Thank you so much IamTheAlleyCat for beta'ing and Ncsupnatfan for pre-reading. Thank you all for reading and reviewing. You people really are amazing. I spent the week from Monday counting down to Saturday so I can update again. IamTheAlleyCat is doing great with the beta'ing, so hopefully I'll be able to step it up to twice-weekly updates soon xxx


Chapter Eleven

Carlisle

It wasn't that I had spent the last five years oblivious to the hole Edward's absence had left in my life, but when he returned, I felt the chasm that had been his empty place close with him, and I was shocked it had been so great. I had forgotten, or perhaps glossed over for my own sake, the way it felt to have him there, that pillar of shared memory and experience, the object of paternal love and comfort.

The change it wrought over the rest of my family was huge, too. We hadn't been truly happy without him, that I had known, but I hadn't realized the effect it had had on us all to be without him.

Esme's smile was brighter than I had seen since the night of that cursed birthday party. Emmett and Alice were content to have their brother home and Bella close. Rosalie was satisfied and proud of her part in it and genuinely pleased to have him there, despite the fact she would not outwardly show it. Jasper basked in the feelings of us all, and I… I felt complete again. I only feared the moment he would leave us again.

"I am sorry, Carlisle," he said in a quiet whisper.

I shook myself out of my thoughts and smiled apologetically. It is not my intention to upset you.

"I know. I understand, even. It makes me happier to be here, too, but…"

"But?" I probed as his silence dragged on.

"How can I stay without her?"

She is here.

"You know it's not the same. Imagine life with Esme should she not look at you with absolute adoration anymore."

The idea was distasteful to me, but I forced myself to imagine in hopes that it would allow me to understand his feelings. I tried to picture Esme without the particular look of love she kept for me. It was impossible. I couldn't do it. She was my heart, and I hers.

"Whereas I have the actual memory of my heart being lost," he said mournfully.

It's not that she hates you, Edward.

"I know. At least, I hope she doesn't. Once, she would have been unable to hide that from me; I'm not so sure anymore. Now, it's just that she's not mine anymore, and that hurts. I have ruined it all."

I shook my head, without a word to comfort him, though I desperately wanted to. I wished I could exchange places with him. I would take the misery and let him have the friendship with Bella that I had managed to gain. It would not be enough for him, I knew, but it would be better than nothing.

"We should get back," he said, and I knew the conversation and my accompanying thoughts were too much for him.

He jumped from the tree we had been perched on side by side and landed gracefully on the balls of his feet. I jumped down beside him, and we set off at a run. We were met with a perfect picture of our family's life when we got back to the house. Emmett and Jasper were roughhousing, and Alice, Rosalie, and Esme were sitting on the porch steps. Esme had a sheaf of paint chips in her hand, and Rosalie and Alice were peering over her shoulder to examine them.

"What do you think of this one for your study, Jazz?" Alice asked, holding up a card ranging from deep to sky blue.

"I love it," he said without looking.

Her mouth pressed into a thin line. "You haven't even looked."

Jasper turned to face her, and a wide smile crept across his face. "True, but you love it, and I love you, so I know it's perfect."

"Smooth," I mouthed at him, and he smiled.

"Emmett," Rosalie said, a devious look in her eyes. "What do you think of this one?"

Emmett grinned. "Love it. We should use it for the bedroom." He hadn't even glanced at the card either.

"You haven't looked." Rosalie pouted.

"Yes, but I love—"

Alice hid her laugh behind her hand, her eyes sparkling with amusement.

Rosalie cut him off. "Great. I really like that shade of pink. We'll use it for the bedroom."

Emmett spun on his heel. "Pink!"

"It'd certainly be different," I said, thinking of a recent conversation. "Why do you decorate to complement your skin?"

Edward barked a laugh. "Did she really say that?"

I nodded. "She seemed genuinely curious, too."

"Say what?" Emmett demanded, as always irritated to be on the outside of a conversation.

"I'll leave you to fill them in," Edward said, glancing at his wristwatch. "I need to leave to see Bella."

