This one's a big-un, so hold on to your hats everyone!

BPOV

On Monday evening I was entirely shocked to see Edward walk into the meeting. He came in just as we were about to start, sitting in the chair Angela had put out for him again. We made eye contact for a few moments and I did not see any of the anger or animosity I expected to see in his face. If anything, he looked worn down and a little nervous. Before long he averted his gaze to focus on Angela, seemingly listening intently.

Throughout the meeting I caught his eyes flashing to me a few times, though he looked away quickly when he saw me looking back at him. It didn't seem that either of us were entirely following the conversation Angela was leading about the importance of not isolating yourself during grief. Instead, we continued the cat and mouse game we had played a few weeks ago.

After Angela had wrapped up the discussion, we all moved to stack our chairs in the corner. While waiting to hand mine to Mitch, who was piling everyone's chairs as they handed them to him, I felt more than saw Edward come and stand in line beside me. My right arm buzzed like it had a mild electric current passing through it, reacting to his mere presence. I couldn't help but turn to give him a small, yet friendly smile, only to find him looking down at me.

I wanted to say hello, to try and re-do our last disastrous conversation, but Edward beat me to it. "Good evening, Bella," he said quietly in his rich, velvety voice.

My heart was beating a little too frantically, making it hard to catch a breath to form into words. "Hi, Edward" was all I could muster, his name feeling clumsy in my mouth. We both handed Mitch our chairs and he followed me as I moved a little away from the others.

"Umm… I was wondering, umm…I was wondering if you'd like to go grab a coffee or something?" he stuttered, dragging his hand through his beautiful auburn hair, making it stand up in disarray for a moment before it settled back into place. My heart stuttered. Was he asking me on a date? "To talk," he emphasised at the end.

"Oh," was my less than eloquent reply. I could feel my brow furrow and my mouth gap like a fish, and in the corner of the room I could see Angela watching our interaction with wide eyes.

"Don't feel obliged if you aren't comfortable," Edward said quickly. "It's just…"

"No!" I cut him off. "I mean, sure. Yes, that sounds nice." I gave him another small smile, letting him know that I meant what I said.

"Okay, great," he smiled back, his striking green eyes warming a little. "I just need to grab something from my car, so can I meet you out the front?"

"Yes, of course. I need to talk to Angela for a moment, anyway. She usually drives me home after this."

"Alright. I'll see you in a few minutes," Edward said with a nod, before he turned and strode from the room.

I quickly went to the corner where I had stashed my bags and went to talk to Angela. She was talking to Judy, but quietly excused herself and turned to me.

"So, you're going out for coffee with the hospital hottie, huh?" Angela joked under her breath. "I guess you won't be needing me to drive you home tonight?"

"Not tonight. Thanks, Ange," I said, hugging her. My whole body felt like a carbonated drink, with little bubbles and tingles popping all over in my excited anticipation. "I don't know how long I'll be, so I'll probably just get an Uber home."

Angela smiled kindly at me as I balanced my bags on either arm. "See, I told you it was all in your head last time."

"Oh shush," I admonished. "I still think I need to apologize."

"No, you don't, Bella," Angela rolled her eyes. "Why don't you wait to see what he has to say before you go jumping to conclusions?"

"I'll take that under advisement," I said, giving her hand a squeeze, then I left to find Edward.

He wasn't waiting by the doors or anywhere on the grass outside the university library. Knowing he was going to his car, I looked towards the car park. I could see him with his back to me, standing next to a silver car with his hand on the half open door. I started in his direction, but as I got closer I could see he was not alone. He was talking animatedly with a small, beautiful woman with short dark hair, and from his body language he looked like he was none too happy with her.

Suddenly, the woman's eyes locked on mine and Edward turned to catch my eye. I continued in their direction, slightly confused, as Edward forcefully shut the car door he had been holding open. The irritated words "Go home" drifted to me, before the woman stomped off in the direction of a bright yellow sports car.

The whole interaction was highly confusing. Who was the woman? Could she be his girlfriend? I doubted it, considering the depth of feelings Edward still seemed to carry for his wife. The mystery that was this man only deepened.

"Everything okay?" I asked as we met on the sidewalk by the car park.

"Yeah, that was nothing," Edward waved off the question, then quickly changed the topic. "Would you like to go to the diner on the corner?"

"Okay," I nodded.

Edward held out his hand, indicating at one of the tote bags full of student papers I had slung over my shoulder. "May I?"

"Thank you," I smiled at him gratefully, handing him the bag and we turned to walk towards the crossing on the corner.

The diner was a twenty-four-hour place that was frequented by students, due to its proximity to the campus. It was usually much busier than L(art)te, which was why I preferred the quiet coffee house. But it was close, and they served food, which was definitely something on my mind at nearly eight on a Monday night. We walked in silence. It felt entirely awkward, yet also companionable.

It was thankfully fairly quiet inside the diner, and we were able to find a red booth to slip into. A friendly, middle aged waitress wearing a retro uniform presented us with our menus before heading off to get the Cokes we ordered. We were both quiet as we studied the menu. There seemed to be a tension in the air, but I didn't know if it was coming from him or I.

