A/N: Just because I love you...

Breaking Chic

"Eddie!" I yell, rushing after him. Don't run, please don't run. Not after all these years, with all these emotions crushing me.

I'm a dam about to burst - confusion and panic at his departure bearing down toward the breaking point. I was the runner, not him; never him.

"Edward Masen Cullen! Wait!" He halts, at attention with his back to me. He looks like a statue carved from stone; I'd believe it, too, but I see a single muscle twitch in his jaw as I slow at his side. "Edward. It's you."

I have to walk around him to see his face. He's so ... still. Silent.

"Aren't you going to speak to me?" I ask. "Won't you please say something?" I beg.

"I ..." His voice cracks under the stress of the single syllable, and he clears his throat. "Ma'am," he says, his only acknowledgment of my existence.

Ouch.

"It's been so long," I state the obvious, stupidly failing at small talk with the man I once loved. "How have you been?"

Edwards eyes - alight with relief - tell me a story conflicting the words from his mouth. "I'm here, aren't I?" he asks, motioning to the venue and the place and the trucks with the Wounded Warriors' logo. He's right. This is the first time in the one hundred and twenty-seven seconds of our reunion that I'm doing the addition before me: fatigues, buzzcut, the scar.

"You're in the Army?"

He scoffs at me like I'm an idiot. "Marines," he informs, obviously disgusted at the very thought that he'd gone Army.

"Oh, sorry, I didn't know..."

"Because you weren't around," he finishes my sentence with something I was definitely not going to say.

"Eddie, I -"

"You've got a kid," he says, throwing me for a loop until I'm a mumbling, sputtering mess of wordless noises. Fuck. "I was curious about you awhile ago. A little brunette girl? I saw her in a picture on MySpace."

"That's Lexie, uh, Lexington - named for the battle that started the American Revolution. She was born the same day, uh, April 19." I'm spewing information like a geyser. I'm a fucking mess.

"I know of it," he says. Of course he does. He's a marine. They know these things. I guess.

"She's my middle child."

"Three kids?" His eyes are almost bulging out of his head. "When did you have time for that? Oh, that's right ..."

"It's been a decade," I remind him. "Walker is less than a year, and Reny's almost ten."

The moment moves in slow motion; his eyes harden and he steels himself. "Almost ten, huh?"

I nod, mute and stoic.

"So you went from my bed back to your real boyfriend's just like that?" The final word is accentuated with the thundering clack of the heels of his thick boots coming together. He's had enough. Enough of me; enough of the information. "'Night, Ma'am."

He's around me and walking away at a clipped pace before I register what just happened. I'm a royal disaster. I thought maybe he'd do the math and come to the correct conclusion, hoping I'd be spared from saying it aloud.

"She looks just like you," I call after him, and the words have their desired effect. Edward is before me in the blink of an eye.

"What the fuck is that supposed to mean?" he growls like a wild beast.

"Reny," I say. "She's yours."

xxxxxxxxxxxx

A/N:

I can't stop writing. I'm becoming obsessed. I literally have zero clue where each chapter is going; I'm just letting my fingers fly and the words fall where they may.

I'm as curious as y'all.