"One of these days the sky's gonna break and everything will escape and I'll know. One of these days the mountains are gonna fall into the sea and they'll know."

-"Letters From the Sky", Civil Twilight

...

Chapter Seven:

No.

Please don't tell me I'm about to walk into a ransacked apartment stripped bare except for the light fixtures and windowpanes.

This was the only thing I could think as I slowly pushed the door open with my barefoot, taking my first steps inside onto my scuffed hardwood floor. Voices suddenly echoed down the empty hall and I experienced what I have come to coin a 'two second heart attack', thinking the bandits were still inside pillaging my goods like pirates. However, I quickly calmed myself when I recognized to whom the voices belonged.

"So she told you then?"

Alice.

I would have face palmed myself in the forehead right then for forgetting about our girls night, but my left hand had my pumps dangling from two fingers while my right still held my key, poised to open the already ajar door, and the stack of papers under my armpit were beginning to slip from their place. I remained silent, having a bad habit for the thrill and satisfaction eavesdropping brought me. I blamed my inner reporter who had gone as far as to hid under desks and crawl out bathroom windows just to get her story.

"Yes," it was Mike. His stern voice was one I could easily pick out from a sea of Ivy League lawyer types. His words sounded hard but unthreatening, like the way a father talked to his child who's just done something naughty. Not entirely scolding, but not entirely thrilled with having to have the conversation all together.

"Even about…?" The silence stretched on for what felt like forever, and I wondered if I should just step into the room before I became too engrossed, ultimately hearing something I didn't want to. My feet ached as I remained still on the hard floors andmy back screamed for relief from the book bag that was strapped to it, but I wanted to hear more. I wanted to be the fly on the wall of a conversation never meant for me.

"You mean how your brother almost succeeded in raping my fiancée and your best friend? How he hospitalized her, left her bruised and broke both physically and mentally, so much so that she felt like she had to keep such a weighty secret for nearly six fucking years? Yeah, I finally have a little insight to the Cullen family shame"

"Mike I-"

"No Alice. Look, I don't blame you or anyone one besides him. But I can't forgive what he did, and honestly I'm having trouble cooping with the fact that Bella might have never told me any of this shit if Edward hadn't come around to stir up old skeletons." He paused to take a breath, to calm himself down from the proverbial ledge where his temper balanced. I could imagine him grabbing at his neck and then smoothing his hands through his sandy blond hair. "You can't change what he did…" he trailed off letting the room fall quiet once again before Alice's childlike voice broke through the tension that I could feel drifting down the hall, coming towards me, closing in around me.

"Exactly. You can't change the past. Oh, how I wish we could. I would have done anything to keep Bella from my brother, to recognize how sick he actually was, to be a better friend, a better sister, a better wife…" I was startled when a single tear fell from my eye. It was so unexpected that I emitted a small, soundless gasped when I felt its wetness trail down my face. "But he's better now, so much better, and he wants to make amends for his demons, his sins. I think it could be vital for Bella's mental health if she finally came to terms with what happened…with him. Can't you support that at least?" Her words sounded desperate, as if she was trying to convince death to spare her life with her last breathes.

At this moment my shoes decided to slip between my fingers and tumble to the ground, causing a thud that reverberated almost violently into the pure silence of the apartment beyond me.

"Fuck," I heard the word escape Mike's lips in the same way that a gush of wind pushes through you on a fall day. There one minute and gone the next, forcefully moving passed you, disappearing so fast you almost think it hadn't happened.

"Bella?" Mike appeared at the end of the hall, his face looking ashen and worn down, his eyes sparkling with a raw emotion that was too intense for my mind to comprehend after such a day.

I didn't say anything as he approached me, bent down to grab my shoes, pulled my book bag from my thankful shoulders, and the stack of articles from underneath my arm. I wanted them back as soon as there were out of my hands, longing to cling onto them like a life preserver. I had no words, something that seemed to be occurring a lot today. What's a writer without her words?

"I brought Chinese," He spoke softly, before kissing my cheek and walking back down the hall.