"Of course." I hesitated. Was it bad form to wish him luck on something like this?

The question was answered for me by Alice, who grinned at him and said, "Good luck."

Edward sighed as he made for the garage. "Not helping, Alice."

She shrugged. "You never know."

"I do," he said dourly.

I hoped he was wrong.


Edward

I got to the parking lot we had arranged to meet in far too early, but I didn't want to be late. I didn't want her to think I was treating the meeting lightly. I was well aware of what a blessing she was bestowing on me, allowing us the chance to meet and talk. It was more than I deserved.

I turned on the stereo, setting the CD Carlisle had in there to play. I was surprised to hear notes of my own composition coming through the speakers, played by my own hands. I had made the disc at the same time I made one for Bella's birthday in response to Esme's heartfelt request. She wanted to be able to listen to the song I composed in reflection of her and Carlisle's love whenever she felt the desire, even though she was capable of doing that already by recalling any perfect memory of me playing. The fact Carlisle had clearly been listening to it in my absence made me feel even worse for leaving than I had previously.

The piece I always thought of as Esme's song came to an end and two notes of the next track played before I snapped it off in a hurry. I couldn't listen to Bella's lullaby anymore, just as I would not be able to play it again. It was an intrinsic part of a past that could not be recaptured.

A tap on my side window startled me. I looked to see Bella's smiling face peering in at me.

Disbelieving that she had caught me by surprise, I quickly reached for the door release. She stepped back so I could climb out. Her scent hit me as I breathed in, not the wrecking ball of temptation and want of our first meeting, a mere memory of that, but powerful, nonetheless. I was in control, though. The monster did not wake.

"Bella," I said, not entirely able to keep my tone as casual as I wished it to be. Though why should I? She knew I adored her. Carlisle had told and showed me everything he had shared with her about my absent years.

"Hey," she said. "You okay?"

"Perfectly well," I lied.

I ached for her. I wanted to take her into my arms, breathe in the scent of her scorching blood through her soft hair, to cup her cheeks and brush my lips against hers in a fitting greeting for the two of us.

Those desires belonged to before, though. Now, I satisfied myself with fixing her smile in my memory and returning it.

"Shall we?" she asked, gesturing along a path.

"Let's."

My hand twitched, wanting to reach for hers as we walked, just as it had in Carlisle's office on the point of her leaving. I controlled myself, though, fisting it and forcing it to stay at my side.

We reached a beach, and I thought we would stop there, as there was a bench Bella would be more comfortable on, but she turned north and walked on.

I stayed in step beside her, trying to think of something to say to break the silence. I was at a loss, though, and the silence wasn't uncomfortable. It was actually quite pleasant; a memory of how it had once been when all I needed was the sound of her heartbeat to satisfy me.

We reached an area of large rocks that blocked our path, and I was sure we would come to a stop there, but once again, Bella surprised me. She clambered onto them and picked her way carefully across them.

I tensed, waiting for the moment she would stumble for me to catch her, but she didn't. Her hiking boot-clad feet gripped the dry rocks, and Bella's care meant that when we reached the last rocks, she had remained stable.

She jumped down onto the sand and turned back to me, a hint of teasing in her eyes. She knew me so well that she must knew the shock it must have been to see her once-tripping-and-stumbling-self moving with such grace.

I jumped down beside her and looked around. It was a small cove, bordered on each side with rocks. The Pacific was spread out to the horizon, with rolling waves that reached for us but never met our feet.

"This is beautiful," I said, looking to the side to Bella, who was smiling as she looked out over the ocean. "Perfect." The last was an observation of my company, though she would be unaware of it.

"I love it," Bella said. "I found it exploring one day. I've never seen anyone else here. It's my place."

I understood. It was her place much as the meadow had once been mine and then ours. And was now nobody's, I realized, because I could never return there alone, and she would never again accompany me.

Bella sat down on the sand, and I copied her, leaving a clear foot of space between us for her comfort. She glanced to the side to look at me and then turned back to the ocean. "This okay?" she asked. "I thought we'd be better off meeting outside after yesterday. I don't want you hurting more than you have to."

