Happy Saturday, people!

My internet is back to churning data like it's supposed to, and it's no longer impeding my consumption of How To Get Away With Murder, and my ability to work and post chapters on time.

Thank you, thank you, thank you for all your reviews and alerts. I love hearing your thoughts and theories.
Also thank you to Team Momo, who work tirelessly to help me make this readable. My stories wouldn't exist without them and I'm so grateful they're in my corner.
Alice's White Rabbit and Midnight Cougar are in the editing chairs. AGoodWitch, IAmBeagle, Driving Edward and RobsmyyummyCabanaBoy pre-read.

General consensus seems to be a) we like Jake (so do I), b) Kate is a b***h and she's up to something (I agree), and c) EditorWard might as well move his permanent residence to Denial, which isn't just a river in Egypt (I also agree).
There seems to be a keen interest in a Mac/Ross outtake for Ross's "apology tour". I'll see what I can do ;)
I'm knee deep trying to juggle work and continuing to write the next story (a RockerWard titled "Dreams Unwind", which I hope to debut in the new year) but I'll have your people talk to my people and see what happens ;-)

On with the show!


BEHIND THE IVORIES – CHAPTER 19

As short, dreary February fades into March, Bella and I fall into a routine. At first, I don't even realize we're doing it. I'm just along for the ride, but, strangely, quite happy to settle into it.

It starts one early morning in mid-March as I'm sitting down with my first cup of coffee, still at home and barely awake. My phone buzzes with a text, and the swish alert tells me it's from Bella—yes, I gave her customized alerts. Sue me.

Please tell me I can crash your lunch break today. :)

She always ends her texts to me with a smiley face and never signs them. When you have someone's number saved in your contacts, a signature becomes redundant information—it fits her no-frills persona to a T. When I grab the device to type a reply, the screen opens to three dancing dots in the same thread. I wonder what she's so eager to say at 7:00 a.m., but decide to dispel any doubts she might have about my willingness to have lunch with her.

You can crash my lunch break whenever you wish, including today.

The three dots bubble up in a new sequence of words.

Are you sure? Not too busy on a Monday?

I snort. She's giving me a perfect excuse to cut the staff meeting off when it's supposed to finish—at lunch break.

The entire newsroom will love you for stealing me away from the Monday meeting. Please, come and kidnap me.

Consider yourself kidnapped around 1p.m. :)

And that Monday, she does end up extracting me from the office. Our lunch break runs longer than my usual, but I don't even realize I'm half an hour late until Tanya taps her watch in lieu of a greeting. I reply with a shrug; Tanya's answering laugh follows me when I retreat into my office.

Throughout that week, I keep getting random texts from Bella. The topics are as disparate as can be, but they all offer me a window into Bella's daily life. Now that she's going to have a less nomadic life, she's thinking of adopting a cat. She asks for grocery shopping pointers in our neighborhood. She tries to con me into revealing Triple A's upcoming featured letters, but I claim editorial privilege and refuse to tell her. She tells me about her intention to start working on a PhD, as a further facet of her upcoming teaching career because she's accepted the offer from Berklee. She always texts me first. For some reason, I can't bring myself to start the conversation, but I'm more than willing to keep it going.

Then another Monday dawns, and a thought strikes me. The words I shared with Jacob come back to me: friendships are a give and take. So I gather my backbone and balls and shoot Bella a text while I'm on the T.

Please come and kidnap me for lunch if your schedule permits?

I wait for her answer like an anxious teenager, staring at the screen, hoping those three dancing dots will appear before I freak out and question what the fuck I'm doing.

It takes three stops—during which I wait with bated breath—before she answers. Or maybe she answered right away and the network gods just like to screw with us. I shouldn't have doubted her.

My schedule permits! 1p.m.-ish? :)

That smiley. It doesn't do justice to her smile. It doesn't do justice to the warmth seeping through me when I read her answer. But my memory—and my constant nighttime googling—serves me better in this. I can catalog her expressions and variations in her smiles with the accuracy of an AI. I don't know why, but it comforts me—the thought she's out there and cares about me. It warms my cynical heart into a slightly more-human disposition.

