Chapter 15 – The Factor

The next day ~ Suburbia Texas

Edward Cullen POV

Ariana DuBachee.  

At least that’s what she had said her name was when I met her.

She was my very first pubescent “love”.

You know, not like, your actual love love… but the one you think is love because she let you fuck her?

Yeah.  That one.

She was my first everything else too.  I mean the big stuff.  Stuff that was big to a sixteen year old anyway.

First tit grab, nipple pinch, grope fest.  First finger fuck… awkward… finger fuck, I might add… first blow job…

My younger self thought she was the beginning and the end of all things to do with life.  She showed me how to enter her without giving her dick burn… how to lick a clit… how to pull out before cumming without it being too painful.

We shared ourselves.  And secrets.

She was fairly new to Marcus’s band of merriment so he wasn’t too sure about her at that point, but I was and I’d been willing to risk a lot of things for her.  Including the trust Marcus had in me that I’d spent years building.

We’d sneak off and spend money that wasn’t ours on hotel rooms to make the experience more “romantic” and then come up with ridiculous reasons that we thought for sure Marcus was buying into about where we’d been and why we were short changed. 

When she’d come to me about running away together I thought, wow… this person wants me… Like, out of all the guys she had a choice of in our little world, she’d chosen me. 

Ya know?

I felt like a man.  Like I was on top of the crazy, fucked up con-man’s world we were living in.  Like I could do anything and be anything and get away with what she was asking me to do.

I was fearless and reckless and worst of all, young.

There was a flight we needed to book to make it all work out properly and I hadn’t yet gotten a hold of Marcus’s secret stash of money just yet that he kept in his office, behind his desk, in a safe.  Ariana had convinced me to give her my money and then she’d take care of the details… meet me at the gate.  Then we’d run.

But that never happened.

It was my first real education on just how knowledgeable Marcus was about all of us.

See, when I broke into his office during the time frame he was supposed to have been out to dinner with some of his higher ranking men… he wasn’t… at that dinner, that is.  He was waiting for me.  Sitting in his big black leather chair, relaxed, with his feet up on the desk, listening to Mozart and smoking one of his priceless Cuban cigars.

“Edward!” he welcomed me, as though he didn’t even realize I had just picked the lock on his door.

My heart raced, knowing Ariana was at the airport by then, waiting for me as Felix and a couple other guys that were just as big as him entered the office behind me.

Marcus read my expression easily, but back then, I actually still thought I was pulling the wool over his eyes.

Yeah.  I was that dumb.

I laughed nervously with all of the inexperience that comes with being under twenty.  “Marcus, I….”

He tsk’d, shushing me, and then got up out of his chair and walked over to where I stood, giving me this look of utter disappointment, and grabbing my shoulders firmly as he did it.

“I took you in, Edward.  Got you away from those men who treated you horribly, taught you how to make a name for yourself… I have raised you like a son.  And still, you come into my place of business, planning to steal from me?”

That’s when it hit me.

I was gonna die.

My head jerked around, trying to see if I could run, but the three large men that had entered Marcus’s office behind me were blocking not only the only exit… but the windows that adorned each side of the room as well.

He knew me alright.

“Marcus…”

He held a hand up.  “What makes me even more sad over this unfortunate situation, Edward, is that you trusted her… over me.”   Then he put that hand to his chest, over the imaginary wound there.

“I …”

“She let you stick your dick into her pussy and somehow… that made her trustworthy.”

I was shaking my head.  I might have even been crying like a goddamn baby at that point. Hell, I don’t know.  I laughed at the idea, internally.  If only crying was an option.

“Perhaps I should let you fuck me after all, perhaps then I will be trustworthy in your eyes, yes?”

Felix and company laughed but my head was reeling.  I managed to shake it a little in response to his words, but I couldn’t speak… couldn’t get my tongue to work.

“And then…” he narrowed his eyes in a confused sort of look.  “You gave her your own… money?”

I swallowed everything I had then, trying to be brave about it.  I knew how Marcus toyed with people before killing them off and I was scared.  I was fucking scared as shit. 

