I was kind of horrified about being happy that it had happened.

I was an awful person.

And to make matters infinitely worse, I couldn't even feel guilty about kissing Edward. I felt guilty about not feeling guilty about it and felt guilty about wanting it to happen again, but I just couldn't find it in me to think that what had happened was wrong. I really wanted to; a pretty big part of me was screaming at me for being stupid enough to complicate an already complicated situation by sticking my tongue in a boy's mouth who wasn't my sort-of boyfriend. However, it was completely overwhelmed by the other part of me that was wondering what the hell had taken so long to get to the point where I was sharing the same saliva as Edward without it being covered up by the fact that we were supposed to be two completely different people.

I wouldn't say that Edward's lips touching mine was a surprise; I don't think it was. I think I knew that it would happen at some point – especially after Friday night. What I would say was that feeling Edward's lips touching my own when no one was watching us and neither of us was calling the other by a different name was something I could never adequately describe. It was like I'd been running up a hill for the couple of hours and finally I was standing on top of a mountain looking out over the vast expanse of land, with the wind swirling around me and the sun going down. It was beautiful and exhilarating and just...so worth it. There was a sense of freedom and joy and relief that I had never experienced from a kiss before. I hadn't thought that kissing Edward as Bella would be too different from my bring Kristen and kissing him as Robert. It shouldn't have been really and I couldn't really explain why it was, but it really, really was.

Of course all good things end and I'm pretty certain our kiss ended prematurely. I would have put money on the fact that had someone from the crew not banged on my door with instructions for me to get my ass on set, Edward and I would have been locked together for much longer than we actually were. I certainly didn't think I could have willed myself to pull away without an external force and from the way he was kissing me, I didn't think Edward could have either. Unfortunately, I'd never know because like a load of ice cold water being dumped over us, the banging and shouting brought us both back into the reality of the situation.

And the reality was that we had a film to shoot, he was my co-star, friend and something else that neither of us had really even tried to define and I still had a boyfriend.

So now, here I was, sitting opposite of Alice as she talked about something that I just couldn't follow. I was being eaten up by guilt and torn apart from the inside out with the knowledge that I wasn't feeling guilty for the right thing.

Great. Just how I wanted to spend my evening.

"Bella are you even listening to me?" Alice enquired, her voice full of frustration. I wondered how long she'd been trying to get a response from me.

"Sorry Alice," I said, shaking my head minutely and willing myself to get my ass into gear. "I was just..." I trailed off, not wanting to finish that sentence with what had actually been on my mind and yet too slow to come up with anything else plausible. I guess alternately feeling guilty and wondering what else could have happened was keeping my brain too busy.

Alice's forehead wrinkled with a question about what I was just doing, but she didn't voice it, so I just smiled to indicate that I'd finished with my non-explanation and she was getting nothing else.

"I just told you that I think there's something going on with Jasper and some woman named Maria and your response was just to sit there with some creepy smile on your face," Alice said, clearly irritated that I hadn't been listening to her.

"Why would you think that?" I asked, completely ignoring the part of her sentence that concerned non-response the first time she'd given me this news.

Alice kept her disturbingly penetrating gaze on me for a moment too long, but then dropped it and let out a long sigh. "He got a call in the middle of the night last night and he checked that I was asleep before he answered it. Then when he was sure I was still asleep, he slipped into the next room to answer it."

That was it? Talk about jumping to conclusions. "He probably just didn't want to wake you," I offered as way of explanation.

"Yeah, that would have been my thoughts too if I hadn't overheard the practically whispered conversation."

"Overheard?" Somehow I doubted that anyone could 'overhear' a quiet conversation from another room unless they were purposely eavesdropping.

"Okay maybe I opened the door a little and tried my damned hardest to listen," Alice confessed hurriedly, but at least she looked a little ashamed at having to confess to doing something like that. "But then I heard him talking to someone called Maria about not being able to keep it a secret anymore; about not wanting to hurt me when I eventually found out."

My jaw dropped a little and my eyes widened. Okay, maybe Alice hadn't so much jumped to a conclusion, but been led there by the trail of Jasper's god damn lies. Was this what he'd been keeping from everyone? That he was seeing someone else? He sure as hell had me fooled if this was his secret; he'd had me convinced that he really cared about Alice and he was only lying to her to protect her. He'd said something about life and death for god's sake. Was he really this much of a fucking douche? I didn't want to think so; Edward thought so highly of him and I trusted Edward.

