"I was five and he was six. We rode on horses made of sticks. He wore black and I wore white, he would always win the fight. Bang bang, he shot me down. Bang, bang, I hit the ground. Bang, bang, that awful sound. Bang, bang, my baby shot me down"
-"Bang Bang", Nancy Sinatra

...

Chapter Ten:

"Bella!" Alice's high-pitched voice could be heard in the distance as she called out to me, searching somewhere in the backyard for her best friend to come back up to her room and play dress up.

I turned my head when her voice pushed passed the large, oak door that was cracked open by my small body just moments before, as I snuck into the music room on the second floor of the Cullen's seemingly vast house. Downstairs my mother was sitting in the kitchen laughing with Esme and speaking of adult things that I barely stopped to consider their jargon as I entered the house, hoping to have a few moments away from Alice and her dress up games. I looked quickly from the door where her voice floated before returning my gaze back to the boy who sat on the window seat.

I had expected him to be at his precious piano, plucking away at the cords, filling the house with sweet melodies that always made me want to close my eyes and take a nap, no matter what time of day it was. I was surprised and confused to see that he wasn't in his usual spot facing away from the door but instead seated by the window, where he legs dangled off the floor and his eyes scanned a bright green, thickly, bound book. His new position however, did not deter me from sneaking to my usual hiding spot behind the large white armchair that sat just beyond the entrance of the room. It smelled like sweet perfume, the same scent that wafted around me when Esme picked me up in her arms and cradled me to her every time my mother announced it was time for us to leave. I liked to lean in and take deep breaths and listen to Edward practice his scales.

Today however, he seemed to have little interest in being anywhere near his piano. His eyes instead, kept a constant stare on that book that could barely rest on his small lap without falling off. He thumbed through the pages, sometimes in rapid succession he would let them fly by without giving anything on the pages any type of consideration, but other times he would sit and stare at a page for several long minutes. His fingers would trace over the lettering on the thick cardstock and his eyes would marvel at the hand painted pictures that I could just catch a glimpse of from my hiding spot. He would move on to another page only to return back to that one after realizing he wasn't quite done admiring it yet. It fascinated me.

He fascinated me.

But no matter how much I longed to do so, I would never leave my concealed spot. He wasn't like Emmett, who would wrap me up in his thick arms and push me on the swing until I felt lightheaded. No, Edward barely said a word to me when I came over to play. He was always absent from games of tag, tucked away in the shadows at every birthday celebration, and silent for every dinner shared at the big kitchen table. I once heard Esme call him a 'phantom' over a whispered conversation she held with my mother one winter day a few months ago.

When I asked my mother later that night, back safely in my own bedroom, tucked in under the warm blankets and snuggled up to my favorite teddy bear, what a 'phantom' was. She was taken back by my innocent question.

"A ghost," she finally answered me, "a phantom is another word for a ghost."

I didn't understand then why Esme would call her own son a ghost, but now looking at him sitting in the corner of the room, his head illuminated by the midday sun streaming through the window, I knew that she was very accurate in her description. Edward was very distant from the world around him, never bothering to look up from his piano to care if there were one hundred people in the room or if he was by himself. When his green eyes would catch mine in the most rare of moments, I could see the ghost, the phantom, lingering inside his green orbs.

"Bella!" Alice's voice was now just down the hall and it reverberated almost violently off the walls, before plowing through the creak of the music room's door and breaking the carefully constructed silence of Edward's space.

His eyes snapped up from his book and landed right on my own wide, brown, innocent doll like gaze. I let out a little squeak of a gasp as I marveled at the way the green of his irises sparkled and shined, especially in the light of the sun. He tilted his head just slightly to the side, observing me from my spot that no longer hid my small body. I felt like giggling and crying, and screaming, and smiling all at the same time. The conflicting emotions made my head spin in circles. He looked at me like he could see something I couldn't, even when I was forced to stare at my reflection in the mirror that mom placed in front of me each morning to twist my hair back in some simple fashion.

I wondered what he saw.

"Bella!" Her voice was farther away, but it broke the imaginary string that tugged us together.

His eyes hadn't left mine, but there was something different now. The ghost seemed to have returned, slinking back into its normal haunting ground behind his eyes.