He let the words hang out there for a minute or two before telling me the next part.  “Did you know she has already left the country, Edward?”

My eyes snapped to his in defiance.

He was wrong!  She wouldn’t have done that.  But I could see it in his face before he even said it. He was being truthful.  And I felt my shoulders slack.

“Giovanna saw her get on her plane with another man, twice your age… then watched it go not forty minutes ago my young friend.”

I was still trying to hang on to the hope that she wasn’t like that, as my head dropped and I stared at the floor, avoiding his glare.  She’d left?  With another guy?  I…   “She wouldn’t…”

“She did,” he insisted angrily and I couldn’t quite make out if that anger was directed toward me for betraying him, or at her for betraying me.  “And with all… Your hard earned…. Money.  Every dime.”

Oh god.

I felt sick.

I was going to die penniless, painfully and alone.  At sixteen.

“Wait,” I pulled my head up to look at him, scowling like only a young spoiled brat could.  “You knew?”

He curled his eyebrow up at the middle and put a hand on my shoulder. “It was a lesson you had to learn, my friend.”

“You knew, this whole time and you…”

“I needed you to understand, Edward, you can trust no one… but me.”

“I’m…”

I had no idea what to say.

I’m sorry?  It seemed so trivial at that point.  It didn’t matter anyway. Marcus had decided what would be done and there was nothing I could have said that would change the outcome of that conversation, so I just stayed mute.

“You will start over,” he said and it took a moment for my brain to catch up with what that simple statement had meant.  I’m not gonna die.

I’m not gonna die!

“From the bottom once again, of course, and you will re-gain your money and position in this organization, but for now…”  he trailed off, waving a hand at what seemed like nothing.

It was Marcus’s own version of a pep talk I supposed… but with those lingering last few words, he patted me on the back and left the office.

Left me alone with Felix and friends.

And they beat the living shit out of me for what I’d tried to do to Marcus.

But I wasn’t gonna die.  Sure, I’d come close, but somehow I was still alive.

I was in the hospital for three days.  In bed for another two weeks and, after that, I never tried anything of the like again.

I also never bothered with women again.  Not for more than one night anyway.

Not until Bella.

Who was not in bed with me for the second morning in a row.

There was always that dread still, in the bottom of my gut, making me wonder if today was the day I’d be fed to the wolves.  I was a jack ass and an idiot for letting feelings get in front of everything else again, but it was neither here nor there at that point.

They were there.  They were real.  And I had no say in the matter anymore.

I rolled over onto my back and rubbed at my eyes, digging the sleep out of them, trying to erase old memories and new doubts.   Then I forced myself up and out of that bed, got a shower and headed downstairs to see if I could start checking on the next neighbor for any suspicious background they might have.

The Newtons might be a good place to start today, I thought.  And let me tell ya, they might have tried to come across as “exciting” or “hip” to their neighbors, but god damn were they boring.

The bright side to that was that it seemed as though, other than a few domestic disturbance calls in the neighborhood about Mr. Newton’s drunk and disorderly conduct at home, they were harmless.

I was massaging out the headache in my temples when I heard water outside.  Specifically, it sounded like a hose starting up.  At first I thought it was just McCarty getting all riled up about lawn maintenance again until I peeked outside.

It was Bella.

She’s attempting to wash her car and I had to chuckle despite the pill I was still swallowing over her being Marcus’s latest leverage with me.   I needed to work on a way to make it so he couldn’t use her.  A way to make it so he didn’t have me around anymore to have her to use against me.

Surely he wouldn’t hold it against Bella if I just, disappeared… right?

Then I laughed out loud again at the absurdity going on out in front of our fake house, distracted from depressing thoughts.  Bella was struggling with how to get a nozzle attached to the hose.

I couldn’t get over her lack of smoothness at some activities… I mean, you’d think she’d never washed a goddamn car before.

Never been to a fair, never washed a car.  Really? 

I changed gears and went out to give her shit and found her pouring an entire bottle of dishwashing liquid into the bucket she was using.

