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LadySharkey1 rocks my world by being the most amazing, kick-ass beta I could ever imagine.

27.

As an acoustic guitar started to strum, a single light came on, illuminating a lone figure sitting on a bar stool in the middle of the stage, his unkempt hair falling over his face as his fingers plucked at the strings.

But Bella didn't need to see his face. She knew it as soon as she saw him. Hell, she'd known it the second she'd heard him, or maybe even before that.

Edward.

Edward.

The mystery artist they'd come to see was Edward.

Shocked to her core, Bella stood and listened as the man she once thought she knew—the man whose skin she felt underneath her fingertips as he moved inside of her—took his spot behind the microphone, his fingers strumming his guitar with a familiarity that came from years of practice.

This was the real him.

That was Edward.

And she had to admit that seeing him stirred something deep inside of her, something she thought had been dead and buried ever since that day at the beach house.

And only then, did his voice enter the mix…words…sentences…their life…his feelings for her.

It had been real.

He'd betrayed it…he'd walked away from it.

But he'd felt it, too.

It had been real.

It hadn't just been her.

As one song followed after the next—some familiar, others she'd never heard before—Bella stood fixed to the floor. While her friends were dancing, screaming and going out of their mind as they got caught up in the general state of mayhem an unsuspected performance by such a well-known artist stirred, Bella stood stock still, her mind hyperaware as she soaked up the words and let the music wash over her like a tidal wave. It wasn't until half an hour had passed that Alice noticed the change in her, so caught up had her friend been in her own perception of the historic performance taking place right in front of their eyes.

"What's up, Bella?" Alice yelled, her voice barely registered above the amplified sound of acoustic instruments. "Aren't you enjoying this?"

Bella shrugged. "I am. Truly. It's just…remember I told you about that guy that broke my heart?"

She watched as the words sunk in and the wheels started to turn inside her friend's head. Then, as her eyes started to widen, Alice's mouth formed the very apt, "No shit! Him?"

Bella nodded, still completely petrified as on stage, Edward launched into another song that took her straight back to the beach. To them.

It was surreal; listening to those beautiful melodies and lyrical words describing some of the most profound moments in her life. To stand there and listen to his side of things, all the while knowing that out of the huge crowd gathered around, only two people knew the true meaning of those words.

It was like being thrown into an alternate universe.

"You have to go see him," Alice pressed, her concern about her friend shining through the look on her face. "You never got your closure, Bella. You need that."

"So, what…?" Bella hissed, unnecessarily afraid their other friends would overhear. "We're just going to walk up to the backstage area and ask them to let us through?"

"That's exactly what we're going to do!" Alice's confidence completely threw Bella for a loop. It wasn't like Bella had a wealth of experience where it came to music venues and the artists, but she knew enough to assume that, unless your presence backstage was welcomed, it took more than a smile to get through security.

Still, she could see that the wheels in Alice's brain were running a mile a minute as Edward wrapped up his set and, after a quick break, launched into an encore that had the room shaking.

Looking at Edward, so in his element, Bella couldn't help but be proud of him. In spite of the way they'd ended things and the ghastly images in the press after their break-up, he had made it through the storm and was back to doing what he did best…back to using that amazing God-given talent of his.

Deep down inside, she still felt an overwhelming anger and disappointment with him over the choice he'd made that day, but as the last note of the last song faded away in a deafening roar of the crowd, she couldn't deny that underneath that thick layer of resentment, part of her still loved him, too.

"Come on, let's go!" Alice cried as the lights came on and people started to disperse. "We don't want him to leave before we manage to get past security!"

The rest of their group was still too high on the performance they'd just witnessed to see them leave, though Bella did feel the vibration of her phone in her jeans pocket as they crossed the venue to where a big, burly security-type guy stood guarding the entrance to the backstage area.

"Hi!" Alice announced in her usual chipper voice. "We're here to see Edward Masen; he knows us."

"Said by just about every damn girl in this room," Security Man answered with a sarcastic snort. "Believe me, sweetheart, you're barking up the wrong tree here."

"But my friend is a very good friend of Edward Masen's," Alice, unused to not getting her way, insisted sharply, tugging Bella forward as if she were a dog on a leash. "If Mr. Masen finds out she was denied entry, he'll be very upset."

Security Man didn't even answer that time. He just crossed his arms in front of his chest and blocked their way, challenging Bella and her tiny friend to try something.

Alice, meanwhile growled and looked as if she was staging an attack on a man who was easily double her size. "Come on, Ally." Bella sighed, nervously tugging on her friend's sleeve. "Let's just go, okay?"

"Don't give up yet! We haven't even started," Alice shushed her, raising her voice as she called out to a skeletal, young man overseeing the roadies packing up the instruments. "Hey, you! Come here?"

As surprised as Bella was to see that the guy actually listened, she fell from one amazement in the other as somehow, her friend managed to persuade him to go backstage and ask Edward if he wanted to see them.

It was only after he had left that Bella realized that that actually meant that, unless Edward refused to see her, she was going to be face to face with him again in just a couple of minutes. "Oh, shit!"

"Look!" Alice exclaimed gleefully, "He's back already! Oh, and Edward's with him! Boy does he look intense...and hot! You did good, girl!"