"You should go."

Three simple words from his mouth and I was running out the door to find Alice and enter back into the sunlight of the backyard. The house suddenly felt too cold.

The phantom had taken up residence.

I stared at the back of my eyelids, refusing to allow my eyes the satisfaction of winning this battle, forcing them to remain in the dark until they gave up and let me drift to sleep.

But my self-control had always been terrible. Every diet I ever tried to start always ended with me in the kitchen nearly in tears at the heavenly taste of a pint of double chocolate chip ice cream, or savagely bent over a container of cookies, a full sleeve already demolished. My attempts to enforce a three days per week quota to make my gym membership worth the $59.95 I paid every month, failed after just one of week of pointless trips that always ended in some kind of bodily injury or pure exhaustion that I didn't like as an alternative to a more toned body. Needless to say I cancelled the membership.

Beside my eating and exercising habits I always lacked control in my life. It was one of the root issues that Leah insisted we try and remedy. It was the reason I let my mother control my life when I was young, why I let Alice replace her, and ultimately why I allowed myself to stay in an unhappy relationship with Edward. I had no control.

I shivered at the thought, remembering the angry tears and shouting that would ensue every time she would tap her pen against my file and ask that question over and over again.

Why did you let him do it?

My eyelids flew open. The white of my ceiling was covered in splotches that blurred my vision as my eyes adjusted to the brightness of the full moon that hung outside my window, another clear night. I wished the summer rain would come and help lull me to sleep, but I was never that lucky.

"Ugh!" I groaned out loud into the silence of the room. I started to squirm around under my sheets that all of a sudden felt too hot and heavy against my bare legs. I kicked the offending material away from my body in violent jerks before flopping onto my stomach and wrapping my body around the body pillow I usually cuddled up to every night when Mike wasn't here to hold me in his arms. I closed my eyes one more time; hoping that if I remained still I could trick my body into thinking it was tired.

However, unlike my usual insomnia plagued nights, my body was wide-awake. Some nights I would cry myself to sleep, utterly exhausted and yet my mind wouldn't allow me the satisfaction of rest, always running back and forth to one pointless subject after the other. But tonight I did not feel that desperate need for sleep to over take my fatigued body. Instead I felt rejuvenated and full of energy, like I could get up and repeat the whole day over again, even though it was a horrid day that I would never wish to relive again.

"This is ridiculous!" I shout at the empty room, sitting up in bed, throwing my body pillow onto the floor where it lay with almost all of my bedding.

My typewriter and the unfinished page mocked me from the corner. I glared at it for a whole minute before I finally scrambled out of bed, needing to distance myself from the confining sheets. I didn't even bother turning the bedside lamp on, but rather preferred the illuminating light of the moon outside my window. I plopped myself down at the desk, both of my legs hanging off the sides of the chain in a position my mother would have called 'unladylike'.

I pulled the single sheet of paper up from its limp resting state against the carriage so it was exposed to the moonlight. My eyes took a minute to adjust to the small dark smudges that formed the unfinished sentence that I had stopped to read at least a half dozen times everyday since I wrote the damn thing. I never even bothered to cover up the words. Michael had passed the desk practically every time he was over, and had even stopped to read the unfinished sentence once or twice, asking what I was writing.

"Just a little side project…" Not a lie.

The words to anyone else would just seem so insignificant they would never really guess the weight that they held. Even unfinished I had a hard time reading those words because unlike everyone else who walked by the page, I knew how that sentence ended.

I read it one more time before doing much what I did the night before, tore my eyes from the white page and pushed away from the desk, but not before opening one of its small drawers and extracting a simple sketchbook. It was an old little thing that I had had for years. It was thick and worn, well loved from the looks of the fraying corner of the soft hand sewn hemp cover. It was a gift from my mother when Phil and her went on their honeymoon to Mexico, at least fifteen years old. I pulled an old charcoal pencil from its hiding place at the back of the drawer, just a little stub of a thing, and went to the arm chair placed in the corner of the room. From here I could look out the window more clearly and stare up at the vast and deep looking night sky.

I had to thumb my way through nearly half the pages before I found a blank one, not even bothering to stop and revel in the old drawings that were done by a different girl, in a different time. I just put my pencil to the page and began the strokes that were once so familiar. They came back to me like an old friend, drawn away by time and space.

