Title: Forbidden Attraction

Author: MarieCarro

Beta: Alice's White Rabbit

Genre: Drama/Romance

Rating: NC-17

Summary: To Edward Masen, Bella Swan was nothing more than his daughter's best friend, but that all changed when they both applied for the same weekly writing class. Suddenly, she didn't appear to be the young girl who had played with his daughter since her family moved in next door. What will Edward do when he realizes that he's developing a very forbidden attraction for a woman twenty-five years his junior? AH

Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.

CHAPTER 2

The next Thursday, I arrived at the old high school, carrying two books written by Allison Polly that I thought Bella might like.

When I handed them to her, she eyed them for a few seconds before she held them against her chest. "Thank you," she said with a sweet smile.

"No problem. These were the next books I hoped to get Alice to read, but …" I let the rest of the sentence trail out in the sand.

"She does read some of the books you give her," Bella said, defending her friend. "It's just that some of them—"

"I know." I held up one of my hands to stop her. "I've always tried to force things on her that I hoped she would like. It's a weakness of mine, I guess."

We continued to converse until Ms. Cope came clicking down the corridor. She asked us all how the homework had gone and smiled when some of the others enthusiastically replied.

We were supposed to take a memory and reiterate it by writing a poem about it. It had not worked for me at all. I was pretty sure my poem would be one of the worst, but I couldn't do anything but endure the torture and read it out loud.

Bella walked next to me inside the classroom, and her grimace told me that it hadn't gone well for her, either. Still, what she read out loud about a particular memory she had with Alice, I had to say that it was better than most. She truly had a talent.

During the break, Julia and Audrey joined Bella and me at our table. They immediately started up a conversation with me while completely ignoring Bella. To be polite, I continued talking with them, but in my periphery, I saw Bella cross her arms over her chest and stare at the two women. It looked almost as if she thought they had interrupted our time together.

It wasn't until we got in my car after the class that I got a chance to ask her about it.

"It was rude of them to sit with us and not talk to me. It was like I didn't exist. They only had eyes for you."

I may have heard it wrong, but it almost sounded like Bella was jealous, although, what she had to be jealous about, I didn't know. But the feeling it evoked in me, although pleasant, was anything but good. I should not have felt pleased about something like that.

"What did you think about my poem?" Bella asked, interrupting my thoughts.

"It was very well written," I replied, thankful for the distraction. "And so much better than mine."

"No way! Yours was great, but we got a boring subject. This next one seems more interesting."

I nodded. "I agree, but I also have a hard time writing on command. Maybe I'll get used to it."

"Have you told Alice that we are taking the same class?" she asked, suddenly changing the subject. "She wants to know how last week was, but I'm afraid to tell her that you were there. She might get mad if she hears that you've been there this whole time, and I didn't tell her."

I laughed at the simplicity of the problem Bella had, but knowing my daughter, she could refuse to speak to Bella for weeks if she found out about the fact that her best friend attended the same class as her dad without telling her about it.

"What a situation I've put you in! I'll tell her tonight. I promise."

"Thank you," she said appreciatively.

For almost an hour, we remained in the parked car and just talked. Mostly about the class, but also about personal stuff, books we had enjoyed, and the people we attended the class with.

Bella seemed to enjoy my way of observing the people around me—how I could somehow see their core by simply hearing them talk for five minutes.

I also got to know Bella on a new level. She was still all of the things I already knew, but I found out that she was also curious and thirsted for knowledge. She had never had the desire to go to the parties Alice had always gushed about through high school, even though she'd gone to some of them just to please my daughter.

She was no longer simply Alice's friend in my eyes. During that hour, she grew into something more. She became my friend—a person I could share my passion with.

In the following weeks, our friendship grew stronger, but only when we were alone. When she was with her family or Alice, she reverted back into being Alice's best friend only, but I got to see her being animated over a movie or book she'd recently read on those Thursday evenings we spent together.

I took an immense liking to Bella Swan, and I found myself yearning for her company more than once. On those occasions, I always reminded myself of the fact that she was only a nineteen-year-old girl, especially when my thoughts drifted to her during conversations with my wife.

I sometimes felt incredibly ashamed of what I was thinking, but I couldn't seem to help it. My want for her company was soon not only on a mental level, but a physical one as well, and it terrified me.

