Lots of you wondered where Edward went when he disappeared time after time. Well, here you go.

"I'll be downstairs in five." Shouldering my phone, I zip my duffle bag, tossing my hat on top. "I'll wait out front for you."

Jasper makes a grunt of agreement, and I hang up, sliding my phone into my back pocket.

I can feel the cold air pressing against the window, seeping in through the cracks. I slip my hat on, throwing the hood of my jacket over the top to keep warm.

At the door I turn to check my apartment one last time. There's not much to look at as it is, bare bones. The more time I spend two doors down the more I realise that this isn't a home—it's the place I keep my stuff. It's where I eat and sleep. There's no comfort, no warmth, nothing to suggest that anyone cares, and a few months ago it was all I needed. The apartment matched the way I lead my life - simple, clean, effective.

And then she walked into my life and everything is out of control and messy and I'm considering things I never thought I would. The future. My future. It fucks with my head and spins me around and for some insane reason I can't get enough of it.

And because of this, leaving her - even if just for two nights - is goddamn torture.

She opens her front door a minute after I knock. Backlit by the warm glow of her home, Bella is everything that makes my heart race, and just seeing her makes me feel a comfort I don't get anywhere else.

"Hey," she breathes, her face lighting up.

I can't help but reach for her. Tugging her to me by the material of her T-shirt, I pull her body to mine, holding her against me. "Hey," I whisper into her hair that smells like bubblebath and my body reacts the same way it does every time I touch her.

"I can't stay," I say, leaning back to look at her properly. She reaches up to press her lips to mine, and I still can't believe that I get to kiss her. Finally.

I tell her that i'll be back, that i'll call her as soon as I am. I don't tell her that I'll probably think about her for every goddamn second i'm not there. That every second that my mind isn't otherwise occupied, I'll be thinking about coming right home to her.

Home.

Not next door where my things are, here. Her.

The sound of Emmett's bubbly giggle is followed by a splash from down the hallway. Bella sighs, pressing her head to my chest where I know she can hear my heart beating just for her. "Okay."

I want desperately to pull her back for one last kiss, but I need to go and so does she. Also, one more doesn't seem to be something we're good at. One more always turns into just... more.

"Bye."

Tucking her bottom lip into her mouth, she waves and Jesus Christ the girl has no idea what she does to me with just her mouth.

I pass the Eizadi's apartment downstairs just as the man, Amun maybe, is taking out the trash. He looks at me from beneath heavy brows, dark eyes assessing.

My stomach twists with a kick of anxiety, but I smile anyway, the strange urge for him to like me passes over me and fuck, I guess it's the closest thing I'll come to impressing a father.

From the look etched into his wrinkles features I think I have a long way to go.

The next morning, after a night spent staying out at Jasper's, he and I pull up out front of Riley's place, the exhaust fumes from my car steaming into the morning air. Riley is still half asleep as he falls into the backseat, tossing his bag in first.

"Watch it!" I snap, whipping around to glare at him.

Riley just chuckles, slinking lower in his seat.

"You smell like ball sweat and beer," says Jasper over his shoulder, and my jaw clenches at the thought of Riley making my car smell like his balls.

Glancing in the rearview mirror, I watch Riley roll up his jacket and tuck it under his head. "Yeah," he grunts. "That'll happen."

Jasper snorts. "And your breath smells like day old pussy. Did you sleep in a strip club last night, or what?" He turns to me, his eyes wide, a laugh trying to escape. "Oh. Sorry, dude."

Shaking my head, I shift hard through another gear. "You're a dick."

Both Riley and Jasper laugh, so I turn the radio up, already too eager to turn the car around. I chew on the skin of my lower lip, trying not to think about slapping Jasper across the head.

Riley pulls his cap down over his eyes, crossing his arms over his chest. "Wake me up when we get there."

The drive out of state is long. Made even longer by Riley's snoring from the backseat. By the time we reach the outskirts of the city my ass is screaming and I'm ready to punch something if I don't get out of the car soon.

"Pull over," says Jasper, pointing to a gas station. "I need a smoke."

He rummages through his jacket pockets, patting around for his lighter. I can tell he's about as anxious to get out of the car as I am.

Riley stretches, scratching his stomach roughly. "Gonna take a piss. You want a something to eat?"

Both Jasper and I shake our heads, and Riley shrugs.

The gas station lights flicker overhead as the numbers tick over on the bowser. Smoke billows in front of my eyes.

"Are you really smoking that here?" I ask, gesturing to the petrol station around us.

Jasper smirks. "What the fuck is wrong with you tonight?"