I cleared my throat and harshly wiped away the remaining residue left behind by my single tear. I padded down the hall in my bare feet feeling my heart beats increase with every step until I was looking at Alice who was sitting Indian style with her legs crossed one over the other, folded underneath her in a position I had never been able to find confortable. She was in my white armchair, the one by the window that I liked to sit in when I read. The small side table next to it was heavily marked with water stains from the endless mugs that accompanied me through every novel, autobiography, and newspaper.

"Alice," I try my best to put some sort of smile on my face, but I felt numb and I couldn't be sure if I was conveying a look that said, 'I didn't heard a single thing' or one that was so transparent it would automatically deny such a lie. "I'm so sorry I'm late, I got swamped at work and to be honest our movie night slipped my mind." I shuffled from one foot to the other feeling painfully uncomfortable about the whole situation, especially with the way her blank stare never faltered from my face.

"I brought ice cream," she finally replied after a moment in which she appeared to recollect herself, a small grin that I imagined looked much like my own, as phony as the knock off designer bags they sell on Second Street. But it managed to pull the bags away from her exhausted looking eyes and allowed the deep creases in her forehead to relax back into a smooth slick of skin.

~ ooOoo ~

"Your brother asked me to dinner." I spoke into the darkness of the room.

It was one of the first things that were spoken since we turned the lights off and hit the play button on season one of Sex and the City. I was half way through a pint of chocolate chip ice cream, which was dessert to the entire box of broccoli and beef I demolished earlier. No one really says it, but eating your feeling doesn't make you feel any better, just fuller.

After our awkward meeting in my living room, I quickly stepped into my bedroom where Mike sat on my bed his eyes downcast to his intertwined hands. My book bag sat on the chair of my desk, my papers waiting to be marked in a stream of red pen next to my beautiful typewriter, where the sentence still hung, unfinished. My nude pumps sat next to his own polished black shoes at the foot of my bed. We didn't speak as I closed the door, pulling off my blazer and unzipping my dress, letting it slide to the floor where it pooled around my feet. He glanced at me from the corner of his eye, clad in only my mismatched underwear. He still refused to look up at me as I walked over to stand in front of him. I ran my fingers through his soft hair, which was free of his usual gel, allowing it to fall to the sides of his head, soft and pliable, just the way I liked it.

"Bell-", I pressed my finger to his lips shushing him without speaking a word. I was done with words tonight. I was cross with them, my lifelong friends, since they had betrayed me today. His eyes held onto mine, trying to say everything he couldn't with his words. I spoke right back, my gaze heated and intense as I crawled on top of him, my legs straddling his lap. His suit jacket was missing and he had his starch, button down cuffed up to his elbows exposing his strong forearms to me, one of my favorite sights. His tie was loosened at his neck. I finished the rest, pulling it from his neck where the top button of his collar was already undone. He wrapped one arm securely around my bare waist while the other reached up to pull my hair form its messy bun.

When our lips finally met it was like I could breathe for the first time all day. There was no more Alice, or Edward, or the Seattle Times, there was only the puffy pink skin that parted beneath my kisses. We rushed to push and pull the restraining fabric from our bodies and when he finally pushed into me I opened my mouth, letting the silence pour out louder than any scream I could have emitted, my head thrown back in ecstasy, my fingers still buried in his locks, keeping me grounded to the earth. His movements underneath me, and the three words he whispered over and over in my ear were enough for me to pull his lips back to mine before I shattered in his arms.

We lay wrapped up in each other for a while after that, knowing that eventually we'd have to address the fact that Alice was still sitting in my living room, but for the moment I was content in his embrace. We must have been quite a sight, both bare from the waist down while Mike still had his button up on, although I pushed it apart so I could lay against his naked chest, twirling my finger through the whispers of blond hair there. And me, still in my blue and white bra whose straps had been pulled down my arms so he could kiss my bare shoulders.

"Edward wants to buy us dinner this week."

One second, two. three…

"Okay"

I pushed him out the door ten minutes later and finally joined Alice who appeared to barely have noticed that we were missing for at least half an hour, a time frame of which I wasn't entirely sure. Now we sat on the love seat facing the TV, cuddled under the same blanket, barely watching what was playing out on the screen. Heaviness sat over us, but neither wanted to be the first to seriously address it. So we asked only simple questions with one-word answers until that was quickly exhausted and there was nothing left to be done but let the silence overtake us.

"Yeah?" She looked interested in my words for the first time all night and I smiled at her curious face and the way it lit up her eyes.