I lost myself in the smudges of a different kind, not ones that made concrete words, but those that formed objective shapes and figures. Nothing was irreversible like the words on that page. If I didn't like a stroke I simply smudged it out or drew over it, creating something new, something different. When the sun finally started to rise, I was barely aware that the company of the moon had faded away. I pulled my dark stained fingers back from the small page that once was white and blank but now was filled with black creases and marks. I wasn't surprised to see my finished work, but rather saddened.

Even in black and white and shades of gray, his eyes still sparkled back at me. They were the same as the piercing ones that plucked at my soul tonight, but the face was much younger. Drawn from a memory that kept floating back into my mind. Two pieces of paper and yet they both managed to capture the same person, one in ink and the other in charcoal.

I pushed the tablet off my lap, letting it fall haphazardly to the floor. In a fowl mood already before the sun had risen fully in the sky I started to get ready for the day ahead.

~ ooOoo ~

My walk to work was nothing out of the ordinary.

I left my little apartment at the same time I always did, a hot cup of coffee in my hands, ready for the impending crash I was bound to have considering I hadn't slept in over twenty four hours. The bags under my eyes this morning told a similar story, but still I felt…fine. I wasn't exactly skipping down the streets full of exuberance, but I didn't feel sluggish like I usually did when I got less than my average four or five hours.

My book bag still hung from my shoulders. I picked at the stray string that had loosened from the straps threading, a nervous habit that often occupied me on my walk to work. My modest heals clicked against the sidewalk in a smooth and comforting rhythm as the sun shined down on the pedestrian of Seattle who I watched buzz along, all with lives as complex as my own to fill their day and steal their time. The light summer breeze that seem to linger for the passed week brushed against my arms, exposed by my sleeveless black button-down. I said hello to the hotdog vendor who supplied me with many free franks when business was slow. I still didn't know his name, but his smile was always warm and welcoming. The pigeons scattered as I walked through their clustered meeting spot on the pavement, afraid of the power of my small feet. I took in the rich, full scents of every coffee house I passed and even stopped to taste the air by the bakery, which was always just slightly sweet from their morning sugar delivery.

Nothing was different, nothing was new, but something was not right.

I sighed pulling open the heavy doors of my building, following a steady crowd of working class, white-collar workers who piled into the golden elevators with their suits and dresses all pressed and clean, their briefcases clasped perfectly shut, a coffee cup with a green logo settled perfectly in their hands.

Settling into my desk had been a daily ritual that I never changed or deviated from in the years I started working at the paper. Every morning I strolled in at five after nine, much to Charlotte's dismay, turned on my computer, checked my emails, refreshing approximately three time before moving on to voice messages yet to be listen to, usually no more than one or two worth the effort of placing a return call. This was followed closely by consuming the last gulps of my beverage of choice for that morning, before it had gone completely cold, and a quick trip to the bathroom, and finally stopping to check in with a few coworkers for some light water cooler chatter before I finally wrote a single word for the day.

Everyday…like clockwork.

Today however, I sat down at my desk and instead of turning on the computer and starting the routine, I simply sat and stared out the window for a few long moments. I crossed my legs, swiveled my chair to the left where the floor to wall glass window made me privy to the hustle and bustle of the city below. I sipped on my coffee and just stared.

"Bella?" I recognized the voice of one of my coworker, but I couldn't be bothered to put a name to the face or turn my chair to confront them.

"The city seems so quiet from here, doesn't it?" I spoke softly before taking another small pull at the dark roasted java in my thermos. I knew I sounded crazy, but I needed just a moment away from the ordinary, a moment to think about anything other than what was consuming me.

Whoever was behind me must have taken the hint and retreated. I took a deep breath in, letting the oxygen expand my lungs until it was painful to take anymore in and then, in one big sigh, I released it all back into the air around me.

"Okay," I spoke to myself.

I turned my chair around; finally ready to start my day, ready to be inspired by the average, the familiar, the routine, the norm. Just as I swiveled the whole way around I was inches away from the very serious face of my boss.

"Bella, I need you in my office." Deadpan, was the best word I could think of to describe her face when she said that sentence, it rang out into the air like a warning bell.