"What'll you have?" the waitress asked when she returned with our drinks. She looked to Edward, but he gestured that I should go first.

"I'll get the club sandwich, please."

"Side of fries?"

"No thank you." I folded the menu and handed it back to her. She smiled and turned to Edward.

"Just wheat toast, thanks," he said, handing his menu back to the waitress, who left to put in our orders.

Neither of us said anything, and the awkwardness had begun to increase and supersede any companionable feelings in the silence. Edward seemed to be thinking incredibly hard as he swirled the straw through the ice in his Coke.

In a bid to break the tension, I searched for something to say. "Not hungry?" I asked after what felt like five minutes.

Edwards' eyes finally met mine, but the tension didn't leave his face. "Not really," was all he said before we fell quiet again. His brows were so furrowed that they almost met in the middle. I wondered why he asked me to talk if he was just going to sit and say nothing. Maybe his confrontation with the woman in the parking lot was more than the nothing he claimed it to be?

Needing to fill the space between us with something, and ignoring Angela's advice I couldn't help but let the words I'd been stewing over for two weeks come out. "I want to apologize…" "I don't really know how to…" It seemed the silence had finally gotten to Edward too and we ended up talking over each other, which only made us both halt what we were saying.

"What do you have to apologize for?" he asked, his brow more furrowed than before as he stared at me in disbelief.

His question threw me a little. I had thought he was upset with me for making him uncomfortable, but it seemed Angela was right. Now all I felt was foolish for saying anything about it. I didn't want to admit to what my assumptions were, but I doubted any other explanation would make sense.

"I… Well, um. I thought… well," I struggled to find the right to say it that wouldn't make him uncomfortable after all. With a deep sigh I pushed on. "I thought I had offended you at your first meeting."

The arrival of the waitress with our food broke the tension that had begun to envelop us. The sandwich looked delicious, but my appetite had all but vanished. "Let me know if you need anything else," the waitress said before she once again left us alone.

I'd hoped that what I'd said already was enough of an explanation, but his face was still flooded with confusion. I swallowed my pride and elaborated but had to find something else to concentrate on because I couldn't keep looking at him while I said it. "I had thought you left so quickly because you thought I was coming on to you, after having driven Tanya off for doing the same thing." I was staring down at my sandwich, fingers dancing around the edge of my plate nervously. "And I made that terrible joke about you being a stalker," I mumbled.

"No, Bella. That's not…" Edwards hand shot into my downcast sight and stilled my hands. My eyes snapped up to him. He had a pained look on his face and his mouth gaped, as if trying to scoop the words he was looking for out of the air. "That's not why I left," he finally finished.

I wanted to ask him why then. What did he mean? Why did he leave so suddenly? Why didn't he didn't come back last week? What were we doing here now? So many questions buzzed around my head, which I'm sure he could see in my eyes.

Pulling his hands back, he buried his face in them. "Oh god," he moaned. He was quiet for a moment while I watched him intently.

Finally, Edwards head came back up, his eyes now wary. "You're a little right." My heart dropped, but Edward didn't seem to notice the stricken look on my face. "When you joked about me being a stalker, it hit a little too close to home."

Now I was extremely confused. "What do you mean?"

The pained look on Edwards face deepened. "After I saw you at the hospital, my sister helped me find you on Facebook."

"What?! Why?" Whatever I expected him to say tonight, that was not it. The momentary pleasure I got from his admission to remembering me from our brief interaction at the hospital quickly faded as the rest of what he said sunk in. My mind was racing with what this meant as more questions began to swirl. Was he actually a stalker?! My body, which had been leaning on the table towards him, moved back instinctively as my hackles rose in warning.

Edwards hand reached out towards me, but he quickly pulled it back. "Bella, please let me explain!" He had a frantic look in his eyes that made me pause long enough to give him an opening. "It is not what you think, I promise."

"Then what is it?" I demanded, crossing my arms over my chest.

"I…" Edward seemed to be searching for the right words. "I don't know how to explain without freaking you out."

I tried not to scoff. It was a little too late for that.

But hadn't I had similar worries in regard to him? I had been dreaming about him almost every night since the first time I saw him. Hadn't I been worried about freaking him out when I first talked to him, and then spent the last two weeks obsessing over that conversation? Maybe, just maybe, it was possible Edward was feeling the same intense draw that I felt. Maybe I had been in his dreams too. Didn't I know firsthand how that obsession could twist you into knots you struggled to get out of? I wanted to know him, didn't I? How could I do that if I didn't hear him out?

I took a deep breath to calm and centre myself. "You've already freaked me out, so you might as well explain it."

Reaching down to the bench beside him, he pulled out a spiral bound book I hadn't noticed him carrying. This must have been what he went to his car to get earlier. "I… Before I do, I need to ask you a question, though it won't make sense at first." He was fiddling with the coil that held the book together, looking at me apologetically.

"Okay," I said curtly, puzzled and losing my patience.

