Better late than never, right? Here is the next chapter, anf I really hope you like it. I know my updates are slow, put it takes a lot of time for me to write all this. English is not my first language. Chapter 18 is almost done, and I am starting to see the end og this story. It will not be there soon, but in due time.

~B4E

Chapter 17: Blame

"Alice?"

First, I thought I was just seeing things, but there was no mistaking that, short, pixie-haired, butterscotch-eyed, deathly pale vampire in front of me. Alice was here, in Seattle. In North Star Records. It had been over six months since I last saw her, and I was fascinated by how dull my memory was. She was so much more... just more Alice than I remembered.

I couldn't help myself. Before I had thought my actions through, I had closed the small distance between us and wrapped my arms tightly around her petit, but rock hard body. I breathed her in, closing my eyes and just felt her there in my arms.

It hadn't all been just a figment of my imagination, like I had almost started to believe. They had excised, and they hadn't all just left me to fend for myself in this maze that people called life.

Alice's arms folded around me, strong, cold arms that I knew so well.

"Oh Bella," she whispered. " We were such fools, all of us."

I could feel traitorous tears coming to my eyes, and I blinked them quickly away as I pulled back from her, smiling sadly. I didn't know how long she was here for, and I was not going to spend what little time we may have together crying over things that none of us could do anything about.

Over Alice's shoulder, I could see Amanda smiling, a bitt puzzled, but I had told her about about Alice, so she wasn't as unknowing as Christopher, who was staring at us in utter bewilderment. I cleared my throat and collected myself.

"Christopher, this is my... best friend from Forks, Alice Cullen," I stumbled a bit at the words "best friend", but it was still true, no matter how we parted or how long ago it was. "Alice, this is my producer and manager, Christopher Bleakly, and I guess you have already met Amanda Evens, our bass player." Alice nodded and smiled at both of them, her shining whit teeth gleaming in the dim light.

Christopher nodded contently now that he knew who my friend was. He was a bit of a control-freak really, I'd have to make him stop with that.

"Well Blonde, as I said, I think we are done for the day, and you two seem to have a lot of catching up to do, so why don't you take the rest of the day off, and we'll al meet up at The Little Coffee Shop tomorrow at ten. We have to decide on a title for the album by tomorrow it we're going to release it on time," he told me. Jupp, control-freak. But I was too shocked and happy that Alice was here to argue with him, so I just nodded, gave him and Amanda a hasty goodbye as I ushered Alice out of sound booth, led her through the corridors and out into the reception, where the elevator was waiting for us.

It was weird having Alice there behind me, trailing after me. As soon as the elevator doors closed, I turned around and everything I wanted to say rushed out of me like a the air out of a balloon.

"Oh Alice, it's so good to see you again! You have no idea how much I have missed you, all of you. How have you been, where have you been? How is Jasper, I hope he's not still blaming himself for that little accident on my birthday. How are everyone else? How..."

Alice shook her head and laughed at me. Taking my waiving arms in her own small once and squeezing them gently as the elevator doors opened again at the top floor, almost dragging me out and into the hall.

"Calm down Bella, let's get settled down a bit before you start the interrogation," she smiled in her familiar Alice-kind-of way. She knew which of the doors led to my apartment without my guidance, and walked right in, I never locked it, still holding my hands. I guess she could smell her way to it.

She put me down in my sofa, and I instantly folded my legs under me and turned so I my body was facing Alice.

She sighed.

"Well, where to start? I've been Ok, we all have I guess. We've been in Ithaca ,New York. Carlisle is working at a local hospital, and he has done some teaching too, at Cornell University. Actually, Jasper has been taking some classes there as well." She winked at me. "He's studying philosophy this time. It was that or psychology, and psychology would just be to simple for him." I laughed at the thought, and it felt so good to laugh this way again, more freely.

"I have actually done some digging into my pre-vampire past," Alice said, and I sat up straighter in anticipation.

"Really? What did you find out?" I asked, loving to hear her talking about her family, the family I had wanted to be a part of, expected to be a part of at one point. Alice stared at me intently for a couple of seconds, then she frowned at me.