My fingers type back faster than it takes me to contemplate an answer.

The editor also accepts early kidnapping. ;-)

I don't know what possesses me to add the wink. Maybe all of this human interaction is changing me. I've never been a humorless person. I can be a sarcastic bastard with the best of them, but after Syria, I lost my enjoyment of good humor. I lost the zest for life, as cliché as that sounds.

Something in this slip of a girl is pushing me back into enjoying life. I don't know what it means for me, for us, yet. For now, I'm just enjoying the ride.

&&&IVORIES&&&

Five hours later, which included plowing through a contentious staff meeting, I'm answering a few emails while I wait for Bella. I've already had Tanya call Alistair to reserve a table downstairs. No way am I having my weekly lunch with Bella at the counter under the big Viking's watchful eye.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry!" Bella dashes into my office, her curls flying around her face, then dumps her backpack on my visitor chair.

"It's barely one. You're not late, so what are you sorry for?"

With a deer-in-headlights look, she stares at me, then looks at my office wall clock. "I'm not late?"

"No, you're not. And even if you were, you're here now. That's what matters."

She blinks. Then smiles at me while running a hand through her riotous hair. The old, impenetrable layer of ice around my heart cracks and bleeds, spreading unspeakable warmth through me.

"You're right. That's what matters," she echoes. Then, she drags her chair closer to my desk, reaching across for my hand. When her fingers tangle with mine, another crack runs through the pack ice around my heart. "Usual place?"

"You bet. I booked a table."

She gives me a pointed look.

"Okay, Tanya did. But Ogilvy almost sputtered when he took the call."

She snickers. "Big guy talks a big game, but he's all bark and no bite, is he?"

I shrug. I don't really care about Ogilvy's reaction—but it was funny at the time. "I think he's still starstruck."

"And you're not?"

I shake my head, pondering how to voice what I'm thinking. "No. The fame is incidental—you're … you. That's what matters to me."

She blinks, and when she looks at me, her eyes are glassy. "Thank you, Edward."

My name on her lips does strange things to my cracked and battered heart. And before I dwell on it, I grab my coat and phone and lead her to the elevators.

"Come on; let's see if Ogilvy's picked his jaw off the floor, maestro."

"By all means."

&&&IVORIES&&&

An hour later, Bella and I tumble out of the elevator and into the newsroom at the Tatler, both laughing at some absurd joke Alistair cracked.

"I can't believe he said that!" Bella exclaims.

"You'd better. That's textbook Ogilvy for you."

"Ah, so you still work here." Mac's booming voice welcomes us.

"Of course he does, Mac. Can you believe this guy?" Bella asks sarcastically, pointing to the guy himself.

"As a matter of fact, I do. Hey, Mac. Did you need me?" I ask him.

Meanwhile, Bella and I follow him into my office. Tanya's nowhere around, and just when I think about questioning it, I remember she took a couple of hours off for a doctor's appointment.

"Nah. I just like giving you shit every now and then. Hey, piano girl. Now you're hobnobbing with the editor—you've forgotten about us little people?"

Bella snorts. "You are so full of it you stink all the way into Maine, Mac. I've been busy."

"Doing what?"

"Stuff," Bella replies with a mischievous glint in her eyes. Surreptitiously, she throws me a wink. Mac can't see her because he just plonked himself—uninvited—into one of my visitor chairs.

"Stuff, she says. You're not doing shows. You're not touring. You're not doing interviews. What the hell are you doing?"

Shaking my head at Mac's nosy, judgmental ass, I bring my computer out of hibernation and try not to groan at the number of emails and messages I need to return.

"Uh-oh. There goes the half-groan," Mac comments.

"Should we be afraid of the half-groan?" Bella asks.

Mac shakes his head, but then nods. "Sorta. Kinda. The half-groan is the prelude to the groan."

"That is … insightful, Mac. I would have never figured that out on my own. Being a dilly-dallying musician and all."

"The fact remains that the half-groan means he's turning work mode back on. Soon, he won't be listening to us because he'll be too busy thinking about work shit."

He's not wrong. I'd just prefer him not to blab all my bad habits to Bella.