One hand on the pump, I roll my shoulders, trying to release the ball of tension. "Nothing."

I can feel Jasper watching me silently, smoking his cigarette, thinking, knowing me better than I know myself.

"Your girl doing okay?"

"She's not…" I shake my head, my mouth unable to form the words to finish the sentence. "But yes, Bella is fine."

Jasper laughs quietly. "You seeing anyone else?" The glare I give him answers well enough. He smiles around the butt of his cigarette, the smoke puffing out of his nose as he laughs quietly. "So she's your girl then."

"Marcus has been quiet lately," I admit, and I can see Jasper is as worried about that as I am.

"Marcus is never quiet."

"She keeps asking questions about this though." I lift the pump from the bowser and screw the cap back into place. "About what I do."

Sighing, Jasper rests against the car beside me. "What have you told her?"

"Nothing."

"Probably best."

The desert air is warm, but nevertheless, I cross my arms over my chest like I can keep the pressure building up inside my chest in. "I'm going to have to tell her something. One day."

Jasper nods. "One day. Until then, I think it's best you keep her out of it. If Marcus finds out she's connected to you, or to me, you know he'll try to get at the family through her."

"Yeah, I know."

"You got a good thing right now," he says turning to clamp a hand on my shoulder. "Enjoy it while you can."

Before she finds out that you're the monster. That Marcus is nothing compared to you.

Riley appears, chips and candy bundled under his arms, a huge bottle of soda in his hand.

My eyes tighten as he approaches. "You drop crumbs on my backseat and—"

"Yeah, yeah," he says, holding up a bunch of napkins. "I got it."

"Should be it right here on the left," says Jasper, pointing to a street sign.

The three of us sit up straight, suddenly wide eyed and alert.

"Four-twenty-seven."

"What a fucking dump," says Riley, shaking his head as we pull up in front of the house. The front yard is occupied by a rusted out piece of shit Toyota, engine parts and tools strewn around it. Broken chairs and empty bottles, busted bikes and garbage bags full of who knows what are lying around, cluttering the front path.

We park across the street, a few houses down and out of sight.

I'm expecting it to be a quick stop. The last one before we head back to our hotel for the night. If it was up to me we'd drive through the night and be back by the time Bella finished work.

But it's not up to me.

I'm not the boss.

A silver bat dangles from Riley's left hand, and as we cross the street he swings it around like a batter about to step up to the plate.

"Let's make this last one quick," Jasper says, adjusting his tie. "I gotta girl at Crazy Horse with my name all over her." His eyes widen. "No offence, Ed."

I sigh, clenching my jaw. "Shut up, Jasper."

He laughs, knocking on the front door.

Tugging on the brim of my cap, I shake my head. Not the time to be thinking of Bella's ass.

Except now all I can think of is Bella's ass.

Impatience roars through me as the house remains quiet.

Riley leans over to knock again, this time with the end of the bat. "Knock, knock!"

"I'm just saying, is all," says Riley, like he's continuing a conversation I'm sure we've never had. "I'm sure Bella is a nice girl, and to be honest anyone that can get that stick up your ass to relax for a minute is a fucking goddess in my book. But it just sounds like a whole lotta drama to me."

My fist tightens around the bat in my hand, and I have to breathe through the urge to bash Riley over the head with it.

"You gotta ask yourself," he says, "if it's all worth it."

I'm so tired I barely have the energy to argue. "I swear to God, Riley, if you don't stop talking shit I'm going to ram this bat up fucking ass, you hear me?"

Knocking on the door again, louder, Jasper laughs. "Alright, alright. Both of you shut up."

Finally, we hear movement, and three of us go ramrod straight as we hear a door slam somewhere in the house.

"He's running," spits Jasper.

With everything I have, I throw myself against the front door, grunting as the locks give way and the door slams open.

Riley is off like a greyhound, pushing past me as I right myself. I can hear him banging around the house, giving chase, laughing as the guy tries his best to get away. Little does he know Riley lives for the chase, and he never backs down.

He might not look like much, weighing in at maybe one fifty pounds soaking wet and and a baby fact to boot, but the guy can wrestle, and more than that, he's a fucking animal when you need him to be. Untameable.

By the time I've dusted myself off and found the boys, Riley has the guy slumped in a kitchen chair, blood dripping from a cut above his brow, his bottom lip already swelling. Still panting, Riley stands behind, a shit-eating grin on his face as he wipes his bloody knuckles.

Jasper is the picture of calm, picking an invisible piece of lint from his expensive suit jacket.

I slip in quietly, preferring to watch for the moment.

