Early (err, earlier than planned) update because I just got the chapter back and don't know how to wait to do anything. *sigh*

So... Can I just say how incredibly blown away I am by the response these two are getting? Thank you so much for all the reviews and interest in it!

Huge thanks to Stratan for the beta work. Flove him :)

Chapter 4

Edward

I launched my beer bottle into the black night sky and waited for the satisfying smashing of glass as it landed on the Sol Doc riverbank. The satisfaction never came when the sound finally reached my ears, so I reached for another beer and popped open the top. I was determined to drown my sorrows in a sea of alcohol—even though I knew I probably shouldn't open up that fucking can of worms—like nearly every other person on this planet. Something mundane and normal was what I needed right now, when I was swimming in my abnormality and dredging up my past.

I couldn't even handle being alone with Bella without wanting to rip her clothes off her body and just… fuck her, if I was being totally honest with myself. Being closed in with her like that was stupid. So goddamned stupid, given how totally wrong I was for her. I was fairly positive my fuck up went to a molecular level. I mean, how could it not, given my heritage? My DNA… My DNA was warped, at best. That was all there was to it.

But if being alone with her tonight did anything positive, it made me realize that I couldn't put myself in that kind of position again. Watching her squirm and chew on her lower lip the entire car ride, seeing her skin illuminated by the streetlamps as we passed under them nearly broke me.

So I'd run. No explanation, no warning. Just dropped the beer she'd bought for Chief Swan on the concrete stoop and left as quickly as my feet and car would let me.

I was such a fucking coward.

I scrubbed my face with my free hand and plopped down on the wet grass. I'd let her crawl under my skin already. A week of knowing she simply existed, and I was already beginning to feel a shift within me. An aching, a longing, that just wouldn't go away no matter how hard I pushed at it or how destructive I was with her. Because the destruction never lasted. I always found myself trying to get back into her good graces again. Like I couldn't keep her from hating me and staying clear from me. It was a constant battle between this sudden desire I had to attempt the norm and the knowledge that I was destined to be alone.

And it was all over the chief's daughter, someone who likely knew every facet of my past and present. Hell, the man might even know my future; he was that intuitive. He probably hated me for all the things I'd done back in Chicago when I'd been trying to survive. There was no way he would let me be with his daughter, even if there was some way I could.

"Christ, you're even more fucked up than you thought," I muttered, taking a deep pull from my beer and swallowing hard. Pining over a girl I could never have…

Nor wanted, I reminded myself firmly. I didn't want it at all.

"Why do you think you're fucked up now?" Jasper asked, scaring the ever-loving shit out of me.

"Who does that?" I groaned, settling back into my spot. "Who fucking sneaks up on someone when it's pitch dark and scares the hell out of them like that?"

"Me," he laughed, sitting beside me. "Care to share?"

"They're mine," I growled. "Go back up to the house and get your own."

He snatched a beer out of the case anyway and twisted off the cap. "A whole case," he mused, staring down at the barely visible label. "You must've done something pretty bad."

"Not exactly."

His eyes snapped up to mine. "No?"

"No."

"Then what?"

I didn't answer.

"Ah, okay, you're going to give me the silent treatment." He paused dramatically. "Edward, I'm so, so sorry for walking in my own backyard and scaring you. Will you tell me what crawled up your ass now?'

"Fuck off," I retorted.

"Well, I tried." He took a drink of his beer and made a face. "I never liked this stuff."

I tried to snatch the beer out of his hand, but he managed to be faster than me and held onto it. "Then why steal it?"

He shrugged. "Just to annoy you."

"Consider it done."

"You're in a pissier mood than usual." He laughed to himself for a few seconds before going silent. He fidgeted with his bottle, working at the corner of the label until he'd peeled it off, and then ran his thumb over it absently as he stared up at the sky.

"I miss the stars," he said quietly. "I think that's really the only thing I miss about Texas. We hardly ever see them here."

