Thanks Sherry and Paige for being the such angels .

"Shakin' like the Devil when she lets me go

Got a new place and how it's so much better

Falling over myself, the televisions on

I turn it off and smile

Oh, Jennifer, you know I always tried

Before you say goodbye.

Leave the bourbon on the shelf

And I'll drink it by myself

And I love you endlessly

Darling don't you see I'm not satisfied

Until I hold you tight

Give me one more chance tonight

And I swear I'll make it right

But you ain't got time for this

And the wreckin' bell is ringin'

And I'm not satisfied

Until I hold you tight."

-The Killers-

EPOV:

It's a quiet night, too quiet for my liking. With anger and disbelief raging inside of me, the pleasant evening feels fucking distressing. I want it to be loud and distracting enough to drown out my thoughts, but of course, tonight of all fucking nights there's barely a car on the street or a sound to be heard.

I park outside of Paul's apartment complex and I'm relieved to find that his car is here. For some reason, I was fucking fearing that he would skip town to avoid facing me. Giving me some sort of closure is the very least this fucker could do. I jump out of my car and head toward Paul's building. I receive a horrified look from an older woman as she quietly makes her way to her car.

"Mind your own fucking business," I mumble beneath my breath as I pass her by.

I know I look fucking terrible. I've been crying for the past few hours and my bloody hand is wrapped up with a dirty cloth from work. Hell, I think how I look is completely fucking acceptable considering the gravity of what I've learned. Thankfully, Paul's complex doesn't have any security, allowing me to easily get into his building and run up the steps to his third-floor apartment. His door is ajar and I let myself in without knocking. This is going to be fucking awkward to say the very least. I found out the truth and beat the shit out of him, and now I'm here to talk. Fuck, he brought this shit on himself.

"Paul!" I call out, slamming his front door behind me.

There's no answer and I have to roll my eyes. What a fucking coward. I guess nothing's changed, has it? I make my way into his living room and take a quick look around before coming up short.

"Are you seriously going to fucking hide from me?" I call out, becoming more and more fucking enraged. "After all we've been through together, you're going to fucking hide from me!?"

I stare at his bedroom door and a mirthless laugh escapes my lips. He's really going to hide in his bedroom like a coward? How disgusting. He killed my brother, the very least he could do is look me in the eye and apologize. He doesn't make a sound, causing my anger to skyrocket as I cross the room and yank on the knob of his bedroom door. It's fucking locked, but I continue to yank on it anyway, hoping the rattling will shake him up enough to man-up and open the door to talk to me. It doesn't take long for me to realize that isn't going to fucking happen, so I let go of the knob and begin kicking the door. It feels fucking amazing. It's nice to release my rage on something and I kick until the dent in the door turns into a gaping hole.

I feel like Jack fucking Torrance as I quickly duck down to get a look inside the room. Paul's back is to me and he's sitting on his bed, staring out his window. He hasn't seemed to have reacted to my presence at all. His body is perfectly still and his mind seems to be elsewhere. Reaching through the gapping whole in the door, I unlock it before pulling my hand back out and pulling the door open. As I walk inside his bedroom, Paul doesn't even flinch. If he weren't sitting up straight, I'd think he was fucking dead.

"Paul?" I question. The anger in my voice fading to confusion.

He doesn't move. I walk around the bed so I can get a better look at him. His face is blank and his eyes are bloodshot. He looks like he's been crying as much as I have. Regardless of how much I fucking hate him in at the moment, I still look at him and see the face of the man who once was my friend. The face of the boy I grew up with, a boy who was like a second brother to me. The memories of the past few hours come rushing back and any warmth I feel toward him is gone. I wish I could think of him as a fucking stranger, then this wouldn't hurt so fucking badly.

I stare at him as he sits completely unresponsive before me. My anger turns to fear as soon as I see the gun sitting in his lap. Everything in my world comes to a halt. I stare at his blank face in disbelief. So many thoughts course through my head at once, they sound like an angry blur, but I'm too far gone to understand. The tension in the air quickly becomes palpable and when I finally reach my hand out to grab the gun, Paul shakes out of his catatonic state and beats me to it. Holding it in his hand like it's all he has left.

"Paul?" I question again, relaxing my stance so he knows I'm not a threat.

"Please," he says in a resigned voice, "just leave me alone, Edward."

"No," I state, growing fucking angry again.

