Author's Note:

Who knows, maybe every story will get an update this year? Anyway, I'm doing really well, the only down side is I don't ever get to write anymore, which is terrible as I used to enjoy it very much. I also hope everyone of my readers haven't thought that I have abandoned them or my stories. Please enjoy!

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10 Years After Happily Ever After

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He doesn't know how it happened, doesn't know when. All he knows is that it lacks feeling now – it's dull, repetitive and indifferent. Nothing has changed; she's still the perfect wife, cooking, cleaning, everything organised and ready for him. Bella creates dishes of perfection, beautiful in every way, they look like they belong on the cover of a home living magazine. She's had years to perfect her art, having supported him through-out college and medical school and her eventually leaving behind her own education in favour of the house-wife lifestyle.

He's grateful. He's grateful. He really is…. he tries to remember that as he looks at her from across the table.

She looks at him, unchanged through the years. She still looks like the eighteen year old that he proposed to…so why? The atmosphere is stilted between them, the conversation non-existent but her hand remains wrapped around his, as it has been since they were both seventeen; only now it feels less like a divine gift and more like penance, a shackle.

Before he even finishes the thought, his hand his slowly twisting from her once comforting grip. She doesn't fight the movement, instead she watches it go with a sad sort of smile. He's hurt her, she's never been able to hide her emotions.

There's a soft intake of air, she's building herself up for something. Something monumental.

She looks up at him through thick, dark lashes. "Do you still love me?"

No. I don't know how, I don't know when, but, no.

And yet, her pain still causes him pain and her tears still cause something to seize in his heart so his lips move without his consent, "Of course, I still love you."

She doesn't look like she believes him, her shoulders remain hunched. But there's a hopeful tilt to her lips and her eyes don't look quite so sad anymore. Slowly, her hand makes its way atop his again and though he wants to, he doesn't move.

"Coward," something young hisses inside him. The voice is familiar and enough to spark up irritation in him. This isn't his fault. It isn't. They've changed, Bella and himself. Edward used to look at her and find the joy in eternity in her eyes, now, he looks into them and finds himself afraid and full of dread at the mere thought of their bleak marriage and the endless years ahead of him. They've grown up – grown up and grown apart.

Something happened. He still didn't know what, or when, all he knows is when he looks at his wife, he can't remember why it is he felt he loved her. It's cruel, it's entirely cruel and he knows that, but it's true and he just can't stand feeling like the villain whenever he looks at her. All the guilt, all the toxic guilt builds up and tears into him when she looks up at him, eyes never accusing but nearly resigned and he can't help but think, 'why do you stay? Surely, surely, you must know, why do you stay? Why do you make me the bad guy?'

Let's get a divorce. He wants to say. But he doesn't, because despite everything, despite all the things Bella no longer makes him feel, there's always been one thing that she has never stopped making him feel; immeasurably guilty.

It has to be her, Bella has to leave him because his conscious won't allow for him to destroy her like that. But Bella won't, because somewhere along the line, he'd strangely become her everything and it was paralysing. Like the hand around his own, he too felt it at his throat.

He needs to leave – to get away from her.

The screech of his chair moving against the hardwood of their floor doesn't slice through the atmosphere as he rips his hand from underneath hers as gently as he can manage, if anything, the sound only adds to it. He feels her eyes on his back as he gathers his belongings, he's spouting excuses to her, he doesn't even know what he's telling her, but before he knows it, he's out the door and practically panting for air.

There's no other woman, he's not cheating or even aiming to cheat. He shouldn't feel this guilty, he hasn't done anything wrong. She has no right to look at him the way she does, like she knows what he's thinking and expected it. Expects him to be the bad guy and destroy their marriage but it wasn't him.

Something is knocking against his mind and conscious, something loud and sad and desperate and it takes Edward the longest of moments to realise that it isn't in his head. In a haze he turns his head to look to his left, from where he was still leaning against the door of his prison – a far cry from their perfect little vision of a cottage they had once dreamed of having – and there he spots a young woman, beautiful if not for the dark streams of mascara running down her face, screeching and banging ferociously on the next door neighbour's door.

"Jacob! Let me in! Jacob! Fuck!" The woman lets out an otherworldy shriek as crumbles against the door, sliding down until she's huddled on the cold steps, sobbing and making feeble attempts to punch at the wood.