It was Edwards' turn to take a deep breath. He was obviously having a hard time with this conversation, and I again wondered why he'd even asked to talk to me tonight. "Were you adopted?" he finally asked, his voice full of trepidation.

I sat frozen as his question sunk in, then suddenly my brain shot into overdrive. "What?! How did you… Why would you ask that?" My mind was telling me to get out of there as quickly as possible, but my body wasn't listening, still locked in shock.

The fact that I was adopted wasn't something I generally talked about, not ever feeling the need to. My father was my father, and my brother was my brother. End of story. It wasn't something I shared with strangers, and it was certainly not something Edward would have been able to find out from my Facebook account. Did this mean he had looked into me more extensively than just my social media? He was a stalker!

"Because of this," Edward said as he pushed the book towards me. I didn't move to unfold my arms, staring first at him and then down at the innocuous brown cover. When I didn't take it he pushed it a little closer towards me before pulling back, leaving it on my side of the table. "Please?"

With a frustrated sigh, I unwound my arms and picked up the book. Now that I had a closer inspection, it wasn't a book at all, but a photo album with a small, embossed image of a camera on the front. Opening it I was incredibly confused to see a graduation photograph of myself, but it was one I had never seen before.

"What is this?" I demanded, glaring at Edward. "How is this going to convince me you're not a psycho stalker?"

I kept staring at the photo, feeling more and more uneasy. A knot was forming in the pit of my stomach as I studied it. I kept seeing things in it that didn't make sense. It was like looking at one of those 'spot the differences' pictures, where small changes were hidden to confuse you. I remembered the day I graduated from UDub, and I distinctly recall the vivid purple and yellow of the stole I had worn over my gown. Yet in the photograph it was green. My hair had been different too, longer than it was in the image.

"That," came Edwards' quiet voice. "Is Maria. My wife."

My head snapped up and my eyes bugged out of their sockets. "EXCUSE ME?!"

"That's my wife, Maria," he repeated with a bit more strength. "That was from the day we graduated from Dartmouth."

If I'd thought my mind and body had shut down before, it was nothing compared to what I was experiencing now. "I don't understand. How is that possible?"

I turned the page of the album only to find a photo of me as a young girl, at either six or seven judging on the date '1996' written underneath it. I was wearing a frilly yellow dress with puffy capped sleeves, holding the lace trimmed skirt out to show the polished black mary-jane shoes with bows and frilly white socks on my feet. Not me, Maria. It couldn't be me because I had certainly never worn anything like that as a child.

On the opposite page was an older photograph of a dark-haired couple holding a baby. Their faces were overjoyed and blissful as they gazed at the tiny bundle, wrapped in a pink blanket, in the arms of the woman. Beneath the picture it said 'Eleazar and Carmen bring home Maria, 9/14/1989'.

That was thirty years ago, yesterday. The day after I was born. The day I had been adopted by the Swans.

Edward was watching me as I stared at that particular image. "That's Marias adoptive parents," he explained. "She was born in a hospital in Tacoma. Was that where you…" My eyes flashed to him for just a moment, but he caught it and he stopped talking. I needed him to be quiet because I was having trouble processing what he was saying.

I flipped to the next page, then the next. Each showed a parallel reality version of me as I grew up. A girl with my face with different parents, doing things I'd never done before. A few times there was a boy with auburn hair smiling alongside the girl, and as he grew too he turned into Edward. Until I reached a page that made me stop entirely.

It was a wedding photo. The girl with my face had turned into a woman, my eyes staring back at me with a light I hadn't seen in a mirror for years. She was standing beside the man who had been appearing in my dreams for weeks, wearing a white lace ball gown with a sweetheart neckline and delicate lace sleeves. The sight of us - them - together caught my breath.

"When I saw you at the hospital that day, I completely freaked out. It took me ages to process it." Edward shook his head at his own words. "I haven't really dealt with her dying, so it all kind of threw me. And I knew when my sister found you on Facebook that I just should have sent you a message, but I just… I didn't know how. Then I… when I saw you at the counselling session, and…"

"You need to leave," I blurted out, cutting him off. I still hadn't looked up from their wedding photo, but I really didn't want to look at him right now. My brain had finally reconnected to my body, which meant that I was probably about to have a breakdown. I did not want to do that in front of Edward.

"What?"

"Can you please leave," I pleaded. "I just… I need to be alone right now."

Edward sat back against the bench as if he'd been thrown. "Right," he said, shaking his head. "Yes, of course. Umm... There's a letter in the back that has…"

"Edward," I cut him off again, this time looking him in the eyes. "Please go."

He nodded, pulled out his wallet and placed a fifty-dollar bill on the table, then slid out of the booth in a smooth motion. He paused for a moment, looking down at me as I stared back up at him. I'm sure the heartbreak was clear on my face.

All too quickly Edward turned and strode from the diner, leaving me alone in the shattered remains of my identity.

I haven't decided yet who's POV the next chapter should be from yet, so it may take a little longer to update than the last few chapters.Does anyone have a preference on whether they would like to stick with Bella or switch to Edward now?