"Speaking of work, don't you have any to do?" For once, I'm not reminding Mac he's on the clock. Bella is.

"Fine. I know when I'm not wanted," he quips again. With a dramatic flourish, he walks out of my office, only to turn back at the last moment. "That dinner of yours, are we ever going to hear of a scheduled date, or did you just dangle the promise of lasagna in our faces for shits and giggles?"

Now I do groan. Because he's right. "I still have to figure out a date that works for everyone."

"Set up a Slack chat with everyone in it. Then have Tanya sort the rest out. Easy-peasy."

The man has a point. "Thanks, Mac. I'll get right on that."

"You don't have to do all of it yourself," Bella counters.

I almost forgot she's still here, what with Mac sucking all the oxygen out of the room. "I invited everyone over; I should at least put in some work for that."

"Right." Bella nods. "And, Mac, should we sit you next to Ross at this shindig?"

Now it's Mac's turn to groan. "Why do you hate me, piano girl?"

"I don't," she replies with another wink.

"Just my luck." And now he does leave.

When we're finally alone in my office, Bella turns to me. "You're still sure about the dinner?"

"Yes. Did you coordinate with Jake or something? He asked me the same thing."

She shrugs. "Well, I have this feeling that you don't let a lot of people into your inner sanctum. Am I wrong?" Somehow, she sees through me.

"No, you're not. But I'm trying to push the boundaries of my comfort zone a little farther."

She nods. "As long as you're okay with it."

"I am."

She smiles, then stands to gather her things. "See you next week?"

"Same kidnapping, same time."

"I'll let you work, then. See you, Edward."

A half-hour after she leaves, my phone vibrates with a text.

Thank you for letting me in. :)

&&&IVORIES&&&

The week passes in stops and starts, as we prepare a big issue in the Tatler for May. It's spurts of feverish activity and spans of tedious, monotonous tasks because most of the labor that keeps the lights on is far from exciting busywork.

On Thursday afternoon when most of the grunt work behind the scenes is done, and we've put to bed the big assignments for the next issue, I give myself permission to cut out of work early. And that's how I find myself almost lulled into a stupor while the T drags me back into Cambridge a little after four.

Suddenly, two-thirds of the way home, the shrill ring of my phone startles me out of that stupor. I answer reflexively; too stunned by lingering exhaustion and stress to recognize it's the customized ringtone I set for Bella's calls. At least, my choice of one of her songs—"Fly Away"—doesn't attract scowls of disapproval from the elderly lady seated beside me.

"Bella, hi. How are you?"

My enthusiastic greeting crashes and burns when all I hear on the other end of the line are muffled sobs.

"Bella? What's wrong?"

The sobs devolve into hiccups, then into a deep, shuddering breath. "I'm here. Sorry 'bout that."

"What's the matter? Can I help?"

More sniffles. Instinctively, I throw a glance at the screen above me and check the next stop. Then I remember I just changed trains at Park Street, which means I'm two stops away from home. Meanwhile, I hear more sniffles and more subdued sobbing from Bella.

"I-I'm here," she says again.

"Please, tell me what's wrong." She's making me anxious, but I don't want to put that on her. I have a bad, bad feeling about this phone call.

"Nothing," she replies in-between sniffles.

"You wouldn't be crying on the phone to me if it were nothing," I counter. "Where are you?"

"Home."

My next words are out before I make a conscious decision. "I'm one stop away from Kendall Square. I'll be there as soon as I can."

"No, Edward."

"I'm not going to leave you there alone after you call me crying, Bella. What do you take me for? I'll be there."

"Thank you," she concedes.

&&&IVORIES&&&

Forty agonizing, drenched, freezing cold minutes later—because it started raining, and I caught the brunt of it running from the Kendall Square stop to Chestnut Street—I'm standing outside Bella's place, banging on her door, with dread and anguish drilling a hole through my heart.

Disjointed noises greet me from behind the purple portal to the Wisteria House; the colorful access point fits her personality perfectly. While I'm halfway through cataloguing the curlicues on the stained-glass half-moon panel on top of the doorway, she wrenches open the door.