I'm not going to let him fucking do this. I can't tell if he's acting out of cowardice or if he's been suffering for a long time. Regardless, I'm not going to let him fucking kill himself because of his bitter fucking regret. He's shaking before me, and he no longer seems like the monster I made him out to be hours before. He looks like a very sorrowful man who made a terrible mistake. I hate him for killing my brother, I hate him for killing my sister-in-law, and I hate him for taking Charlie's real parents away from him. I hate him for so many things, but as tears prick my eyes, I realize I don't really fucking hate him at all. That's the hardest pill to swallow.

Despite my anger, my disbelief, disappointment, and rage… I still love Paul like my own brother. What he did was an accident, a devastating one at that, but as I look at the very pusillanimous man he's become I slowly begin to forgive him. Whatever it takes, no one's going to die tonight. I wasn't there to save my brother. I wasn't there to save Kate. However, I will save Paul. I couldn't live with myself if he died right in front of me. Instead of reaching for the gun, I sit down on the floor beside his bed, my posture completely nonthreatening.

I don't know what to fucking do, but I know I can't give up on him.

"Talk to me, man," I say. I try to sound strong, but my voice fucking cracks.

With the gun held tightly in his right hand, he shakes his head, tears coming to his eyes and quickly trailing down his face. I just want him to be honest with me, I just want to know why.

"Please, Paul. Fuck, just say something," I practically beg.

"It was an accident, Edward," he says with a sob.

"I know that," I say, wrapping my arms around my knees so I'm sitting in a fucking ball on the floor. "I know it was an accident."

Paul looks at me for a long time. His eyes are so red they look fucking cashed and his posture is so tense he looks like he's about to explode. I stare back, unable to look away in fear that once I do he'll do something drastic. His entire body begins to shake and he buries his face in his left hand while his other clenches the gun.

"Do you know what you're going to do now that you guys are almost finished?" I ask before taking another swig of my beer.

Paul smiles and shrugs his shoulders before taking a drink of his IPA. "I got accepted to WSU with Seth."

This is news. Paul's always wanted to leave Washington. "I thought you wanted to go to school out of state?"

"I don't think I could be away from Seth for that long," he admits. "I mean, he's my best friend and we know so many people going to WSU."

Fuck, they must really be close if Paul's willing to stay in Washington, a place he always claimed to hate, just for him. Paul changes the subject and he transforms back into the perfect star athlete my mom's fucking obsessed with. Sometimes I want to be more like him. His life just seems so perfect and I'm a fucking mess. However, I know I could never be as straight-edge. I'll just admire his life while I live my own.

The memory is fleeting and the Paul in my thoughts is such a stark fucking contrast from the Paul that's sitting before me. The man sitting before me is fucking defeated. He's allowed life to fuck him over, and that has transformed him into someone I barely recognize. I want to look away, but I don't. I stay strong and focused because I hope that's what he needs.

"I just can't do this anymore," he explains with a sob. "I can't go on like this. I've tried and I'm not getting better, Edward. You don't know what it's like!"

I can see the hysteria in his eyes and all the sudden he looks so haunted that it takes my breath away. Seth was practically his brother too, and he had to look him in the eyes before he decided to drive off. He saw Seth struggling to survive and knew that he did that to him. I can't wrap my mind around the guilt that must be eating him up. I thought my inner demons were bad, but his must be indescribable.

"I killed him," Paul wails, with tears spilling down his contorted face. "I killed my best friend! It all happened so fast. I had been drinking and I wasn't fucking thinking when I got behind the wheel of that car. What were the fucking chances? It was late at night, on the roads of a dead-end town. I didn't even think, I just got into my car and began to drive home."

My stomach begins to drop because I know this is the part I don't want to hear, but I know that I needto know. Once he tells me this story, all of this will fucking be real and I'll never be able to forget the images he'll put in my head. Things always tend to stick to me, and I know that this will fucking stick with me forever.

"I was drinking a beer when I was driving home and I dropped it. It spilled all over my phone and dropped to the floor. I reached down to grab it, unable to see the contents of the can go to waste and it was then that I felt the impact of an oncoming car. Everything was a blur. The sounds of steel crunching, tires screeching, and the screams were all I registered. I could barely see what was happening, but I could hear it all. The crunch of the steel body panels is something that's stuck with me all this time. As well, as the sounds of Kate's screams as their car spun off the road and into a tree.