"I miss the heat of the sun in the summer, but what are you gonna do?"

He chuckled. "Live in Hawaii or something, I guess? The Texas heat is shit."

"Nah. This is… home."

"Yeah," he whispered. "They gave us that didn't they?"

"You had a home." It was better than what mine had been by a long shot. His, at least, had been clean.

"Not like this one." He gave me a level look. "Nothing in my old life could compare to this. Not even on my worst day as a Cullen. My father was a PTSD-suffering wife beater and a drunk, and my mother didn't give a shit enough about me or herself to get the fuck out. Or get him help. So I got the pleasure of watching them both destroy each other."

I didn't look at him. I couldn't. It was the first time he'd really talked to me about his life before the Cullens, and the agonizing way he did so reflected a little too closely in all my own history for comfort.

"I mean, you think I'd have been able to go into that warehouse if I had actual parents," he said the word with disdain, "because if I'd have lived here, Esme would have caught and then beat my ass for sneaking out. But not Janet Whitlock. Oh, no. She didn't even bother to look up from the goddamned TV when I opened the door. She should have just lit the match herself."

The details were sketchy; neither he nor our parents would ever tell the entire story. Jasper tended to talk about the events leading up to the fire and nothing more, and my parents firmly respected his need for privacy. But I had pieced together enough of happened that night to know that what was originally intended to be a prank by a group of snotty rich kids had quickly spiraled out of control. The kids had fled the scene and Jasper was left to burn. After deciding to adopt Jasper, Esme had sued everyone involved, including the multi-million dollar corporation that had left that old warehouse to rot. Because in my mother's mind, and apparently the Texas judge presiding over their case, turning off every security camera and alarm since they were such cheap bastards was just as negligent as the Whitlocks had been. They all sealed my brother's fate in one way or another.

The conversation was really getting too fucking heavy for me, so I quickly, and not so smoothly, changed the subject. "Get Bella's truck to the shop?"

"Yeah," he murmured, still lost in thought. "Emmett's heading down there now to work on it."

I fumbled to pull my cell phone out of my pocket to check the time. "At nine at night?"

"He wanted to make sure it was ready for her tomorrow before her lunch break in case she wanted to go pick up something to eat. You know how he is."

I cursed and dragged my hand through my hair as I stood up. I swayed a little and glared down at the beers. I was half lit already. "Take me there? I uh, I can't-"

He held up a hand to stop my rambling. I pitched both beers into the river—with a little bit of a guilty conscience afterward because hell, I was wasting good beer—and bent down to pick up the case before silently following him the long way back up to the house.

I studied it as we approached, thinking of how different is was from the run down apartment buildings and roach-infested motels I lived in for the most part of my childhood. The house was huge, modern, and completely out of place in the middle of the woods like this. But it was what Esme wanted. She wanted light, air, and space to counteract how claustrophobic the dense, dark forests around us could sometimes make you feel. Each of the three floors was made of mostly glass, and every room—with the exception of our bedrooms—was painted a creamy white. Walls were only placed in the most necessary of places, and the ceilings were tall and vaulted, probably costing our parents an absolute fortune in gas and electric.

Not that it mattered to them, though. I'd never once seen Carlisle or Esme Cullen worry about money, something that had been completely confounding when I first came to live with them. I couldn't understand how one didn't worry about it. It had been the bane of my existence since I could remember—still was, actually. But after a few months of being a Cullen, I'd figured it out. Esme had sold her Seattle architectural firm just after she and Carlisle had adopted Jasper, wanting to be able to dedicate as much time to him as humanly possible. They'd taken the profits from their Seattle condo and the firm and built a life for us here in Forks.

Jasper was the first. Had Carlisle and Esme not been in Dallas for a conference and found him lying in that hospital bed when they did, causing the domino effect that it did, Emmett and I might have never have escaped our prisons. We'd have likely died there.

Fate was a tricky, tricky thing.