Her hair falls to her shoulder in haphazard piles of curls, free from the confines of the scarves she normally wears; her tiny torso's engulfed in an oversized Juilliard sweatshirt, and she's rubbing her bloodshot eyes with the cuffs. In a word, the poor girl is a mess.

"Bella …"

I don't have time to ask what's wrong. She flings herself into my arms, and the sobs racking her tiny frame resound through my chest. It's a heart-wrenching rhythm. Her frantic breaths sound like a prelude to something I'm intimately acquainted with—an impending panic attack. I need to get her inside and find a way to settle her down enough to stave it off. Maybe, after that, she'll tell me what happened.

"It'll be all right, Ladybug. It'll be all right." I don't know where the nickname comes from. It just gushes out unbidden, like a lot of other things when I'm with her. "Let's get you inside. It's cold here."

She nods against my chest and disentangles her arms from around my waist. But before she turns toward the door, she extends her hand to me, threading my fingers through hers.

"Thank you for coming, Edward."

"Of course, Ladybug."

When I close the door behind me, she's walking toward a dark gray sectional that sits in the front room. I throw a glance around me, but not a lot of the décor registers with me. I'm not here to write a feature for Architectural Digest. I'm here to comfort a friend. One thing I do notice are a table and mismatched chairs in a breakfast nook by the kitchen—the open plan affords a view of most of the ground floor—and a baby grand piano in a space off to the right of the living room. On the left, a staircase with purple banisters climbs to the first floor.

Bella shakes her head suddenly, then pats the space beside her on the couch. "I'm a horrible host. Please, take a seat."

I take off my soaked coat, hang it on a guitar-shaped coat hanger by the door, then join her. The sectional is one of those wide-seated, chunky modern affairs you see on the pages of, well, décor magazines. Somehow, it clashes with the rest of the mishmashed furniture I've seen so far, but I can picture Bella huddled on it, listening to music, or daydreaming.

Or drying her tears in-between sobs, as she's doing right now.

This time, I'm the one reaching out for her hand. She complies, grasping my fingers so hard it almost hurts.

"Will you tell me what happened?"

Her eyes and nose barely peek out above the collar of her sweatshirt. She blinks, then pulls the collar down. "Why did you call me Ladybug?" she asks in one of those shy whispers of hers.

The question—a weird segue from mine—stumps me for a second. Then I decide to go for honesty. "You call your niece Little Bug, right?"

She nods, and a faint smile transforms her distraught expression into a pool of tenderness. "Yes. She likes ladybugs, so one day I told her she was one. But she protested. 'I wittle,' she said. So I told her she was my Little Bug."

"Well, you're not little. So, if you'll permit, you're my Ladybug."

With a shuddering sigh and a glassy smile, she nods. "I'll take it," she concedes, pulling on our joined hands.

"What happened?"

"James Fray happened."

My obsessive googling is paying dividends because I recognize the name immediately. "The ex, that unmitigated dickweed?"

She nods, then pushes her laptop that's lying open on the ottoman in front of the couch toward me. It shows an article on Classic FM Magazine's homepage. The headline reads "Triumphant Concert Schedule and New Album Announced for Fray, with Fatherhood on the Horizon."

"I can see how that would be unsettling. It seems we have something in common lately. Our exes seem determined to come out of the woodwork and screw with our lives."

"I vowed I wouldn't let him affect me this way again. I swore I didn't care," she says, her voice growing more unsteady with every syllable.

"Emotions are fickle things, by definition. What is it that disturbed you about this? I thought you didn't really bother with industry press anymore."

"Yeah, well," she replies, huffing. "I'd like to say I walk the walk and talk the talk, but sometimes, my demons get the better of me. I only checked the website because a fellow grad from Juilliard debuted his first record this week. Then, bam. This piece of crap was on the homepage."

"He got a few concerts at"—I throw a glance to check—"Carnegie Hall, so what? Didn't you sell that out twice?"

She sits up taller, emerging from her cave-like sweater that acts more like armor at this point. "That I did. Take that, you fucker."

I nod in encouragement. "That's the spirit. What in the ever-loving fuck did he do to you?"