“Seriously, do you not know how much soap you need for this?”

She clumsily dropped the bottle of liquid soap and almost lost the hose but managed to recover, and then gave me a dirty look.

To which I laughed again.

“Screw you, Edward.”

I looked around at the neighborhood a little.  “Here?  Now?” I teased her.  “You dirty girl.”

She ignored me but I saw traced of a smile fighting its way through the grump in Bella.

I reached down and picked up a towel I assumed she was planning on using and ripped it into smaller pieces.  “Ya know,” I started when the towel got stuck at a particularly rough patch… the hem I guessed.  “You could just take it to a detailer.”

She didn’t look at me; instead she hosed the Beamer down, as though she was talking to it. “I needed to…”

“Clear your head?”  I asked as I dunked a piece of the cloth into the overly soapy water. 

Good lord, this woman.

“Something like that.”

I know the feeling, I thought to myself, immediately trying to make light of the situation. But then I noticed the worry lines forming near the edges of her mouth.

“Serious is not a very good look on you, Bella,” I stated, starting to wash the dirt from the night before off of her fender.  “I think I liked you better when you were slinging mud in my face.”
Her shoulders bobbed and her lips tightened, determined not to let the laughter go free.
She was punishing herself for something.  I could tell.  I did it to myself enough to recognize it.

 “Serious is required Edward, we’re not on vacation you know.”   She looked over at me after the comment.  “As much as we’d like to think we are.”

“Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t enjoy it while we can.”  I dipped my fingers into the bucket o’ H2O and flicked some of it over at her.

She flinched when it sprayed her face and she eyeballed me, giving me a dedicated eyebrow warning.  “Don’t start, Edward.”

“What?  No time for fun and games again?”  I flicked the rag at her and she giggled. 

“Stop it.”

“Why Bella?” I flicked it at her again.  

Then she pointed her weapon at me.  “I have a hose here, and I know how to use it.”

“Is that a threat?”  I asked her, curling my eyebrows up a little as I dunked the rag again.

“Edward…”

And that time, I made to flick her one last time, but it got away from me. I had, in essence, thrown the soapy rag at her, landing it flat against her breasts.

And I couldn’t help but smile.

Perfecto.

I don’t know what it was exactly that got into me around this woman.  I just know it was involuntary.  Mostly.

Her face froze and her fingers released the hose’s nozzle as the shock of the water hit her square in the chest, then fell to the ground… and then she eyed me. 

“Come on, that was priceless.”

“Oh really?”

“Oh, yeah,” I tried to convince her, pointing at the now basically see through shirt she was wearing.  “The nipples were bitter for lack of attention today.”

She pointed the hose at me again and I raised my hands cautiously to her. “Now Babbette…”

“Call me by my name, Edward, or suffer the consequences.”

Did I call her Babbette to get a rise out of her?  Yes.

Was I about to give in to her sexy as hell demands? I don’t think so.

“You’re right, you’re right,” I started to correct myself for her and she waited for me to say it.  “What was it now?  Bethany?  Betsy?  Billie!”  I snapped my fingers then said, “Oh that’s right… you like Babe.”

And then her jaw dropped.  “You… are such an asshole,” she yelled out before squeezing the trigger of the hose nozzle that was pointing it directly at me. 

So, I did what anyone would have done in the same situation with a mad woman squirting them down with a hose full of cold ass water.  I ran at her.

It was all for naught by then of course. I was drenched, but it wasn’t about whether I was wet or dry, it was about tackling the shit out of Bella Swan and getting her body closer to mine.

I bent down and lifted her up and over my shoulders as previously done during another type of playful fight and she screamed, still managing to aim the hose down my back.   I ignored the shock of the cold water and spun us a little, tripping over the damn hose and falling flat on my back.

There was a muted thud as we hit the ground and the hose, thankfully, was dropped in the process.  Bella was laughing with only a few snorts mingled throughout and I was reaching for the small of my back that was now on fire from pain.

It was my own fault.  I should have never tried to spin her like that.