Oh, if she only knew the way that made my heart clench. As if I could do anything but hurt now with her so close yet so far away. My problem was not thirst, though, far from it.

"I am not thirsty, Bella. You are in no danger from me."

She frowned. "But your eyes before, in Carlisle's office…"

That had been nothing to do with thirst. That was the ungentlemanly side of me faced with her beauty and uniform combined. It was deplorable and made worse by the fact she'd noticed. I would take better care to control myself in future.

"I am not thirsty," I said again.

"That's good." There was awkward silence for a moment, and then she said, "I guess we should talk."

"Yes," I said reluctantly. There was so much that needed to be said, things I needed to say to her, but I was leery of starting. This was almost perfect, being with her. What if this was to become our second and last goodbye? I didn't want to hurry our time away.

"I don't know how much Carlisle told you about what happened after you left," she said. "Do you know about the wolves and Victoria?"

I gritted my teeth and nodded.

Carlisle had told me—or, perhaps, showed me was more accurate— Bella's story of how the wolf gene had reemerged in Forks when we were there. He had told me how Bella had befriended them—that had galled me—and how they had become her protectors. I knew now that Victoria had come for Bella in revenge for James' death, and the wolves, with a cleverly constructed plan of Bella's creation, had killed her and a group of newborns she had brought with her. I knew that I owed them her life.

"I know it all, I think," I said. "And I am so sorry. I have no words to express my remorse for not being there to protect you."

"It's okay," she said quickly. "It's over now."

Did she really believe that? I didn't think so. I thought perhaps she would hold onto a certain measure of blame toward me because of the danger I had left her in. It was perfectly understandable. Because I hadn't been there, she had almost died. Her friends had been forced to put themselves at risk to protect her. I knew how much she would have hated that.

"Besides," she said, "I heard that you were hunting her anyway." A smile quirked her lips. "It's not your fault you weren't very good at it."

I didn't smile. "I was terrible at it. I followed her to Brazil—at least, I thought I had—but there was no trace of her when I got there. I think now that she tricked me at the Houston airport and turned back north while I flew south."

"You tried," she said gently.

"Not hard enough. When I lost her… Bella, I gave up. I didn't look anymore. I just found an abandoned, squalid place to hide myself, and I gave into the misery."

She looked sad. "Carlisle told me some of it. Was it truly that bad for you?"

"Worse," I said with certainty. "I know my misery is my own fault. I created the situation that broke me, but nothing could have prepared me for how it felt to walk away that cursed day, let alone how I felt after months away from you." I sucked in a breath. "And that's nothing to how I felt to seeing how much I hurt you when I left." I looked into her eyes, meeting their depths and wishing I could wipe away the reflected pain I saw in them. "I will never forgive myself for hurting you the way I did."

"You don't know the half of it," she said, a hint of bitterness in her voice.

"I think I do," I said. "I am not speaking of what you told Carlisle. I am thinking of what I saw when I came back to Forks, what Charlie told me..."


Edward - 4 years previously…

I separated from Carlisle and my brothers in the Rio airport and made my way to Washington while they went back to Ithaca. It was one of the longest journeys of my life, my connections seeming to take ages to traverse. Eventually, we came to SeaTac late morning. Close to my beloved, I wanted to run the distance to her, but my reappearance was going to cause enough of a stir to anyone that saw me already. I needed to arouse less suspicion by traveling as a human at least.

As I passed the Welcome to Forks sign in my hire rental car, I smiled. It truly felt like coming home.

Charlie's cruiser was parked on in the driveway of the little white house, and Bella's truck was parked on the road. I pulled up and climbed out. It was drizzling with rain, and my hair grew quickly damp, not that I cared. My appearance had never mattered to Bella. She had seen past the unnatural beauty to the person beneath.

I scaled the steps and knocked on the door. Had my heart beat, it would have trebled its pace as I waited for someone to answer. I hoped it would be Bella, I had no more patience to wait for our reunion, but it was Charlie's heavy plods that reached me before the door opened. When it did, it was only open long enough for Charlie to catch sight of me on the porch before it slammed shut in my face.