She crawls across the couch to get closer to me, then burrows into my side. Her arms circle my waist; the warmth of her hands melts the pack ice around my heart, again.

"I know I told you … someday. Let this be my someday, all right?" she asks, raising her gaze to look me in the eye.

"You don't have to tell me if you don't want to."

She shakes her head. "No, I need to tell you. If you'll listen?"

I wrap my arms around her shoulders. "Yes, Ladybug."

"I first met James at Juilliard. He was an exchange student from Paris …"

&&&IVORIES&&&

A half-hour later, we're deep into the weeds of Bella's whirlwind romance with Mr. Fray. A French-born Englishman educated both at Juilliard and in Paris, the fucker is a few years older than Bella, but when their paths crossed in New York, he didn't give her the time of day. Things changed, she tells me, when she earned a scholarship to Paris for her master's. A master's Fray had also been accepted into, and to which he'd be returning after his semester at Juilliard. It had greatly ruffled his pretentious feathers that Bella, who graduated a year early from Juilliard, gained admission into an exclusive program ahead of him. Apparently, the jerk had to apply for the master's twice before getting a spot. A bitter pill to swallow.

"He's been raised to think he's the cream of the crop, and he acts like it," she explains.

"So he's a conceited, entitled asshole. That's what you're telling me."

"In a word, yes. But at the time, I didn't realize. The classical music community is incredibly insular. People who win prizes and performance spots at festivals are one in a million. They've been in it since they were all five, six years old. Everyone knows everyone, especially in Europe. It's awfully competitive."

"A den of backstabbing harpies."

"Again, yes. At the time, I tried to let it slide. It was the nature of the beast, after all. I only cared about performing; I wasn't keen on composing my own stuff yet. I mean, I did write here and there, but …"

"But what?" I ask, bumping her shoulder. She's calmed down somewhat.

On account of me running through the frigid rainfall, she insisted I sip piping hot herbal tea with her. I don't hate it; in fact, it's soothing. But I'm not about to throw the java away.

"When you train as a classical performer, you're instructed to be a conduit. There are composition classes in the syllabus, but it's more meant as a passive, analysis-oriented class for performers. It's not intended to teach you how to compose; it's not the primary goal. It's meant to teach how to analyze compositions. Of course, it teaches you the basics of composition itself, but if you're aiming to be a performer, composing your stuff is frowned upon."

"How do we even have modern-day composers? Like people who write movie soundtracks?"

"Ah, those ones. They never go into performing. Either you perform, or you compose. There's no classical equivalent to Bob Dylan-type singer-songwriters, if you will. No acceptable equivalent, that is."

"You're a maverick, then? You looked at the rulebook and threw it out?"

She nods before answering. "Yes, but it took me years to make peace with it. With the fact that I'd never fit the mold and would be made to pay the price for it. My critics have a lot of things to say about that. Plus, going my own way cost me a few things over the years. My relationship with James was the first casualty."

"Forgive my frankness, but since he turned out to be a two-timing bastard, I'd be inclined to say good riddance. Is there more to the story, though?"

She lowers her gaze. "Yes. After our masters' in Paris, I thought I'd give it a go in Milan with him. He'd gotten a gig for a few concerts at the Teatro Alla Scala, and he was scheduled to perform at a few summer festivals across Italy. I believed myself in love, and going to Milan with him made sense. I wasn't pressed to find a paying job. Charlie, my dad, has always supported me in my endeavors, and he told me I didn't need to worry about paying the bills for a while if it meant I'd find my place in the world."

That's when I remember her father is some sort of geek-wiz, who started a tech company in Silicon Valley. A tech company that is now a big-time defense contractor. Yes, this tracks—her dad could certainly foot the bills without breaking the bank.

"When I arrived in Milan, James started changing. He'd had dreams of the two of us being this classical music power couple even while we were studying in Paris, but I thought it was just that—daydreaming and nothing else. Instead, it all took a weird, uncomfortable turn. I was busy building a network and working as a session musician here and there to find my feet. Sometimes, I just played the score they gave me, others they asked me to get creative and contribute. And those times lit a fire in me. I wanted to write. I wanted to play my own stuff. Screw the conduit. I mean, do you see me sitting on a bench, wearing a velvet frock, playing Rachmaninov? Hell, no. That's not me."