"Yep. Well, he actually asked Mike and me for dinner. He wanted it to sort of be like a double date."

"A double date?" She sat up and positioned herself so she was facing me; she stirred her spoon around the melting ice cream in her carton.

"Uh huh, some coworker."

"He didn't mention any coworkers…why would you take a coworker on a double date?" She put the spoon in her mouth, sucking on the chocolate residue there, a quizzical look upon her face.

"Beats me, I thought the same thing when he asked me. It all seems pretty odd." I take another bite of my own sweet dessert, which was now more like a milkshake in consistency, both of us trying to decipher the boy's intent. I felt like I was in middle school again. A time when boys were an enigma scrutinized in over analysis of what a 'hey' might mean opposed to a 'hi'.

"Did you say yes?"

I looked at her eyes filled with a glimmer of hope, for something I didn't know she wanted.

"Nothing yet, but Mike said 'okay'." I tapped the cold sticky spoon on my chin. Even now it was easy to get lost in the over analysis of another boy's one word answer. Was he serious? I would have to ask him tomorrow when we were both clothed, at our lunch date. "I guess I should get a hold of him, there's not much free time before the wedding." I was more talking to myself now than to Alice who was scrambling up off the couch.

"What are you doing?"

"Where's your cell?" I laughed when she tripped over the blanket still tangled around her feet as she rushed over to the kitchen table where it was plugged into the one good outlet in my apartment. It was rare to see a Cullen caught up in an ungraceful moment.

When she reached it her fingers flew across the screen. Before I knew what was happening, the phone was pressed against my face, the line already ringing in my ear. My heart pounded against my ribcage, and out of nowhere a line of sweat seemed to form on my brow. Why did my nerves care if Edward picked up the phone or not? Why did my palms clam up at the thought of hearing his voice sound out over the phone?

But it was all over in a moment, the line cut off and an automated voice narrated instructions to leave a message.

"Ah, hi Edward, it's Bella, uh…Alice gave me your number so I could uh…uh accept your dinner offer. Sorry if I'm calling too late, just ah…yeah, call me back..." I paused not knowing how to end the train wreck I'd already committed to. "Yeah, bye." I hung up wishing I could actually speak like a woman who had a degree from Yale.

Alice was grinning from ear to ear as we settled back down under the blanket; the episode on the TV long passed what we had last seen. I couldn't tell if Big and Cary had reached the part of the season where they were hooking up or breaking up.

"Jasper and I are trying again." My best friend whispered next to me, her words floating into the darkness and settling there, demanding to be acknowledged.

I turned towards her, my mouth opening several times, but nothing coming out. Her eyes remained focused on the TV, watching the couple kiss on the streets of New York, like what she had just said was nothing more than a passing remark. But those six words meant everything to her and that's why she couldn't bear to see my reaction, to see if I replied with the same kind of rejection I did just six or seven months ago.

Alice always wanted babies. She was that little girl who never left home without her baby doll with the yellow bonnet and matching stroller. I used to wonder why I never had that overwhelming urge to play a mommy in our little games or shared the same enthusiasm my best friend did when it came to picking out names for children I wasn't even sure I wanted at ten years of age. I talked about it once with one of my therapists in one of those sessions in which they suggest you take a break from discussing your underlining issues and focus on other aspects of your life. Sessions that ninety percent of the time would ultimately connect back to what you were supposed to be avoiding in the first place, making you realize how deep your physiological problems ran.

It was possible that Alice had such a strong desire to become a mother because she was raised with a strong motherly figure in her life, one who was always there for school plays, to make her lunch, and cretic every dress she bought for every school dance. I, on the other hand, grew up with a mother who lived thousands of miles from me, one who had to explain sex to me over the phone, who missed nearly every recital, award ceremony, or mother daughter function that ever came up. And there therefore, I was left with an underlining fear of one day becoming a mother because I didn't want to turn out to be like my own mother. I knew she loved me to the best of her abilities, but she was always a flightily woman who had to put so much effort into figuring her own life out, that there wasn't any room for the accidental child that spawned a five year marriage to a man she probably never actually loved.