"Did you ask him about it?" I questioned, trying to stop myself from jumping to conclusions.

Alice scoffed. "What was I going to say? Hey Jasper I was eavesdropping on a conversation you were having and heard that you were lying to me? It doesn't exactly sound great does it?"

She had a point. "Why would you listen to him on the phone anyway Alice?" I asked her. It seemed a strange thing to do; pretending to be asleep and then listening to someone on the phone.

"He's been really weird with me recently," Alice explained, her voice matching the sadness on her face. "He's always saying he has errands to run at the oddest times and when I ask him what he's been up to whilst I've been shooting, he never gives me a real answer. It was fine at first, but I...I don't know. I just feel like there's something not right with Jasper."

Alice was obviously far too intuitive for anyone's good.

"What are you going to do?" If she couldn't ask him outright what the conversation was about, she had to have a plan. I didn't think Alice would take the possibility of being cheated on and lied to lying down.

Alice looked up at me, with uncertainty displayed in her dark blue eyes. "That's kind of what I wanted to talk to you about Bella."

I didn't like the sound of her voice; at all. I didn't know what I could do in this situation other than be her shoulder to cry on, which I thought I was doing (albeit rather poorly). I eyed her curiously and I could see the hesitation in Alice's whole demeanour as she tried to find the words to explain to me how I fit in with her plans regarding Jasper.

"I kind of want you to talk to Edward-"

I was shaking my head before she even finished her sentence. "No way Alice," I refused. I needed to have an awkward conversation with Edward as it was, without adding the Alice and Jasper drama to it. "I'm not putting myself smack bang in the middle of this and I'm not dragging Edward into it either."

"Bella," Alice started, but I shook my head to stop her from continuing.

"Alice seriously what do you expect me to say to him?" I asked her. "I can't just be all like 'hey Edward is your friend cheating on mine?' Even if he knew do you honestly expect him to tell me?"

"I don't know what else to do Bella," Alice said, her voice laced with anguish and desperation. In fact, she looked like she was on the verge of breaking out in tears. This was a completely different side of the girl that I thought I knew and I didn't know what to do with this vulnerable Alice; hell I barely knew what to do with the strong, indestructible Alice. Obviously she was in deep with this whole Jasper thing.

"Maybe you should try talking to Edward yourself," I suggested half-heartedly knowing that she would never do that and Edward probably wouldn't be too willing to help her either.

Alice actually snorted at the idea almost as soon as the words left my mouth. "You really think he's going to tell me more than he'd tell you?" she laughed dryly. "I don't think he's going to be too willing to help out the girl that put a hand print on his cheek. Hell he probably knows and is laughing about it behind my back, thinking that it's just what I deserve for hitting him."

Although I knew she was hurting and a little too emotional to be rational or fair right now, I didn't like what Alice was implying about Edward's character. He may not have liked her, but Edward was not the type of guy to take pleasure from someone else's pain. He was a good guy and I didn't know exactly what Alice had against him that made her refuse to see that.

"Well he sure as hell won't help you with that kind of attitude," I told her, my tone harsher than it probably should have been given her state of mind.

Alice looked at me and seemed to realise her mistake immediately because she nodded her head and at least had the decency to look somewhat regretful of her outburst, if not in the least bit apologetic. "Bella, please, please do this for me," she all but begged.

I looked at her and sighed, knowing that I was getting involved with something I really didn't want to be involved in and something I shouldn't have been involved in. Yet I wasn't going to deny Alice my help when it was obvious that she had no other options. I knew she didn't exactly like Edward so the fact that she was asking me to go to him for help on shedding light on this matter meant that she really was pretty desperate. I couldn't say no to her; not when she was on the verge of a breakdown and she was looking at me like I could solve all of her problems.

I placed my hand gently on her arm and told her that I'd do what I could, though I knew I wasn't going to ask Edward anything. Edward and I needed to have a serious conversation about our own relationship, not someone else's. However, I could definitely ask Jasper what the hell he was actually doing with Alice. After all, I was keeping his secret and I didn't want to be part of a cover up if the only thing I was hiding from my friend was the fact that her boyfriend was a cheating sum bag.

Alice's gratitude at my promise brought back the guilt ten-fold.

Oh hell.

