We were drawn from the weeds. We were brave like soldiers. Falling down under the pale moonlight. You were holding to me like someone broken, and I couldn't tell you but I'm telling you now. Just let me hold you while you're falling apart. Just let me hold you and we'll both fall down
-"Ever the Same", Rob Thomas

...

Chapter Seventeen:
EPOV

I always thought that I was lucky that I inherited my mother's kind, yet vibrant green eyes. They were expressive and warm and where I looked for solace during a time when no one else seemed to want to give it. Compared to my father's cold, ice blue eyes, Esme's were like a molten pool of melted Christmas trees. While my father had never been a cold man himself, except towards me after what I did to Bella, those two penetrating and unnerving orbs had always been able to unsettle me. Every emotion displayed in his gazes was magnified by the sharp crystal cyan color. It was those two eyes that I always looked for when I snuck a cookie from the jar, took his beloved Porsche out for a joy ride, and the moment Charlie's police cruiser pulled up in front of the hospital on that humid summer night, following the ambulance that carried a comatose Bella inside. Even through a haze of alcohol and bipolar rage, my gaze darted back and forth waiting for those sharp blue daggers to find me.

He held me with his gaze now, nothing having seemed to change in the last decade but the added wrinkles to his face and the calendar date.

Carlisle and Charlie stood as an impenetrable gate to the hospital room door that kept me from seeing Bella, from making sure she was all right after the incident in the ballpark. I could feel the hysteria of my former life boiling back into my veins at the thought of not being allowed to see her.

"Go back to the house Edward and cool off." My father's emotionless words did not match his pained eyes. Looking at him in his crossed arm stance with his cold stare, made me want to be sick right in the halls of Seattle General.

"Come on man," Emmett pulled on my arm, trying to lead my body away from the two men who had just spent the last fifteen minutes berating me and stirring my ire.

I stumbled for a moment, not yet ready to turn away from their stone faces or from the door that kept Bella from my view. But Emmett was stronger and more determined than ever to pull me from our father and Chief Swan. Even with his build and notorious football career as a brute tackle throughout both high school and college, my brother never did care for confrontation. With his muscle and the consistent tugging on my elbow, I was finally forced to shift my body in the opposite direction and continue down the hall. Emmett wrapped his large arm around my shoulders as we rounded the corner and kept it there until we were outside.

Gone was the warm sun, sickly looking black and green clouds covered the sky instead, threatening to break open and pour down on the hot asphalt.

I wrenched my body away from his grip then, feeling both physically and emotionally exhausted from the last hours events. I couldn't stand his manipulating touch any longer and I staggered a few steps out into the humid early evening air of this August day. The heat was almost unbearable and my dress shirt, which was still pushed up to the elbows, made me feel sticky and confined. I had lost track of my jacket a long time ago, and couldn't be bothered to worry about where it may be.

"Hey," Emmett tried to grab at my shoulder again, but I shrugged him off violently. "Hey! Calm the fuck down little brother."

"Why don't you tell Charlie and Dad to calm the fuck down!" I wiped at the sweat that had formed on my upper lip with the back of my hand. "They're the ones with the problem."

I was pacing back and forth in front of the entrance of the emergency room, one hand on my hip the other pulling harshly at my dampened hair.

"They're not the ones who are screaming and running around the ER like you're Bruce Wayne looking for his Rachel Dawes."

I stopped my manic pacing to stare at him, a confused look upon my face.

"What?"

"You know, 'WHERE IS SHE'?!" His tried to manipulate his voice to sound deep and scratchy. "…The Dark Knight?"

"I don't have time for your stupid movie references Em."

"Why not E? Where do you think you're going to go?"

There was a long silence that stretched out after his questions, and I was left to just stare at him with a blank look on my face.

"You can't wait for her you know." His face turned sheepish and he looked up at the darkening sky just to avoid my stare.

A sharp pain splintered through my abdomen, radiating up through my chest where my hand had pressed again the skin and bone above my thudding heart.

"Would…" I had to stop and swallow back the emotion rising in my throat. "Would that be so wrong Em?" I sounded just as defeated and lost as I felt at that moment.

Why did you even come here? My voice echoed through my pounding head.