"Hey, you okay there?" Jasper asked, glancing over at me with a puzzled look.

I cleared my throat. "I'm drunk as shit. So yeah, I'm good."

He took the case of beer from me and nodded over to the black Ford sitting just to our left. "Get in. I'll put this back in the fridge."

I silently did as I was told and sat in the passenger's seat of my brother's brand new pickup. Money was something Jasper didn't need to worry about either. Not since his accident.

But having all that cash at his disposal did nothing to change him, and it was just quite possible that he was more generous because of it. He'd given Emmett every cent needed to start his garage and never asked for nor expected anything in return. Of course, this was unacceptable to Emmett, so he'd made Jasper a silent partner in the company, giving him a share of the profits as a sort of payback for the ability to start his business.

It tended to make me feel like the bad seed of the family. The entire Cullen family was selfless, excluding me. My life revolved around myself. It always had because of necessity. I didn't know how to pretend otherwise.

The ride to the garage seemed short, thanks to Jasper's willingness to let me choose the music we listened to on the way there. Not that driving the distance really took that long to begin with. We all tended to speed a little.

I blamed Carlisle. He was the one, after all, who taught each of his sons how to drive.

I followed Jasper into the garage. My eyes fell to the dark office at the far side of the building—where Bella spent most of her time—and I knew that the damn thing probably still smelled like her. Like flowers just after the rain.

I was staying as far away from that office as humanly possible tonight or else I might just find myself in Bella's front yard holding a boombox over my head like Lloyd Dobler. Because fuck if I didn't have the words either.

I nearly groaned at that. Waxing poetic over a girl's perfume—through music or otherwise—was not okay. I refused to be that guy.

Emmett's head snapped up from Bella's engine as soon as he heard us approach. "Hey," he grunted, working to loosen the alternator. "Who built this engine?"

"Uh…" Jasper glanced over at me.

"Why the hell would I know?" I snapped, realizing that Emmett was starting back at me too. "I don't know anything about her. Jasper's talked to her more than I have. Ask him."

Jasper seemed to suddenly find the tools in the box on his left incredibly fascinating.

"Yeah, but…" Emmett trailed off awkwardly as he glanced between the two of us. "Well, it's totally stock. Whoever it was put in a lot of fucking time searching for parts."

I'd noticed that too, but had been a little preoccupied by Bella's mouth to really focus on it earlier. The way her tongue snuck out to wet her lips, the way they parted just slightly as my body was instinctively drawn to hers… Her breathing had been shaky; her body was still with anticipation... or rigid with disgust. I didn't know which. So what had I done?

Freaked the fuck out.

"Did she happen to mention anything about it, Jazz?" Emmett continued, staring back down into the engine again.

Jasper shook his head forcefully then realized Emmett wasn't paying attention to see it. "No. We didn't talk about that. I'll go and um, grab another alternator out of the parts room," he said as he shoved his hands into his pockets and practically ran away.

Strange.

As soon as Jasper was out of sight, Emmett spoke again.

"She's really pretty, huh?" Emmett said casually, grinning triumphantly as he hefted the thing out of the truck.

I bristled. For no good reason that I could think of. "Excuse me?"

"Rosie said she'll be a nice buffer between us and the pissed off customers, not that we have many. Just the douche bag city guys that expect me to have Mercedes parts on hand. She's polite, witty, easy on the eyes…"

"Just stop right there," I barked, stomping over to him and snatching the alternator out of his hand. "No one is looking at her, much less thinking about her, so long as..."

Emmett's brows shot up just before a slow, 'gotcha' smile graced his lips.

"I mean, she's an employee," I backtracked. My face grew flushed as the words left my mouth. "You stupid fucker. You know what I mean."

The smile was still there. I wanted to punch it off his face. "I think I definitely do. You don't think I've seen the way you two steal glances at each other?"

"She doesn't steal glances at me," I argued, not bothering to deny my part in that. He'd just ride my ass about it if I did.