*

10 o'clock.

It wasn't late, but when you had to be at work at 5 in the morning then 10 o'clock may as well have been the middle of the night. I should have been in bed, either asleep or at least trying to get to sleep, but instead of being in my room in the land of unconscious oblivion, I was standing in front of an all too familiar wooden door, wondering whether I shouldn't just turn around and go back to my own apartment. I had been waiting all day for an opportunity to have this conversation and yet now that I was only moments from it – only feet from him – I was thinking about chickening out.

God, I was pathetic.

I was pathetic enough to turn around on the spot and head away from the door, from the conversation, from Edward. Or at least I thought I was walking away from Edward, but when actually happened when I turned the corner to use the stairs was that I walked straight into Edward. I guess some things just couldn't be avoided.

"Shit I'm so sorry Bella," Edward offered me his hand to help me up from the fact that he'd knocked me on my ass for the second time.

I took it and allowed him to pull me up, trying to ignore the fact that the touch of Edward's hand now reminded me of the feel of his bottom lip between my own or the way his nose pressed into my skin slightly; it wasn't easy. I stood up and dusted myself off, not really worried about having gotten my clothes dirty, but just trying to find a way of not looking him in the eyes quite yet; I didn't know what the hell I would do if we made eye contact.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

I nodded my head and yet still didn't lift it enough so that I would have to look at his face. This was far more awkward than I could have imagined. Edward was in front of me and all I could think about was how when Edward had been in front of me this morning, he had been much closer. I took a deep breath and tried to steel myself for actually trying to have a conversation with him without seeming like I was thinking about kissing him.

I heard Edward exhale quickly above me and I knew that I wasn't the only one having a hard time right now; the thought made me feel better. "I just, um...I knocked on your door, but...er...obviously, um, you weren't...you were here so..."

I couldn't help the small chuckle that escaped from me when Edward had finally finished what he was attempting to say. It was so odd, being with him and feeling like I didn't know what to say or do with myself. We hadn't been this awkward around each other since we first met and I didn't know whether to find it funny or sad that it had come to this just when we'd given in to what had been threatening to happen for a while now.

I looked down at my feet, watching the way they moved as I shifted my weight from one leg to the other. I wanted to say something to Edward, but I didn't know what to say. I was afraid that if I looked at him and opened my mouth, I would blurt out something horrendously embarrassing. I felt like I was at a dance in middle school trying to work up the nerve to ask one of the boys on the other side of the room to dance on the empty space in the middle. I didn't exactly relish the feeling.

"Well I guess you'll want to, um, get back, er...go to your apartment," Edward stuttered out after minutes of my saying nothing. He sounded nervous and embarrassed and extremely disappointed; all feelings that my inability to raise my head, look at him and have a mature conversation – or hell any kind of conversation – was causing. "I should, er...just...I'm going to, um, go back."

I saw his feet withdraw a few paces from where they had been in relation to mine and it was only then that I finally found my voice. "Edward wait!"

I had finally raised my head and when I looked up I met his anxious and curious eyes – his green eyes and I had to smile because it was somewhat of a comfort to look into the eyes of my friend. It was funny how just before he and I kissed, I was thanking the wardrobe department that his contacts were still in place and yet now I was happy just to see the green again.

"What did you want?" It was a stupid question and from the look on his face he knew that I was just asking it to say something to him. I could have told him that I had been at his apartment too, but somehow I wasn't ready to say that yet and he probably knew anyway. Still, to give the guy credit, he only faltered for a moment before telling me that he just wanted to talk to me. I knew he was probably purposely being vague because of where we were, but there was a moment where I wanted him to actually say what he wanted to talk about. I don't know whether I was looking for confirmation that I wasn't the only one completely freaking out about the whole thing or whether I just wanted to hear it said aloud instead of just in my head. Whatever it was, I couldn't stop the flash of expectation and then disappointment.

"I guess you should come up then," I suggested, leading the way to my apartment. I could feel his eyes on my back, probably wondering whether or not it was a good idea for him to follow me. When I heard his heavier footsteps behind me, I knew he must have decided either that it was a good idea or that it was a bad idea, but he didn't care.