I think about her all-black outfits, her Chuck Taylors in all the colors of the rainbow, and her cobalt blue scarves. Nope. The Philharmonic is no place for Bella. She'd be bursting at the seams, gasping for air. "Somehow, no. I can't picture you like that. I'm not sure the dress code would allow for hi-top Chucks."

She snickers in between sips of tea. "Nailed it. Now, another bone of contention emerged with Mr. Fray. Mind you, I'd been asked to audition for La Scala, too. With his constant needling, James convinced me it wasn't for me. So he went, auditioned, and got the spot. I just shrugged it off at the time because, again, not my scene. But when I started getting hired more and more as a session musician, including by a renowned Italian rock singer who asked me to go on tour with him, James's irritation with my career choices came to a boiling point."

"I'd be willing to bet the titanium rod in my left femur that the fucker was afraid of competition, wasn't he?"

"Nailed it again. He'd manipulated me into not auditioning for La Scala, partially leveraging my growing distaste for the traditional classical milieu. The bitter truth was he knew he might not get the job if I'd auditioned along with him. So he jettisoned the possibility altogether. When I was ready to go on tour through Italy, he staged a full-blown campaign against my chosen career."

"Oh, for fuck's sake. Remind me to never cross paths with this piece of shit, Ladybug."

"Gladly. Get this—his argument against me gallivanting across rock stages was that it'd reflect badly … on him."

"What? That one, I don't get."

She disentangles herself from my side and sits up straighter. When she speaks, her expression is half-sarcastic and half-disgusted. "He was vying for a spot as resident performer at the Scala. According to his avowed position, a girlfriend who mixed it up with rockers of dubious fame and pedigree would have been a blot on his record. Yet, he pressured me to get engaged. I was starting to pull at the strings of that relationship, and he didn't like it. He didn't like that I had the potential to be more popular than he did. He didn't like that I was a better performer than he was. He didn't like that I didn't fit the traditional mold of a classical performer. So rock was disreputable, but when I auditioned to play with a few chamber music ensembles—and got the gigs—he went postal."

"The man can't have it both ways. Pick one side and stick with it, you bastard."

She shakes her head with a minute smirk. "You know, if you'd met Ross at the time, you two would have been peas in a pod. Her opinion of James was—and still is—identical. She would have sooner thrown him off the pinnacle of the Duomo than suffered his continued presence in my life. But at the time, I was still trapped in this mindset where I was the 'wrong' one, so she kept her mouth shut."

"Ross? Keeping her mouth shut? That I gotta see."

"Well, mostly. She was supportive. She made her opinion known and said she'd listen whenever I needed to vent. And of course, she'd be there with a getaway car the minute I said the word."

"Since you're no longer in Milan, I'm guessing you said the word at some point."

And that's when she folds in on herself like a cat curling up into a donut on a cold winter day. But she's not gearing up for a nap in front of a roaring fireplace, she's holding on to herself so she doesn't break down again. With her knees gathered up to her chest and the hem of her sweatshirt engulfing her legs, she begins the rest of her tale.

"You guess correctly. Saying yes to his proposal was misguided. I didn't have the best example of marital bliss growing up. My dad has always been a bit of a nerd with his head in the clouds, lost in his projects. But his business smarts helped him build his empire, and Mom stayed as long as she could reap financial benefits from it. Dad put his foot down when she tried to hijack my college education. By then, they'd been divorced for years, but she saw me as someone to shape into a clone of herself and introduce to her socialite friends' offspring—I wanted Juilliard. I saw no life outside of music. And that's when Mom took her marbles—metaphorically—and stopped talking to me. I'd learned to grow up without her, but I always had some hope to find common ground with her at the back of my mind. After that debacle, even Dad wouldn't talk to her. He'd seen her attempted manipulation of me as the blackest kind of betrayal. Not even a year after the divorce, she married Garrett's father, and I gained an older stepbrother and ally. But back to James—I didn't really want to marry him. I didn't even really love him."

"What was it, then?" I ask, reaching for her hand.