It's not much, but it makes him feel slightly better that there was someone else in the world who seemed just as trapped as he did. He feels he can breathe again, the more distance he puts between that door – Bella – and himself. It makes it easier to think, to walk with confidence; only one thing breaks his stride.

"I left my husband for you, you fucking bastard! I love you, god, please, Jacob, I divorced him! I left everything for you!" The fire is back, and the woman is once more on her feet and fighting her unmovable foe.

It's enough to make him pause, enough to have all thoughts come to some truly dark conclusion, this muddled, not truly thought out idea. Vague but with enough shape to have him realise…maybe. Terrible. Truly terrible. But –

But –

That hand, that fucking delicate, warm, little hand on his own, like a vice cutting into his skin and growing like unbreakable chains around his wrist and those eyes with that damnable look in them, cutting him like nothing else with such surgical precision – it's enough to make him feel like going insane at the thought of spending the rest of his life like that, with her.

So he slows, just enough to look back and think to himself, Jacob.

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"Fuuck," comes the whining pitch of Mike Newton, male nurse – and while, yes, they've become more common, it's still something of a small joke to have male nurses on staff and Edward can't decide if it's the lingering vestiges of sexism in the system or the competitive streak of alpha medical practitioners trying to keep lines clear.

Mike slumps into his chair and it's only after Edward looks up that he realises Mike may for once have a justifiable reason to whine. There's a purple bloom running across the underside of his jaw where Mike is holding an ice pack to it. Nothing looks broken, but the swelling and colour gives it away as a fresh wound.

Edward gestures to his own jaw line, "what happened?"

Mike rolls his eyes heavenward and sighs, low and deep. "Same thing that always seems to happen this time of the week. Same guy too. You would think he would learn to stop going after married women. Guy has some serious mommy issues."

"Oh?" Edward has never really broken himself of the habit of being slightly too invasive.

Mike jerks his head in a clear 'look over there' gesture. Edward lets his eyes track the movement then the direction where they finally fall on a man that could barely be seen from the angle Edward was sitting. For all that his family had made fun of him during his school days – before Bella – Edward had truly never been attracted to another male in his life. However, he'd be a fool not to see why others would consider this man attractive.

He sat carelessly in the standard, plastic waiting room chair, legs crossed at the ankle and outstretched. He was young, younger than Edward by a good half decade at least, with unblemished russet skin and a full head of dark hair. It was obvious he had an effect on the woman around him as their eyes kept darting back to him, but he ignored them all, eyes narrowed and drilling into the floor.

"Damn brat, wish I was nearly as lucky at his age, hell, even now." Mike throws his ice pack on the table between them, "He's in here every week or two after being jumped by the jealous husbands of whoever the pick of the week is. And if I'm lucky, he'll take a swipe back and both of them will end up in the same waiting room brawling with each other. Had to separate the two of them. Kid is luck he hasn't been murdered yet – all the relationships he's ruined."

Edward stills, the apple in his hand untouched and the lunch Bella had made for him even more so. "Who's attending to him?"

Mike shrugs, "He's a sit and wait, whoever gets to him first."

Edward is up before he can even think about it, down the hallway, behind the reception desk and clamping a hand down on the shoulder of Lauren, the front desk worker. "The sit and wait," he ignores her stupefied expression, he knows he looks slightly unhinged, he feels unhinged, this is stupid, so entirely stupid, "pull up his chart."

There's a serious of clicks as she navigates their system before black lettering unfolds across the screen.

Jacob E. Black

"I'll take him," he tells Lauren, already moving away and towards the young man who was now looking up and quirking a brow at him – what did his face look like? Could this Jacob see? See the things Bella saw? That he was a terrible husband, that he was about to do something so truly terrible just to get a moments peace away from the grave-like atmosphere of his house, haunted by his ghost of a wife?

"Jacob Black?" Edward sweeps a hand out to herd him into his office, "please, come in."

The boy goes tense, eyeing Edward peculiarly but moving slowly into the office with the air of someone going to the hangman's noose. Behind him, Edward closes the door, locking it immediately. At the small click, Jacob twitches and grinds his teeth, eyes darting to the door knob and back to Edward, who stands in the way.

"Look man, I don't know what you've heard or what she told you," Jacob begins with the low tones of the truly irritated. "But I haven't done anything to your wife."

"No," Edward finds himself saying, allowing the door behind him to keep him upright as the world slowly spins around him. "No, you haven't but I would like you to."