I didn't even know how to answer my own subconscious, so I continued to look at my older brother, needing desperately for him to put together the pieces of everything that I was feeling build up inside of me.

Emmett's eyes were two big blue green orbs that seemed to be the perfect combination of both my mother and my father, although mom insisted that her dad had the same ones as well as the same teddy bear demeanor of her oldest son. He looked at me with the saddest expression of pity and once again I feared that I would lean over and retch right in the ER parking lot.

"She moved on Edward. She patch up the wounds and got a new life, one without-"

"Without me," I quickly finished his sentence.

"You had your chance E, and we both know what the doctors said about what your time with Bella did to you." He took a step closer to me but I backed away like a scared animal. "You need to leave her alone, let her have a chance at a happy, normal life."

A crack of thunder shook the whole world around us and I swore I could feel the crackle of lightening in the air as I blurted out the first thing that came to my mind with no hesitation, no second thoughts.

"We could have been happy!" I gasped out the words like they were an inhale held for too long. I threw my arms up into the air before sinking them back into my crazed locks.

The rain finally began to fall in big fat drops that often came with a warm summer shower. I could feel the sting of hot tears that formed in the corner of my eyes as my gaze darted back and forth between my brother and the gloomy evening sky.

"We both know that's not true…not after." He spoke just loud enough for me to hear him over the sound of the pounding of the rain that hissed when it hit the baked ground.

"If she hadn't left, it wouldn't have happened." It didn't even sound convincing to myself. It was a sentence weakly stated and we both knew it was a blatant lie.

Emmett moved quickly towards me, grabbing at my arms and forcing them against my sides where he held them.

"We both know that is bullshit Edward. If it hadn't happened when it did, it would have eventually. Maybe not for another week or month or even years down the line, but you would have still ended up blowing up, lashing out and leaving her in the ashes of the aftermath."

We stood there, neither of us speaking for a long time. Our gazes never left each other's and we let the thunderstorm pour around us, soaking through our clothing.

He finally let out a sigh and dropped his arms from my biceps. He looked at the ground for a while; just shaking his head lightly from side to side, before he finally met my desperate red-rimmed gaze again.

"Do you still love her?"

Another rumble of thunder filled the quiet between us. I looked off into the distance, knowing exactly what the answer to his question was, even though I had spent years trying to deny it. I had seen other women, thinking I could sleep around a bit, like any normal college student, and forget about her heart shaped face and kissable lips. When that didn't work, I even attempt a few long-term relationships, but none of them had her witty charm, her clumsy nature, her love for antiques, or her soft and sassy demeanor. None of them were my Bella.

Fuck.

I could feel the sharpness of the imaginary knife that dug deeper into my chest at the thought. But I ignored the pain and stuffed my hands into my drenched pockets and looked back at Emmett's worried face.

"I never stopped Em," The surprise registered only for a moment in the features of his face, before the reality of what I said sunk in and I could tell that even he knew that what I spoke hadn't been that much of a shock for him.

He gave me a slight nod of his head.

I turned then, walking out into the parking lot of the hospital's emergency room, letting the rain surround me, getting lost in my own thoughts of the past. Emmett didn't follow me and I never looked back.

Nine Years Ago…

I couldn't help but stare at her long brown hair as it fell over her shoulder and masked her face from view as she leaned over the microscope and looked at the leaf particles we had collected for our biology class.

We were sitting in my kitchen, working on our group project, an in depth analysis of the leaves native to the northwestern peninsula. I could fall asleep just listening to Mr. Banner try and explain that rubric on Monday if it were not for the girl who state beside me and the consistent tapping of her pencil against the slate table we sat at. I remember, vividly, the way she stared at Banner, as if he were explaining how aliens built the pyramids, not the many aspects of a leaf's anatomy. While she stared at him, I stared at her unashamedly.

It had been years since I really looked at Ms. Isabella Swan. Yes, she made a random appearance at holiday parties, always in tow by Charlie, but it was rare that she showed her face around our house. Of course mom and dad were insistent about going to dinner with both of them at least once a month, but Emmett went to college, Alice lost interest, and I had no reason to want to see that strange little brown eyed girl who used to hid behind armchairs just to watch me practice my scales on the piano.