One Saturday afternoon in March when Bella was hanging with Alice in her room, I fought the urge to knock on the door and ask to talk with Bella for a few minutes. Alice knew that we were going to the same class by now, so she wouldn't think it was weird if I said that I needed her friend's opinion on something.

The reason I was fighting it was because I didn't really need Bella's opinion. I only wanted to talk to her. I wanted to see if I could make the Bella I liked come forward even though she was hanging out with Alice at the moment. I needed her to come out because I needed to know if she felt the same way I did.

At the same time, I didn't want to know because what would I do if she did?

I lost the battle, though, and I found myself standing outside my daughter's room with a few pieces of paper in one hand and my other knocking on the door.

I peeked inside, and when Bella smiled, I knew she didn't mind me interrupting her time with Alice. "Bella, since you're already here—"

"Dad!" Alice sighed deeply and rolled her eyes at me.

"I am terribly sorry for the interruption, oh great daughter of mine," I said teasingly, and Bella giggled. "But if I can borrow Bella for two minutes, I promise I won't utter another word for the rest of your evening together."

Alice rolled her eyes again. "You are so lame, Dad," she snorted out. "Besides, you can talk as much as you want tonight because we're going to the movies," she stated.

Bella, who was walking toward me, stopped in her tracks. "We are?"

"Of course!"

I felt an ache in my stomach when Bella followed me out into the hallway. It was an ache I hadn't felt in fifteen years at least, and the thought had me rubbing my slightly sweaty neck.

I handed one of the papers to Bella. "Do you think this is good enough?"

Bella's eyes widened, and then a big grin stretched across her face. She accepted the paper and began to read. While doing so, her mouth formed the words quietly, and I found myself focusing on it, almost losing myself in the process.

I swallowed thickly when she looked up, and I tried not to let my face reveal my inner thoughts. How I could even have those thoughts about a nineteen-year-old girl in the first place was beyond me. For a second, I actually felt disgusted with myself.

"It's beautiful," she said. "Although …"

"Although what?" I asked, genuinely interested now in what she thought about the poem.

"It feels like you're saying the same thing twice in the end."

I stepped closer to her and read what I'd written. During those few seconds, the smell of her shampoo invaded my nose, and I held back a groan.

Even though I couldn't concentrate on my own text, and I had no idea what she meant about the ending, I agreed with her. We smiled, and for a moment, we didn't say anything. We only looked at each other.

Alice chose that moment to stick her head out from her room and state impatiently that they had to leave soon.

Snapping out of the trance that had been created in my mind, I took the poem back from Bella. "I'll re-write this," I said as I backed away from her toward the office. "Thank you for the help."

I turned around, but before I closed the door, I wished them a fun time at the movies. I heard Alice mutter a "whatever" before the door closed behind me, and I exhaled with relief.

What the hell was going on with me?

I practically stood on the brakes as I parked my car outside of the school.

I was almost twenty minutes late, but I was held up by a customer with very specific requirements for an old coffee table he wanted me to work on.

With fast and shallow breaths high in my throat, I made my way with long steps through the corridor toward the classroom where the others were probably already sitting down.

It was so typical that I would be late tonight since it was the last week of the class. It was the night that we would read our own personal poems we had written without any directions or instructions from Ms. Cope.

I knocked on the door before opening it, and everyone turned their heads to look at me, but it was Bella's gaze that I noticed the most. Her eyes were slightly watery, as if she had been about to cry, but the brown depths also showed relief over my presence. My heart made a strange double beat at the same time as Bella's cheeks reddened.

"I'm sorry I'm late," I said and forced my eyes away from Bella to Ms. Cope. "But I was held up at work."

Ms. Cope smiled at me reassuringly. "Don't worry. We've barely started."

After some shuffling, I sat down in my seat with my poems in front of me and waited for my turn. I was nervous to read them out loud, not because the group would hear them, but because Bella would. She was probably the only one who would really know what they were about.

When Bella stood up to read her poems, I leaned forward so I wouldn't miss a single word. She stood with her legs slightly apart, and her eyes lowered toward the paper in her hand. I could see that she was nervous, but as soon as the words started to flow from her mouth, I forgot all about that.

The depth and insight in her words, as well as the youth apparent in the text, mesmerized me. She read about a confused young woman like herself who didn't know which path to take as she made her way toward adulthood.