This week is going very well for me.

"Sit down Bella," her voice had not changed its tone and I liked it better when the red headed goddess with a pen was screaming at me for letting a misplaced comma slip through my final draft.

We sat for a moment in complete silence, the noise of the office at work was a distance sound trapped behind her heavy wooden office door. I could count the number of times that I'd been called into Charlotte's office on one hand. She was much more of an 'up and about' kind of supervisor. She would hover over all of our desks eight hours a day if she could, but rarely did she insist on a one-on-one meeting with any of her subordinates.

"Is there something wrong?" I finally asked, not liking the quiet that had started to wrap around us.

She barely took a moment to answer, "yes".

I would have liked a mirror to stare at or perhaps someone to take a picture of the face that I made when she said this simple one word answer. My eyes widened slightly, my mouth opened not having anything to say, and my brows pulled together in confusion. What was going on?

"Did you think that you could just add this block quote and think that I wouldn't notice?" Her voice was still so serious and stern, her face smooth and emotionless.

I barely held back the laughter that started to push passed my closed mouth. My teeth did their best to keep it from erupting from me, latching on to my bottom lip so hard I thought I might draw blood. I had been expecting the worst. A deep talk about my unprofessionalism at the workplace, my waste of company time, my emotional break down yesterday, my inability to produce enough completed work to allow me a two week vacation, but never…never did I expect for this to be a simple edit review.

"This isn't a laughing matter Bella! You think I'm going to let you get away with a block quote, " she practically hissed the words, leaning forward over her desk with the offending document in hand, "in my section? You're mad."

I had finally composed myself enough to take the question seriously. I may be crazy, damaged, with a closet full of skeletons to match, but my work, my words were my life. I would defend them until the end.

"I can't believe that you can't see the merit of using such an element in this piece. I would make a much more permanent connection between the interview with the city councilwoman and her parallel to so many other strong female characters in history." I was almost shocked to hear such expressive words leave my lips. They tingled with exhilaration.

Even Charlotte couldn't hold back her smile as she continued to rip my piece to shreds with a red pen and her eloquent words.

~ ooOoo ~

"I'm so sorry that this has to be so rushed Ms. Marsh."

I am once again left staring out the window right next to my desk, but this time I am lost in work, not in my own thoughts. I had been returning calls for the better part of the morning and even finished two pieces that needed to be edited before their final draft was sent to the printers. However, I skirted around the one message that I had listened to at least three times before finally picking up my clunky, outdated landline and dialing Ms. Marsh' s phone number. With all that had been going on lately I didn't think that I could handle another element to the chaotic mess of my life, but there I found myself, listening to the measured ring on the other line, which was ultimately answered by a secretary who finally redirected me to the woman at the Seattle magazine.

Her request to feature my wedding as a part of a larger human-interest piece focusing on the women of Seattle had all but been forgotten. A thought my mind pushed easily aside in order to make room for other pressing matters, like that of a certain man's brilliant green eyes.

"I'm just thrilled that you could make time for us at all. I know how busy this week must be for you, and I'm sure your just dying from the anticipation for your big day." Her peppy but professorial voice irritated me.

This phone call would have been going in a completely different direction if I had not received a frantic email from Mike's mother just twenty minutes before, expressing her extreme pleasure with my ability to make contacts with the 'right people' who could get her beloved Michael in the society pages. Of course those were not her exact words, but I stopped reading after her third use of the word 'regal'. The lifestyle of a Newton was always just a little to cordial for my back roads, bumpkin upbringing.

Her exact words went something like this, "By not accepting this distinguished opportunity to present yourself and my son to the community at large, you would be delaying a significant moment in the next generation of Newton acknowledgment."

I read the sentence once again as I listened to the journalist on the other line babble on in her chipper tone that reminded me just a smidge too much of Lizzy's girlish voice that had managed to practically float across the dinner table and slowly strangle me every time she opened her mouth last night. I pushed her perfect face from my mind and read the ridiculous sentence one last time before dismissing the pretentious email to the trash file.

"Yes, well it is a distinguished opportunity." I practically hissed the words into the receiver.

Marsh either chose to ignore my hostile tone or was oblivious to my rudeness, because she continued on just as exuberant as before.