But I guess in actuality it doesn't matter how bad you want it, sometimes the people with the most zeal never get what they want. Alice wasn't so lucky in making her dream into the reality she craved to hold in her arms. Jasper and her started trying right after they got married. Watching my best friend try to get pregnant was like watching one of those crime dramas; they always start slow but manage to pick up enough by the end to leave you teary eyed as the tragic turn of events unfolds. That was Alice's life in the last two years, slow and tragic.

Six months after they first started trying to conceive Alice came bounding into my office, her face flush, hair wind swept from running, and her eyes dripping with fat tears that fell down her face in streams. I immediately thought the worst with Jasper being deployed, but it had only been two weeks since I wrapped my arms around his broad shoulders, holding back my tears as he said his last goodbyes. My hands covered my gapping mouth, my knees shook so hard I thought I would collapse at any moment. Alice ran into me, wrapping her arms around my midsection like I was the last thing holding her to the earth, I couldn't breathe but I knew immediately I would have to stay strong for the petite woman in my arms.

"Alice-" I barely got her name out before she jumped back from my embrace.

"I'm pregnant!" her voice carried through every cubical in the small office and my coworkers erupted into spontaneous applause.

I tried to catch my breath, to alter my mood, to stop my hands from violently quaking against her back, but in my head I had already seen that American flag covered casket, already thought about the long list of names I would need to call, the vacation days I would need to run by Charlotte in order to be next to Alice every moment of everyday.

Alice's face fell when she pulled back to looked at me; I knew she expected to see excitement and possibly a few tears of wonder forming in the corners of my eyes. Instead I stood stone cold in front of her, my face ashen, my lip caught between my teeth, holding back not tears of joy but ones of devastation. She recognized that look quickly, I guessed she had seen it many times in the mirror when she got up in the middle of the night, a bad dream so vivid rousing her from her bed, one where the empty side of the mattress became a permanent fixture in her life. She quickly pulled me back into a tight embrace, laying my head down on her slim shoulder. She soothed me back to reality, whispering over and over in my ear, "he's okay, Jasper's alive, Jasper's fine, he's okay, I'm so sorry". It was a whole five minutes before my hands stopped their trembling and the image of a cold, dead Jasper would fade from my thoughts.

"A baby?" I whispered back in my tear stained voice.

"Yeah!" I could hear the smile in her reply.

The way it worked out Jasper would join a long line of men who would miss the birth of his child because he was deployed, a third tour in Afghanistan. Alice kept it off her mind with a serious case of nesting, filling her house with every baby item in gender-neutral yellow she could think of in order not to succumb to the always present ache that came from the empty spot next to her in bed. In her mind that was just one little sacrifice she was more than willing to make in order to bring a life into this world, a life that she made.

At nearly seven months pregnant, Alice was staring to worry that something wasn't exactly right with little Whitlock, the name we finally settled on until something more permanent was given. She would spend lengthy periods of time staring at her stomach in the mirror, pulling her shirt up and rotating from side to side. She had gained almost no weight and the only evidence that she was expecting existed in the nearly nonexistent bump that protruded low on her abdomen. Even more so, the fact that beyond the 22-week mark she had only felt her child kick inside her once or twice perturbed her even further. After a week of daily calls to her OBGYN, her doctor finally gave in and scheduled her an extra appointment although both Carlisle and him had thoroughly reassured her that every woman experienced pregnancy differently and that she shouldn't worry so much. She could not be soothed though until she heard that fluttering heartbeat and saw that grainy black and while ultrasound for herself.

You know those days that would be completely unrecognizable next to the routine of a normal week, but because of once major event you can suddenly recall what you had for breakfast that particular day, how you did your hair, and what your were wearing even years after that twenty four hours had passed. Well I can remember everything about the day Esme called me, her voice barely recognizable through a gurgle of tears and choked back sobs. I was on an impromptu lunch date with Mike, who felt like celebrating after winning one of his first big cases at his father's firm. We held hands, sipped sparkling water, and waited for our entrees to be brought out. I ordered the salmon Michael got the chicken. I wasn't even going to answer my phone, letting it buzz annoyingly inside my bag, but Mike encouraged me to take the call, thinking that nothing could ruin our day. I can vividly remember the terrified look in his sparkling blue eyes as he sat helplessly across from me at the table, gripping my hand so tightly it should have been painful, but it wasn't. I could only imagine what he saw when he looked at me that day, my mouth gapping like a fish out of water as Carlisle finally pulled the phone from a inconsolable Esme and spoke to me in his trademark calm and serious voice. I barely held myself together as my fiancée pulled me from my seat, partially carrying me out of the café, before I buried my head in his chest, the phone still pressed to my ear. Silent tears ravaged my body.