"I was fucking horrified. When I got out of my car to check out the damage… to see what I've done… I didn't recognize Seth's car at first. However, there was this sick feeling in my stomach, screaming at me that something was terribly wrong. I got to the car as fast as I could and when I looked inside, my world fell apart. You should've seen him, Edward. He was looking—" Paul stops for a moment, gasping for air "-right at me. He couldn't talk, but everything he wanted to say was in his eyes. He looked so fucking dejected. He was reaching out for Kate, who looked like she had already died."

Paul whips away his tears and shakes his head, as if he were trying to shake all the unwanted images out of his mind. I've never seen a person look so broken and it's so fucking frightening. As he talks, I can't take my eyes off the way his finger plays with the trigger, as if any moment he'll raise the gun to his head and end his own life.

"It was so hard to look at him, but I didn't want to look away. I wanted to wrap my arms around him and tell him it'll be okay. I wanted to be in his position more than anything. I loved him, Edward. I loved him so much and I couldn't watch him die. I was such a fucking coward. I got back in my car and drove away. The only thing I could say to him was 'I'm sorry'. I didn't even tell him that I loved him or anything else. I wish I fucking had, because 'I'm sorry' must have been the last thing he ever heard."

"I loved him too," I say, trying to connect with Paul and tell him that he isn't in this darkness alone. "You're not alone in this."

Paul's face looks so fucking pained and he quickly looks away. "No, Edward. I was in love with him," he admits with a sad smile. I don't know what to fucking think. "Seth never knew, but I would've followed him anywhere. I would've done anything for him. Or at least, that's what I thought. I thought I'd give up anything for him, but I couldn't even save his life. I was in love with my best friend and it fucking hurt so much to watch him fall in love with someone else. I'm the godfather to his son and I can barely fucking look at Charlie because he reminds me so much of his dad. I've always stood by him and I had to be the cause of his fucking death."

Tears are coursing down my face at his admission and I have no idea why. I've cried so much today, so I suppose it just feels fucking right. Part of me hates Paul for what he's done, but another part of me just fucking pities him. If I lost Bella… if I were the reason for her death I would want to end my sorry life too. I don't know how Paul's had the strength to stay alive for this long. I don't know how he's found it in himself to put on a brave face and lie to me every day.

"He's gone now, and I have nothing," Paul says, his shaky right hand, bringing the gun up toward his head.

Time seems to slow down as I watch him with wide, horrified eyes. The gun inches closer and closer, his finger shaking on the trigger as if preparing to pull it at any second. My body seems to react before my mind does. I launch myself at him, grabbing his shoulders and bringing him down to the floor with me as we scuffle. He cries out in anger, mad that I'm preventing him from his desired outcome, and he begins to wail on me with the stock of the gun. My head is vibrating with pain and I taste iron as blood fills my mouth, but I don't back down. I hit him back, just as hard, wanting to knock some fucking sense into him.

"Just let me die, Edward!" He screams in my face. "I just want to be with him!"

I can't let him do that. I can't watch him fucking kill himself before my very eyes. I shake my head, looking up at his broken face with tears in my eyes. I wrap my arm around his shoulder, as if I were giving him a hug and try to grab the gun with my other hand. He's sobbing now, his eyes are filled with pure shame as he stares down at my beaten face.

"Give me the gun, Paul," I say, trying not to beg.

"I can't." He violently shakes his head. "I need to pay for what I've done."

"You've been paying for it," I quickly reason with him. "Now, give me the gun."

He shoves his body away from mine, thrashing around above me before I manage to flip him over and throw myself on top of him. There's no reasoning with him. That much is fucking clear. So, I decide to rip the gun from his hands. I'm not letting anyone fucking die today. There's been too much death in my life already. My body is inches from his as I grab his hand and try to pry the gun away. His finger is on the trigger, but I don't let it fucking scare me. I can't let him die. I can't have his death on my conscious. I look Paul straight in the eye right before I hear the gun go off.

The pain is unbearable, but it quickly turns to nothing. My ears are ringing and my head is vibrating with the sound. The room begins to spin, before the colors begin to blur. I hear Paul scream my name before my world goes black.

A/N: So…what do you guys think? I'm dying to read the reviews for this chapter. Maybe since it's my birthday in two days everyone could review? Please? . Thanks for reading!

I'll be posting a teaser of the next chapter in my facebook group and I'll also be posting that outtake for you guys on my blog soon! So keep an eye out .