Chapter 1

Summary: Bella Swan, a conductor for Chicago Metra Transit Group, has a jaded past. Edward is an up and coming ad exec who becomes a passenger on her train. Will he be able to overlook her past to see a future?

SM owns Twilight and characters – I’m only taking them for a ride.

A line that can only be used once:  Be gentle with me, this is my first time.

Chapter 1: All Aboard

5:30am

Another ten minutes before we depart. Someone needs to remind me why I switched to the early schedule. Oh, that’s right! So I can have my afternoons free to do errands and run in the sun!

 Bella stopped to remember one particular run about two and a half months ago. 

She was coming up to the incline of the trail she frequently ran and glanced toward the top of the hill, almost coming to a dead stop. Just cresting the peak ahead of her was the most incredible sight: broad shoulders, strong, lean back, and a mess of wet, dark hair with hints of bronze running through it. Bella increased her pace to get to the top, in the hopes of seeing more of this fine sight, but when she reached the top of the hill, he was gone. DAMN! 

 “Swan! Swan!!!” Bella was snapped out of her daydream by her supervisor’s voice carrying over to her from the next set of cars. “You about clear?” 

She smiled as she looked out over the platform. “Yeah, Billy. Hold up a sec. Harry’s almost to the doors.” 

Suddenly a strange sensation came over her – something she had never experienced before. An “awareness” was the only way she could describe it. She turned to the parking lot and spotted a Volvo with two occupants inside. The passenger door opened and a long lean leg stepped down to the pavement, followed by another encased in a walking brace. As she continued to gaze at the person emerging from the car, she caught a glimpse of unruly dark bronze hair.

“Swan, time to go!” Billy yelled again.

“Okay, Billy, hold on,” Bella replied before yelling to one of her favorite regular passengers. “Hustle, Harry, we have got to go!” Harry was a nice old guy and never seemed be in a hurry to go anywhere. He usually rode the train between two stops – Elburn to Geneva – to fish in the Fox River. Bella had never seen anyone, other than her dad, that liked to fish so much.

The passenger of the Volvo heard her and tried to make a run for it. She knew he would never make it, especially in that brace, so she yelled out to him, “There’s another train in thirty minutes. We have to depart.” He glanced down at his watch and then glared at the train, as if it had offended him by leaving on time. As the doors to the vestibule began to close, Bella looked out at him, smiling a half smile and shrugging her shoulders in apology, but she was surprised to see the most intense glare, almost strong enough to feel, coming from the greenest eyes she had ever seen before.

The next morning, the Volvo was there in the lot with both occupants again. As it got closer to departure time, both the passenger and the driver got out. Bella noticed that the green eyed God was driving today. His companion, a short pixie woman with dark hair, walked around to the driver’s side. She stood on tip toe as he bent down to her level to exchange a hug and a kiss goodbye. 

“Swan!” came the familiar bellow of her supervisor.

“Yeah, Billy, I know! Hustle, Harry! We’ve got to go!”

At this announcement, the man from the Volvo, who was almost to the platform, worked on increasing his speed while cursing the brace under his breath. Bella noticed this and yelled out to Billy a couple of cars down. Once she had his attention, she pointed toward the man and told Billy, “Hold up a few. He missed yesterday.” The passenger glanced her way and waved his thanks before boarding the train by Billy’s car.

The following week, she spotted “Mr. Volvo” boarding the train a few times –always in the same car. Creature of habit, she figured. However, there was no sign of him after that, and by the following Thursday she’d resigned herself to the fact that she wouldn’t be seeing the bronze haired, green-eyed God again. Oh well, enough daydreaming about an elusive stranger. At 1:00pm, her shift was over and she was excited to get home to work on her plans for the next day, glad that she had been able to coordinate with Billy to take the whole day off.

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At 7:30pm that same Thursday, the bronze haired man finally pulled up to his two story colonial style house, cursing. “Fucking traffic! Two and a half God damn hours in fucking traffic to travel fifty-two miles! Fuck!” He walked into his house, and his doting cousin was there to greet him with a Corona and a shot of Patrón.

“Welcome home Edward! I had a feeling you would have had a long day, so I figured you’d need this,” she said as she handed him the drinks and took his briefcase.

“Ah, Alice, you always seem to know what I need before I do. You’re the best, and I don’t care what anyone else says!”

Alice answered his compliment with a resounding “screw off” but knew that he was just joking. “Rough day, Edward?” she asked, and he looked at her and rolled his eyes.

“Yeah, the driving is really starting to get tedious. I used to not mind it, but lately it’s…well, it’s too much. It took me two and a half hours to get home. At least the train used to get me home earlier.” 

“Well, it is better for the environment, and you do need to remember that winter will be coming soon, so you should just go ahead and start taking it, even if you have healed from your sprain . . .” Alice droned on.

“Alice! Jeez, you sound like a commercial for Metra! I get it, but since I’m off work tomorrow, I don’t need to worry about it until Monday. The only pain in the ass part is having to run for the bus that I need to take to get to work–”

“Oh,” Alice interrupted, “before I forget, the doctor called. He wouldn’t say much to me, except that the answer to your question is yes.”

 “Perfect! I wanted to make sure that I could start running, lightly anyway,” he answered.

“That’s great. I think you should go tomorrow… Yes, after we get home in the afternoon. It’s supposed to be nice out, a little cooler in the afternoon than it will be in the morning, so you won’t get too over heated.”

Edward nodded his head in approval. He’d never won an argument with her before, so there was no need to start now.