Somewhere along the way she had grown into those big eyes, her heart shaped face framing them perfectly, although that memorable flush of red that stained her cheeks frequently as a child had reminded throughout the years. I could see it down creeping over her face and down her neck. I wondered briefly how far it stretched underneath her t-shirt clad chest.

"Edward?" She called my name and I had to shift in my chair and clear my throat, embarrassed to have been caught in my state of arousal and at my blatant staring.

"Uh, yeah?"

"Did you hear what I said?" She looked at me with those big doe eyes and I was lost for words.

"Um, no I'm sorry I must have spaced out for a second. What did you say?"

Smooth Cullen, smooth.

"I said I think we'll have to collect another sample of the pine, this one is just not catching the light right for me to illustrate it." She pushed the microscope towards me, but my eyes my eyes caught sight of the small notebook she was drawing the observation in and quickly reach out to grab it.

"You did this?" I looked at the illustration of what her eye saw when she looked into the microscope.

It was a beautiful and intricate drawing of the maple she had just completed prior to starting the pine. She had used different shades of red, orange, and yellow to capture the fall coloring of the leaf, blending them together in a why that made me feel like I was looking at a kaleidoscope not a drawing of a maple leaf.

I was just about to flip through the rest of the pages when she quickly snatched it from my hands.

"Hey! I wasn't done looking at that," I laughed and reach for little notebook again, wanted to see what else lay beneath its leather cover.

She held it off at arms length. "I didn't say you could rifle through my stuff."

A small smile of mischief crept along my face and leaned in slowly towards her face. When I was close enough to feel her heavy exhales on my cheek, I turned my face and whispered in her ear.

"Please?" I heard her small gasp and quickly took advantage of the spell I had her under and rose from my chair, reached over, and plucked the book back out of her little hand with ease.

I couldn't help the laughter that over took me as she finally came to her sense and chased me round and round the kitchen table.

"Edward, give it back!" She caught up with me just as I rounded the dinning room table, grabbing at the back of my black t-shirt.

"Why? What have you been up to Bells?" I laughed; turning my body away from her and quickly began to flip through the pages of the small sketchbook.

They were drawings of varying subject matter and medium. Once I moved passed the few ones she had completed from our leaf project there was a drawing of a bird done in color pencil, the next was a twirling ballerina created from watercolors, and another of her father has he got into his cruiser smudged out black charcoal pencil.

I closed the book and faced her and her cute scowl, handing the book back to her eager hands. She snatched out quickly, probably thinking I was going to pull it away at any moment and continue running around the house with her following after me.

"You're good." I said, crossing my arms and looking down at the now growing woman who I couldn't seem to get out of my head these days. "I didn't you could draw."

We took our respective seats back at the dining room table before she timidly answered my interest.

"It's just something I like to do when I'm bored." She stated weakly, shrugging her shoulders. She had not met my eyes since I handed her back the book. That signature blush crept along her peaches and cream skin again and my pants became very uncomfortable as I watched it spread down beneath her oversized t-shirt.

She looked uncomfortable underneath my gaze. She had wrapped an arm over her midsection and was clinging to her elbow. I was unnerved at the fact that I could make her feel so insecure.

"You know I love baseball," I faced my body towards her, our knees nearly touching underneath the table.

She looked up at me, her faced filled with confusion.

"I never thought that there would be room for anything else in my life than music, but I always had a thing for baseball. Dad always takes us to opening day and I remember being a little kids watching Edgar Martínez crack one out of the park, the whole park up on their feet going crazy for this one guy." I shook my head back and forth remembering the day like it was yesterday. It brought an instant smile to my face. "So now I love to play baseball, it's a hobby and interest. I my not be a passion like my music is, but there is nothing better than the sound of a baseball hitting the bat on a warm summer afternoon."

She was staring at me now, her eyes transfixed on my face as I finished my little speech. Her brown orbs almost sparkled and for a second I longed to reach out and caress the flawless skin of her cheek. The urge and temptation surprised me, and I dug my fingers into the flesh of my jean-covered thighs just to keep from reaching out to her. The smile that pulled at the corners of her mouth just then however, was enough to curb my confusing appetite for the girl I knew since she was born.

"Well," she finally broke the silence between us, "you might want to rethink your 'hobby' if you think Martínez has anything over 'The Kid'."