To someone who didn't know the art of poetry, the poem would have sounded like gibberish, but I knew Bella had been talking about herself.

When she finished, I wasn't the only one who was spellbound. Almost everyone in the room sat with their mouths slightly open in shock. No one had known that a talent like Bella's was residing inside that young body of hers.

Eventually, it was my turn, and I started to nervously go through the pages of my notebook. I mumbled to myself that I didn't know if they were good enough but I'd read them anyway.

As I read, I took comfort in the fact that nobody in there, apart from Bella, knew about the admissions I made in that moment, admissions about how my relationship with my daughter tore at my heart and how I wished it could be better. I admitted that my life felt like a big fat routine—squared and boring.

I also told about my marriage. Even though it was a loving one, it was seriously lacking. I barely had anything in common with my wife, and our lovemaking was just like my life—squared and boring.

Passion hadn't existed between us since Alice was two.

I practically laid out my entire life for the small group of people I'd only known for ten weeks, and I made myself especially vulnerable with the last poem that was solely about the intimate times between Mary and me, although it was reworded to make it seem like any pair of lovers who had lost something on their journey together.

Maybe it was a bit too erotic, but I hadn't been able to put it in any other way.

I automatically looked toward Bella when I was done, but she wasn't looking at me. She was stubbornly staring at the folder in front of her, but I wanted her to look at me. I needed to know what she thought of the poems since she knew my family, and now she knew the depth of our problems.

My focus was only on her, even when Julia wondered why I didn't write so that it would be easier to understand the poems. I didn't reply to that, but Ms. Cope took the opinion in and seemed to agree.

"I do believe that you would gain more by simplifying your writing. Try to pinpoint what you want to be said with every poem, but other than that, it was different and fun."

Bella's head snapped up, and she stared at Ms. Cope as if she'd grown another head. In that moment, I knew she'd understood every word, and now she was questioning Ms. Cope's sanity.

I didn't care that the others hadn't liked my poems. What was important to me was that I had finally relieved my heart from some of the heavy stuff that resided in there. I'd been carrying it around for too long.

For the remainder of the class, I sat quietly in my seat, but when I felt a tingling on the side of my face, I turned to see Bella staring at me with brown eyes full of question.

I already knew what she was wondering, and I planned to talk to her after, hopefully on the car ride home.

However, when she quickly looked away from me, as if she suddenly realized she was staring, I frowned. There was something in the way she held herself that was off.

Ms. Cope called for a break, and I waited for Bella to stand up from her seat so we could go to the cafeteria together.

"Ms. Cope?" Bella called to gain the older woman's attention.

"Yes, Isabella?"

"I'm sorry, but I don't think I can stay. I don't feel well, and I think I need to go home and rest." This statement shocked me and I frowned. She seemed fine only moments before, so what caused her to suddenly feel unwell?

"I'm sad to hear that, dear, but if you don't feel well, go home and rest. I'll email your evaluation to you."

"Thank you," Bella mumbled quietly in response.

When she walked past me, I tried to ask her if she was okay, but she refused to look at me.

I watched her walk down the corridor, and I felt a strange pain in my chest.

I read the words Bella had written me again, and then folded the letter so I could tuck it back into its envelope.

Every word confirmed that she knew exactly what my poems had been about, but she needed some time to let them sink in and "build up a few walls again" as she'd put it in the letter.

I should have known what those poems would do to her. It couldn't have been easy for her to hear how life was for her best friend's father, a figure girls her age often barely thought about. That figure was supposed to remain in the background, in the shadows. You weren't supposed to know about that person's intimate fears and desires, but now she did, and she needed time.

I could understand that.

But at the same time, she had reached out her hand through the letter, telling me that if I ever needed to talk, she was there to listen. That wasn't a responsibility a forty-four-year-old man should put on a young girl's shoulders, but she was the only one who had ever offered me this, and so I couldn't resist it.

I reached for the phone and dialed the number to Bella's workplace. I just had to talk to her.

"The Five Roses Hotel, this is Isabella speaking. How can I help you?" I heard her say, and I took a deep breath before revealing that it was me.

"Hi, it's Edward," I said and waited for her to reply.

It took a few seconds, but then I heard a timid "Hi" in my ear.

"Thank you for the letter."

