Disclaimer: Should I keep up with the recipes I own, or change it up a little bit? I do not own Twilight, but the harsh glare of the laptop computer does belong to me.

Summary: Bella's past affects everything in her daily routine. Edward keeps his true emotions hidden better for the sake of his two children. When these two meet at Edward's sister's bonfire, can they unravel many years of fear and guilt and help each other in the long run, or will it be a wasted effort that tears them both down further? AU/AH

Author's Note: Thanks so much for reading, reviewing, favoriting, anything else that you're doing, thank you. Oh, and thanks for the well wishes for the vacation. Things went great aside from a torn ligament from jumping on a trampoline and it was nice to see the family again.

Pertaining to the song choice for Bella in this chapter, I am not a country music fan, for which I am practically shunned in my community, but the song lyrics just fit so well. If for some reason you are interested in my taste in music, check out my profile page.

As always, mad love goes out to beta extraordinaire, Leon McFrenchington.

"She's a broken lady, waiting to be mended,

Like a potter would mend a broken vase.

A broken lady waiting to be mended,

And have what's left of the pieces put back in place."

Larry Gatlin and the Gatlin Brothers-"Broken Lady"

[BPOV]

"Since when are we having a bonfire?' I hissed at Alice after she clicked off the phone with her asshole of a brother, Edward. Alice had been talking about getting a small group of friends together for a while, but I just figured it would be to see a movie or hanging out at the mall; something more Alice than a bonfire.

"Yes, Bella, a bonfire. I already have it okayed by the city of Seattle. Carlisle and Esme are coming by from Forks, and Emmett and Rose are dropping by too." She tried to reassure me by pulling out the 'people I've missed' card. I was a sucker for that and Alice knew it.

"Okay Ally, but do you have a place to have it? There's a lot more that goes into having a bonfire than the people going to it." I told her gently, hoping that she would not think I was trying to squash her plans.

"Like what, Bella? Ask me a question about this and I will answer it." Alice said confidently.

"Uh," I stuttered momentarily, "uhm like food. What are we going to have to eat? Well, more like, what is Emmett going to have to eat, because we both know that he could scarf down anything and everything we lay out on the table." I finished, feeling a little smug that I was able to propose and finish a question somewhat coherently.

Alice led me over to our double-door refrigerator and pulled open the door to the freezer. Ball Park Franks and Dearborn hotdogs shipped straight from Dearborn, Michigan filled the small meat hydrator. She gave me a look before taking me over to the pantry. We stood in front of the door before she proudly swung it open and swept a hand toward the back shelf. A minimum of five boxes of Graham crackers, three bags of large marshmallows, and one…two…three…seven large Hershey chocolate bars lined the small wooden plank. To the side of the necessary items, approximately fifteen suitable sticks for making smores hung on a nail, swinging back and forth, mocking me. She made a grand notion downwards. Looking at the floor, I noticed four two-liters of soda and tow twelve packs of Coke and Pepsi.

"Okay, so you have stuff to eat. But where are we going to have it? That's kind of important considering the fact that we live in a two-bedroom apartment complex." I said, trying to get over the crashing of pride that comes with being wrong.

"The cleared out plot of land around the corner from Jazzy's old apartment. The owner was selling it and, well," Alice squirmed like a child facing the evil- eye that all mothers had nailed.

"Well, what, Alice?" I half-groaned. I think I knew what she did.

"Well, I kinda sorta bought it."

"You did what?! You bought five acres of land for one bonfire?"

"But Bella, five acres isn't that much! I mean, Emmett could probably take up half of it by himself!" Alice cracked a smile in her vain efforts to make me laugh and relieve the tensions in the air. "And I wouldn't have been able to get the land without buying it."

"Then you should have went somewhere else for a bonfire, Alice." I told her like a disapproving mother, before she brought out the puppy-dog eyes.

"Well, I was originally thinking of First Beach in La Push, but two things stopped me." She expectantly said, like she was waiting for me to ask her what had interfered.

I quirked an eyebrow as a sign for her to continue.

"One, what happened with Emmett there." She said with a reminiscing tone.

Five months before my eighteenth birthday, I went with Alice, her older brother Emmett, and our adoptive parents, Carlisle and Esme. The Quiliete Indians that lived on the reservation had recently put a short fence that ran around the perimeter of the beach. Alice and I had rode with Emmett, while Carlisle and Esme took their own car. Emmett was always eager to go swimming, or do anything else physical, gunned the engine to ninety and tried to come to a sliding stop next to the white picket fence, only to go crashing into it, ripping the entire fence up and almost going into the water.

Needless to say, the Elders of the tribe were not happy. Not at all. They said that we -well, rather, Emmett- could not step foot in La Push for as long as he lived, or the original Quilete spirits would haunt him and his family for "as long as they lived".

"What was the second reason?" I asked, trying to keep the smile off my face as I imagined Emmett's face when he saw what had happened to his precious Jeep, Bertha.

"Edward and his ex-fiancée were going to get married there." Alice looked at the floor as she muttered this, like she was saying something that she really shouldn't have.

I had known some of the story behind Edward and Tanya's relationship. She had cheated on him when Maddy and Anthony were younger, and then a few months later, after he found out, and they broke up, she turned up dead at her apartment. Edward was a suspect in the investigation for a while, but he was picking up Tony from his parents house, so he had a solid alibi for that night.

I heard that Maddy was there the night Tanya was killed, the poor girl.

"So you see why I had to buy the land, right? It wasn't that expensive," she said nonchalantly, and I knew that she was keeping the price from me for fear that I would over-react.

"How much was it, Alice?" I managed to grit out from between my clenched teeth. Alice winced at my harsh tone before drawing her lips into a line an looking from side to side in an extremely nervous manner.