"Are you kidding me? You think Ken Griffey Jr. ranks over Martínez?" She shrugged and smiled at me before returning to the long forgotten slide under the microscope.

"To each their own Cullen."

I was left staring in awe at the woman who had literally grew up right before my eyes, and I wasn't sure how I felt about the way my heart was thudding loudly against my chest.

I don't remember much of the walk from the hospital into downtown Seattle, but some how I ended up at my sister's doorstep, drenched and confused.

I hadn't even rung up to her apartment, but instead managed to slip in behind another resident as he unlocked the large iron wrought entrance door to the posh looking complex Alice and Jasper lived in.

Now I stood in front of her door, clothes dripping all over her personalized "Whitlock" doormat.

I was leaning heavily against the doorframe; my body feeling like it weighed twice its usual weight, when Alice opened the door. From the look on her face, it did not seem as if she were entirely surprised to see me. She'd always been like that.

Even as a little girl, she always seemed to know what was going to happen before anything ever did. She was always prepared with an umbrella in a freak rainstorm, she gave away every plot to every movie we saw together within the first ten minutes of sitting down, and it was nearly impossible to surprise her with any kind of present.

Now she just stood, staring at me with pity, her eyes and a concerned grimace on her face. This is what it had come to.

"Edward," she sighed heavily and stood aside to let me into her apartment.

I shuffled in, my shoes making a comical 'squish' sound with every step, but I was past acknowledging my sodden clothes or uncomfortably wet state. It was as if I was in a fog that I couldn't quite see passed.

Alice ushered me into the kitchen of her large and well decorated home. I had never been here before, but the address was one I remembered well from the many annual birthdays, Christmas, and other holiday cards I sent every year.

I felt pathetic as I looked around the open, bright space like a child in a dinosaur museum, not sure where to look first. I plopped down in one of the chairs at her kitchen table while she moved back and forth around me. She squatted down and pulled my ruined shoes and socks from my soggy, sore feet. She rolled up the pant legs and ran off to the sink.

I didn't pay much attention to her and instead let my mind wander.

I was pulled back to reality when my feet were emerged into a large pot of hot water and the smell of tea lingered just under my nose. My baby sister poured the water from the kettle into a bright pink pot that was already on the kitchen table. She fetched two cups from a cabinet and placed them in front of me before dashing back out of the kitchen and away from my eye line.

This time when she returned she had a large fluffy towel in her hands. My limbs felt heavy and sluggish as she began to remove my shirt from my chest, where it clung against my damp skin. When it was finally off, she wrapped the towel around my shoulders and finally took the seat opposite of me. I watched intently as she poured the tea.

"Emmett called," She seemed to say it as an explanation as she fixed up our teas. One cream, two sugars for both of us, the way dad has always taken it.

She placed the warm cup in my hands and I took small sips that burned my tongue but soothed my dry and scratchy throat.

"And I talked to Jasper when he got home." She eyed me with equal parts curiosity and concern. When I didn't respond in any way, she continued on. "He told me that he heard from dad that Bella was going to be okay. He got her old physiologist to come down and see if he could figure out what happened."

"I happened!" I slammed my cup down on the table and I saw my sister jerk in her seat at the harsh movement and sound. "I'm sorry." I apologize quietly before bending over in my chair, placing my elbows on my knees, and letting my hands grip at my hair.

"What's going on with you two Edward?" She paused before asking her next question. "Why are you here in Seattle, after all this time?"

I knew what she must be thinking as she sat staring at her brother, an emotional wreck, literally doubled over in her kitchen.

Why would he come home now when he couldn't even come for his own sister's wedding, his nephew's death? Why weren't you there to hold me and be the big brother I needed while my husband was fighting a war thousands of miles away? Why now?

I had no words to express the anguish that I had built up inside me. It was one of things a therapist of mine told me once. I have a need to find ways to verbalize the emotions welling up and when I can't, I bury them, leaving them to go unaddressed and fester in the hole they've ripped inside my chest.

"I don't know Alice," I tried to answer as honestly as possible. I owned her at least that much.

She held her hands out in front of her on the table, her fingers interlaced into a tight lock. Her face looked ashen but her eyes sparkled with a million emotions.

"Please try Edward. We just want to understand." She swallowed back the tears that were making her voice turn deeper with desperation. "Please…anything."

