A/N:

This is not the update! Keep clicking until you reach chapter 13 ;-) I just changed the chapter format for the story to make it easier for me to write xD

Title: Forbidden Attraction

Author: MarieCarro

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 course. Suddenly, she didn't appear to be the young girl that 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 Word Count: 3, 165

CHAPTER 5

Bella went back to college and with every day that passed, I realized that my marriage couldn't be saved, and I started to connect the dots between Alice's behavior and my fights with Mary. She got progressively worse the day after a fight between Mary and me had taken place, and I knew that she would only continue her destructive behavior unless a change was made.

A change I had been contemplating for almost a year but had not dared to approach fully until now. It wasn't just for myself anymore. It was for my daughter as well, because it was not healthy for her to live in the environment her mother and I was creating.

I stayed in my car for a long time that night, trying to build up my courage to go inside and discuss what was needed with Mary. I was dreading it, but it had to be done.

I climbed out of my car and took a few deep breaths before walking up to my door and going inside.

A strong sense of Déjà Vu hit me when I heard Alice's music blaring from her room, causing the walls to vibrate, and my wife talking on the phone, her crossed leg unconsciously bopping in time with the beat of the music.

The only difference this time was that when Mary saw me, she didn't smile, and it only further cemented my choice to have this discussion tonight, so after I had hung up my jacket, I walked past her into the living room to wait for her to finish her call.

She did only two minutes later, and she stood up to walk to the kitchen, but I stopped her. "Mary, could you come in here for a second?" I called out, and she appeared in the doorway after a few seconds.

"What?" she asked, and while her voice was tight, her eyes and face were weary. She was as tired of fighting as I was, but I knew she wouldn't agree quietly with what I was going to suggest.

"We need to talk about what's going on between us, Mary. Because what we're doing isn't working out," I said, and she immediately straightened her stance as she waited for the rest of it. "I can't continue like this, for my own sake, but also for Alice's."

Mary looked at me cautiously, the frown on her face smoothing out and her eyes narrowing. "What are you saying?"

"I want to get a divorce."

It was completely silent for a beat, and then a reply came, but not from where I expected it.

"What?" came from the stairs, and then Alice became visible as she descended the last few steps and came up behind her mother. The music was still playing in her room, and that was why neither of us had heard her coming down the stairs.

I closed my eyes and exhaled in defeat. This didn't go as I had planned. Mary and I were supposed to talk about it first, just the two of us, and after that, we would tell Alice, but now I dropped the bomb not only on my wife but our daughter as well.

"Alice, honey, would you be so kind and go back to your room? Your father and I need to talk alone," Mary said, and I had to give her credit for remaining so calm in front of Alice. I don't think I would have been able to had the roles been reversed.

"I'm not just going back there after hearing that," Alice protested. "What the hell is going on? Dad, are you serious?"

"Alice, please!" Mary said a bit harsher, but she refused.

"Mom, you can't just—"

"Alice Masen, go back to your room now!"

Alice flinched when Mary raised her voice—I did too—and her eyes watered slightly before she ran up the stairs. The music was shut off, and the house became eerily quiet.

Mary walked closer to where I was standing, and when I looked into her eyes I had to fight the urge to take a step back. I don't think I'd ever seen her look at me with such detestation.

"Who is she?" she asked with a deadly calm voice that scared me to my core. I had not expected that question at all, and for a moment I feared that one of her friends had seen me with Bella and told her. Despite that possibility, I decided to act stupid.

"What do you mean?"

Mary made a disgusted sound. "Don't take me for a fool, Edward. I can take a lot, but don't insult my intelligence."

She still hadn't confirmed that she truly knew what I had done, so I held tight to my act. "I would never do that. I truly don't understand what you're referring to."

"Oh please! All the signs are there. Working late almost every night, how you're distancing yourself from me. You haven't touched me for months. I know you're cheating on me, Edward, so just tell me who the slut is that's fucking my husband!"

I knew then that she didn't know about me and Bella. She was interpreting signs and had suspicions, but she didn't have any proof. I hated myself for playing that game, but I knew it needed to be done, or everything could turn very ugly.

"You haven't once perhaps thought all of those things could be because our marriage is falling apart? That I'm working late because I don't want to be home fighting with you? That I haven't touched you because that spark died years ago?" It was cruel of me to say it, but it was also all true. Bella and I had sex once, so any signs Mary thought herself to have seen were because of what I had just told her.