"I'm sorry Bella. I'm a vampire, and my concentration is excellent. But that hair... Seriously Bella, blond?" she asked incredulously, her hand pulling gently at the hair sticking out from the hat Johnnys mother had knitted for me. I felt my good mood fading away at the thought of the original reason for my drastic change of hair color. But I didn't want to tell her that story, I was too ashamed. What if he read it in her mind when she came home? Or she told Jasper. I didn't know if I could stand the shame. Amanda and Jasper hadn't judged me, but that was different. They hadn't been my ex-es sister.

I shrugged nonchalantly, trying not to show any signs of sadness or pain.

"Hey, don't hate the hair! I needed some change in my life, and my hair was the least drastic I could think of,"I told her, trying to smile jokingly. "You just be glad I didn't get a tattoo or something."

But of course, Alice was a vampire, and not as easily tricked as I had gotten used to the band, mr. North and Christopher were. Here eyes got a cold look in them, and her lips set in a stubborn way, and I knew I was going to tell her the whole story. But I had to at least try to resist.

"Bella, I know that there is something you're not telling me, and I'm going to find out what it is, so you better just tell me right now," she told me in a stern voice that made me flinch. I really, really didn't want to tell her...

I shook my head as I bit down hard on my lower lip. Looking away from her. I could feel her arm carefully wrapping itself around my shoulders, and when she continued, her voice was softer.

"Bella, I'm sorry. I won't force you, and I know that after what we, what I did to you... I no longer have the right to be this person that knows your deepest and darkest secrets. But I really hate seeing you like this. You might be able to fool everyone around you Bella, but you can't fool me. I know you, and I can see that you have been through hell and back again." She paused, and I looked up at her, astonished. She thought I was mad at her, and that's why I wouldn't tell her?

"Bella, is this all E... my brothers fault?" Her voice was almost inaudible. My last resistance to tell her crumbled there and then. I couldn't let her believe that I was mad at her or that Edward had made me the way I was. Not when it was all my own doing.

"Oh Alice," I whispered, tears building up in my eyes. "I have messed up so bad..."

I told her everything. I told her about my friendship with Jake, how I had been worried that he was putting more into our friendship than there was. I told her about the horrible night in Port Angeles, my decision afterwards and the phone call. When I was finished, I was sobbing so hard, I almost couldn't breath.

"A-and now, h-he hates m-me, and when I t-tried to c-call him again, he j-just hung u-up," I told her, drying snot and tears on a paper towel that Alice had somehow provided from nowhere. I didn't dear to look at her, I just couldn't stand to see the disgust in her face. If there was someone who had a right to be disgusted at med, it was her.

"Oh Bella, I'm so sorry..." Her sympathetic voice made me look up. If a vampire could cry, Alice would have been crying just like me. It made me angry.

"No," I told her, standing abruptly. Shock came into Alice's face, but I didn't let that stop me.

"You don't get to be all understanding and nice to me. I did a terrible thing Alice, a horrible thing! Edward always said that he was a monster, but he is wrong. I'm a monster, I'm the kind that person that destroy everything. I chased your family out of Forks, and I broke Jake, I..." the anger had receded a bitt, and the sobbing was taking over, making it impossible to continue my angry tirade.

Alice was in front of me in a flash, her hands on ether side of my face, forcing me to meet her eyes. Her expression was impossible to read.

"Bella, I wan't you to listen to me," she told me intently, and she shook my head gently when I tried to look away from her intense stear.

"Bella, this wasn't your fault, non of it. Do you hear me?" Her voice was so strong and certain, not a hint of disgust of doubt in her voice.

"Jake is hurting, that's why he's angry, but what happened wasn't your fault or his, it was an accident. Bella, you made a mistake, you both did. So stop hating and punishing yourself for it."

I looked at her, not believing what I was hearing.

"So you don't hate me?"

If she hadn't had super hearing, she wouldn't have heard me, but she did, and she shook her head.

"No Bella, I could never hate you," she told me, smiling sadly. It was like something loosened inside me. Something clicked into place somewhere, and tears were flowing freely. Then, she took me in her arms and held me until I cried myself to sleep on the sofa.