"Wanna bet?"

I huffed. "You didn't talk about the last chick that worked in the office like that."

"Dude. She looked like she'd been hit with the proverbial ugly stick. Multiple times. That's why."

She really had. I suppressed a shudder.

"Stop trying to change the subject," he laughed.

"I'm not."

"You are, but whatever. Ask her out or something."

"Isn't employee fraternization against company policy?" I asked, pacing around. Emmett wasn't known to be very observant, so his notice meant that I was doing a real bang up job at hiding what this girl was doing to me.

"You're not technically an employee."

I bit down on the inside of my cheek so I didn't say something I'd regret later. My temper was beginning to get the best of me, directed mostly toward myself for being so ridiculously into some… some… teenager.

"Just try," he said calmly. "You won't know unless you try."

"She's too young," I finally ground out.

"She's three years younger than you," he countered.

"I can't… I just… I'm not…" I stammered.

"Ed." His blue eyes held mine in understanding. "I get it. I really do. Believe me, when I first met Rose I was torn up like you were. I'm just some kid from the shit part of LA, you know? And there she was… this… Anyway, it's worth it. If you can just get past it all, it's worth it."

"How can something I can't even picture be worth it?" I asked incredulously.

He shrugged and took the alternator back out of my hands to be scrapped. "One of these days you will, bro. You can deny it all you want, but you really weren't wired to be alone."

I just stared at him blankly, making him laugh.

"Believe it or not, I can be a serious fuck when need be. Anyway, want to work on her yourself? I can take Jazz home and you can drive his truck back when you're done."

I was still reeling from his earlier comment, so cognizance wasn't exactly my strong point at that very second. "The truck?"

More laughter. "Yes, the truck. She's your girl."

"She's not my fucking girl," I hissed, pushing past him to get to Bella's truck.

"And yet you can't wait to do something for her," he murmured. "Yep, totally not your girl at all."

I arrived at the garage early, looking over Bella's truck on my way by. I'd had the bright idea to detail the shit out of it after I'd exchanged the bum alternator for a new one, chalking it up to wasting time before I went home. It'd been a distraction, I suppose, from going home and examining my pitiful life some more. Emmett's words had replayed themselves over and over in my mind, even though I kept refuting them. My reasons still stood. Emmett might have known me well, but he didn't know everything.

No one did.

If that truck hadn't been in such need of some serious bodywork, it would have sparkled. As it was, it was just a cleaned up, rusted version of the sandy, grimy truck that had originally driven to Forks recently.

I idly wondered if she'd let me do the bodywork for her. I needed something to busy myself with; Bella's truck was in desperate need of attention. It was a win-win situation.

Or at least, it was, until my thoughts started veering off into lecherous territory, and I was doing the bodywork on her rather than for her.

Furious with myself, I grabbed the closest thing—ironically enough, an auto body saw—and threw it across the room with a curse. I knew it wouldn't make me feel any better, and it didn't, really, but I'd done it anyway. I always did shit like that, though it was inexplicable why I ever felt the need to. It wasn't like I enjoyed destroying things or was sadistic and violent, on my way to being some mass murderer, to begin with. I was just at a loss at how to release any pent up frustration. I refused to burden anyone with my bullshit, I was no longer in therapy, and it wasn't like sex was in the picture for me…

"You're paying for that," Rosalie said from behind me.

I glared at her as she passed by. "Yeah. I know."

"Just making sure..."

I flipped her off.

For some reason, I was extremely nervous to see Bella's reaction to her truck. I spent the entire morning impatiently waiting for her to walk through the door. My heart just… wouldn't stop leaping up into my throat, and my palms were annoyingly damp, making it hard to not only focus on my work, but keep a hold of any tools I happened to need to do the damned job. I ended up relying on Sam to help me out, which in turn pulled him away from his own projects.

And that was a little infuriating, to be this helpless.