Karma.

It was forgotten soon enough though.  The pain that is, when I noticed her nipples pressing securely up against my own chest and her thigh that was dancing between my legs, threatening to tease me in a very, very bad way if I didn’t behave myself.

My hands found her waist, tugging a little at the needless shirt she still had on for some reason.  “You feel really good right… there,” I told her, pulling her against the hard on she’d created, just like that.  Smiling only slightly for her.

I wasn’t exactly in the mood for smiling.  I was in the mood for other things all of a sudden.

“You feel pretty good too,” she said with just a hint of a whisper as she rolled her hips a little against me, telling me my hands weren’t needed.

And since they weren’t required instruments in the dick grinding, I moved one of them up her back, behind her neck and coaxed her lips onto mine.

The other hand found her ass and you’d think we’d know better, being adults and all, than rolling around in the yard of suburbia like that and stopped wasting time to get ourselves into the house. If it hadn’t been for our professional cockblocking neighbor, I mighta gotten a chance to see where it all would have taken us.

“Yo Ed-ward!”

It was Whitlock, calling over to me from across the street.   Bella and I ceased the make out session a la our front yard and I let out a frustrated sigh.  “You’d think one might take a fucking hint when they see their happily married neighbors swapping spit in the grass.”

Bella’s whole body jerked with silent laughter when she put her head into my shoulder, then she sent chills up my entirely soaked body when she trailed kisses along my shoulder and neck.  When she was done, she whispered into my ear, “There’ll be time for fun and games later, Edward.”

I smiled over at him while simultaneously trying to talk my dick down and got myself up off the ground.  Then I held a hand out to Bella to pull her up too.

“Still on for today?” he called over again.

We exchanged a look of concern, Bella and I, then she told me with a nod, “Go.”

“You sure?  I could probably convince him you’re just as in as I am with this.”

I didn’t want Marcus finding out we weren’t “together” again.  The way he was talking about his annoyances with Bella… I mean, I was fairly certain he was just setting me up in that conference room, but you just never know what the fuck is really going on in that guys head. 

Ya know?

“It’s all good, my feelings aren’t hurt one bit, Edward,” she laughed. “Besides, Marcus wants me to come see him today anyway.”

And then, inside my soul, there was an abrupt stop.  A screeching halt.  A double take of sorts.

“What?”

She shrugged.  “I know. It was weird for me too but he says it’s important.”

Not… liking… this.

“I’m staying, I’ll go with you,” I told her under no uncertain terms, but she shook her head.

“He said it was a confidential conversation that you shouldn’t be privy to.”  I started to argue but then she added, “I think it might be about my dad… and you’re not supposed to know about him anyway, so…”  She shrugged trying to encourage me, but I still wasn’t liking it.

At all.

“Ed-ward!”  Whitlock called over again and I forcibly pulled my eyes from Bella’s, and looked over to him. 

“Yeah just… give me a minute to get… dry.” 

He laughed and I went inside to change, letting Bella finish up with her, attempt at washing the Beamer.

She was inside and unseen when I was done. I swallowed the bad feeling I was getting about her urgent meeting with Marcus as I crossed the street to help Whitlock load his truck up with the mystery boxes he was still hauling off to an unknown location.

One I was hopefully going to finally know about that day.  One that would, theoretically, get my money back from Marcus and allow me step one of getting the fuck out of that man’s control.

“Sorry for interruptin’ Edward, I just figured you know…”

“Oh, no, yeah, no worries,” I told him.  “Bella and I have plenty of time for, you know…”  I waved a hand.  “Later.”

I tried to smile as I glanced over at the house’s second floor window that I knew was hers, but dread was lurking and I couldn’t honestly tell myself that we did have that time we were all going on and on about.

Truth was, I didn’t know if Marcus was calling her to see him to “let her go” or to throw me in her face, or what.

My stomach churned at the thought of the first one.

I could almost handle the latter.

Almost.

“So… what exactly’s in these anyway?” I inquired for chit chat purposes.  And to get my mind off of ugly thoughts and daytime nightmares as we hustled the last of them into the bed of the vehicle.