Jasper Brendan Whitlock Jr. was announced a still born on June 21st, at just 25 gestational weeks.

In the few nights that my body allows me to fall asleep on my own for more than an hour, a nightmare of my past usually has me almost painfully twisted in my sheets when I wake up, eyes puffy with tears, nose dripping a disguising concoction, and my entire body trembling so violently it takes almost an hour to convince myself that it was all a dream before finally getting up and starting my day before the sun even rises beyond the skyscrapers of downtown Seattle. On occasion when those night terrors did not revolve around the boy with the green eyes they replayed the same memory repetitively in my mind, placing me back in the exact spot where I stood next to her.

"I got ice chips," I spoke softly to a drained looking Carlisle, whose usual exuberant blue eyes were glazed over in exhaustion and pain.

Without a word he pulled me to him, assaulting me with his spicy aroma when I tucked my face deeply into his neck. My silent tears soaked into his scrubs, and would have been smudged with black mascara if I had bothered to put any on this morning as I moved through my apartment like a drone, lost in my own grief. His hands gripped onto my thin frame, almost like he wished he could dig his fingertips deep into my ribcage. And I would let him if he asked.

Carlisle had been the rock of an otherwise distraught family. While they cried he stood firm, holding them all together, trying his best to mend them with his healing hands, but this wasn't a clean cut. It was jagged and deep, bleeding from every orifice without any sign of coming through unmarked when everything was finally stitched back up. So, I made a silent agreement to be what I could for Carlisle. I was far from a rock, a steady stream of tears hadn't stopped leaking from the corners of my eyes since that fateful phone call merely twenty four hours ago, it felt like a lifetime, but he could break down with me, he could grieve too. I pulled him to me as tightly as possible when I felt the wetness of his own previously unshed tears drip down the back of my neck.

"It's time," he said clear and concisely, pulling away from our embrace. He pulled the hem of his blue scrubs up to roughly rub away the stray tears from his face, which looked to have aged in the last time I saw him.

I couldn't say a word without breaking down into the tears that so badly wanted to pour from their duct, to loosen the tightness building in my chest. Instead I placed a kiss on his cheek, hoping the vehemence behind the action soaked through his skin and gave him enough courage to go through with the birth of his first grandchild.

I took a deep breath in before he opened the hospital room door, taking in the sickly sweet smell of disinfectant that always seemed to come standard with every hospital. Alice's face came into view almost immediately. Any traces of happiness, hope, or excitement had been sucked from her face hours ago. Only sagging purple bags, red-rimmed dead looking eyes, and limp greasy hair remained. Our eyes met as she gripped the sheets of her bed, a fresh contraction spread through her body causing her to bear down on anything within reach. She refused the morphine, the spinal tap, even the epidural; she wanted the pain that demanded to be felt. She needed it.

Her hand reached out for me and without hesitation I abandoned the Styrofoam cup of ice chips in order to take a tight hold of her small hand. It trembled slightly in mine as she watched Carlisle quickly dress in plastic and latex. He tried to argue against her wishes of having him be the one to help her birth the dead child from her womb, but one look into her lifeless eyes and the sound of one sentence leaving her mouth was enough for him to nod his head in agreement. "Daddy, I want you to be the first one to see him".

So there we stood, a family tucked away in a far private room deep within the hospital's maternity wing, waiting to see the face of Alice's beautifully, peaceful child. I to her left, Esme to her right, Emmett respectfully in view by the window, Carlisle positioned at the head of her bed, and Rosalie the registered nurse looking empty but studious behind him. The missing faces in the room were painful reminders to an already emotionally wasted Alice, of the man who couldn't be with her, and the man who wouldn't be. I held her hand tighter.

"Okay baby girl," Carlisle spoke softly over the gentle sound of pianos and harps that filled the room, a beautiful sunset poured onto his face. "It's just you and me. Okay?" He rubbed her shin, smiling at her as she nodded her head, tears flowing over her pale cheeks and dripping off her chin landing onto her pink hospital gown. "Good, now are you ready to meet that little baby?"