I sighed and ran my fingers through my damp hair that stuck to my face. I rubbed my feet together in the warm bath in which they were submerged.

"I don't even know if I can find the words to explain it all Ali."

"Then explain something that you can. Forget about what's going on with Bella for a second and just…just tell me why you couldn't come back."

"Don't you see?" The answer was right in front of her. "I can't answer that question without bringing her back into the equation." I looked out the window behind the table, watching the rain streak down the glass.

"It's all about her?"

"Of course," I stood up abruptly, wanting to pace the room, but quickly realized that I was standing in a pot of water and sat back down just as suddenly.

Leaning back in the car I gave her a candid look, hoping all of my words would sink into her with the honestly in which I tried to say them.

"It's always been about her Alice."

Silence stretched out between us.

"Oh Edward…"

"I know, I'm a mess right? Look at me." I gestured towards my sodden self, wishing that I had the ability to shed my skin and start over with a different face, a different body, even a different life.

"They told me to get away, to forget about her. I'm convinced that's the only reason dad paid for Columbia after everything that happened." I rubbed my hand against the scruff on the side of my face. "I tried Alice, I really did but after a while I knew that there was nothing to all this without her. I knew it the moment she walked into AP Bio in that stupid sundress"

"But the way you treated her…you suffocated her Edward. I barely spent anytime with you two but even I could see the light fading from her eyes bit by bit every time she showed up to Sunday dinners during that last year. You two weren't good for each other."

"Everyone keeps saying that to me today and it's starting to sound like a goddamn broken record!" I slammed my fist forcefully down on the table again. I didn't apologize this time. "You know it wasn't me…it was…it was all those screwed up thoughts in my head. I loved her Alice; I was going to spend my whole life with her! And now she's parading around with some douchebag lawyer who wants to put her up on a pedestal where she can be seen and not heard."

She rose from her seat, letting the chair legs scrap loudly against the hardwood of the kitchen floor.

"First of all, don't you dare raise your voice in my house again," I quickly had a flashback to my mother using that same eerily calm voice on us as children. "And secondly, you don't even know Michael-"

"Oh, I know is type Ali, college frat boy, who comes from money, and plans on taking over the family law firm. There are a thousand and one guys like him in every Ivy League school in America. If you think that I stole the light from her just give it ten years and a couple of his blond hair blue eyed bastards for her to be completely snuffed out."

My voice reverberated off of the walls, ringing out until everything eventually fell into a dead silence again. A crack of thunder shook the apartment as my sister and I held each other's gazes, hers were that same unnerving ice blue, and mine liquid green fire. She remained standing, liking the height vantage she had over me for once and I refused to move from my chair although the water that my feet were submerged in was starting to chill and become uncomfortable.

A door opened somewhere within the apartment. Neither of us flinched.

"Ali, I'm going to put on a pot of decaf, you want some?" My brother-in-law's voice finally made me break from our staring contest and look off into the living room where he came padding down the hall in a pair of tattered sweatpants and a old looking army shirt.

He was rubbing the back of his neck, his eyes looking at the floor, I could tell that he had just woken up from a nap, as his hair stuck up in every direction, looking much the way mine did all the time.

"Alice?" he call again and he raised his head, finding us both seated in his kitchen.

He paused where he stood.

"What the fuck is this asshole doing in my house?" He tone was cold and deadly, his steel blue eyes confirmed the ridged solider demander he had about him all the time. He was at war and I was his enemy, his eyes darted quickly over to his ally, his wife poised in a hostile stance on the other side of the table.

Alice finally broke her stare, rounding the table and stepped out in front of her husband. I was grateful, fearing that another minute and he would have me thrown out the window.

"What is he doing here?" He growled as his wife placed her hand steadily on his chest.

"Calm down Jazz, he's had just as bad of an afternoon as you."

"Yeah, well I'm guessing Bella's had a pretty bad afternoon too. Stay away from my family and get the hell out of my house Edward, before I throw you out."

I could see the effort with which Alice now was using to keep her husband as far away from me as possible. And yet I still didn't move. I don't know if it was lack of trying or the fact that my feet were now numb from the cold water.

"He just came from seeing Bella and he walked the whole way from the hospital in the rain. Have a heart Jasper, he's my brother."