She sighs, burrowing into my side again. "A misguided attempt to fit in, to belong, with someone who'd somehow dazzled me along the way. I realize now that he was an insecure jerk who put the burden of his inadequacies on me. I shouldn't have fallen for it, but at the time, I didn't know any better. I thought going along with his wishes would benefit us as a couple, in the long run. Until that pretentious, lavish, over-the-top, absurd engagement party he conned me into throwing."

That's when I remember a slew of Page Six articles I found in my early days of obsessively googling Isabella Swan. The high profile, publicized demise of her relationship played out like a bad Lifetime movie on the pages of European tabloids. It's another thing we have in common. Our last long-term relationship imploded under the limelight for all and sundry to gawk at and judge.

I don't want her to relive that sordid humiliation, so I hold her close and speak. "People think they know you. They see headlines and make assumptions. They can infer the bare-bones version of it, but they don't know what happened to you. They don't know the impact on you of all the crap that gets slapped on tabloids, nor will they ever know how you felt while your life played before their eyes on an endless reel."

"Yeah," she answers with a shudder. "And by the time I caught him with his pants down—literally—he'd parlayed his future into the family of the music director of the Teatro Alla Scala. Knowing Aro Delgado is a professional hazard for a classical musician—I knew him, too. I didn't know his daughter Victoria. James made up for it, though. Intimately and repeatedly. And because she's an actress, Italian tabloids jumped on it with glee. Beloved Italian actress snags promising French musician—that's how the headlines summed it up. Never mind that he'd been caught fucking her in a storeroom at his engagement party to another woman. Me. They painted me as an unstable, emotional small-time musician with zero talent. Someone who'd been riding his coattails. That's what they reduced my life to. He'd cheated on me, and it was my fault."

"Let me guess—anonymous sources?"

"Close to the couple."

I can't suppress a growl. As a journalist, I recognize the value of an anonymous source here and there. But that'd be in certain circumstances—conflict, national security, you name it. And not as the only sources. Anonymity protects the source; it's not a weapon to destroy a person's reputation. Not when that person is, by all accounts, the harmed party in the equation.

"Don't even get me started on the lack of journalistic ethics of that shit, please." I shake my head. "James and his people must have planted most of it."

"Oh, I'm aware. By the time my face was plastered on gossip rags, Ross had flown in from New York with a getaway plane and a plan. Nothing held me in Milan. And James and his cronies had started poisoning the well. My gigs and contacts started drying up. At the time, I felt like a coward on the run."

"Don't do that. I'm an expert on—"

She interrupts me. "Yeah, I know, and I have the hours of therapy to prove it. I took myself out of a toxic situation. Quitting isn't always the easy way out. What was it? 'In some cases, quitting, saying no, begging off that one task you're feeling reluctant about could be the healthiest thing you do for yourself.' Or so I read in a certain magazine."

She just quoted my own article back to me. "You read my editorials?"

Bella shrugs, a faint smile dawning on her lips. "It was on the same issue as my interview."

"Fair enough."

A stealthy glance out the window tells me it's pitch dark now, and it's still raining. Even if I left the office earlier than usual, it must be dinnertime or thereabouts. Almost on cue, Bella's stomach grumbles.

"Are we hungry, maestro?"

She averts her gaze, then stretches out her legs. "I didn't eat anything today. I slept in because I spent the night composing and playing. When I woke up, I answered Ross's messages, then saw that article. I completely lost track of time and—"

"Say no more. Lead me into your kitchen."

"I can't cook to save my life, Edward."

I shake my head. "But I can. Let's see what we can forage from your pantry. I'll bet there's something edible." I stand, then reach out for her hand.

Instead of taking it, she looks up at me with a skeptical expression. "You don't have to stay here and feed me. I can order takeout."

"And if you think I'm going to let you spend the night eating alone after the day you've had, you're delusional. Come on, Ladybug. Let's cook."

&&&IVORIES&&&

Ten minutes later, we've found a few things that look promising.

"The ricotta doesn't smell like a biochemistry experiment, so we can use it. The spinach looks a tad wilted, but we'll steam it, that's not a problem. And you have pasta. I think we're golden."