The walk to my apartment seemed to take us forever and I entertained the impossible thought that someone had moved it without my knowing; surely it had never taken this long to reach the apartment before? Finally, I was once again in front of a familiar door, but this time I didn't have to knock to get into the space that this shielded. Instead, I had to fit a key in a lock in order to gain access, which would have been a hell of a lot easier if my hands weren't shaking. I didn't know exactly what I was so nervous about, but I honestly felt as if I was about to have one of the most important conversations of my relatively short life. I felt just as nervous as I did when I had spoken to Jake about taking the break we both needed; just as nervous as I did when I spoke to my Mom. However, unlike both of those other times, my anxiety now wasn't laced with heartache and sadness. I was nervous, yes, but it was a good kind of nervous; like I was on the edge of something huge – monumental almost.

I was frustrated as hell about my hand shaking so much that I couldn't open the damn lock, but before I could throw the useless piece of metal onto the floor and stamp my foot like a 5-year old throwing a tantrum in the aisle of the grocery store, Edward's large, warm hand wrapped around my own to steady it. My hand could suddenly go in a straight line again so that I could put the key in the lock, but every other part of me now seemed like it was trembling. I was aware of every movement either one of us made. I could actually give the number of seconds it took him to release my hand after we heard the lock click. I could feel his hesitation at moving too close or too far away from me. It was very reminiscent of the walk to set that we shared just after the kiss and just like then, it made me feel completely unbalanced; almost drunk.

I let him walk into the apartment before me, needing to collect myself before I was in another enclosed space with Edward; just Edward...being no one but himself. I closed the door and suddenly I found myself being pressed up against the wooden structure that I had found so hard to open only moments before, Edward's lips insistently pressing against my own. And just like before, although the movements were sudden, I wasn't surprised. It was as if my body had expected this kind of contact because no sooner had his mouth made contact with mine, I was kissing him back, opening my mouth and letting my tongue touch his lightly, teasing almost. I don't know whether the groan that came from the contact was mine or Edward's – maybe it was both – but without any conscious decision on my part, my hands were all over him. They went from grabbing handfuls of his shirt to try and get him closer to me (which was impossible given that we weren't even breathing fresh air anymore, just what the other one was breathing out), to pulling on his hair, to running up on his back, underneath the shirt that I had pulled on earlier.

I'd never been the type of girl who got so carried away in a kiss that she forgot the fact that people needed oxygen to breathe, but then again I had never kissed Edward Cullen. I knew that I should have pulled away so that I could inhale something that hadn't already been expelled from someone else's lungs, but I didn't want this to end. I didn't want to stop kissing him and have to go back to a state where we would talk about logical and responsible things whilst at the same time knowing that all the other one is thinking about is how the other tasted, or how they sounded when they were out of breath and out of their mind with lust. It was so much simpler this way; when all we could think about was the feeling that this moment, these actions, this contact gave us; when we were all that mattered. I could feel Edward's hands touching the skin underneath my own shirt and my mind went blank.

Or maybe that was the lack of oxygen going to my brain. I didn't know and a big part of me didn't care as long as Edward was still here, still doing what he was doing. However, it seemed that Edward did care about my well-being (and probably his too) because with a massive effort on his part, he managed to pull away. I could tell it was a massive effort because I had a rather tight hold on the boy and for my size, I knew I was freakishly strong. I could also tell because he had to have three goes before he finally managed to detach his lips from mine.

"Bella," Edward breathed mere millimetres from my face. I could still taste his breath and it made my head swim in a way that I knew for sure wasn't because of a lack of oxygen. "Oh god, Bella." He was panting and his eyes were running all over my face, down to my chest (which was heaving as if it belonged to the heroine of a Jackie Collins novel) and back again. It was as if I could literally feel the path they were taking and I had to exercise some major self control not to just jump on him.

All the self control went completely out of the window though when his eyes finally settled on mine and all I could see was a ring of the darkest jade framing Edward's overly dilated pupils. Before he could say anything else, or even take another breath, this time it was me who made the move to close the small gap between us and suddenly words no longer existed – for either of us.


A/N: Thank you to everyone who is still reading this story for being incredibly patient the past few months. An extra huge THANK YOU to everyone who reviewed.

Funny how these two have been all talk (either with each other or in their ehads), but now they can barely string two words together in the presence of the other one. What the hell changed? Hahahaha! Also...Jasper and Maria...maybe not the storyline you will all want taking centre stage right now, but for those who have been wondering when the Jasper thing was going to be revisited...it just has. Hope you enjoyed the read!