It was as if he couldn't even hear Alice's words. He just held my gaze, his body tense and poised to throw Alice aside like a ragdoll and beat me into the ground.

"You have one minute to get out of my house."

"Edward, will you please step into the hallway? I'll grab you're shirt and shoes and walk you out." My sister reminded me so much of my mother, a kind soul stuck in chaos, the buffer between the fire and me.

I slowly rose from my chair and stepped out of the cold water. I didn't bother toweling them off and walked out of the kitchen, passed Alice and Jasper, and down the hallway to their front door. The fluffy towel still hung around my shoulders as I exited my sister's apartment and stood waiting in the hall, feeling as much of a fish out of water as one possibly can.

When Alice finally emerged from the apartment, she handed me a clean NYU sweatshirt that must have belonged to Jasper and a pair of slip on sandals that left me looking like a homeless person when paired with my tailored dress pants and crazy hair. She took back her towel and placed a cloth bag, which held my presumably ruined shirt and shoes, over my shoulder.

"I'm sorry Edward, he's just not in a great place right now with everything that's going on and Bella is like a sister to him."

I couldn't help the cynical snort that came out of my nose. It was funny where people's loyalties lie within a family.

"Don't." She begged quietly as she tried and smooth out my mop of a head. She pushed her fingers through the tangled locks. Her light passes over my scalp were so desperately welcomed that I could have cried. I felt like crying after the day I had just had.

"It wasn't supposed to be like this Ali," it came out sounding just as broken as I felt.

"I know," She let out a sob as she pulled me into her small arms.

I pressed her to my chest and held my baby sister for the first time in much too long.

"You missed everything." She cried, hiding her face to my borrowed sweatshirt, letting all of her precious tears be soaked into the fabric.

My heart pounded almost painfully against my chest and I did the only thing that I could do, something I could never do in the past, hold her to me and just be there for once in my miserable life. I ran my fingers through her short inky black hair.

"I know," I repeated her words, having nothing else that would compare to the sorrow that I had created. "I'm so sorry Love." It was all I could give her for the years of disappointment.

"You…you can't do it anymore. I need you. We all need you here Edward. You've missed more than you even know." She pulled her face away from my now damp chest so she could look at me with her red rimmed, beautiful blue eyes. "She might not be here for you anymore Edward, but you're family is. And as much as I'd love to see you too get your fairytale ending, I just don't see it in the cards." She hung her head for a moment and began to cry again.

I don't know when I started crying, but suddenly I was very aware of the wetness that coated my cheeks and stung my eyes.

"You have to find a way to be happy with a life that is filled with family, and work, and people who make you want to cry out with joy not hid away in despair. My heart hurts so much for you Edward…but you need to come back to this family." She let out an unexpected halfhearted laugh. "You have nieces and nephews to teach piano to, and siblings to annoy the hell out of, and parents to have over for fucking dinner parties that are boring as hell."

I knew everything that she was saying was exactly what needed to happen. I had known it for years now…and yet my heart rebelled. I moved across the country, I left her alone, was slowly building a music empire, and yet my heart hurt more than Alice's ever would, because at the end of the day she could crawl in bed and know that she would get the spend her life wrapped in her love's arms.

"But I love her Alice."

She hesitated for only a moment before pulling me back to her, our arms holding each other closer and tighter than before.

"Then let her go Edward."

A/N:

*Peeks out from rock I've been hiding under.

So I could give you the usual woes of life and why I've been MIA for months, but just know that I'm a college student who likes to procrastinate and spread myself WAY too thin. Welcome back and thanks for reading! I've pretty much outlined the rest of the chapters for this story and I'm hoping to seriously be done by the time I head back to school at the beginning of August, but I'm not promising anything because this story has been a WIP since 2011 or something ridiculous like that.

As it stands right now there will be 25 Chapters and an Epilogue to wrap everything up. It might end up being longer or shorter depending on how the actual writing goes. I hope you liked seeing a little more into Edward's mind. Spoiler alert, the next chapter will take place from the time this scene ends and the time he goes to Bella's apartment from EPOV, so stay tuned for that. Fingers crossed it doesn't take me another four months to finish it...joking.

Let me know what you think, leave a review!

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