I worried immediately for his health, as I could hear him drawing heaving breaths inside, and his heart raced. "Charlie," I called. "Are you okay?"

There was no response other than his heart beating even faster.

I waited, almost expecting the sound of him dropping to the floor in a dead faint, but it didn't come. Instead, his breathing and heart rate slowed, and he began to mutter under his breath. "Bastard. How does he dare? What does he think he's doing? Thank God Bella isn't here."

The last sank in, and a heavy weight dropped into my stomach. She wasn't there. I was not on the cusp of seeing her again. I would have to find her first.

I knocked again.

"The hell with this," Charlie growled the moment the door was yanked opened again. He stood on the threshold, red-faced and furious. "Cullen."

"Charlie…" I began.

He held up a finger. "It's Chief Swan to you."

"Chief Swan," I said politely. "I am sorry to arrive unannounced, but I was looking for Bella."

"Yeah, I bet you were. She's not here, so you can turn around and go back to whatever rock you crawled out from under."

"Where is she?" I asked boldly.

"Not here."

I could see in his eyes he was resolved not to tell me, and I could gain nothing from his thoughts but the image of a russet skinned boy and one word: college. I recognized the boy's face as Jacob Black, but he was not the same as I had known him a year ago. He was substantially taller and muscular, older. There was an air of affection in Charlie's thoughts toward the boy, gratitude.

"I would dearly like to speak to her," I said.

"Tough luck. You can talk to me instead," he said, coming out of the house and into the drizzling rain. Bizarrely, he stepped around me and walked down the steps to the yard. I followed, confused by his thoughts that consisted solely of an ax. I didn't sense intent from him for an attack. The meaning of the location became clear at once. He stood a few feet away from a tree stump that had been used as a chopping block. The imagery almost made me smile.

"Take a seat," he said, gesturing at the block.

Feeling stupid but certain the only way to get the information I needed was to play along, I sat down and looked up at him where he stood looming over me.

"Chief Swan," I started, but he cut me off, jabbing a finger into the woods.

"It took us hours to find her that night. Half the town was out looking. Sam Uley found her, lying on the dirt in the cold, not moving. He said she looked dead."

His thoughts, usually so clouded, became crystal clear. A man walking out of the trees with Bella in his arms. She was deathly pale, and her eyes were closed. She did look dead.

My still heart clenched at the sight.

"She didn't get better for a long time," he went on. "I thought I was going to need to have her hospitalized for a while."

An image of Bella curled on her bed, her gaze empty.

"Her Mom came to take her back to Florida, but she wouldn't go."

Bella screaming at Charlie, "I am not going!" as she dragged clothes out of a suitcase and threw them in the direction of the closet.

"It went on for months. She drifted through her days like a ghost. She barely spoke. Her friends stopped calling. And at night…"

Bella thrashing in her bed, a scream ripping from her.

"She would scream for you."

I swallowed hard as the torturous images assaulted me. I didn't know what to do or say. My poor Bella. What had I done to her?

"Chief Swan," I started, unsure of what to say.

"You don't get to talk!" he snapped. "I'm talking now!" He drew a breath to calm himself and went on. "She got better, eventually. She's okay now. Jake made her better."

"Jacob Black," I breathed. The child I had seen in Charlie's mind, the boy that was morphing into a man, had saved her when I couldn't. He had repaired what I had broken.

"Yeah," Charlie said. "He's a good kid. He makes her happy." He smiled slightly at my look of obvious horror as the meaning sank in. "He's a boyfriend deserving of my daughter, unlike you. She loves him."

The words were like darts to my heart. I had lost her. She had moved on with another. It was no more than I deserved; I knew that now, seeing through Charlie's mind what I had done to her. How could I have ruined her so completely? I had never imagined…

I was not so naïve as to think Bella wouldn't have felt something at our break-up, but I imagined her passing through the phases of grief at the end of a relationship as I had seen countless other teenagers doing over the course of my long life. Her reaction was not the end of a relationship, though, it was more like a bereavement. It was like the separation of mates.