"A little over three hundred dollars, but that's relatively cheap for five acres! And the man threw in a fire-pit!"

"But Alice, what are we going to use five acres for after this bonfire?"

"Well, I figured that we could sell the land after we use it for this."

"There's not really anything I can do about it now. I'm sorry for freaking out on you," I regretfully said with a blush spreading up my cheeks.

"It's fine, Bella. Honestly, that's the reason I didn't tell you in the first place." Alice took a bite of her relatively soggy cereal as if nothing had happened.

"Wait, what do you mean in the first place?" I asked. I could feel myself getting confused and testy again. I wasn't a confrontational girl at all, but if pushed too far, I could easily become one.

"Well, I bought the lot a couple of weeks ago," Alice replied, shrugging her tiny, easily breakable shoulders as if it was something as simple as forgetting to tell me rather than not telling me.

"Okay, I'm going to take a hint from your book, Alice and count to ten so I don't do something I regret."

Onetwothree

...

Seveneightnine

Only counting for six seconds helped me to see through my anger.

"Okay," I started, breathing out the air I had been holding in for what seemed like forever. "This thing is tomorrow. Is there anything else we need to do?"

As I finished my question, a very tired looking Jasper walked into the kitchen and plopped down at the table. Alice promptly pushed her coffee over in his direction, knowing that he would need it. She stood up from the table, grabbing her half-empty cereal bowl, dropping a kiss on Jasper's floppy blond hair and setting her breakfast in the sink.

I gave her a pointed look that said, "you know where to put that," and she rolled her eyes. As Alice rinsed out her bowl in the sink, I tried to figure out what had Jasper so tired and... un-morning person-ish this day and then I came to the realization that I must have woken him up with my nightmare last night.

"Good morning, Bella," he said, a bit of sleepiness lingering in his normally smooth - tinged with a southern accent-voice.

I decided to be frank and open about the disturbance. "Good morning, Jasper. I apologize if I woke you up last night. I can certainly tell you that it was not intentional."

Jasper gave me a smile that made me feel calm and told me that he could empathize with what I was going through. As I recalled Alice's words from last night, I realized that he probably could.

He leaned closer to the table and me as he took my tiny, frail hands in his large, rough from years of hard labor ones, and looked me in the eye. A small smile came upon his lips. "Bella, don't worry one bit. Besides, I'm a heavy sleeper, I've been told.''

His gaze turned away from me and to his insane fiancée who was snorting into her fourth cup of coffee.

"I have no idea what you're talking about, Jasper. You're the lightest sleeper I know," she said, an innocent glint in her eyes, a playful smirk sitting on her lips.

"Alice, honey, how many cups of coffee have you had?" he asked suspiciously, getting up from the chair and plucking the mug from Alice's jittery hands. He sniffed the cup curiously and I honestly didn't know what he was doing. Then, he reached an arm around her back and pulled out a Dr. Pepper can.

"It's not my fault!" Alice said frantically. She blushed a light pink color that only Jasper could make show up on her cheeks.

"Oh yeah? Then whose fault is it?" His face turned up into a wondering smile like he really did want to know whose fault it was.

"Bella's!" She pointed to me and Jasper chuckled while a baffled look came upon my face.

"How the hell are your sugar complexes my fault, Alice?" I asked, trying to fight back a laugh. This was so Alice.

"Because Bella, you wouldn't let me put the soda on my cereal, so I had to put it in my coffee! Jazzy, you know how I get if I don't have my daily allotment of caffeine."

"Yes, Ally, I do know how you get when you haven't had your caffeine, but that's why you - and the rest of America - have coffee in the morning. But the difference between you," he paused to tap her nose playfully, "and the rest of America, is that they don't normally spike their coffee with soda. If anything, it's alcohol."

"And they don't normally have four cups before eleven A.M.," I piped in just to see how much trouble I could get Alice into.

"Four?" Jasper said, half in horror and the other half in apprehension. "Alice, honey, you're going to be so tired by five o'clock this afternoon."

Yeah, great. We'd have to deal with her until then.

Alice poked her small head around Jasper's lanky frame to glare at me. I shrugged innocently just like Alice did in situations like this and bit back a smirk. This really may come back to bite me in the ass when it came time to pick out my maid of honor gown, but who cared? It was way to much fun to watch this in the meantime. To watch Alice and Jasper's badinage with a small smile on my face. It was nice to see this kind of happiness.

Just as soon as I thought that, a small pain began to grow in my chest. What the hell? I narrowed my eyes in concentration to forget about the dull thrumming of irritation that aligned itself perfectly with my heart beat, but it was difficult.

What the fuck was it, and why did it just spring up when I was watching Alice and Jasper? Suddenly, my mind stopped an picked up at a pace that was as fast as Lance Armstrong at the time trials for the Tour De France as I figured out the answer.

I wanted this.

Not necessarily the light and happy banter between the two lovebirds, but the driving force behind all of it.

Love.

I wanted to be loved. Not a familial kind of love, or a friendship, but the passionate kind of love that is almost sinful and should be illegal in all fifty states, Puerto Rico and Guam. The love that is impossible to run from and can pick up, mend and put back together all the pieces of a broken glass, no matter how shattered it was.

I wanted a love like Alice and Jasper's and Rosalie and Emmett's. Hell, even Carlisle and Esme's twenty plus years of marriage certainly seemed enviable to me.

I wanted a powerful kind of enchantment that tears away at your soul and adds a new, -unbreakable, yet still as fragile as a brand newborn baby- layer to it. I wanted a love like I saw between my parents up until my father's dying day. Up until the day I killed him.

So, who wants to kill me right now? Say your death threats in a review, if you must!