"I need you to um," I ran my hand over the back of my neck and then pointed to the radiator on the Jeep I was currently working on, "to… Oh, for God's sake, this is ridiculous. I can't even get the fucking screen out of the car."

Sam grinned, further darkening my mood. "I've got it."

He reached inside the hood and did exactly what my sweating palms wouldn't let me, which managed to piss me off even more.

I nearly pushed Sam out of my way to reach inside the cowl. I felt around the seal and noticed a hole at the top. "Needs a replacement."

"We have that in the back?"

"Should."

I worked on removing the seal while Sam went back to the parts room and retrieved a new one, glancing around for Bella the entire time.

"God damn it," I muttered.

I needed a fucking cigarette, a long jog through the woods, anything to calm me down, actually. But I couldn't force myself to walk out the door. As much as I tried to convince myself that it was any reason I could think of, and not this one specific thing, I knew it was all bullshit. The only reason my feet stayed firmly planted where they were was because I didn't want to miss seeing her when she came in.

I should have been relaxed, thankful, when she wasn't around because there was no temptation to try to thwart. Only instead, I spent every waking hour thinking about her, whether she was in my line of vision or not. I couldn't understand it. Nor did I want to. I just wanted her to go back where she came from and leave me to my miserable existence. At least I'd made peace with my shitty life before she'd come to Forks. Hope was never originally in my vocabulary. When you come from my world, hope only managed to find a way to kill you. Now… now I knew that it was partly hope that I was feeling. Some idiot piece of me hoped that being a lonely doctor for the rest of my days wasn't all there was left for me; that maybe there was more, though I still couldn't see how. That seed of hope did nothing to change the facts. It simply worked to drive me insane.

Sam came back with the new seal, and we went to work putting the radiator back together. The same question kept bubbling up on my tongue the entire time we were working, but I couldn't even begin to tell you why I thought Sam would have the answer. So I kept shoving it down until finally, when I was so frustrated that I could barely function, I blurted it out.

"Who restored Bella Swan's truck?"

Sam turned his black eyes toward me warily. "Jacob Black."

I nodded, thinking my curiosity would be sated.

Only it wasn't.

"Who's Jacob Black?"

Sam burst out in laughter, shocking the hell out of me. It was the loudest sound I'd ever heard from him.

"Why?"

"Why not? That truck is a beauty. Can't I know who put all that time into her?" I asked, feigning nonchalance. Inside I was dying, though, but it was different than my usual, fucked up way. It was killing me to know nothing about Bella Swan. Hypocritical, given how secretive I was about myself, but there it was.

"Yeah, I guess," he said on a shrug. "Billy Black is the chief's best friend. Jacob's his son. Jake and his dad started on her as a project before the accident."

I stared at him stupidly.

"I forget you're not a native," he sighed.

Because I fit right the fuck in, I thought sarcastically.

"Billy's in a wheelchair," he said in explanation. It didn't explain shit, and I found myself clenching my teeth together so I didn't say that little fact out loud. "Jake finished the truck, thinking he'd be driving it when he got his license. Only they needed the money for some bills, so the chief bought it from them."

I didn't know why, but I was insanely jealous of this Jacob Black character. Possibly because he had history with Bella, and all I had was… nothing. Nothing at all, which was exactly what I'd wanted all along—to keep her at a distance. For her own good.

So why did that make my chest feel as though it suddenly weighed a ton?

"Does she um… does she know Jacob?" I focused on my shoes so that I didn't give my intentions away. They were as black as my heart; I had no business having intentions of any kind when it came to Bella.

"She probably played with him as a kid, but I don't think she'd remember it. She stopped coming to Forks after…"

He trailed off the second the door opened. I desperately wanted to know what it was that kept her from coming back, but I couldn't force the words out. It seemed wrong to hear about Bella's past from anyone else but her.