“All in due time, my friend,” he teased, “All in due time. Now hop in.”

He was already annoying the shit out of me, but I did as he said anyway, knowing it was necessary to get what I was after, and then we drove.  For a long goddamn time, if ya ask me.   We stopped for some lunch and Whitlock, I decided, was the one and only big fat definition of cryptic.

I asked him about his dealings, he said it was all highly confidential and didn’t wanna talk about it out in public too much because ya never know when someone’s listening in.

I inquired about where we were going, he told me I’d know when we got there.

And when I wondered out loud why someone of his obvious stature in society would worry about what anyone thought of him, the prick told me he didn’t, that it was simply a matter of confidentiality.

About an hour and a half later, we were there and the mystery still abided strongly with this one.

The building was fairly new but had a simplicity to it that continued to force my mind toward child porn as kids ran past the front lobby doors, nearly knocking my ass over as I tried to balance the four large boxes I adopted at Whitlock’s request.

Seclusion from the outside world.  Check.

Young boys with their whole life ahead of them.  Temporarily. Check.

But once we were inside and I took in the large sign that hung from the ceiling above the reception area, I felt like an idiot.

And I was virtually slapped awake from my hopes of this guy being an asshole that deserved whatever he got.

”Texas Hope?”  I repeated the words out loud and Whitlock smiled over at me from the front desk’s notebook that he was signing us into.

“Best I could come up with,” he told me with a tilt of his head so it met with his shoulder once.  “I’m not the creative one.”

“What is it?” I asked him.  Even though I was already pretty sure I knew.

Then he confirmed it.  And it no longer had any way of being just an afterthought for me. 

“It’s a boy’s home,” he said, as though he was under the impression I already was aware of that.

Then he laughed through his nose at me.  “You are one tough nut to figure out, Edward.”

Welcome to the club, Whitlock.

Welcome to the motherfucking club.

As I followed him through the hallways, I watched kids laughing and playing.  Learning shit… having a good time, I couldn’t help but feel, I don’t know, heavy.

I set the boxes down onto a table for a minute as I watched the flurry of activity around me, feeling the familiarity of it all and yet, it was not the same.  Not in the least bit.

“I’ve been here before.”

It was like a murmur really, my words, as I looked around me at the nameless faces of boys that were scattered around the place.

I hadn’t really been there before of course.  I’d been in a place much like it though.  In name only. 

The place I’d been in was old and damp.  Cold and grey.  Frowns and whips.

This place was…  “It’s so bright.”

Whitlock laughed.  “Gotta pick up the mood somehow, right?”

He elbowed me to remind me we had boxes of shit to carry in and I lifted a few, following him to a storage room.

“This is your big secret?” I asked him. Unable to process what he was all about.

“This is it,” he drawled.

“I don’t get it.”  I let the boxes drop in front of me.

“What’s there to get, Edward?”

“You, I don’t get you.”  Godammit.  I was so fucking pissed off all of a sudden.  Why did the guy have to be such a fucking saint?

He chuckled at me.  “I was born an orphan, Edward, it’s kinda near and dear ya know?”

“And the boxes?” I questioned.

He pointed at different areas of shelving that surrounded us.  “Laptops, clothes, shoes…. school supplies… anything I have layin’ around or is going out of style at my offices… sometimes I just buy a bunch of new stuff for ‘em… sometimes I send ‘em a check… you know… they need this stuff.  Helps ‘em stay on the right path.”

I let out a kind of, I feel like such a fucking idiot, laugh and shut my eyes, pinching at the bridge of my nose. 

“And you do all this… anonymously… Is that it?”

“That’s right.”  He stacked some boxes where they needed to go.

“Why?”

He shrugged. “ I guess I feel more like I’m doin’ it for the right reasons when no one else knows what it is I’m doin’.”

Except Marcus.

It was all coming together finally.