"I … I don't know if it's anything to thank me for," she mumbled, and I could almost see her in front of me—her blush and how she nervously pulled her hair behind her ear.

"Of course, it is," I argued. "It was really sweet of you, and I was so happy when I got it. I've read it at least ten times."

"Good … I was a little … I mean, I thought Mary might read your mail, and …"

It was quiet between us as I pondered what she had said. She had obviously thought a lot about her letter after she'd posted it. She'd thought that if Mary got her hands on the letter, and if she read it, it would drive a wedge between us, so that meant the meaning behind the letter was deeper than I first thought.

I read it again and tried to see it through a teenage girl's eyes, and I knew. I just knew she was trying to tell me something of importance, but I couldn't see what it was.

She couldn't possibly feel what I felt for her. What I felt for her was wrong on all levels, and I wouldn't act on it, no matter how much my body wanted to.

Eventually, I said quietly into the phone that Mary didn't ever read my mail.

There was silence again until Bella did her thing and changed the subject. "I don't think Ms. Cope really understood your poems."

I smiled. This was something we could talk about freely, and I was happy to hear that Bella and I could possibly remain friends even though the class was over. "No … they weren't that good, I guess."

"I thought they were," Bella replied fiercely. It warmed my heart to hear.

"Your poems, on the other hand, were beautiful! Would you mind if I borrowed them to take a closer look? I need to see if they're as good as they sounded when you read them or if it was only because you read them so well."

"I-I'll print out another round."

We continued to chat for a few minutes before hanging up.

I looked at the letter on my desk again, and then picked it up to read it one more time while my heart was jack-hammering in my chest.

The next letter I received from Bella wasn't only the poems but also a longer letter than the first. I couldn't keep count of how many times I'd read it, but it was for a different reason than the first time.

Nothing had gone as I'd planned. Not that I had planned anything, but everything was slowly growing into a bigger mess than I had anticipated.

In the letter, Bella confessed to having romantic feelings for me, and that was not something I could handle at the moment. I'd felt that way for her for weeks, but I'd promised myself that nothing would ever happen. I would let the juvenile crush pass and continue on with my life. I didn't want to deal with Bella reciprocating my feelings. It made the entire situation so much more complicated.

I was married with a daughter, for heaven's sake—a daughter who was three months older than the girl who had starred in my dreams several times. It couldn't be more messed up than it already was.

I felt like I didn't have a choice, so instead of calling Bella and telling her this couldn't go on any longer, I didn't do anything.

I ignored it like the coward I was, but I did keep the letter in the bottom drawer of my desk in the carpentry.

A week after I got the letter, Mary invited the Swans over for lunch since the sun had finally decided to show.

She put out plates for six people, but when they arrived, it was obvious that only five would be used because Bella wasn't with them.

I was the only one who really knew why.

Another two days passed, and then a third letter arrived. The tone was different in that one—crushed and defeated.

She asked me to forget what she'd written before, that even though every word was true, they were obviously not supposed to be shared. She would lock her feelings away and hope that we could at least remain friends.

What jumped out at me the most was her compliment on my appearance in the end. She said it would be almost unbearable to look at my handsome face without an aching heart, but if it meant we could be friends, she would take it.

It was incredibly flattering to have such a young woman yearn for me in that way. I knew we had to talk; so once again, I dialed the number to The Five Roses and waited for Bella to pick up.

"The Five Roses Hotel, this is Isabella speaking. How can I help you?"

"Hi," was all I said, but by Bella's sharp intake of breath, I knew she heard that it was me.

"Yes, of course, sir! We're located not far from the city. Would you be interested in booking a room?" she said cheerily, and I understood that I'd caught her at a bad time.

"You're not alone, are you?"

"No …"

"Bella, I …" I didn't know how to continue. How did you talk about something like this? Did things like this really happen in real life? Was I seriously finding myself in a situation like this? "We need to talk in person," I eventually pressed out. "I'm not indifferent to this."

She didn't reply to that, and after several seconds, I had to check if she was still there.

"Yes," she croaked out.

"Can you come by the carpentry at lunch tomorrow?"

"Okay."

"Okay, good. I'll see you then," I said, ending the conversation awkwardly.

"Yes."

"Goodbye."

"Bye."

We hung up the phone, and I rubbed my hands over my face in frustration as I tried to figure out how to solve this.

AN: This story went through a beta from July 2020