Which was just as well since Bella was the one walking through the door. She breezed in with a smile and a little red dress on. I grunted against the sudden demand to close the distance between us and let my hands play over the ivory flesh exposed to me, causing Sam to glance up questioningly. Chief Swan was hot on her heels, scanning the room for both her truck and Emmett, and purposefully striding through the garage as soon as he spotted them both. He shot me a hard look of warning the second he walked past, like he already knew all the lascivious thoughts I'd been having about his daughter these last few days.

Great. Just what I needed.

I glanced back over toward Bella and found her staring at me. The second her eyes landed on mine, her smile wavered and a hot blush crept up into her cheeks. She pulled at the neckline of her dress, finally revealing a hint of the scar—pink and puckered and still so fresh—that Rosalie had told me about. Damn it. That need to know all about her, what she'd been through and if she was healthy, came hurtling back at me again. I needed to know if the reason she'd been cut open was cured or if it was chronic and something she would be forced to live with for the rest of her life.

I just had a sinking feeling it was the latter.

"There's the Liberty Bell!" Emmett shouted, waving Bella over and snapping her out of whatever thoughts she'd been having. "Check it out! You're all set!"

Her brow knit together for a split second before she smiled warmly at him. "Liberty Bell? Did you give me a nickname or something?"

"Well…" He glanced over at me, and then shook his head as he caught my baffled expression. It was the first I'd heard of liberty anything. "Never mind."

"Come on," she pleaded adorably. Fuck me. "Tell me. Please?"

"Your voice is like bells. It's pretty. That's all," he said lamely.

"Well, thank you, but why not just call me 'Bell', or 'Bells' like everyone else does?" she asked confusedly.

"Uh… They call you that?"

"Emmett. What's the Liberty Bell reference for?"

"It was the first bell that came to mind." The liar cleared his throat and went to greet Chief Swan. Bella looked extremely disappointed, but let it go. I, on the other hand, wasn't going to. I'd pry it out of him eventually. "How are you, sir?"

"I'm fine. Care to tell me what the damage is?" he responded.

"No damage."

Chief Swan's eyes practically popped out of his skull. "What?"

"Employee perk. I can't afford to give them very good health benefits being a small business and all, but I can at least give them this." He jerked his shoulders in embarrassment.

"That's very kind of you," Chief Swan stated. "I bought this truck off Billy a few years ago and never really expected it to fail on Bella. It's solid."

Emmett nodded. I kind of maneuvered myself a little closer to the conversation.

"We were just talking about that, actually," Sam chimed in softly.

I glared over in his direction. What. The. Fuck.

"You were?" Bella gasped, her eyes flickering over to me. Was that… hope I saw there?

Always with the hope today.

Sam looked even more uncertain of himself now that I was watching him, but stayed focused on Chief Swan. "I don't talk to Jacob much, but I can remember all the work he put into her. He thought he'd get to have her."

"The truck?" I asked between my teeth, needing the clarification that it was not Bella that some Quileute guy thought he'd get when it was all said and done and just the vehicle.

"Uh-huh. But after the accident… Well, I knew he sold it to you, but I wasn't sure what happened to it after that. I just assumed you'd sold it to someone else to pay for…"

I could have sworn I'd just witnessed Sam blush for the first time.

"Sorry, I wasn't supposed to say I knew."

"It's fine," Chief Swan answered smoothly. "I gave it to Bella to drive when she got her license."

Fuck, I wanted them to keep talking, to find out what the hell had happened to her, from the lips of the angel herself. Instead, Chief Swan gave Bella a strange look and changed the subject.

Bella fiddled with her nails.

"Got any paperwork you need me to sign?" he asked Emmett.

"That'd be your daughter's area of expertise."

Bella snorted. How was it that I found that adorable too?

"I'd hardly consider myself an expert, Em. I'm nineteen, for God's sake. I just managed to get this job because you were desperate."

"Still. Your domain for now. Not mine."

"Until I head off to school, right?" she asked with a smirk.

"New rule: no talking about you leaving me to deal with all that paperwork again in August. So scurry off and do your job now."