"Wonderful! I would love to just ask you some preliminary questions over the phone now in order to better utilize our time when we meet face to face. Would that be okay with you?"

"Sure." I rest my face against my right hand, my elbow propped up in a bored looking posture against my desk.

"I'm just going to start off with a few fluff questions about your relationship with your fiancé." I could hear her shuffling through some papers; she takes her time asking her first question. I continue to stare out at the world below me, wishing I could be like the birds that flew high above the crowds of people. Weightless and free. " When did you know that Mike was the one?"

I rest my head deeper into my hand, my face feeling weighed down and too heavy to hold up. I thought back to the day when I decided I was going to marry Michael James Newton.

I stared at the large marble structure, taking it in with long slow glances, focusing on the minuet details of the piece. Each time my eyes roamed over the same surface something about it had seemed to transform into something new. The water that cascaded down from the many spouts strategically placed on the work made the hard unmoving material below it ripple and sway into something amazingly complex and perplexing.

I slowly walked around the fountain one more time, pushing my way passed the crowds of people who lingered around the obelisk in the busy piazza. Classes gathered in clustered diligently taking notes as their teacher spoke of Bernini and the fountain he created in order to throw some spite at Borromini's simple and stately Sant'Agnese, which stood just in front of the fountain. Couples held each other close as they sat on the thin railings that guarded the famous structure. Foreign immigrants ran around with their cheap goods, targeting the tourists with low prices and colorful objects. Artists filled the square, their easels set up in rows, while some had their works displayed on tables with every image of Rome created in every medium ready and available to be purchased, packed, and hung on a wall back in the trendy apartments of travelers who longed to bring a piece of their experience back to their everyday lives. Street performers sang, danced, and played their instruments, drawing in large groups of spectators, who sometimes threw a coin towards them.

However, I did not let the activity of the square stop my turn about the historic piece of architecture, a mixture of art and science, beauty and structure. I marveled at its glorious exquisiteness, especially as the setting hot Roman sun made the running water glitter as it ran over the marble.

I could have stared at it for hours; days if given the chance, but the warm weight of a large hand slipping into my smaller sweaty one, roused me from my dream like state.

"Isabella?" He never called me by my full name, but he had taken to using in the last few days of our journey across Italy. At first he used it as a tool for annoyance, to pull my exhausted body from our hotel bed in order to experience another villa, another café, another ancient structure. But the way he wrapped his tongue around the four-syllable word turned sensual and made my heart quicken its pace. My name whispered into my ear as he kissed his way up my neck at dinner, my name hissed from his lips as I ran my hands down his bare chest, my name, eight letters never sounded so erotic than in the early hours of the morning when he was still moving his body inside of mine, both of us spent from hours of the same motion, but dying for just one more release. 'Isabella', groaned between our sticky skin and panting breaths, one last time before my nails dug harshly into his back and he gripped my hips painfully against his own, leaving dark bruises that made my heart quicken each time I took a step and felt the sharp sting of their presence.

I smiled lazily up at my suntanned boyfriend, his aviator sunglasses pushed back on his forehead, revealing his bright blue eyes to me. His returning grin was just as warm and genuine and I felt like I might melt from the heat between us. Not fiery and rash like our nights together, but slow and smooth, spreading over every inch of my body until our burn engulfed me. We were burning.

I pulled him to me and his arm wrapped around my waist without a second thought as one of my hands ran along the scruff of his usually clean shaven face and the other raking back into his overgrown mane of golden hair, sending his expensive sunglasses crashing to the cobblestone of the piazza. Neither of us moved to pick them up, but rather stayed locked together, our eyes removing everyone else from the world but us.

"Isabella Marie Swan?" The smile never left my face as his words slowly drifted the short distance to me. "Will you marry me?"

The smiled faltered, but only for a moment. The sun was setting, the water was glistening, the people were plentiful, and I was in the arms of a man who made me burn so brightly I never wanted to let go.

This time it was different, almost alarmingly so. It was the exact same words, repeated years later. This time it was romantic, this time it was desired, this time I knew it would work.

But I couldn't help the sour taste my one word answer left in my mouth.

"Yes."