I knew as I held her hand, her nails burrowing into my palm, and she birthed her dead son, that the only comfort that could have been brought to console her grieving heart was Jasper. The man who was over 5,000 miles always dealing with his own demons in the solitude of a desert that stretched for miles and a rainstorm of bullets that would ring in his ears long after he returned home to an empty nursery and an empty wife.

In the weeks after, we stayed by her side, helping her with everything from the physical afterbirth recovery, to the mental depression of both post partum and dealing with funeral arrangements, to the mundane daily chores. Over a two minute, stoic phone call Alice and Jasper decided on a simple cremation with no funeral or announcement of their child's death, only close family and friends were to be informed. She wanted no flowers, no cookie trays, and at the sight of the first and only sympathy card she became violently ill.

Everyone dealt with their mourning different; I was the single observer of the spectrum of emotion and conflict that desolated the family for nearly a month. Carlisle had to practically restrain Esme when she was told that her grandchild would be cremated. As a devout Catholic who did her damndest to raise three more devout Catholics, she herself was sickened by the thought of that little body thrown into an oven, burned to ashes, and thrown into the Pacific without so much as a proper mass to ensure Jasper Jr.'s shiny new soul was whisked to heaven without delay. Carlisle grieved privately behind closed doors, while Emmett and Rosalie were likely to be found wrapped up in one another, drying the other's tears with soft kisses or brushes of finger pads at any time or place. I tried to remind myself of my improper place amongst this family and only broke down into a million pieces when I finally walked through my door into the arms of an awaiting Mike, who kept his distance but did more than he would ever know, single handedly sewing my shattered self back together every night I collapsed just beyond the door.

Only when Jasper returned home with his dead eyes, balled fists, and ridged expression did they gather up the dust and sprinkle it in the Pacific Ocean, off the bay where Alice used to take walks when she missed her husband and still longed for her baby's arrival. It had been just over a year since, and this was not the first time the idea of another chance, another hope of growing her family, had come up before this moment that brought back so many terrible memories of the months that followed that hot day in June.

When Rosalie announced her pregnancy to the family, she tried to keep herself from digging up the ghost that haunted this family. Alice however, shocked everyone with her energy and adoration for the child that grew inside her sister. Emmett beamed with pride at his bride and amazement at his sister's strength. It was only Jasper and I who spotted that flash of pain in her eyes that was gone in a blink, replaced by a genuine smile.

Later that week we went to lunch at our favorite restaurant near work. As I scanned the menu she dropped the topic I'd been waiting for since Jasper pulled me aside. With wide and terrified looking eyes he begged me to try and thwart the idea of another pregnancy from her bright blue eyes. I remembered grabbing ahold of his shaky palms, unable to take my eyes from his quivering lip. It hadn't even been a year and Jasper wasn't holding up as well as he claimed, but what husband could break down when he had to hold his wife up above the water where she was barely floating. She said the same six words that still rang through my living room, drowning out Big and Cary's dialogue. Six months ago I couldn't even look her in the eyes when I suggested that she take her time and that I thought it was a poor idea.

I think it broke her.

It definitely broke me.

We didn't talk for nearly a month; the tension ran so high it almost suffocated me. But now we were back on track, couch cuddling, ice cream eating and TV show bingeing. She's thrived in taking the reigns on the wedding everyone thought would never happen thanks to busy schedules, health scares, and a secret that until recently clawed at me from the inside. One that still nipped at me late at night when my bedroom walls seemed to speak to me about a pair of green eyes and a head of slicked back bronze hair.

I gripped onto her hand, much like the way I did that day in the hospital, the day in which she allowed me to be apart, and leaned into place a kiss on her forehead. I didn't need words to convey my heartfelt response. I could feel the smile that grew on her face as I rested my head on her shoulder, snuggled into her small side. We watched the TV for a while, still not entirely paying attention.

"Bella?" I heard a slight laugh in her voice, and her shoulders shook underneath my head. "Did you and Mike have sex while I was waiting out here?" She barely got the words out before doubling over laughing until she was gasping for breath.

I followed her into a fit of giggles.