She shook her head, her lips twitching with a smile. "Fine. Dad, follow me. I'll get you a receipt."

I watched them walk over to the office together, struggling not to glance at her amazing ass the entire way, before I forced myself to focus back on the Jeep in front of me. And not some girl that I couldn't have. Or who wouldn't have me.

Either way, it was the same. I needed to simply work on what was attainable. Not what wasn't.

I sent Sam back over to his own job as I began putting the Jeep back together. I was so engrossed on what I was doing that I hadn't heard the telltale footsteps of anyone approaching me. I didn't realize I was no longer alone until I felt her. My whole being seemed to just light up when she was near.

It scared the shit out of me.

I slowly looked over to see her biting her lip nervously. She shifted on her feet a couple of times and then spoke.

"Don't think I didn't notice," she said cryptically. "It was the first thing I saw when I got here."

"What's that?" I croaked, hanging on to the side of the Jeep for dear life.

"How clean the truck is. I drove it all the way from Phoenix-"

"Wait, you drove from fucking Phoenix?" I asked in disbelief. "Why?"

"Why not?"

"Why didn't you just take a plane?"

"Because I moved here," she answered simply.

"Yeah, but…" I stopped myself before I could give away how much I wanted to learn everything about her.

She read my like an open book. "I just needed the time away. Know what I mean?"

"Yeah."

"Anyway, Emmett told me it was your idea," she told me. "So thank you."

"Sure."

She lingered beside me for a little while longer, watching me tighten bolts and check the hoses. Normally, this would have bothered me. I despised people staring at me. But with Bella… it felt okay. Not exactly comfortable, but that was because of my issues. Not her.

Never her.

"Why'd you run?" she eventually whispered. "Last night. Why'd you run?"

My grip on the ratchet faltered, and it spiraled through the twists and turns of the engine and all of its components before finally hitting the floor with an echoing clank.

"You scare me," I answered lowly, reiterating the very thing I'd been thinking.

Her brow furrowed. "I do?"

"More than you could possibly imagine," I said dryly. "For reasons you couldn't imagine."

"If you had any idea what I've been through, you might disagree with that statement," she protested.

"So you think your baggage can come anywhere close to matching mine?"

She exhaled sharply. "No. But I think I could understand you more than you want me to. And more than anyone else ever could."

I didn't have an answer to that. I ached to tell her that she was probably right, but obstinacy kept me from it. It was my secret to bear. No one else's.

"Well, if it makes you feel any better, you scare me too. Not because I'm physically scared of you, but because…" She chewed on her lip and stared back toward her office. "I can't seem to figure out what I'm doing here."

I got the distinct impression those words went deeper than she was letting on.

I turned slowly to face her and saw exactly how scared she was as she stared back at me. She looked to be nearly as terrified as I'd felt all morning long, and I hated that. A part of me knew it was for the best. I needed to embrace the fact that I'd managed to frighten her with my odd behavior, but I couldn't. Seeing her usually sunny disposition gone because of me caused yet another emotion to bob up to the surface. Something I couldn't really identify.

"So I'll see you later. I've got to get to work now."

My breathing was shaky, so I could only nod in response. She hurried back to her office and shut the door, immediately disappearing behind it.

I didn't see her again for the rest of the week.

OK, more thanks below:

PAWsPeaches made an amazing banner for Dear Maggie. One version is red (on The Lemonade Stand's tumblr) and the other is black (on the sidebar on my blog - jenny0719 dot blogspot dot com). Either way, they rock ;)

The Lemonade Stand really pushed this fic last week. It was featured on the TLS Nursery since it's a newbie and the original oneshot was featured on their Lemon Drops page. So THANK YOU SFM for that! www (dot) tehlemonadestand (dot) blogspot (dot) com

WYWG readers: There's a huge section of ch 16 with SBD right now, and I'll finish it up as soon as I've been given the go-ahead. I'm second guessing myself left and right. Again. Sorries.