"You fucking bastard!" she screeched at me, and I groaned. This was exactly what I hoped to avoid. I had wanted to have a grown-up discussion about all of this. I had falsely believed that we could have settled things between us without throwing insults at each other, but that was just not how things worked in our household, and it was also one of the reasons why we had to split up. Neither of us was happy, and it was only stupid to continue and force it.

Mary inhaled to continue her string of insults, but I stopped her before she could truly begin. "Look, you're not exactly convincing me to change my mind here. I want a divorce, and that's final." I left the living room and went out to the hall where I put on my jacket and grabbed my car keys.

"Are you going to see her?" Mary spat out as she followed me.

I sighed. "I'm going to sleep at my office tonight. Tomorrow, I'm contacting a lawyer." I placed my hand on the doorknob, and that was when I heard quiet sniffling, so I turned around to see Mary in tears.

"Edward, please, let's talk about this. We can work it out, we always have before. I know we can do it this time. Please, just stay."

I had never liked seeing Mary cry, and a part of me wanted to go up to her, hug her and comfort her because when it all came down to it, we had been deeply in love in the past. She had been my everything until Alice was born, so while it was my decision to walk out, it still hurt a lot.

But I couldn't stay. This wasn't like previous fights. "I'm sorry, Mary. I really am, but we're not happy together. Not anymore. I believe this is what's best for all of us." With those words, I went outside and closed the door to my old life forever.

As the Christmas holidays neared, I moved out of the house Mary and I once bought shortly after we married, and into my new two-bedroom apartment on the other side of town. The divorce wouldn't be finalized until after the new years, but I just could not stay in the house anymore. It wasn't practical to sleep on the couch as a forty-five-year-old man with slight back issues.

Initially, Alice took Mary's side and hated my guts for almost two weeks, and that hurt me more than anything else ever had, but slowly, the part of her that was more adult than teenager understood why it had to happen.

She and I had a long talk about it—the longest conversation we'd shared since she started high school—and she truly listened and wanted to know how bad things had gotten between her parents. Of course, I was very careful to not pass any blame onto Mary. I simply told Alice that when two people are not meant for each other, despite earlier convictions of the opposite, the differences has a tendency to get in the way and cause irreparable cracks.

In the end, she became neutral and even asked to live with me on the weekends. It elated me that she asked that because it gave me hope that I could get the relationship I used to have with my daughter back. I missed my little girl, and how she used to look at me as if I was the greatest man on earth.

However, as happy as I was that Alice wanted to live with me on the weekends, it presented a problem that I wasn't aware of until it stared me in the face.

I came home from work one day about a week after I moved into the apartment. It was Friday, and when I saw a pair of Alice's shoes by the door, I realized that she had gotten here earlier, and it would be nice to have dinner together just the two of us, but then I spotted the other pair of shoes that I didn't recognize.

I heard voices from the living room, and curious to see who our guest was, I went there only to freeze on the spot when it became all too clear.

On my new couch, my daughter slouched with her eyes glued to the TV, but my attention was on the woman that starred in my dreams.

Both of them turned their heads when they heard me, and while Bella's face became slightly red, my daughter acted as if everything was normal.

"Hey, Dad. I hope it's okay I invited Bella over for dinner. We didn't know when you would come home, so we ordered pizza. It should be here soon."

It took me a second to collect myself, but I hoped Alice didn't notice, and I tried to answer her as I would have before this entire mess happened. "That's absolutely fine with me. I'm going to change and take a shower, but let me know when the food's here."

"Sure," she nodded and turned back to the TV.

Bella and I locked eyes for a moment, but when those beautiful eyes of her started to have their usual effect on me, I fled to my bedroom.

As I stood underneath the spray of warm water, my thoughts ran rampantly in my head.

How had I not anticipated this? Alice and Bella were friends, after all, maybe not the best friends they used to be, but still friends as far as I was aware. Of course Alice would invite her over here eventually, but this quick?

Why was Bella even home? Was she already on her Winter break? How long was she back for? Was there time for us to talk? To meet up?

Images of our time on my desk in the carpentry flashed behind my eyelids, and I felt myself longing for her; for her heat; for her arms and legs locked around my body. I wanted her so bad because now that I'd been with her once, it wasn't just a fantasy anymore. I knew how she felt, and I knew what she looked like when she came.

All of that had ruined me, and I wanted more. In fact, I wanted it all.

A knock on the door of my en-suite bathroom woke me up, but it also made me realize that I was rock solid, and I was positive no amount of cold water would make it go down.

"Yeah?" I called out, and it sounded as if I was being strangled.