"I'll venture a guess to say you know who I am," says Jasper, who wipes a kitchen seat off before sitting slowly.

I rest against the kitchen sink, watching the guy sweat and puff, breathing so heavy I can hear his smoker's lungs rattling.

"And since you know who I am, I'm assuming you know why I'm here."

Jasper says here like he actually finds the word distasteful. He gestures to the house around us, glancing at a dirty ashtray beside him.

The place is a fucking dump. Torn fly screens, dishes piled high in the sink, the stench of unwashed bodies and clothes filtering through every room in the house. It's a goddamn shame.

The house itself isn't so bad, a little yard out back with a clothes line buried between rotting bags of garbage and knee-high weeds, decent sized kitchen with what looks to be working amenities. With some work it could be nice. I guess that's the difference between people who work hard to earn what they have, like in Bella's case, and people who just don't give a fuck.

And just like that I'm angry all over again.

Here sits this greasy piece of shit who I know has piles of cash stashed away somewhere in this house, living in a place twice, maybe three times, the size of Bella's apartment, and he treats it like shit. Happy to live in his own filth while she works hard every goddamned day just to keep her tiny piece of a living.

My jaw tenses, and I have to tap my foot to release some of the tension before I pop this guy in his own kitchen.

Jasper talks quietly, calmly to the guy. It's a straight forward matter.

Laurent runs drugs in and out of Las Vegas for Jasper - a halfway house of sorts.

Jasper pays the man for his services, Laurent handles all the street level bullshit. It's as simple as that.

Unless, of course, it isn't.

"What made you think I wouldn't find out?" asks Jasper.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Don't lie to me."

He's starting to sweat. "Why would I steal from you?"

"Oh, I don't know, maybe you stole from me because someone asked you to."

He gulps. "Who? I work for you!"

Jasper sighs tiredly. "A little bird told me you're cutting my drugs to sell to Marcus McFinney."

The guy's face pales. "No."

"Yes. You're diluting a premium product so that you can sell it to Marcus for a cut of the profit."

I'm silent through the whole exchange, but my hands are gripping the edge of the kitchen bench so tightly I'm sure I'm about to break something.

"I would never—"

"Look. Laurent. Please don't lie. If you lie, I'll have to ask Edward here to hurt you, and you don't want that."

Laurent looks up. I gather every ounce of restraint I have in my body, and shoot him a smile, even capping it off with a little wink. He spits at me, jerking his head in my direction.

Jasper grabs the guy's shirtfront, yanking his attention back to him. "Don't do that."

The guy makes an incredulous face. "Or what? Your girlfriend over there gonna hit me, too?"

Lowering himself to eye level, Jasper pulls Laurent closer. "I don't think you get it. I am your final warning. There is no next time. There's no next week. There's no tomorrow. I will leave with what you owe me."

"And if I don't have the money?"

Jasper just smiles, all sugar-dipped venom. "That's why Edward is here."

"Look, I told your father I would have his money by next week."

"That was two weeks ago."

"I can get it," he says confidently. "I've got it coming in this weekend, I swear."

"Go check please?" asks Jasper, and without another word Riley sets off in search of the money that guys like this always keep stashed away.

A few minutes later, he returns, a fistful of crisp, hundred dollar bills.

"You…."

Jasper's hand connects so hard with Laurent's face that he falls straight to the floor.

As Jasper stands, I step over to lift the guy back into his chair.

"How much is there?"

Tyler weighs the pile in his hand. "Five, maybe."

"Five?" Jasper shakes his head. "Laurent, that's half of what you owe me already."

"I was going to give it to you, I swear!"

Jasper is silent for a moment, again inspecting his pristine navy suit. "I'll tell you what," he says finally. "You tell me what Marcus did with that dancer of his, and I'll let you keep your fingers."

"What dancer?!" he yells. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Edward."

I grab Laurent's hand while Riley pins him to the seat. Laurent twists, trying to pull his hand from my grip, but I'm too strong. I splay his hand flat, spreading his fingers wide.

He wrestles with Riley as I pick up the dirty kitchen knife lying on the table.

I am neither quick, nor am I precise, and his screams bounce off the walls as his blood drips over the side of the table.

My hands don't shake, my palms don't sweat, and my focus doesn't waver - I'm cold as ice. Empty.

"Okay," he gasps, holding his bleeding hand to his chest. The place where his pinky was is now a bloody, messy, stump. "Marcus had me dump her out by Red Rocks. Just off the highway, past the turn off for the I95."