She flits about the kitchen, trying to stash all the dirty dishes in the dishwasher. It's clear that "domestic goddess" is not a descriptor anyone would apply to Bella, but it somehow fits her personality. She's lived independently most of her adult life but always in settings that didn't require her to cook for herself. Her schedule has never been a standard nine to five, so household chores are not high on her list of priorities. She doesn't pretend she likes to do this shit either.

"I need to find someone to help me out around the house. I'm hopeless, as you can see. While Ross was here, she kept things in shape, but I can't expect her to schlep it here from Southie to clean my kitchen. This is part of my adulting plan—taking care of a house on my own. But I feel like crap that I'd have to pay someone to do it when other people can do it themselves."

"Bah." I resort to Carlisle's go-to nonplussed expression. "You're a busy person. Your schedule wouldn't allow you to double as Martha Stewart whenever you're not on a stage. It's not a crime to ask for help. I say go for it."

"It's gonna be a nightmare to find someone reliable. I don't know a lot of people in town."

"Ask Tanya," I counter while I rinse the spinach leaves. "There's bound to be someone from her church who knows someone."

"Will do," she replies. Then she scribbles the words "Tanya for housekeeping" on a whiteboard that hangs beside the fridge. "So, what are we cooking?"

"Pasta with spinach and ricotta. It's going to be creamy goodness. Put the water on to boil, please," I instruct.

She starts to rummage through the cupboards for an adequate pasta pot.

"So, back to James." I still have some questions on this fucker. For example, why did his return to the US for a couple concerts reduce Bella to a weeping mess?

"Yeah, let's exhaust the subject before we sit down to eat. I'd hate to spoil the fantastic dinner you're about to cook for me."

"He's back here for concerts. That alone should not surprise you. What happened? What did he say or do that affected you this much?"

She drops a metal lid to the floor. It clatters to her feet with the repeated swishing sound of cymbals. "Wow. You've still got it."

"What?"

"The knack for asking questions that cut through the bullshit. I haven't been on the receiving end of it in a while." She grimaces slightly after picking up the wayward piece of kitchenware.

"You don't have to tell me if you don't want to. But … I wondered. And before you say anything else, everything in your reaction is valid. It's not for me to say if it's proportional or not. There's no measure to grief or anger. But when I got that phone call from you tonight—the anguish that gripped me ... I ran like the wind to get to you because I was worried."

She walks around the island to gather odds and ends from drawers. She begins setting two placemats on the breakfast bar, then climbs onto one of the stools and turns toward me.

"She's pregnant. James's wife. They're having a baby." Her voice breaks on the last word.

I abandon the spinach to its fate in the salad spinner and round the island to wind my arms around her. Even seated on this high stool, I still dwarf her. She hides her face in the crook of my arm, clasping my hand with hers.

"I had a pregnancy scare in the last few months of our relationship. He went ballistic. Of course, now I know why. First, he was gaslighting the crap out of me. Second, he was already two-timing me, so a baby with me wasn't in the cards when he aimed to land the director's daughter."

"So his reaction at the time led you to believe he had an objection to children, period. Correct?"

"In a word, yes. I rationalized it. He didn't want children, and it would have been terrible timing anyway. I didn't even know if I wanted children myself. Looking back …"

"He just shifted blame onto you, once again."

"Yes. What broke me about that blasted article … he lied. Every time I turn, I find another lie. He wanted children, just not with me. He wanted marriage, just not with me. Why did he have to put me through that if he didn't want me? Why?"

"Oh, Ladybug," I reply, holding her closer.

While I rock her against my chest, something shifts in me. The anguish I felt when she'd called in tears, the rage that bubbled up as she relayed what James did to her, all of it melts into another kind of fire.

I want to shield her from ever going through anything like that again. I want to spare her from shedding another tear about this bastard. I want to hold her while she laughs, not while she cries. But I won't run in the other direction if she needs me … the next time she cries.

I'll be there. For my Ladybug.

And I don't know what it means for this friendship.


Baby steps, remember? They're getting closer, but Edward has so many walls around him it's not even funny. AND we need to see how a certain dinner will go.

Talk to me!