"Pizza's here! Are you done soon?" Alice said through the door, and you would think that would help me, but it did absolutely nothing.

"I'll be out in a minute. Go ahead and start without me," I replied and when silence met my ear, I figured she did as I told her. I exhaled and looked down at myself. Then, I shamefully took my cock into my hand and closed my eyes as I let those images of Bella underneath me fill my mind.

It was the most pathetic and disgusting jerk-off in the history of time, because not only was the woman I was fantasizing about out in my living room eating pizza, but my daughter was too.

When I was done, I had to swallow several times to try and dissolve the guilt that was building up inside of me. It didn't help, though, because the truth was that if Alice hadn't been here, I wouldn't have felt bad for what I just did. If Bella had been the only one here, I would have invited her into the shower and done a whole lot more than just jerking off like any other hormonal teenage boy.

I tried to push all of those thoughts out of my head as I dried off and put on my clothes. It worked to an extent, but when I joined my daughter and Bella in the living room where they were looking at some movie while munching on the large pizza on the table, I still felt like the biggest pervert ever.

Bella's attention drifted from the movie from time to time and I noticed every time, but only once did I look back and smile. It caused her to blush, and I wanted to chuckle because she was so different from when we were alone. I had gotten to know the side that was blunt and bold; passionate and with the sexy confidence that she could seduce me.

I wanted to explore that side more than I already had, and while I really had no defense at all, that was my reason to offer Bella a ride home when she said it was time for her to leave.

"Uuh, sure. That'd be nice," she said, and I got up from my seat to put on my jacket and shoes while she said goodbye to Alice.

As soon as the door closed behind us and the lock clicked, I pulled Bella toward me and began devouring her as if I was a starving man. She was just as fierce as she kissed me back, and I had to hold back a groan so that Alice wouldn't hear the echo.

"I've wanted to do that the entire evening," I said with a gruff voice once we pulled apart.

"Me too," Bella agreed breathlessly. She opened her eyes and looked into mine before asking what I knew she would ask. "Is it because of me? Is that why you and Mary are getting a divorce?"

"Let's talk about this in the car," I said and placed my hand on the small of her back to lead her to the elevator that would take us below to the garage.

Once safe inside my Volvo and on the road, I answered Bella's question. "Bella, I don't want you to ever feel that it's on you that Mary and I are splitting up, okay? It was inevitable and long overdue. I mean, don't you remember my poems from the course?"

"Of course I do," she instantly replied. "I just can't stop wondering if I helped speed things along."

When she said that, I knew I had to be truthful. "My feelings for you changed me, yes. It made me aware of how bad everything had gotten, but I would never say it's your fault. It's all on me, and I don't want to hear of you feeling guilty in any way. If anything, you helped me and it was long before our involvement became as complicated as it is now."

"I wish it didn't have to be," Bella admitted, and I agreed with her. "I know you don't want me like that, though," she continued.

I frowned in confusion. "What do you mean?"

She smiled reassuringly. "It's okay. I remember what you told me back in July. You can't take the chance with me, and you have too much to lose. Maybe not with Mary anymore, but certainly with Alice. I get it. I'm happy with whatever you feel you can give me."

The pure unselfishness of this girl astounded me, but the fact that she practically offered to be my mistress also worried me. Didn't she have any self-preservation? What was her reward in this deal?

"Do you really believe I don't want to be with you completely? Without all the secrets and hiding?" I asked, and I saw in my periphery how Bella looked at me questioningly.

"You said that—"

"I lied," I interrupted her incredulously. "It was the only way to push you away at that point. If I hadn't, who knows what would have happened with you. Maybe you would have decided that college wasn't for you. That you had to stay to be close to me. Don't you see how messed up that is, Bella?"

She didn't say anything and I was afraid I had hurt her enough for her to not want anything to do with me anymore. I would respect that decision if that was what she wanted.

We remained silent the rest of the way, and when I stopped outside her parents' house, we shared another look. I wanted to kiss her goodbye, but it was impossible to do that here. Her parents could be looking out through the window or Mary could come outside with the trash or something like that.

Before she got out of the car, though, I gently placed my hand on her thigh. "How long before you have to go back to school?"

"Two weeks."

"I want to see you again. Alone this time. Are you free next week?"

She nodded. "Yeah. After Christmas, I don't have any plans."

"So, Thursday then?"

"Not on your desk, though, right?" she said, and it caused me to chuckle.

"No, I was thinking more of my apartment. Take the bus into town. I will pick you up at Frank's."

Once again, she nodded, and I moved my hand over her thigh slightly before she got out of the car.