"I don't know." I smiled, knowing that was not the answer she was looking for. The words just started to tumble from my mouth. "It's like I didn't even know that I missed him until I could see him again, touch him again. It's then that I realize that even if I tried to get rid of him there's always this little part of me that will never let him go. I will always want him."

The smile the stretched over my lips almost hurt, my cheek's muscles burned from the sensation. But it didn't take me more than a moment to realize that I wasn't sure how much of my answer was about Mike and how much of it was about Edward.

Seven Years Ago…

"Bella?" His voice startled me.

I had just left the party for a moment; the hot air lingering in the house was starting to feel stifling. Maybe it was just the way his eyes followed my every step I took around the room that made my cheeks flush such a vibrant shade of red. I weaved in between my friends, hoping to lose him as I sunk deeper into the crowd of graduates. But those green forests always found me. Either way, the crisp, summer, night air was a much-welcomed sensation against my heated skin. I almost longed for one of the cigarettes that had recently taken up constant residence in Edward's back pocket, just so my hands had something to do. But I hated those thin sticks of cancer, they made his mouth taste different and his usually clean and musty spearmint scent was now always tinted with that sickly smoke smell, lingering in all of my clothing hours after I left his house.

When I turned my head to look at him I was taken back once again by his sharp looking blue suit, a stark difference from his usual jeans and t-shirt. It hugged him in all the right places and made a blush run down my chest and underneath the navy blue dress that Alice had let me borrow. I shivered even though the air was warm and my skin was hot.

He smiled at me in one of those ways that made me think he was about to say something that I wouldn't like. He'd been doing that a lot lately.

"What?" The word came out harsher than I thought it would. His smile turned into a bit of a sneer that had me backing up against the railing of the Cullen's back deck.

He stalked towards me, wrapping his hand around my waist, keeping me trapped between the wooden railing and his tall, hard body.

"Isabella Marie Swan?" His eyes pierced into mine and I felt like I was sinking into the ground, weighed down by their density.

"Yes," I whispered, his mouth so close that if I moved even the slightest ours would connect. Part of me wanted to pull away and take in a breath of the fresh night air, but another part of me wanted to tug him that last inch towards me and lose myself in the soft skin of his pink lips and wicked tongue.

"Will you marry me?" The words rolled off his tongue and out into the barely existing space between us.

I wanted to step away, take a moment; process the true meaning of his words, but his mouth was so close. His breath wasn't tainted with nicotine like it usually was in these last months, but rather a tantalizing mint taste that resonated on my lips. His eyes sparkled with amusement as mine drooped lower, darting between his gaze and his mouth.

"Yes," I found the words coming out of my mouth before I realized what I was saying.

In the moment though, I didn't care. His lips pushed against mine, his tongue pried my own mouth open, and I was lost in him again.

"Stop it,"

I had checked all the bathroom stalls before I leaned over the sink counter and took a good hard look at myself in the mirror. My phone call with Ms. Marsh had ended nearly an hour ago without much consequence. We scheduled to meet early tomorrow morning to finish the interview, but it wasn't until after I hung up on the Seattle magazine woman, that my mind was once again filled with visions of a younger, gangly Bella, in a blue dress that was ill fitted to her barely there breasts and long scrawny legs. A memory so vivid I could still hear his words ringing much louder than any remembrance of the same phrase uttered by my fiancé.

I could see that stupid girl pinned against the railing of the back desk saying yes to a question she didn't even know she was answering. An immature child who was too busy desiring after kisses she was too young to be sharing, instead of seeing that the ghost still lingering behind those green orbs.

I should have taken six-year-old Edward's advice all those years later.

"You should go."

A/N:

My apologies if you found this chapter uneventful. I need to cover a lot of backstory before the true climax happens. Hopefully you've taken away an erratic feeling form Bella within this chapter. She's very conflicted between loving her adoring fiancé, running away from a past that she thinks of both as fond memories and horrifying nightmares, and trying to figure out who this new Edward is in her life. There's definitely some mental health issues present in this story, and I hope that a hint of that shows through in chapters like this. My writing may seem more wax poetic at times, but it is all to convey the strength of Bella's internal thinking and the feelings that she is experiencing when no one is there to see them.

As always, I'd love your feed back.

F.