Marcus digs up Whitlock out of… who knows where… maybe it’s just because he used to be intelligence… maybe he knew about him before… maybe he’d been watching him his whole fucking life… doesn’t really matter though.  Then, he digs a little deeper and realizes he’s working with kids.  Giving them a chance at life… helping them stay on the path of the righteous… and he gets peeved that his supply of highly influential young boys is getting bamboozled by the guy.

I rubbed at the temples on each side of my head.

I also needed to sit down.

“Ohhhh this is… priceless.”

“What’s up Ed?”

I started laughing.

Silently at first but then it grew into a chuckle, which grew into a full blown, all out gigglefest that I couldn’t seem to control.

He probably thought I was losing my mind, but in reality, I was losing more than that.

Like the will to even try to make sense of Marcus Volturi.

“You need anything?” he asked me as I fell in to various stages of fits of laughter and tears.  And of course he would fucking ask me.

I could only shake my head at him though, as I held a hand up, stopping him for becoming any more celestial than he already was.  “Please,” managed to choke out.  “Stop.”

Then he sat down too and waited for the hysteria to subside a minute before making a statement of sorts.

“Ed, nothin’ is worthwhile in this world if you can’t be proud of yourself for doin’ it.”

And that kinda woke me back up.

Stabbed me in the heart.

Then moved on.

I wiped at my face and asked if there was anything else we needed to do before heading back, and of course there was.

We filled the kitchen pantry that day, listed needs, took down specific requests from some of the teachers… things like that.  He introduced me to a few kids he was particularly attached to and I felt this bitterness inside me starting to bubble up, at how any one of them could have been me, had I had more of a conscience as a boy.  More of anything, really.  And when I thought I couldn’t take it anymore, I told Whitlock I had to get home.  That Bella would probably worry.

In the back of my mind, I wondered if she even still existed.

The one person I’d been able to connect with after so many years working desperately not to connect with anything.

The ride home was quiet except for a few comments Whitlock had made about how grateful he was for my involvement and how important it would be to not speak about it to any press or other media.  Then he played low music while he answered blackberry text messages and made vocal notes to himself about improvements he wanted to make at the home. 

Sometimes I watched him.  The man was happy and I figured silently that he was probably the type that, even if he’d had no money at all, he’d probably find a way to give those kids what they needed.

I fucking hated him.  What he stood for.  What wasn’t available back when I needed it.

But, then I realized, it wasn’t really him I hated.

It was me.

Immediately upon pulling up to his house back in suburbia, relief washed over me when I saw Bella’s Beamer sitting in the driveway. I closed my eyes for a few moments, thanking whatever god might have been listening up above for keeping her alive another day.

I hadn’t expected to say anything to Whitlock when I jumped out of his truck.  I wanted to put as much space between us as possible so I wouldn’t go getting any crazy ideas but then, sure as hell, sounds flew out of my mouth and I said, “Thanks.”

“For?” he asked, twisting his face into a curious look. 

“Just… thanks.”

It was all I could come up with considering my intelligence, and I was already concocting something I hadn’t thought about doing in a long… damn… time.

Inside the lights were out except for one.  The brightness from the den’s TV was shining like a beacon and I followed it until I found her.  Bella, asleep on the couch in there.

She looked otherworldly as she lay there with her eyes closed.  The TV was on some old movie again and she had the door cracked open, letting cold air flow through the downstairs.  Three throw blankets covered her.

And I let out a breath of air.

She’s safe. 

I grinned at the OCD in her, walked over to close the slider and lock it up.

Then I took a seat next to her on the couch and watched her for a few minutes, before leaning forward, resting my elbows onto my knees and letting my forehead fall against the heal of my hands.

The feelings I was having in that moment, I knew they were my own fault.    I’d dug and dug until I found out what I didn’t want to know.   And I’d someone fallen for the oldest trick in the book.  Friendship.

But worse than that.  Love.

I tried to breathe.  Tried to justify any poor actions I might have taken going forward with Marcus’ job.  He’d held Bella over me after all, I couldn’t just let her die because I was having a moment of weakness over the ultimate good in people I’d found myself surrounded by.

Right?