"Draw me a map," says Jasper, fishing his sunglasses from his pocket. "Or…" He looks down at Laurent's bloody hand. "Maybe it's best if you show us on the map."

Fifteen minutes later, we've got a map, five grand, and one more stop to make before we head back to the motel.

"You think he'll come up with the rest?" I ask, wiping my knuckles with a handkerchief Jasper has handed me.

Jasper grins. "Absolutely. Sometimes, Edward, a good beating incites a little personal growth."

As Laurent said we would, we find Leah beneath some scrub, off the highway.

Kneeling, I brush the strands of knotted hair from her face. What was once russet skin is now greying and sunken, the gunshot wound that mars the side of her head festering and dry. Flies buzz around her mouth and eyelids, and even with a stomach as strong as mine I can't bear to see what's left of the underside of her skull. The smell is bad enough.

"Jesus," gasps Riley, holding an arm over his nose.

Jasper simply sighs, tucking his hands into his pockets. "Close range. She would have seen it coming."

Swallowing the urge to vomit, I stride back to the car and pop the trunk. I wrench a pick axe from the car, and brush past the boys, heading deeper into the desert.

Riley wheels back as I push past. "What are you—"

"She deserves better than this," I spit. "She deserves to be buried properly."

I've barely hit the ground twice when I feel Riley's presence behind me, a shovel in hand. The three of us work under the blistering Nevada sun for what feels like an age, digging until the earth becomes cool and soft.

Sweat drips down my sides and over my sternum, my skin feeling raw in the sun.

Jasper helps me wrap her in a drop sheet from the trunk, the three of us lifting her deadweight into the dark hole that marks the earth. An hour later all that's left is the patch of overturned earth. I run a hand through my hair, feeling it slick back with sweat.

My hands are shaking, both from the exertion, and from the knowledge that this could be her. This could be Bella. That could be her soft, pale skin beneath the earth, her beautiful eyes, so deep with emotion, rotting in her skull.

"Let's get the fuck out of here," says Riley.

Both Jasper and he get back into the car while I take one more moment.

Staring at the overturned earth, visions of leaving this wretched life behind appear in my mind. I imagine throwing everything I have into a bag and driving until the city becomes nothing but a memory. My heart gives a painful lurch as I see Bella sitting beside me, the wind in her hair as she clutches Emmett in her lap.

A dozen emotions pump through me, the very most of which is something I never thought I'd feel. Something I never thought I'd be capable of feeling.

Love.

I kick a clump of dirt, shaking my head at myself.

I can't believe that amidst all this shit, all this bullshit, that I've fallen in love. And not just with Bella, but with Emmett. The kid has somehow wormed his way under the exterior I so carefully craft and buried himself deep in my chest, in my heart.

It's completely disarming, and I feel blindsided by it, but the more I think about it, the more right it feels.

Jesus help me, I'm in love.

Sooner than I'd ever thought possible, I find out just how painful the reality of being in love can be.

It's after four in the morning when the sound of my phone buzzing across the nightstand wakes me, my thumb swiping the screen before I'm even fully awake.

"Edward?"

I'm awake.

Her voice is shaky, breathy, filled with the kind of emotion that makes my heart race and my chest ache. My first thought is of Emmett.

"Someone broke in," she says, her voice wobbling.

"Tell your Mom i'll call her in the morning," grunts Riley from the bed beside mine.

He shuts up quick smart after I tell him to fuck off.

Pacing, I make Bella tell me exactly what's happened. From the sound of it, someone busted through her front door and turned the place over. The sound of her crying over Emmett's presents makes my knees wobble with emotion. My strong, brave, headstrong girl is breaking and I'm completely powerless to help. I feel so utterly helpless and it makes me insane.

The need to have she and Emmett in my arms, to have them safe, is enough to make me want to jump in the car right the fuck now and burn through the night just to be there. Knowing Emmett is safe with the Eizadi's is about the only thing stopping me from doing it.

"Go to my place. I want you to lock the door and don't open it for anyone."

I tell her about the key there. The one I left since I couldn't seem to stop locking myself out of my own apartment. At least I know she'll be safe there. The only person who knows about my apartment is Jasper.

My hands are practically destroying my hair, and I can feel Riley behind me, now awake in his bed, watching me pace the length of the motel room.

Bella stays on the line until I know she's safe, locking herself inside my apartment.

"Thank you," she says, her voice raspy with emotion.

Swallowing through a throat tight with rage, I close my eyes. "Bella?"

"Yeah?"

I consider telling her how desperately in love with her I am. How not even two hundred miles and a desert could keep me from her. But I don't.

"I'll see you soon."

Love you guys.

x Wink