Bella swallowed hard, her feet nailed to the ground while her whole being screamed at her to run. She wasn't ready for this big confrontation. Hell, she didn't even know what to say to him. Why, oh why had she let Alice talk her into this?

"Bella?" She turned towards his voice, finding the man as hesitant as his pronunciation of her name had been. "Y-You're really here?"

She nodded, only finding her voice after a long and awkward silence. "I didn't know it was you...I…I came here with some friends."

"I…" Edward stammered, his hand running through his still wet hair. "My manager put me on under a different name."

"Oh." Bella answered, struck completely dumb by an overwhelming panic.

Awkwardness ensued as that same panic seemed to hold Edward under its spell as well. The ex-lovers stood mutely, opposite each other as both minds worked overtime trying to put their feelings into words but failing miserably.

"You two need to talk," Alice ordered sternly, obviously deciding things were taking too long. "Edward, isn't there some place backstage where you can go?"

"No!" Bella was quick to pull on the brakes; the thought of being alone in a small room with him scared her to death. "I don't want to go backstage. I do think we need to talk, but maybe at a diner or a café?"

"Starbucks?" Edward offered, seeming as ill at ease as Bella felt. "I don't really want to run the risk of going anywhere that serves alcohol…" He looked uncomfortable and glanced around seemingly looking for the right words. "It's still too early in my…uh, recovery."

Bella nodded, relieved to see he was taking his rehab seriously this time around. Even though she knew next to nothing about being rehabilitated, Edward's words seemed plausible enough. "There's one just around the corner, I think. I could meet you there in a couple of minutes?"

"I can do that. I need a couple of minutes to pack my stuff and let my manager know I'm heading out but I'll meet you there in twenty?" Edward suggested looking startlingly enthusiastic about their plan while Bella still dreaded the whole thing.

Still, she nodded, her subconscious apparently more eager for destruction that she could have imagined as she watched him walk away.

"Do you want me to stay with you?" Alice offered as they made their way through the now deserted concert hall.

"Hell, yes!" Bella chuckled, a little slap-happy from the whole event. "I'm already this close to bolting and, to be honest, I'm still not completely convinced that this was such a good idea."

"You need this," Alice insisted, linking her arm through Bella's. "For the past couple of months I've seen you suffer. You're living in the twilight zone; still not ready to let go of one guy and thereby unable to see all of the other fish in the sea." Alice sighed, her large, honest eyes locking with Bella's. "You need to talk to him, if only to decide which way to move."

"I won't go back to him," Bella snapped, though her heart wasn't sure as her head seemed to be.

"Then use this conversation to definitely make up your mind, then," Alice pressed, tugging Bella inside the coffee shop. "I don't know what the hell he did to break your heart but from the way you've been acting, I know you never got an explanation." Pausing to rattle her order off to the barista, she hopped impatiently from one leg onto the other until she was free to speak again. "You need this…you need to get the hell out of limbo!"

While Bella agreed with her, knowing something was the right thing to do and actually going through with it were two completely different things. If Alice had not been there, calmly talking her off the ledge every time she'd been ready to take a short sprint towards the exit, Edward would have found an empty seat and an abandoned coffee cup when he dashed in thirty minutes later.

"I'm sorry I'm late," he panted. "My manager's a pain in the ass."

Alice smiled benevolently as she got up and patted her empty seat. "I suppose that's my cue to leave you two to it. I'll be right over there, Bella." Though her final words were directed at her friend, the fierce look of warning she shot at Edward left him no doubt that she would definitely step in a protect her should Bella be in need of a champion.

"I'm sorry," Edward repeated, moving slowly and carefully into the seat, almost as if Bella was an easily startled deer. The comparison wasn't altogether inaccurate.

"I suppose that's a good enough start," Bella replied bitterly, her anger resurfacing now that she was sitting with him on neutral ground. "Why did you do it?"

Edward sighed, one of his long fingers rubbing at a stain on the table between them. "I got scared."

"I got that far on my own, thank you very little," Bella snapped, fighting the urge to smack him. "You may think you're a broody, unfathomable artist, but you were not so mysterious that I couldn't see right through you. I know you got scared, you coward, but what the hell made you obliterate everyone around you? If you wanted to run, why not just run, you ass!"

By that time, Bella had attracted a small crowd of onlookers who, of course, where trying to eavesdrop without it seeming too obvious. The small smile on the barista's lips, however, left nobody in any doubt that she was Team Bella, as was the Goth-type girl in the far corner. The two frat boys on the other side of the coffee shop, though, looked decidedly more awkward as they shot furtive looks of commiserations in Edward's directions.

"I knew you'd try to follow and I had to protect you," Edward argued. "I know that what I did was wrong. Hell, I knew and I regretted it almost as soon as it happened, but I was trying to keep you from getting hurt even more when I'd inevitably fuck up somewhere down the line."

The fist that landed right on Edward's cheekbone came as a surprise to both of them, but as Bella shook her sore hand, there wasn't a repentant bone in her body. She'd had enough of him, trying to steer her life in a direction she didn't want to go in. It was time to take back control. "Next time you decide to completely take away a person's right to make their own choices, think about the black eye you got today, asshole."

And with that, she marched out of the coffee shop, buzzing with adrenaline and with a jubilant Alice by her side.

Thoughts?