For me, that is what it was, but Bella wasn't a vampire. She couldn't feel so deeply as I did—it was proven by the fact she had moved on. I could never do that.

Charlie smiled, satisfied. "You're not wanted here anymore. Not that you ever should have been, really. She always was too good for you."

"I know," I said, so quietly he couldn't hear.

"So, you need to go," he said. "You need to go back to LA and leave my daughter alone. I don't want you calling her. I don't want you contacting her at all." He narrowed his eyes. "I am a cop. I will protect her." To his mind, it was all the threat he needed. He couldn't imagine any of the well-behaved Cullens risking the wrath of the law.

There was nothing left for me there at all. Bella had moved on with a human. She was living the life I wanted for her—one free of supernatural elements. She would marry, perhaps not the Black boy, but someone. There would be children, perhaps they would have her eyes, and there would be love. There would be changes that I could never experience. There would be life I couldn't have.

"Thank you, Chief Swan," I said politely. "I will not trouble you again."

"Good," he said, pleased. "Make sure that goes for my daughter, too."

"Don't worry," I said. "It will."

I walked back to my hire rental car and climbed in. With a roar of the engine, I brought it to life and drove away from the little white house on the edge of the forest, the home of my heart.


I finished my tale and risked a look at her face. She looked sad.

"He never told me," she said. "All this time, and he never said a word."

"He thought he was protecting you."

"I know. He's my dad." She sighed and looked into my eyes, seeming to be looking right through me to my broken and useless heart. "I'm sorry, Edward."

I looked incredulous. "You're sorry? Why?"

"For what happened with Charlie. You didn't need to see it all like that. Obviously, he didn't know, but that doesn't make it any more fair on you."

"Bella," I said bitterly, "I did this to myself."

She didn't argue. How could she? There was no argument to be made in my defense. I was to blame for it all.

"When exactly did you come?" she asked.

Confused at the question, I answered doubtfully. "One week after graduation."

A small and bitter smile quirked her lips. "You were there when Victoria was killed. While you were talking with Charlie, we were luring her into the forest."

I groaned. Another failure. Had I been more aware, I could have dealt with that threat to Bella myself. I could have done one more thing for her. I could have protected her as I once thought I was created to.

"I am so sorry," I said.

She shrugged. "It doesn't matter, I guess. It all worked out okay in the end."

She stared out over the horizon. The sun was setting now, and rays of light were creeping from between the clouds to light the water.

"What are we going to do now?" she asked.

"That is completely up to you," I said. "I know I am too late, you are not mine anymore, but if there is the smallest chance I can have a piece of your life again, I will do anything, be anything you need."

She didn't look at me as she said the tentative words that made my life shift once more. "I would like that. I missed you when you were gone, even after Jacob. I missed the man I knew almost as much as I missed your love. That's different now, I… It's different, but I would like a friend."

"Friends?" I asked hopefully.

She looked back at me and nodded. "If that's okay, then, yes, I would like us to be friends."

It was more than okay. It was better than I could have hoped for. It was a reason to live again.

One of the beams of light coming from behind a cloud reached me, and my skin lit up in a myriad of diamond lights. Bella looked from me to the sky and said, "My mom used to tell me those beams at sunset are dreams coming to earth for us."

"They're crepuscular rays," I said automatically. "Created by the way the light filters through clouds at twilight—"

She pressed a warm finger to my lips. "No, Edward, they're dreams."

Being Bella's friend, having a part in her life after what I did…

"Yes, of course," I said. "They're dreams."


So… This one was a sad write. I wanted them together properly, but I had to follow the characters' pace, not my own.

I have a question. Are there many Carlisle/Bella readers here? I'm working on a Carlisle/Bella story right now - different canon background for Carlisle and Bella so no Edward/Bella relationship to break up - and I had a couple questions I could use answers to. If you are a fan of the pairing or someone willing to give it a go, please drop me a review/message if you're up for answering a couple things for me.

Until next time…

Simaril xxx