But by the end of my very own self loathing party and the silent conversation I was having with my subconscious, I just couldn’t get around it.   I literally groaned.

 “We can’t do this.”

“Do what?”

I let my head turn lazily at the sound of her voice.  It was Bella.  I figured I must have woken her up with the groaning.

She smiled weakly.  Tired, maybe.

I could have just kept on playing the game but really, what was the point?  I decided I was too damn exhausted to try and lie anyway, and decided to just lay it out there.

Honesty.

“Whitlock,” I said quietly.  And with that one name, she sat up, curious. 

“What do you mean? Is everything okay? I thought you…”

“I did… I mean… I thought I did… I mean….” I breathed out and leaned forward, putting my head into my hands again. 

“Edward what’s wrong?”

Such a simple, non-consequential question.  So many fucked up answers.

What wasn’t wrong?

My head had to stop spinning for a few minutes before I could speak.  Then I turned and sat myself on the couch so I was facing her.  She looked anxious.

“I found out what Whitlock’s big deep dark secret is today.”

“Well that’s… great, right?” she asked and I noted the tone in her voice.  She could have just been tired I guess, but it strangely resembled the exhaustion I had been feeling since Marcus’s game with me in the conference room at the Driskil the night before. 

A short chuckle escaped me, despite my attempts to keep the hysteria in check again.

“He’s not…”

“What?”

My head was moving back and forth.  “There’s nothing on with this guy.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean he’s… giving to the poor, supplying their every need, giving them school, a place to live, a place to…”

“Edward,” she tried to stop me but I wasn’t done. 

“He’s literally like the fucking arch angel of the goddamn apocalypse or something like that.” I raked a hand through my hair. “I dunno.”

Then, after some silence, Bella put a hand on mine.  “It’s okay.”

“It is?”  I was hopeful all of a sudden.  She was on the same page and it felt… great. Until she finished her thought.

“I’ll just… go over and see Whitlock tomorrow. We’ll take care of this.”

“Wait… what do you mean?”  We’ll take care of this?

She shrugged, waking up a little and pushed the blankets fully off of her.  I could almost feel the way she was retreating into herself.  “He already likes me… I’ll work him… get him to fuck me or… something and then we’ll get some compromising photos… and…”

“Wait…. What?”

My interruption shocked her a little. 

“What’s wrong?”

Again… this question.  “Bella,” I was shaking my head, “You can’t…”  Then I let the frustration that had been building out in a very spazstic sort of way.  “He’s a good dude.”

 She barked out a laugh I hadn’t heard come out of her before. “How many times have I heard that one before?”

 “You don’t get it… there’s always a glitch… a… dark side to most people… something I can hang on to that makes what we do to them okay somehow, but Whitlock’s…”

“One in a million people out there to donate to charity, Edward, it doesn’t make him perfect.”

“It doesn’t make him worthy of Marcus Volturi’s bullshit either.”

“Stop trying to talk yourself out of it.”

And then I was losing it.  Losing any sense of self control over my temper whatsoever.  “Gotta be honest, Bella, I’m having a hard time talking myself into it right now.”

“Well, we have to.”

“No we don’t.”

But then she changed the way it all sounded.  “It’s what I do, Edward.”

“I”.  She’d said “I”.  Not “we” or “us”… she was distancing.

“No… it’s not… it doesn’t have to be.”

“Yes,” she laughed.  Almost, anyway. “It is.”

“What about…”

“Us?”

And then it was me that was shocked.  She picked up on the sting I’d just felt and settled herself a little bit.

Whether she was saying it for me, or for her benefit, I didn’t know.  And honestly, I didn’t wanna know.

“We knew we couldn’t stay here and play house forever, Edward… this is our job… this is the goal… he’s the target…. We take him down, we deliver him to Marcus… and then we go.”

“Go?”

“Yeah…”

“And where do go from here exactly, Bella?”

It was a question anyone could have taken in a long string of different ways.  I wasn’t sure which way Bella in particular had taken it based on her answer. 

“I don’t know yet.”